We barged right in. Dwight wasn’t alone. He was sitting at his fireplace, a highball in hand. Opposite him sat Mary Ditson. She also held a highball glass. It was a cozy picture.
“Come in, gentlemen,” said Dwight. “Make yourselves at home.”
“Well,” said Bronson with scorn run through with envy, “you’re in character, all right! Imagine bringing a girl here with your sister dead only two days!”
“Don’t break an ankle jumping at conclusions,” said Dwight. “This is Mary Ditson, the daughter of Westfall’s victim. Mary, this stuffed shirt is Carl Bronson. Not having to marry him is the only break poor Sheila got.”
“Dwight! You’re drunk!”
“I never had a soberer thought. Mr. Corbett, I hope you’ll forgive my bringing Mary here. I thought she’d be safer, and when I saw that mess at Briarton Cliff, I was glad I’d brought her along. Westfall is desperate. He knows he’s fighting for his life. So I hope you’ll understand why I brought Mary.”
“Sure, I guessed as much,” I said without batting an eye. I looked around the joint with no little admiration. Some of Dwight’s female companions must have put in residence, for the place had a touch no mere man could give it. But Bronson had different ideas.
“That Picasso is Sheila’s! I know because I gave it to her! She told me she’d hung it in her room! What’s it doing here?”
Dwight apparently got some enjoyment out of saying: “Sheila liked to come here, too. It was her hide-out as well as mine. No bromide ever beat a path to our door. We took turnabout and never got in each other’s way. You’d have liked Sheila, if you’d only known her.”
Bronson reddened. “Damn you, Dwight, you’ve no right to talk like that! Sheila and I were engaged to be married. She was wearing my ring when she died!”
“Sure, but she was still kidding you. She didn’t want to let you down hard and figured you’d tire out if she stalled long enough. It’s all in her diary she kept out here. I didn’t get very far, only a few pages. Brother, did she have your number!”
Bronson could take it no longer. He reached Dwight in two long strides, swung a haymaker that passed a foot over Dwight’s ducking head and took a pair of hooks into his middle that put him on his pants. I regarded Dwight with new respect.
Bronson didn’t look angry any more. He looked sick. He was sick in the bathroom after he’d staggered through a bedroom to it “I told him I wanted to shake up his memory,” I said. “If that doesn’t do it nothing will.”
Bronson was taking his time coming out of the bath, which was between the two bedrooms in the rear, but I figured that if I’d suffered a defeat like his, I’d want to spend some time there, too. I forgot all about Bronson when Keever walked in flanked by Hinchman and Westfall.
For one of the few times in my life I regarded Keever with genuine, unaffected admiration.
“For crying out loud! It took Bronson and me all night to find this place with a map! How the devil did you find it?”
“Elementary, my dear Corbett. I merely wired the county auditor to open up his records, spot any hill country land in the name of Dwight Brown. He found the place, loaned me a map out of his office. Then I picked up Westfall and Hinchman.”
I gasped: “But you didn’t have time to get a warrant!”
“Why should I? You promised you’d have Ditson’s murderer by the time I got here. Naturally it’s to Westfall and Hinchman’s interest to learn that Ditson was no suicide after all. Come, Corbett, produce your killer.”
“Let’s start with a preliminary rather than the main go,” I said. “This is Dwight Brown — Dwight, feel honored at meeting Attorney General Burton H. Keever!” Keever scowled at me and smiled at Dwight. “Dwight has a little piece to speak. Don’t miss any lines, Dwight.”
Dwight spoke his piece while I stood by with leveled .380. I wasn’t impressed by the flattened noses of Keever’s goons in the window. They knew how to surround the lodge — they’d been to the movies.
Hinchman broke quickly. Dwight had read his memo only half-way through when he turned to Keever and nodded.
“That’s enough. I’ll make a deal.”
“Fine,” said Keever, then he yelled. Westfall had lost his head. Keever’s goons must have missed the flat .32 automatic that he pulled out from under his belt. My .380 got in the first and only word, and Westfall’s mouth hung open. He put his hands over his belly, the .32 dropping to the floor. Then Westfall sat down.
I’ve read about guys who shoot guns out of other guys’ hands, but if you haven’t much time the belly is a bigger target. Westfall passed out cold, and I said: “Better get him to a doc — he may want to do a little talking before his life leaks out of all those holes inside him.”
“He won’t have to talk!” Hinchman shouted hysterically. “I know everything that he knows! I’ll bust up every racket in town!”
“You’ll tell us who killed Parker and Souders?”
“Sure, they were Westfall’s boys. He ordered it. I had absolutely nothing to do with it!”
“And who killed Ditson?”
Hinchman shook his head vigorously.
“Honest to God, I don’t know who did that! I actually thought you’d brought me here to turn him up!”
Keever eyed me sharply. “You said you’d turn him up, Ben!”
I hedged. “Well, aren’t you getting your money’s worth? You passed Briarton Cliff on the way here. I’ve cracked that case. Aren’t you satisfied with the progress?”
“Scarcely,” said Keever. “After all, this thing started with Ditson’s murder, and it’s still unsolved. By the way, why’s that fire still burning at the cliff? It started hours ago.”
“The rubbish dumped there,” Dwight volunteered. “Everybody does it.” He laughed. “Why, only a couple of days ago, I came along and found my stuffed-shirted prospective brother-in-law dumping a big bundle there.”
“How big?” I yelled.
Startled, Dwight replied: “A hell of a big bundle. Must have weighed a hundred and fifty pounds I’d say from the way he was lifting it.”
“The diary!” I yelled again. Then I raced into a bedroom and beyond into the bath. The door was locked, but the smoke fumes leaked through. The lock broke out with my second try, and my momentum carried me into Bronson. I tried to put out the fire first. When Bronson intervened I let him have a couple in the same place that Dwight had belted him. My punches were hurried and not so good, but Bronson was in no condition to handle them. He went down and stayed down while I salvaged the remaining pages of the diary.
Keever was staring into the bath, Dwight and Mary Ditson behind him.
“What have you here?”
“Ditson’s murderer — and Sheila Brown’s! It took me a hell of a long time to tumble, but I finally did when Dwight told about seeing Bronson heaving a big bundle of rubbish over Briarton Cliff. Then I realized the cliff’s about as high as a twelve-story window at the Maramoor. And the bundle was about as heavy as Ditson! That meant Bronson was practicing for throwing Ditson’s dead body from the hotel window!
“He had to know something about the trajectory of his gruesome missile. Its target was to be Sheila parked in his convertible below!
“Ditson’s murder was only incidental to Sheila’s murder. Ditson had advertised by letters to the newspapers that he would commit suicide if his losses weren’t paid back. Nobody, least of all the Maramoor Hotel people, took him seriously. If a suicide is on the level, he usually doesn’t tell a soul, much less advertise it in the papers. Even Westfall must have thought he was bluffing, but he couldn’t afford to call Ditson’s hand.