“Yes, sir.”
Duryea picked up the telephone. “I’ll have my secretary provide you with a typewriter and...”
Gramps Wiggins cleared his throat, firmly and significantly.
Duryea glanced up at him.
“Mrs. Rodman can use any typewriter,” Gramps Wiggins said.
“Exactly,” Duryea said, reaching for the telephone again.
Gramps coughed, significantly.
Duryea stopped and frowned.
Gramps said, “You was fixin’ to ask her about that typewriter, wasn’t you, son?”
“She said she could use — oh, yes, the typewriter on the yacht. Do you remember that typewriter very clearly, Mrs. Rodman?”
“It was a portable.”
“Did it have a new ribbon or a new platen?”
She thought for a moment, said, “The platen wasn’t new, no. The ribbon was all right, I guess. I don’t remember about that, but it worked all right.”
Gramps grinned at the district attorney. “Now you’re gettin’ there, son,” he said. “You’re movin’ right along — just a whizzin’.”
When the door had closed, Duryea turned to Gramps Wiggins. “I owe you one for that.”
“Wasn’t anything,” Gramps announced. “I just rang up all the employment agencies to ask about stenographers that were free for part time work. I got a whole list of names and on the list there were only three people who had the initials ‘A.R.’ Shucks, there wasn’t anythin’ to it. I just got in touch with every one of ’em.”
“I thought you were on a wild-goose chase,” Duryea confessed. “I thought Stearne had dictated that letter to C. Arthur Right, and Right had put his initials, ‘A.R.,’ on it. You see, Right had started working for Stearne as his secretary.”
“Yep,” Gramps said. “I thought about Right as soon as I saw those initials, and then I decided against it.”
“You’d already thought of it?” Duryea asked.
“That’s right. You see, Right’s initials are ‘C.A.R.’ Everyone calls him Arthur, but he writes his name C. Arthur Right. If he’d put his initials on there it’d have been the same way he signs his name, not just ‘A.R.’ ”
Duryea grinned. “Well,” he admitted, “you were right. And it looks as though that typewriter we found was a plant.”
“As I see it,” Gramps said, “this here Moline woman is the one who stands to make all the profit by having it appear that Right died first. Ain’t that right?”
“Well — yes.”
“Whoever switched typewriters,” Gramps went on, “knew certain things and didn’t know others.”
“What?” Duryea asked.
“Didn’t know that a stenographer had been called in, and sent out letters on Saturday afternoon, but did know that when the bodies were found, there was a typewriter near Stearne.”
Duryea frowned down at his desk as he considered the problem, then picked up the telephone, called the sheriff’s office, found that Lassen was out, and talked with the undersheriff. “I’d like to have that typewriter which was taken from the Gypsy Queen last night sent up to my office right away. As soon as Sheriff Lassen comes in, ask him to give me a ring.”
Duryea hung up.
Gramps said, “That Moline woman. Now, she’s a deep one. That Gypsy Queen was going some place around three o’clock. It wasn’t just an ordinary cruise. Stearne wanted Nita Moline along. But why should she have got up here so early on Sun-day? She got up plenty early in Los Angeles.”
Duryea nodded. “Keep right on, Gramps.”
“P’haps two yachts was meetin’ out there in the ocean, an’ then again... And this girl on the Albatross may have known all about it an’ decided to go out an’ keep the appointment instead of the Gypsy Queen. Don’t overlook any bets on that Albatross.”
“I’m not,” Duryea promised. “Miss Harpler is due at the office late this afternoon. I expect to ask her questions in considerable detail.”
“That’s good.”
The undersheriff opened the door of the office, bringing in the portable typewriter.
Duryea picked up the telephone, said to his secretary, “Ask Mrs. Rodman to come in here. I want her to take a look at a typewriter.”
A few moments later, Mrs. Rodman appeared, laid some letters on Duryea’s desk, said, “There’s only one more, besides that long one about the leases.”
“Take a look at this typewriter,” Duryea invited.
She studied it carefully.
“Is that the typewriter on which you wrote those letters?”
She shook her head with slow deliberation.
“You’re certain?”
“Absolutely.”
“How can you tell?”
“In several ways. But this typewriter has rubber cushions on the keys. The one I used didn’t.”
The silence which followed was broken by a wheezing chuckle from Gramps Wiggins. “Now we’re gettin’ somewhere!” he said.
Chapter 19
Pete Lassen, the sheriff, was very much in evidence as the diver adjusted his helmet. The group of men clustered on the deck of the murder yacht were tense and silent. The newspapers had been notified and several reporters were there to cover the story. Cameras were held in readiness.
Duryea, always inclined to hold himself aloof when the duties of his office brought him to the attention of the public, remained somewhat detached from the other officers. Gramps Wiggins at his side was puffing furiously at a blackened, disreputable pipe.
The diver lowered himself into the water. The air lines and telephones were tested. Then the diver slipped rapidly from sight, and only a thin stream of air bubbles coming up marked the spot where he had slipped from sight.
Up on the deck of the yacht, two attendants kept the handles of the manual pump swinging with regular monotony. One of the men had earphones clamped on so that he could keep in communication with the diver. From time to time, he relayed bits of information to the little group which clustered along the rail of the yacht.
“Ocean floor’s clean and sandy,” the man at the pump re-ported, then there followed an interval of silence while the men worked rhythmically at the pump handles. The little group gathered closer.
“He’s found something — a bent gold wire... two gold wires... They’re embedded in the sand... It’s a pair of spectacles. He wants a basket lowered.”
Bill Wiegart picked up a steel-meshed covered basket suspended on a rope which had been left in readiness by the rail of the yacht, and lowered it down. A moment later the man with the earphones said, “Okay, pull her back up.”
Wiegart pulled up the basket. The men gathered around to examine the gold-rimmed spectacles.
The man at the pumps reported, “Found ’em about fifteen feet off the port quarter, lenses about half an inch deep in sand, the bows sticking up.”
Newspaper reporters scribbled furiously.
Slowly the stream of air bubbles worked their way around the yacht. A little manipulation kept the hose and lines from fouling on the mooring as the diver moved.
The man with the earphones reported, “That seems to be all. A few empty tin cans pretty well buried in the sand, but nothing else.”
“Tell him to look particularly for a typewriter,” Lassen said.
“He has. There isn’t anything.”
Gramps sidled over to the district attorney.
“Well, he may as well come up,” Lassen said.
Gramps took the pipe out of his mouth. “Tide’s runnin’ out, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Comin’ in when the bodies were discovered Sunday?”
“I believe so.”
“It was low tide Saturday about the time of the murder?”