“Yes,” he said slowly, “though I’m not sure I lost my head. I’ve got a hunch I came pretty near giving the ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ what he deserved.”
“That’s a swell hunch,” I told him. “We were ready to grab him. The whole thing had looked phony. Nobody had come for the money the first night, but it wasn’t there the next day, so he said. Well, we only had his word for it that he had actually put it there and hadn’t found it the next night. The next night, after he had been told the place was watched he left the money there, and then he wrote the note saying Death & Company knew he’d gone to the police. That wasn’t public news, either. And then her being killed before anybody knew she was kidnapped. And then tying it to you when it was too dizzy—no, you are dizzy, or you wouldn’t have pulled this one. Anyhow we had enough to figure he was wrong, and if you’d let him alone we’d have pulled him, put it in the papers, and waited for you to come forth and give us what we needed to clear you and swing him.” I was twisting my necktie around his leg above the bullet-hole. “But that’s too sensible for you. How long you been playing around with her?”
“A couple of months,” he said, “only I wasn’t playing. I meant it.”
“How’d he happen to catch her there alone?”
He shook his head. “He must’ve followed her there that afternoon when she was supposed to be going to the theater. Maybe he waited outside until he saw me go out. I had to go downtown, but I wasn’t gone an hour. She was already cold when I came back.” He frowned. “I don’t think she’d’ve answered the doorbell, though maybe—or maybe he’d had a duplicate made of the key she had.”
Some policemen came in: the frightened maid had had sense enough to use the telephone.
“Do you think he planned it that way from the beginning?” Moley asked.
I didn’t. I thought he had killed his wife in a jealous rage and later thought of the Death and Co. business.
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Continental Op Stories
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