Quade clawed at the big fellow’s ankles. He heard Charlie Boston coming up the porch stairs and tried desperately to hang on until he got there. Stilwell drew back his foot to kick Quade and then Charlie Boston roared. Quade rolled aside in time to hear a loud smack. It was followed by a thump.
When he got to his feet, Jim Stilwell was sitting on the floor and Charlie Boston stood over him.
“Come on, get up!” Charlie invited.
“O.K., Charlie!” said Quade. Then to Stilwell, “I only wanted to ask Miss Arnold a couple of questions.”
Ruth Arnold was already in the vestibule, gasping at Stilwell on the floor. “What — what happened?”
“Nothing much, Miss Arnold. I just want to ask you a question.”
“He isn’t a cop, Ruth!” exclaimed Stilwell. “You don’t have to tell him anything.”
“You don’t,” admitted Quade, “but it will save you trouble if you do. How much insurance did your father carry?”
“Not much, only about five thousand dollars.”
“See, wise guy,” exclaimed Stilwell. “You think Ruth killed him.”
Quade shook his head. “I know she didn’t. I’m merely trying to establish a motive for the real killer.”
“Well, you’ll have to look somewhere else. Ruth didn’t kill her father, not for a measly five thousand dollars insurance!”
“I’d forgotten!” said Ruth Arnold. “Before the Depression, when business was good, Father took out a fifty-thousand-dollar insurance policy as president of the Arnold Publishing Company. That policy is still in effect, but it wouldn’t help me any at all, because the insurance money would go into the firm which isn’t doing well at all.”
“You could liquidate, couldn’t you?”
“Perhaps, but I wouldn’t. Father was proud of the business. When he took out that insurance policy, the company did a million-dollar business. It’s gone away down, but Father always said it would come back, some day.”
Quade nodded. “Thank you, Miss Arnold.” He turned and walked out of the house.
Out by the flivver, Linda Starr said, “So you got a few more wallops? Nice going.” He grinned and slammed into the car.
In the rear, Charlie Boston growled, “That’s what we usually get when we play detective.”
Quade drove back to the main street of the little town. He turned right in the next block and stopped before the hotel.
“I won’t need you this time, Charlie,” he said, as he climbed out.
In the lobby, he went into the telephone booth. He picked up the phone and said, “Will you give me Mr. Colby’s room.”
A moment later Colby’s voice said, “Yes?”
“This is Lieutenant Johnson of the St. Paul Police Department,” Quade said in a muffled voice. “I want to ask you one question.”
“Go ahead,” Colby said wearily.
“Was William Clarke Quantrill a Confederate colonel of cavalry?”
He heard Colby inhale sharply before replying. “No. He was a Missouri guerilla who pretended—”
“Thank you, Mr. Colby,” Quade said and hung up. He ran out of the hotel and said to Charlie Boston and the girls, “There’s a restaurant across the street. Let’s get that dinner we didn’t get at the roadhouse.”
“What’s the matter with you, Ollie?” exclaimed Boston. “Why should we eat in a dump like this after we walked out on that swell joint?”
“The food’s good here — I hope,” said Quade. “Come on, Linda.”
Linda came willingly, but Charlie Boston and Mildred still complained when they went into the restaurant. Quade selected a table near the window and seated himself so he could look out.
They ordered, and just as the waitress brought the food, Quade got up, abruptly. “Excuse me a minute.” He went out of the restaurant.
Across the street, Colby was walking rapidly northward. Quade followed on his own side of the street. In the next block, Colby stopped at the door of a two-story brick building. After a moment he went inside, and a light appeared in a window.
Quade crossed the street. Standing on his toes, he peered into the lighted room. It was furnished as an office with shelves of books on three sides. It was unoccupied. He moved to the door and found it unlocked. Drawing a deep breath, he opened the door and went inside.
He heard noise in the room beyond the lighted office. A drawer squeaked and, as Quade stopped and listened, he heard the rustle of paper.
He took a couple of quick steps across the office and entered the room beyond.
“Hello, Mr. Colby,” he said. A bundle of long, narrow sheets of paper fell from Colby’s hands.
“You!” Colby gasped. “How’d you get here?”
Quade said, “What do you know about Quantrill, Mr. Colby?”
The expression of fright on Colby’s face disappeared, and was replaced by a snarl.
“So it was you!”
Quade pointed to the long sheets of paper which were scattered on the desk before Colby. “Checking up on the galley proofs? So you were in on it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“History,” said Quade. “Specifically, Arnold’s American History, the favorite in hundreds of high schools. I should say was because the last edition is not a favorite. It contains too many historical inaccuracies, such as, Quantrill being a Confederate colonel of cavalry, and Zachary Taylor being the first Republican candidate for president.”
“Stupid proof readers!” exclaimed Colby.
“And because of the proof readers’ blunders, you came down in the middle of the night to find the galley proofs? What are you going to do with them?”
“He wasn’t going to do anything with them,” said a soft voice behind Oliver Quade.
Quade sighed. He moved carefully to one side and then turned. “Hello, Mr. Wexler,” he said.
There was a .32 automatic in Louis Wexler’s hand. He said, “Colby should have given it to you earlier tonight.”
“At the Poplars when he took the book from me?”
“Yes, then.” Wexler shook his head. “That just goes to show you, Colby, even the smartest plans can go screwy.”
Colby scowled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Wexler.”
“Oh, it’s all right now, Colby,” said Quade. “You can let your hair down. This is just among us. It’s possible for an editor to get historical inaccuracies into a book, but a printer couldn’t do it alone, because the editor, who knows such things, reads the proofs. So I knew you had to be in on it.”
Wexler nodded admiringly. “You see, Colby, your scheme was no good. It’s a good thing I muscled in on you.”
“That explains one of the little things that puzzled me,” said Quade. “I could figure out that the Arnold Publishing Company had been staggering for some years because Arnold was conservative and didn’t want to take any chances. Mr. Colby wanted more money, so he thought if he helped to make things even worse, the creditors would force the business into bankruptcy and then he, Colby, would buy it in, at a bargain price. But Arnold got wise to Mr. Colby’s little plan, and so did you, Wexler. But why did you kill him, Wexler?”
“That’s a little secret between me and Colby,” said Wexler. “But I don’t mind letting you in on it. It’s not going any further! Arnold owed me a little money, not much. He could have cleaned it up if his last book had gone over. And then, what? I discover Mr. Arnold’s manager, Mr. Colby, has been changing history. You wouldn’t think, would you, Mr. Quade, that I am an expert on history? Yeah, it’s a hobby with me.
“So what? So I talk to Mr. Colby and he mentions that Mr. Arnold has a fifty-thousand-dollar corporation policy. It don’t do Colby any good, though. If Arnold dies, the money goes to the company. Arnold’s girl owns seventy per cent of the stock. She can liquidate the business — in which case Colby gets three-four thousand as his share.