“Why did you want to see him?”
“I wanted to make him vindicate me.”
“What could he do?”
“He could see that the real facts were made public. The man who was his tool in the original embezzlement is dead now. Dixon could have handled it so he wouldn’t have been hurt.”
“What makes you think he would have done that — just as a favor to you?”
“No,” Alton Rice said patiently. “I intended to force him to do it.”
“How?”
“I had some information that he’d have been forced to consider.”
“You were going to blackmail him into giving you vindication?”
“You might express it that way.”
“What time did you get in there?”
“It was just a few minutes before Natalie came in.”
Sam Moraine moved over to the edge of the bed and sat down. He looked over at Natalie Rice.
“You know,” he said, “this is going to sound like hell in front of a jury.”
She nodded, wordlessly.
“It would never come to that,” Alton Rice said, with dignity, “because I would make a confession which would take the whole blame on myself, and then kill myself. I’d never let Natalie go through that.”
“But you didn’t kill him?” Moraine asked.
“No. He was dead when I got there.”
“What did you do?”
For the first time, Alton Rice let his gaze falter.
“I stole some statements,” he said.
“Some what?”
“Some documents, affidavits and things.”
“Where are they?” Moraine asked.
Rice indicated the closet by a nod of his head.
“You see,” he said, “I went in there with the idea of getting something that would vindicate me. I didn’t care for myself. I’ve served my time. But I did care for Natalie.
“It’s been a terrible ordeal for her., I wanted to spare her the disgrace if I could — the disgrace of going through life bearing the stigma of being the daughter of a convict.”
“You didn’t embezzle the money?” Moraine asked, and then said quickly, “Pardon me. I didn’t mean it that way. I was just trying to get the facts.”
“No,” Rice said, “I didn’t embezzle the money. I trusted people too far. Dixon was back of the whole thing. He didn’t care about sending me to jail; he wanted to get his man appointed to my office. You see, I was in a position to block a lot of his schemes. When he couldn’t beat me at election time he framed me and sent me to jail. That made the office vacant. His own man was appointed. After that Dixon did plenty. He made a clean-up.”
“Do these papers show that? Do they vindicate you?” Moraine asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why did you take them?”
“I thought they might, at the time.”
“What were they?”
“The safe was open,” Alton Rice said. “Things in the room were just the way you found them. The window was broken. He was lying on the floor with bullet holes in him. A piece of glass from the window was sticking out from under his body. The candle was blown out. Wind was whipping papers around the room. The safe was open.
“I struck a match and looked around. I saw this suitcase lying on the table. I opened the lid. It was filled with papers. I couldn’t read much by the light of the match, but I read enough to show me that the suitcase was crammed full of political dynamite.”
“What sort of dynamite?” Moraine asked.
Natalie Rice said rapidly, “It’s dynamite that will make a clean sweep of the county offices. There’s stuff on the paving contracts. There’s stuff against the Sheriff s office. There’s a whole lot of stuff about your friend, Phil Duncan.”
“What about him?” Moraine asked.
“Do you remember those prosecutions for the Better Home Building and Loan embezzlements?”
He nodded.
“You remember the files were missing from the district attorney’s office?”
“There was some talk about it,” he said.
“You remember the cases were dismissed; that they were never prosecuted?”
“Yes.”
“There was a reason for it,” she said. “Money changed hands.”
“Bosh,” he told her. “Phil Duncan wouldn’t do anything like that. He wouldn’t even consider it.”
“It wasn’t Phil Duncan,” Alton Rice said, in that same low, patient voice. “It was the people who are associated with him. They sold him out. He doesn’t know it, even yet. But the documents are all there in that suitcase-signed affidavits, photostat copies of contracts and correspondence. There are even photostat copies of some of the papers that were missing from the district attorney’s file.”
Moraine’s voice was suddenly skeptical.
“And you want me to believe that Pete Dixon had obligingly gathered all of these documents into a suitcase where it would be convenient for you to take them; that he then got himself killed and left the side door open so you could come in and pick up this choice collection of documents, and walk out?”
Rice sighed, and said, “That’s what happened, but no one will ever believe it.”
“I’ll tell the world no one will ever believe it,” Sam Moraine said.
Natalie Rice met his eyes.
“I believe it,” she said, “and I want you to believe it.”
He stared steadily at her for a moment, then said, “Let’s see the suitcase.”
Alton Rice brought a heavy suitcase from the closet. He flung it up on the bed, snapped back the cover. Moraine started inspecting the contents. As he pawed through them, he gave a low whistle.
Abruptly he straightened and stared steadily at Natalie Rice.
“Know something?” he asked.
“What?”
“Dixon was sitting up there in his study, getting all this stuff together for one particular purpose. He was going to make it public — if your father’s story is true.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps through a newspaper. Perhaps some other way, but he was putting all this stuff in a suitcase so he could take it somewhere and deliver it.”
She nodded slowly.
“And,” Moraine said, “someone slipped in and killed him. Now, that someone must have entered the place after you heard Dixon talking to his butler, and before your father came in. That doesn’t leave very much time.”
“There was that automobile,” she said, “that came from some place, ran down to the railroad tracks, turned around and came back.”
“What kind of a car was it?”
“It was a coupe, I think. I didn’t get a very clear look at it.”
“Didn’t see the license number?”
“No.”
Moraine said, slowly, “Now, I’ve got something to tell you.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s about Ann Hartwell. Her body was found down by the railroad track. She wasn’t killed there; she must have been killed either in Dixon’s house or as she came from Dixon’s house. That means the person who killed Dixon also killed the girl. Now then, I still don’t like your story about why you lied to me. It still doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t you tell me all this about seeing the girl walk down the street before?”
Natalie Rice stared intently at the tips of her fingers and said in a low voice, “I was protecting father.”
“Exactly,” he commented, “and the fact that you thought it was protecting your father not to say anything about seeing this girl means that...”
“Tell him, Natalie,” Alton Rice said wearily.
“When I came downstairs,” she said, “and found Father, he was holding a woman’s small brown hat in his fingers. There was blood on the hat. We struck matches and looked at the ground. There had been a struggle — there were bloodstains all over the ground. So Father dropped the hat back where he’d found it, a little to one side of the side door, and I was so frightened and upset I could hardly think straight. The body wasn’t there, you understand — just the hat and the bloodstains.”