snoop around that hospital. Looking for a ceanothus in bloom, along the curb. Sure enough, there was one.'
'I can see the jury.'
'I can, too,' said Grimes cheerfully, 'when we produce this old chap, walking his dog last Friday night, who gets amused when the three letters on a license plate spell a word. He gives us the same three letters on that rented car, mider the ceanothus bush. Coincidence? Yahl'
'Not proof.'
'Sometimes the human mind will jump the proof and reckon up the probability. Just as humans did when Mc- Cauley was convicted. You don't think this human world goes by logic, do you?'
The lawyer was silenced.
'Now, Grimes went on, 'we've got Bartee's car near the hospital.'
'He wouldn't know that Emily was there.'
'I don't care about that,' said Grimes bhthely. 'If we can put him there, tlien we know that he knew. We'll find out how he knew some other time. You absolutely cannot prove that a man doesn't kjipw something. So don't worry about it. Now, for the leg-work. I've stiired up the police. Their legs are legion. Checking every patient in that wing. Who visited?'
'Take weeks,' groaned Copeland.
'I don't think so. Two rooms to worry about/'
'Two rooms?'
'Padgett's room was second from the end of the wing. Nobody in the end room on her side. So, the two rooms on the opposite side of the corridor, between her and-lhe door. Bartee wd^ldn't walk through the hospital.'
'Listen,' said Copeland, 'I am willing to suspect . . . But even if he knew which hospital, how could he know which room?'
'I'll tell you,' said Grimes. 'What about the florist who called and asked if Emily Padgett was in there and if so in which room? And what about nurses who say, 'No flowers for Padgett/ ever?'
'Somebody goofed,' said Copeland feebly.
'You don't beheye that,' said Grimes. 'You're just as human as I am. We both know Bartee killed Emily Padgett.'
'If he did ...' Copeland raved.
'The rest is leg-work. Find some witnesses. If any visitor saw him and can identify. Let's short-cut this thing. You take room 409. I'll take 411. BeHeve me, they are the ones that count.'
'Why didn't you tell John Sims?' asked the lawyer.
'Because,' said Grimes, 'better he get nowhere. Bartee must be pretty confident that nobody will ever prove he killed a woman seventeen years ago. But if he killed a woman
last Friday night, that's difiFerent. Sims knew the Padgett woman well. He couldn't hide that suspicion. Bartee could get nervous. And a killer may as well kill three times as twice.'
'Poor Emily,' mourned Copeland. 'Poor Nan. Poor httle Nan.'
'Everybody's going to be safer,' said Grimes, 'if we assume this Dick Bartee is mighty dangerous.'
The phone rang in Johnny's room in the motel. Blanche Bartee seemed to be inviting him to dinner.
'I'd hke very much to come, Mrs. Bartee,' Johimy's manners concealed his astonishment. 'Thank you.'
'Seven o'clock, Mr. Sims?' Blanche said in a hostess' voice, with no human warmth in it.
He agreed, hung up, breathed deeply in.
Maybe Nan needed him! He could see a vision of her in his mind. Nan subdued, shrunk back into her shy shell, forlorn, lost, wondering, feeling the doubt. The Bartees would be concerned about her. They would ask him to come to the house and they would want things clarified. They would want to know what Johnny had done to her.
Poor little Nan.
CHAPTER 13
The dining room, which lay back of the long parlor, was red and white. There was a red carpet and red damask hangings at the several long windows. The walls were white. The chandeher was crystal. At the oval table, Johnny sat on the left of his hostess, who, in white with peals, was discoursing on the subject of the climate here.
To his left sat the old lady, in black, attacking with greed and relish her cake.
Bart, at the head of the table, bent to Dorothy on his left.
Dorothy wore a soft apricot-colored dress and had her blonde hair swept high.
Nan (poor httle Nanl) was wearing red. A red velvet band held her dark hair back from her sparkhng face. Bonds, spun in the air, but almost visible, held Nan hugged close, allied in loving faith, to Dick Bartee, who sat between the two pretty girls, being charming.
In the parlor, before dinner, under the shock of finding his vision of Nan to have been about as inaccurate as it could be, Johnny had rallied. Well, then? Here he was. What was to be accomplished?
The old lady had not been in the parlor and he had been afraid she would not appear. For, he reflected, the old lady hked him. Maybe he could try again with her. Glean all he could before the politeness and the charm broke open and he was told why he had been asked. Or asked what he had been told. Or told to stop asking.
Now the old lady was here. But Blanche did the talking.
