“Things would have stopped there if Dixie hadn’t brought Tom Sedgwick back. Fayette tried to stampede her into an alley where she could be taken for a ride. She didn’t react. And Fayette was so confident of success he’d let the muscle man use his car. He thought he might be spotted, so he rented a car for the night for his own use.
“Then Dixie ran, there was a bullet hole in Fayette’s car, and then the Seattle police discovered Dixie had pawned Claremont’s gun.
“That did it. Fayette was hot. He’d squeal to save his hide so it was decided to kill him and frame Alburg and Dixie with the crime, leaving them with an impossible story. You upset the apple cart by digging out the one weakness in the scheme, something they’d even forgotten about themselves — Hoxie having been rushed to Mexico City so he wouldn’t see Claremont’s picture in the papers.
“Of course, since it was a big racket in a big payoff, the head of the deal had plenty of people he could call on, people who had to help in the deal but who would be strangers to all concerned.”
“The real owner of the hotel?” Mason asked. “The real head of the payoff?”
“Why make me go into that?” Tragg said savagely. “You want to crucify me! You want to...”
“I don’t want anything of the sort,” Mason interrupted. “I just want to get the case cleaned up.”
“It’s cleaned up. You know who it was,” Tragg said. “It was Sergeant Jaffrey of the Vice Squad. He owned the hotel lock, stock and barrel. He owned half a dozen other places, and he had three or four safe deposit boxes. It remains to be seen what’s in them.”
“Where is he now?” Mason asked.
“He’s dead.”
Mason came halfway up out of his chair. “Dead!”
“That’s right. He was shot while resisting arrest.”
“Good Lord,” Mason exclaimed. “Who killed him?”
Tragg got up from his chair, stood motionless for a moment, then his right hand tightened, crushing the cigar he had been smoking into crumpled bits of charred tobacco leaves.
“Who the hell do you think? I did,” he said, and walked out.