He brought her into his office with a puzzled Wilks following, then leaned out to say to Sergeant Unger, “Get hold of Watly, will you? Ask him to come over right away.” He closed the door and seated Miss Sherman in his swivel chair.
Wilks said, “Don’t tell me what this is all about. I only work here.”
“It’s more of my stratosphere stuff. It probably won’t pay off, but by the law of averages, Sid, if you keep trying long enough, something’s bound to happen.”
“What’s supposed to happen this time?”
“Figure it out. She and Watly are the only two people we know of who’ve seen Campbell.”
“You’re not going to have them draw another picture are you?”
“That’s one possibility,” Fellows admitted, “but I’m hoping just a little bit that we won’t have to resort to that.”
The girl sat quietly, a little bit awed, a little bit embarrassed. Wilks said to her, “Do you know what this is all about? I can see the chief won’t tell me.”
She shook her head. “He came this morning and got me out of bed. I don’t know what it’s for.”
Wilks bit savagely into a hunk of chewing tobacco. The look he gave Fellows said it was more hocus-pocus.
At quarter of nine, Sergeant Unger opened the door. “Mr. Watly’s here.”
Fellows brightened. He went out to greet him. “Sorry, Mr. Watly. We’re taking up a lot of your time.”
Watly nodded. He had passed the stage of enjoying any of this. He had even passed the stage of complaining.
Fellows stood aside and let him enter the office first. Watly took one step inside the door.
In the chief’s chair, Jean Sherman shrank back, then stumbled to her feet. Her voice was a shriek. “It’s him! It’s John Campbell!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
Friday, 8:45-10:00 AM.
When Jean screamed, Wilks froze against the table, and Watly sagged against the wall, his face gray. Only Fellows seemed to know what he was doing. He shut the door and pulled out a chair. Jean moved into a corner, staring at Watly with a look akin to horror, her hand at her throat, her breasts rising and falling rapidly. Fellows took the stunned real estate man by the arm and aided him into the seat. “How about it, Mr. Watly?” he said. “You want to tell us about it?”
Watly leaned his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. “It’s been driving me crazy. I haven’t been able to sleep or eat for waiting.” He looked up. “Let me explain,” he begged. “I can explain everything if you’ll only listen.”
“We’ll listen. You just wait here.” He opened the door and ushered Jean Sherman out into the arms of a flabbergasted Sergeant Unger. He said, “Thank you very much, Miss Sherman. You’ve been a great help. Now, if you’ll go with the sergeant, I’ll have him take you upstairs and get your statement.” He said to Unger, “First get Ed Lewis. I’m going to want him for Watly’s confession.”
Unger nodded and got busy. He departed with the girl as Wilks came out of the office. The detective sergeant was eyeing Fellows suspiciously. He said, “Something tells me this wasn’t pure accident, your bringing Watly and the girl together.”
Fellows grinned and moved to the door where he could look in on Raymond Watly, who was resting his head on his hands. “I wanted to satisfy myself,” he said to Wilks.
“You might prepare a guy for a shock like that. I’m not a young man any more.”
“I couldn’t, Sid. It was more of my stratosphere stuff and if I let on I suspected him and I was wrong again, I’d be the laughing stock of the town.”
“How did you do it?”
“I added up my theories, Sid. We figured Campbell was married, that he worked in downtown Stockford, but lived in another town, one not too far away. We had him a salesman, one who worked regular hours in the daytime and did door-to-door selling at night. We also figured he didn’t want us to have his handwriting because we could identify it, either because he had a jail record or because he was close by. We also felt he did have a record somewhere. And we thought he abandoned the body because he was sure of discovery—and the only certainty of discovery was by a prospect coming out to look at the house. That was all that stratosphere stuff you were talking about, and I expected to be wrong on a lot of it, but I couldn’t see how I could be wrong on all of it. I just couldn’t believe that.
“So then, thinking about this guy Bunnell, it occurred to me that the only guy who resembled Watly’s description at all and who could have known Bunnell would go to the house was Watly himself. As soon as I thought of that, I realized that there was still one person who worked in Stockford Center who hadn’t been cleared by Watly and that again was Watly himself. Of course I thought I was crazy, but then I began to think I wasn’t crazy because more and more I could see everything fell into place if Watly was the guy. He’s married. He works in Stockford, but he fives in Ashmun. He’s in real estate. That’s a selling job. And he was out the night you called him to go to Stamford with us. He could have gone to a movie, but he could also have been house-to-house selling, especially since his wife was home to say he was out. Then there were the differences in description, his and Jean Sherman’s. He said Campbell was five-ten, two inches shorter than he was. Jean said he was six feet. Watly said Campbell wore better clothes than he could buy. Jean said they were average clothes. Watly had him wearing a tan overcoat. Jean said a dark coat. Watly wears a dark one.” Fellows shrugged. “It’d
