“Pounding their ears. Better get some sleep yourself,” I suggested. “I’ll ring you up if anything happens.”
He set off for home. I went into the café for breakfast. I was half through when Vernon joined me there. He had telegrams from the San Francisco police department and the Marin County sheriff’s office, confirming Fitzstephan’s alibis.
“I got my report on Cotton,” I said. “He reached his mother’s at seven or a little after Saturday morning, and left at six that evening.”
“Seven or a little after?” Vernon didn’t like that. If the marshal had been in San Francisco at that time he could hardly have been abducting the girl. “Are you sure?”
“No, but that’s the best we’ve been able to do so far. There’s Fitzstephan now.” Looking through the café door, I had seen the novelist’s lanky back at the hotel desk. “Excuse me a moment.”
I went over and got Fitzstephan, bringing him back to the table with me, and introducing him to Vernon. The district attorney stood up to shake hands with him, but was too busy with thoughts of Cotton to bother now with anything else. Fitzstephan said he had had breakfast before leaving the city, and ordered a cup of coffee. Just then I was called to the phone.
Cotton’s voice, but excited almost beyond recognition:
“For God’s sake get Vernon and Feeney and come up here.”
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Hurry! Something awful’s happened. Hurry!” he cried, and hung up.
I went back to the table and told Vernon about it. He jumped up, upsetting Fitzstephan’s coffee. Fitzstephan got up too, but hesitated, looking at me.
“Come on,” I invited him. “Maybe this’ll be one of the things you like.”
Fitzstephan’s car was in front of the hotel. The marshal’s house was only seven blocks away. Its front door was open. Vernon knocked on the frame as we went in, but we didn’t wait for an answer.
Cotton met us in the hall. His eyes were round and bloodshot in a face as hard-white as marble. He tried to say something, but couldn’t get the words past his tight-set teeth. He gestured towards the door behind him with a fist that was clenched on a piece of brown paper.
Through the doorway we saw Mrs. Cotton. She was lying on the blue-carpeted floor. She had on a pale blue dress. Her throat was covered with dark bruises. Her lips and tongue—the tongue, swollen, hung out—were darker than the bruises. Her eyes were wide open, bulging, upturned, and dead. Her hand, when I touched it, was still warm.
Cotton, following us into the room, held out the brown paper in his hand. It was an irregularly torn piece of wrapping paper, covered on both sides with writing—nervously, unevenly, hastily scribbled in pencil. A softer pencil had been used than on Fitzstephan’s message, and the paper was a darker brown.
I was closest to Cotton. I took the paper, and read it aloud hurriedly, skipping unnecessary words:
“Whidden came last night … said husband after him … frame him for Collinson trouble … I hid him in garret … he said only way to save him was to say he was here Friday night … said if I didn’t they’d hang him … when Mr. Vernon came Harve said he’d kill me if I didn’t … so I said it … but he wasn’t here that night … I didn’t know he was guilty then … told me afterwards … tried to kidnap her Thursday night … husband nearly caught him … came in office after Collinson sent telegram and saw it … followed him and killed him … went to San Francisco, drinking whiskey … decided to go through with kidnapping anyway … phoned man who knew her to try to learn who he could get money from … too drunk to talk good … wrote letter and came back … met her on road … took her to old bootleggers’ hiding place somewhere below Dull Point … goes in boat … afraid he’ll kill me … locked in garret … writing while he’s down getting food … murderer … I won’t help him … Daisy Cotton.”
The sheriff and Rolly had arrived while I was reading it. Feeney’s face was as white and set as Cotton’s.
Vernon bared his teeth at the marshal, snarling:
“You wrote that.”
Feeney grabbed it from my hands, looked at it, shook his head, and said hoarsely:
“No, that’s her writing, all right.”
Cotton was babbling:
“No, before God, I didn’t. I planted that stuff on him, I’ll admit that, but that was all. I come home and find her like this. I swear to God!”
“Where were you Friday night?” Vernon asked.
“Here, watching the house. I thought—I thought he might—But he wasn’t here that night. I watched till daybreak and then went to the city. I didn’t—”
The sheriff’s bellow drowned the rest of Cotton’s words. The sheriff was waving the dead woman’s letter. He bellowed:
“Below Dull Point! What are we waiting for?”
He plunged out of the house, the rest of us following. Cotton and Rolly rode to the waterfront in the deputy’s car. Vernon, the sheriff, and I rode with Fitzstephan. The sheriff cried throughout the short trip, tears splashing on the automatic pistol he held in his lap.
At the waterfront we changed from the cars to a green and white motor boat run by a pink-cheeked, towheaded youngster called Tim. Tim said he didn’t know anything about any bootleggers’ hiding-places below Dull Point, but if there was one there he could find it. In his hands the boat produced a lot of speed, but not enough for Feeney and Cotton. They stood together in the bow, guns in their fists, dividing their time between straining forward and yelling back for more speed.
Half an hour from the dock, we rounded a blunt promontory that the others called Dull Point, and Tim cut down our speed, putting the boat in closer to the rocks that jumped up high and sharp at the water’s edge. We were now all eyes—eyes that soon ached from staring under the noon sun but kept on staring. Twice we saw clefts in the rock-walled shore, pushed hopefully in to them, saw that they were blind,
