Cotton whispered: “Wait till I see if his car’s here.”
He went away. The sheriff blew out his breath and grunted: “Damn such a expedition!” Rolly sighed.
The marshal returned jubilant.
“It ain’t there, so he ain’t here,” he said. “Come on, it’ll get us out of the wet anyways.”
We followed him up a muddy path between bushes to the black house, up on its back porch. We stood there while he got a window open, climbed through, and unlocked the door. Our flashlights, used for the first time now, showed us a small neat kitchen. We went in, muddying the floor.
Cotton was the only member of the party who showed any enthusiasm. His face, from hat-brim to dimpled chin, was the face of a master of ceremonies who is about to spring what he is sure will be a delightful surprise. Vernon regarded him skeptically, Feeney disgustedly, Rolly indifferently, and I—who didn’t know what we were there for—no doubt curiously.
It developed that we were there to search the house. We did it, or at least Cotton did it while the rest of us pretended to help him. It was a small house. There was only one room on the ground-floor besides the kitchen, and only one—an unfinished bedroom—above. A grocer’s bill and a tax-receipt in a table-drawer told me whose house it was—Harvey Whidden’s. He was the big-boned deliberate man who had seen the stranger in the Chrysler with Gabrielle Collinson.
We finished the ground-floor with a blank score, and went upstairs. There, after ten minutes of poking around, we found something. Rolly pulled it out from between bed-slats and mattress. It was a small flat bundle wrapped in a white linen towel.
Cotton dropped the mattress, which he had been holding up for the deputy to look under, and joined us as we crowded around Rolly’s package. Vernon took it from the deputy sheriff and unrolled it on the bed. Inside the towel were a package of hairpins, a lace-edged white handkerchief, a silver hairbrush and comb engraved G. D. L., and a pair of black kid gloves, small and feminine.
I was more surprised than anyone else could have been.
“G. D. L.,” I said, to be saying something, “could be Gabrielle Something Leggett—Mrs. Collinson’s name before she was married.”
Cotton said triumphantly: “You’re durned right it could.”
A heavy voice said from the doorway:
“Have you got a search-warrant? What the hell are you doing here if you haven’t? It’s burglary, and you know it.”
Harvey Whidden was there. His big body, in a yellow slicker, filled the doorway. His heavy-featured face was dark and angry.
Vernon began: “Whidden, I—”
The marshal screamed, “It’s him!” and pulled a gun from under his coat.
I pushed his arm as he fired at the man in the doorway. The bullet hit the wall.
Whidden’s face was now more astonished than angry. He jumped back through the doorway and ran downstairs. Cotton, upset by my push, straightened himself up, cursed me, and ran out after Whidden. Vernon, Feeney, and Rolly stood staring after them.
I said: “This is good clean sport, but it makes no sense to me. What’s it all about?”
Nobody told me. I said: “This comb and brush were on Mrs. Collinson’s table when we searched the house, Rolly.”
The deputy sheriff nodded uncertainly, still staring at the door. No noise came through it now. I asked:
“Would there be any special reason for Cotton framing Whidden?”
The sheriff said: “They ain’t good friends.” (I had noticed that.) “What do you think, Vern?”
The district attorney took his gaze from the door, rolled the things in their towel again, and stuffed the bundle in his pocket. “Come on,” he snapped, and strode downstairs.
The front door was open. We saw nothing, heard nothing, of Cotton and Whidden. A Ford—Whidden’s—stood at the front gate soaking up rain. We got into it. Vernon took the wheel, and drove to the house in the cove. We hammered at its door until it was opened by an old man in gray underwear, put there as caretaker by the sheriff.
The old man told us that Cotton had been there at eight o’clock that night, just, he said, to look around again. He, the caretaker, didn’t know no reason why the marshal had to be watched, so he hadn’t bothered him, letting him do what he wanted, and, so far as he knew, the marshal hadn’t taken any of the Collinsons’ property, though of course he might of.
Vernon and Feeney gave the old man hell, and we went back to Quesada.
Rolly was with me on the back seat. I asked him:
“Who is this Whidden? Why should Cotton pick on him?”
“Well, for one thing, Harve’s got kind of a bad name, from being mixed up in the rum-running that used to go on here, and from being in trouble now and then.”
“Yeah? And for another thing?”
The deputy sheriff frowned, hesitating, hunting for words; and before he had found them we were stopping in front of a vine-covered cottage on a dark street corner. The district attorney led the way to its front porch and rang the bell.
After a little while a woman’s voice sounded overhead:
“Who’s there?”
We had to retreat to the steps to see her—Mrs. Cotton at a second-story window.
“Dick got home yet?” Vernon asked.
“No, Mr. Vernon, he hasn’t. I was
