“Mine is Clyde Burchard.”
“Called John Campbell,” the chief repeated. “It wasn’t his real name, of course. His real name could be anything, including Clyde Burchard.”
“I never rented any such house.”
“Do you have any way to prove that?”
“What do you mean prove it? You can’t prove I did.”
“That remains to be seen.” Fellows reached out to hand Burchard one of the pictures. “Want to tell us this girl’s name?”
He looked at the proffered photograph without taking it. “No. Why should I?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” Fellows kept the picture at arm’s length. Burchard looked away from it, turning to the chief. “Because it’s none of your business. What right have you got coming in here asking me a lot of questions? I haven’t done anything.”
“We can’t just take your word on that, I’m afraid.” Fellows replaced that picture and held out another. “Who’s this girl?”
“I’m not going to tell you. I said that before.”
Fellows gave up with a sigh. “Can you tell us what you did last weekend? The one before this one?”
“Why?”
“Because everything you’ve told us so far goes against your claim you know nothing about this. If you’re innocent, you ought to have some way of convincing us.”
He said, “I was away that weekend.”
“Where did you go?”
“I went to New York.”
“How did you get there?”
“I took the train.”
“What train?”
“I got one around six o’clock. It’s the one I usually take.”
“You go to New York every weekend?”
“Nearly every weekend.”
“Why?”
“What do you think I’m going to do? Stay here?”
“You’re not answering my question, Mr. Burchard.”
“To have some fun, of course.”
“Somebody special you go to see in New York?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Want to tell me her name?”
“No, I don’t. I said I’m not giving out names. But I can tell you one thing. If you try to prove I did anything that weekend, I can bring her in here and make a liar out of you.”
“See anybody you knew on the train, Mr. Burchard? Did you meet anybody on the train? Someone who could kind of back up your story?”
“No.”
“You didn’t sit next to a girl, maybe, and chew the fat with her?”
“No.”
Fellows regarded the man thoughtfully for a moment. Then he said, “Have you ever been in jail, Mr. Burchard?”
Burchard looked grim, but he didn’t answer.
“We can find out,” Fellows reminded him. “You’d be better off telling us yourself.”
The man said sullenly, “Once. I served part of a two-year sentence.”
“What for?”
“A girl told me she was eighteen. Her parents proved she wasn’t.”
Fellows accepted that and tried another tack. He asked questions about the others in the house, who the landlord was, when and how he sold the vacuum cleaners. Burchard said he knew little of the other people in the house, that he seldom saw them. He said the landlord was a landlady who lived on the first floor on the opposite side. He sold vacuum cleaners during the day and did pretty well at it.
“Pretty well?” Fellows asked and glanced around the apartment. “But you live here? What’s the rent?”
“Forty a month. But I only sleep here. I’m not going to waste my money on a place to flop.”
As for his technique in selling, he said he’d pick a neighborhood and hit all the houses. Blind calls, he described them, and he was successful at it. “It’s a percentage,” he explained nervously. “If you know how to sell, and you pick the right neighborhood, one that’s not too classy, you can figure on so many calls to make a sale. So it’s just a question of putting in the time.” Burchard lit a cigarette and his hands were shaking.
Fellows said, “A man in your work can take off all the time he wants, I guess.”
“You can, but you don’t make any money doing it. And beyond a certain point the company will give you the fish eye.”
Fellows said to Wilks, “Sid, while we’re talking here, why don’t you run down and see the landlady. We’ve got time.”
Wilks nodded and went out. Burchard watched him and took quick puffs on his cigarette. “Listen, I haven’t done anything. I don’t know anything about any woman in Stockford.”
“You canvass houses in Townsend when you’re trying to sell vacuum cleaners?”
“I go all over this area.”
“How about showing us your records?”
He jumped a little. “Records? What records?”
“Of your calls. You must keep a record, Burchard.”
“It’s in my head. I don’t write that stuff down.”
The chief said, with sudden impatience, “Listen, Burchard, I want to know who you called on in Townsend. The more you stall, the deeper in you get. Now tell me.”
He put a hand to his forehead. “I can’t remember. You’ve got me all mixed up.”
Fellows got up and looked around. There were no places for papers in the living room and he returned to the bedroom, opening drawers in the bureau. He didn’t have to go beyond the top ones. Scattered papers half filled the right-hand drawer and he went through them slowly. Burchard watched through the door from his chair. He swallowed several times, but the presence of the other officers kept him silent.
The only informative papers were order-form duplicates that contained names and addresses of sales made. Fellows read every one. Most were in the Stamford area, but there were four in Townsend, one in Ashmun, and three in Stockford, as well as a scattering from other surrounding towns. Fellows copied the Townsend ones and put the papers back.
“All right,” he said, rejoining him. “Maybe tomorrow you can show us all the places you’ve been to in Townsend, all the calls you made there.”
“I can’t. I’ll be on the road.”
Fellows shook his head at McGarrity, and the captain snapped, “Not tomorrow, Burchard. We’re holding you.”
“Holding me? For what?”
Fellows said, “Suspicion of murder.”
Burchard came out of the chair like a shot, and McGarrity and Paulus converged on him. “You can’t,” Burchard yelped. “You— you’ve got nothing to hold me for. I haven’t done anything. I’m innocent.”
Fellows stood up too. “That may be, Mr. Burchard, but we’re not convinced of it. Not by quite a
