“There aren’t any,” Duryea said.
“There’s either a closet or a trap door,” the sheriff insisted. “Wait a minute,” Duryea pointed out. “How about the ceiling?”
The sheriff raised his flashlight to the tongue-and-groove ceiling, said: “There’s a trap door up there in the ceiling... Look out, Frank, I’m going up.”
“It’ll take a ladder,” Frank said.
“Here’s a chair I can stand on.”
The sheriff dragged a chair out into the middle of the floor. Gramps, who had circled the house, came running excitedly in the back door. “What happened?” he asked. “Who was it? Somebody came and stood by the front door. Heard him just as plain as day—”
“You get back out of the way,” the sheriff ordered. “Keep an eye on those women.”
Gramps said: “The women can look out for themselves. You ain’t goin’ to put me in any feminine corner. You—”
“GRAMPS!” Milred exclaimed.
The sheriff got up on the chair, poked at the trap door with the muzzle of his revolver.
“Gramps!” Milred said again.
“You girls get out of here,” Duryea ordered.
“GRAMPS!” Milred shouted.
Gramps turned to meet her eyes.
The sheriff pushed the trap door out of its seat, said: “You up there, come on out, or I’ll shoot.”
Milred said: “You can rest at ease, Frank. It was Gramps.”
“What was?”
“The man in the house.”
“What do you mean?” Duryea demanded.
“Look at him,” Milred said.
Gramps tried, but he couldn’t keep guilt from showing on his face as Milred stared at him accusingly.
“What the devil are you talking about?” Duryea asked impatiently.
“The man you heard in the house was Gramp Wiggins,” Milred asserted. “Don’t you remember? He had a key to that front door. All he had to do was to open it, pound on the front door, then tiptoe through the house, stand quietly by the back door, tiptoe back, and start pounding.”
Sheriff Lassen, who had raised himself so that his head protruded through the trap door, brought a cobweb-covered countenance down far enough to glare at Gramp Wiggins. “I don’t think it was,” he said slowly, “but if it was—”
Borden who had been prowling around the grounds, suddenly appeared at the back door.
The sheriff started to say something to him, then at the expression on Borden’s face, stopped.
Borden said: “A car stopped down the road about fifty yards, switched off the lights, and a lone man got out. Thought you’d ought to know.”
Gramps said dryly: “All right, boys, that’s it. The murderer has one chink in his armour. He can’t tell whether Eva Raymond did or didn’t see him through that window when she screamed and ran. She didn’t, but the murderer doesn’t know that. I thought by takin’ her out here, I could sort of get him to tip his hand.”
Abruptly Sheriff Lassen thumbed the flashlight into darkness.
“He’ll be most apt to make for my trailer,” Gramps muttered, “an’ when he finds nobody’s in there, he’s goin’ to come to the house. I wouldn’t show any light. He just might be kinda dangerous.”
“Who is it?” Lassen asked.
“Good heavens,” Gramps said with exasperation, “don’t you know who it was yet?”
“Remember the demonstration Gramps made of the man walking in the house,” Milred said.
There was a moment’s silence. Duryea said: “Okay, I get you. Now everybody keep together and keep quiet.”
Chapter 30
They waited for what seemed an endless succession of slowly ticking seconds. Then there was a faint scraping noise on the porch. A moment later, a very faint beam of light appeared around the edge of the keyhole; then the light was extinguished. Apparently, the man outside was listening.
Just when the nerves of the little party of watchers seemed strained to the point of being raw, a key rasped in the lock. A well-oiled bolt clicked back.
It was another five seconds before the door slowly opened.
The beam of the sheriff’s flashlight stabbed Hugh Sonders full in the face.
As the man instinctively drew back, throwing up his left hand to shield his eyes, the sheriff said dryly: “Drop that gun, Sonders, or I’ll blow you apart.”
Chapter 31
Gramp Wiggins, despite his protests, was herded outside along with Eva Raymond and Milred Duryea as the sheriff, the district attorney, and the deputy sheriff took down the man’s confession.
Gramps, taking Milred’s arm, drifted across the darkened yard, over toward his trailer. The note of wistfulness in his voice seemed more apparent than ever. “Well,” he said, “guess I’ve done all the good I can do. They don’t want me here no more.”
“Don’t talk like that, Gramps.”
“Nope. Time for me to be ramblin’.”
“But, Gramps, aren’t you going to wait? You’ve solved the case. Good heavens, you—”
“Nope,” Gramps said modestly. “I didn’t do a thing... Looks better that way,” he explained as he heard Milred take a quick breath preparatory to an indignant interruption. “Election’s comin’ along. An’ anyway there ain’t nothin’ in particular I did. I just figured out what might have happened. I reckon Sonders came out here to call on Pressman for a private sort of a showdown. That worked into a fight. Pressman was scared of Sonders, an’ he pulled a gun. Sonders grabbed him by the arm an’ doubled his arm back, goin’ to make him drop the gun. Pressman hung on to the gun, an,” in doing that, squeezed the trigger sending a bullet up through his head at just such an angle you wouldn’t have thought it possible for him to have had the gun in his hand when it was fired... But he must have had. If Sonders had got the gun away from him, he wouldn’t have needed to use it, because he was so big an’ strong. If he hadn’t had hold of Pressman, Sonders would have been the one that got shot. Then Sonders started in tryin’ to cover up, because he knew he could never make it appear it had been anythin’ except cold-blooded murder.
“He went in to get True an’ bring him out here. That was where he pulled the alibi stunt that seemed so clever at the time. Evidently he found two keys to that front door. He stuck one of ’em in Pressman’s hand, and kept the other. Then, while True was poundin’ on the back door, Sonders opened the front door and walked in. Afterwards, all he had to do was to lie about hearin’ someone inside the house, to make his statement coincide with True’s... An’, of course, it was Sonders who said he saw someone pullin’ down the curtains as they drove up. True didn’t see that.”
“But why on earth did he come back at three o’clock in the morning?” Milred asked.
Gramps said: “Because while he was runnin’ around in here, that folded sheet of editorial proof dropped out of his pocket. When True asked him for it, he realized he’d lost it. He stuck right close to True until around three o’clock in the morning, so he’d be sure to have an alibi, but he knew that if, when the body was discovered, that marked editorial was found inside the cabin, it would be just the same as though he’d left the signed confession. He had to come back an’ get it, but he didn’t want to come back an’ get it until he knew enough time had elapsed so he’d have a good alibi... Knowin’ the autopsy surgeon could tell just about the time of death.
“An’ there was one other reason. He had to have the shades down when True came out with him, but he had to have ’em up afterwards.”