Mrs. Hopkins shook her head again. “He didn’t have any. That’s what he would always say, that he didn’t have a relative or a friend in the world.”
“Who’s his lawyer?”
Mrs. Hopkins looked blank. “If he’s got one I don’t know it, Mr. Gould. Maybe you could find something like that in his letters and things.”
“That’ll do,” Guild said abruptly around the cigarette in his mouth, and opened the door for the Hopkinses. They left the room.
He shut the door behind them and with his back against it looked around the room, at the blanketed dead figure on the bed, at the clothing scattered here and there, at the three travelling bags, and finally at the bloodstained centre of the light blue rug.
Boyer watched him expectantly.
Staring at the bloodstain, Guild asked: “You’ve notified the police in San Francisco?”
“Oh, yes, we’ve sent his description and the description and license number of his car all over – from Los Angeles to Seattle and as far east as Salt Lake.”
“What is the number?” Guild took a pencil and an envelope from his pockets.
Boyer told him, adding: “It’s a Buick coupe, last year’s.”
“What does he look like?”
“I’ve never seen him, but he’s very tall – well over six feet – and thin. Won’t weigh more than a hundred and thirty, they say. You know, he’s tubercular: that’s how he happened to come up here. He’s about forty-five years old, sunburned, but sallow, with brown eyes and very dark brown hair and whiskers. He’s got whiskers – maybe five or six inches long – thick and shaggy, and his eyebrows are thick and shaggy. There’s a lot of pictures of him in his room. You can help yourself to them. He had on a baggy gray tweed suit and a soft gray hat and heavy brown shoes. His shoulders are high and straight and he walks on the balls of his feet with long steps. He doesn’t smoke or drink and he has a habit of talking to himself.”
Guild put away his pencil and envelope. “Had your fingerprint people go over the place yet?”
“No, I -“
“It might help in case he’s picked up somewhere and we’re doubtful. I suppose we can get specimens of his handwriting. Anyway we’ll be able to get them from the bank. We’ll try to -“
Someone knocked on the door.
“Come in,” Boyer called.
The door opened to admit a man’s head. He said: “They want you on the phone.”
The district attorney followed the man downstairs. During his absence Guild smoked and looked sombrely around the room.
The district attorney came back saying: “The car belongs to a Charles Fremont, on Guerrero Street, in San Francisco.”
“What number?” Guild brought out his pencil and envelope again. Boyer told him the number and he wrote it down. “I think I’ll trot back right now and see him.”
The district attorney looked at his watch. “I wonder – if I couldn’t manage to get away to go with you,” he said.
Guild pursed his lips. “I don’t think you ought to. One of us ought to be here looking through his stuff, gathering up the loose ends. I haven’t seen anybody else we ought to trust with it.”
Though Boyer seemed disappointed he said, “Righto,” readily enough. “You’ll keep in touch with me?”
“Sure. Let me have that card I gave you and I’ll put my home address and phone number on it.” Guild’s eyes became drowsy. “What do you say I drive Fremont’s car in?”
The district attorney wrinkled his forehead. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “It might – Oh, sure, if you want. You’ll phone me as soon as you’ve seen him – let me know what’s what?”
“Um-hmm.”
Three
A red-haired girl in white opened the door.
Guild said: “I want to see Mr. Charles Fremont.”
“Yes, sir,” the girl said amiably in a resonant throaty voice. “Come in.”
She took him into a comfortably furnished living-room to the right of the entrance. “Sit down. I’ll call my brother.” She went through another doorway and her voice could be heard singing: “Charley, a gentleman to see you.”
Upstairs a hard, masculine voice replied: “Be right down.”
The red-haired girl came back to the room where Guild was. “He’ll be down in a minute,” she said.
Guild thanked her.
“Do sit down,” she said, sitting on an end of the sofa. Her legs were remarkably beautiful.
He sat in a large chair facing her across the room, but got up again immediately to offer her a cigarette and to hold his lighter to hers. “What I wanted to see your brother about,” he said as he sat down again, “was to ask if he knows a Miss Columbia Forrest.”
The girl laughed. “He probably does,” she said. “She’s – They’re going to be married tomorrow.”
Guild said: “Well, that’s – “ He stopped when he heard footsteps running downstairs from the second floor.
A man came into the room. He was a man of perhaps thirty-five years, a little above medium height, trimly built, rather gaily dressed in gray with lavender shirt, tie, and protruding pocket-handkerchief. His face was lean and good-looking in a shrewd, tight-lipped fashion.
“This is my brother,” the girl said.
Guild stood up. “I’m trying to get some information about Miss Columbia Forrest,” he said, and gave Charles Fremont one of his cards.
The curiosity that had come into Fremont’s face with Guild’s words became frowning amazement when he had read Guild’s card. “What -?”
Guild was saying: “There’s been some trouble up at Hell Bend.”
Fremont’s eyes widened in his paling face. “Wynant has -?”
Guild nodded. “He shot Miss Forrest this afternoon.”
The Fremonts stared at each other’s blank, horrified faces. She said through the fingers of one hand, trembling so she stuttered: “I t – t – told you, Charley!”
Charles Fremont turned savagely on Guild. “How bad is she hurt? Tell me!”
The dark man said: “She’s dead.”
Fremont sobbed and sat down with his face in his hands. His sister knelt beside him with her arms around him. Guild stood watching them.
Presently Fremont raised his head. “Wynant?” he asked.
“Gone.”
Fremont let his breath out in a low groan. He sat up straight, patting one of his sister’s hands, freeing himself from her arms. “I’m going up there now,” he told her, rising.
Guild had finished lighting a cigarette. He said: “That’s all right, but you’ll do most good by telling me some things before you go.”
“Anything I can,” Fremont promised readily.
“You were to be married tomorrow?”
“Yes. She was down here last night and stayed with us and I persuaded her. We were going to leave here tomorrow morning and drive up to Portland – where we wouldn’t have to wait three days for the license – and then go up to Banff. I’ve just wired the hotel there for reservations. So she took the car – the new one we were going in – to go up to Hell Bend and get her things. I asked her not to – we both tried to persuade her – because we knew Wynant would make trouble, but – but we never thought he would do anything like this.”
“You know him pretty well?”
“No, I’ve only seen him once – about three weeks ago – when he came to see me.”
“What’d he come to see you for?”
“To quarrel with me about her – to tell me to stay away from her.”
