Arson Plus

by Dashiell Hammett

  “When I had her safe in the yard, I thought of Mr. Thornburgh, and tried to get back in the house; but the whole first floor was just flames. I ran around front then, to see if he had got out, but didn’t see anything of him. The whole yard was as light as day by then. Then I heard him scream—a horrible scream, sir—I can hear it yet! And I looked up at his window—that was the front second-story room—and saw him there, trying to get out the window. But all the woodwork was burning, and he screamed again and fell back, and right after that the roof over his room fell in.

  “There wasn’t a ladder or anything that I could have put up to the window for him—there wasn’t anything I could have done.

  “In the meantime, a gentleman had left his automobile in the road, and come up to where I was standing; but there wasn’t anything we could do—the house was burning everywhere and falling in here and there. So we went back to where I had left my wife, and carried her farther away from the fire, and brought her to—she had fainted. And that’s all I know about it, sir.”

  “Hear any noises earlier that night? Or see anybody hanging around?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Have any gasoline around the place?”

  “No, sir. Mr. Thornburgh didn’t have a car.”

  “No gasoline for cleaning?”

  “No, sir, none at all, unless Mr. Thornburgh had it in his workshop. When his clothes needed cleaning, I took them to town, and all his laundry was taken by the grocer’s man, when he brought our provisions.”

  “Don’t know anything that might have some bearing on the fire?”

  “No, sir. I was surprised when I heard that somebody had set the house afire. I could hardly believe it. I don’t know why anybody should want to do that.”

  “What do you think of them?” I asked McClump, as we left the hotel.

  “They might pad the bills, or even go South with some of the silver, but they don’t figure as killers in my mind.”

  That was my opinion, too; but they were the only persons known to have been there when the fire started except the man who had died. We went around to the Allis Employment Bureau and talked to the manager.

  He told us that the Coonses had come into his office on June second, looking for work; and had given Mrs. Edward Comerford, 45 Woodmansee Terrace, Seattle, Washington, as reference. In reply to a letter—he always checked up the references of servants—Mrs. Comerford had written that the Coonses had been in her employ for a number of years, and had been “extremely satisfactory in every respect.” On June thirteenth, Thornburgh had telephoned the bureau, asking that a man and his wife be sent out to keep house for him; and Allis had sent two couples that he had listed. Neither had been employed by Thornburgh, though Allis considered them more desirable than the Coonses, who were finally hired by Thornburgh.

  All that would certainly seem to indicate that the Coonses hadn’t deliberately maneuvered themselves into the place, unless they were the luckiest people in the world—and a detective can’t afford to believe in luck or coincidence, unless he has unquestionable proof of it.

  At the office of the real estate agents, through whom Thornburgh had bought the house—Newning & Weed—we were told that Thornburgh had come in on the eleventh of June, and had said that he had been told that the house was for sale, had looked it over, and wanted to know the price. The deal had been closed the next morning, and he had paid for the house with a check for $4,500 on the Seamen’s Bank of San Francisco. The house was already furnished.

  After luncheon, McClump and I called on Howard Handerson—the man who had seen the fire while driving home from Wayton. He had an office in the Empire Building, with his name and the title “Northern California Agent, Instant-Sheen Cleanser Company,” on the door. He was a big, careless-looking man of forty-five or so, with the professionally jovial smile that belongs to the salesman.

  He had been in Wayton on business the day of the fire, he said, and had stayed there until rather late, going to dinner and afterward playing pool with a grocer named Hammersmith—one of his customers. He had left Wayton in his machine, at about ten-thirty, and set out for Sacramento. At Tavender he had stopped at the garage for oil and gas and to have one of his tires blown up.

  Just as he was about to leave the garage, the garage-man had called his attention to a red glare in the sky, and had told him that it was probably from a fire somewhere along the old county road that paralleled the State road into Sacramento; so Handerson had taken the county road, and had arrived at the burning house just in time to see Thornburgh try to fight his way through the flames that enveloped him.

  It was too late to make any attempt to put out the fire, and the man upstairs was beyond saving by then—undoubtedly dead even before the roof collapsed; so Handerson had helped Coons revive his wife, and stayed there watching the fire until it had burned itself out. He had seen no one on that county road while driving to the fire.

  “What do you know about Handerson?” I asked McClump, when we were on the street.

  “Came here, from somewhere in the East, I think, early in the summer to open that Cleanser agency. Lives at the Garden Hotel. Where do we go next?”

  “We get a machine, and take a look at what’s left of the Thornburgh house.”

  AN enterprising incendiary couldn’t have found a lovelier spot in which to turn himself loose, if he looked the whole county over. Tree-topped hills hid it from the rest of the world, on three sides; while away from the fourth, an uninhabited plain rolled down to the river. The county road that passed the front gate was shunned by automobiles, so McClump said, in favor of the State Highway to the north.

  Where the house had been, was now a mound of blackened ruins. We poked around in the ashes for a few minutes—not that we expected to find anything, but because it’s the nature of man to poke around in ruins.

  A garage in the rear, whose interior gave no evidence of recent occupation, had a badly scorched roof and front, but was otherwise undamaged. A shed behind it, sheltering an ax, a shovel, and various odds and ends of gardening tools, had escaped the fire altogether. The lawn in front of the house, and the garden behind the shed—about an acre in all—had been pretty thoroughly cut and trampled by wagon wheels, and the feet of the firemen and the spectators.

  Having ruined our shoe-shines, McClump and I got back in our machine and swung off in a circle around the place, calling at all the houses within a mile radius, and getting little besides jolts for our trouble.

  The nearest house was that of Pringle, the man who had turned in the alarm; but he not only knew nothing about the dead man, but said he had never seen him. In fact, only one of the neighbors had ever seen him: a Mrs. Jabine, who lived about a mile to the south.

  She had taken care of the key to the house while it was vacant; and a day or two before he bought it, Thornburgh had come to her house, inquiring about the vacant one. She had gone over there with him and showed him through it, and he had told her that he intended buying it, if the price, of which neither of them knew anything, wasn’t too high.

  He had been alone, except for the chauffeur of the hired car in which he had come from Sacramento, and, save that he had no family, he had told her nothing about himself.

  Hearing that he had moved in, she went over to call on him several days later—“just a neighborly visit”—but had been told by Mrs. Coons that he was not at home. Most of the neighbors had talked to the Coonses, and had got the impression that Thornburgh did not care for visitors, so they had let him alone. The Coonses were described as “pleasant enough to talk to when you meet them,” but reflecting their employer’s desire not to make friends.

  McClump summarized what the afternoon had taught us as we pointed our machine toward Tavender: “Any of these folks could have touched off the place, but we got nothing to show that any of ’em even knew Thornburgh, let alone had a bone to pick with him.”

  T
avender turned out to be a crossroads settlement of a general store and post office, a garage, a church, and six dwellings, about two miles from Thornburgh’s place. McClump knew the storekeeper and postmaster, a scrawny little man named Philo, who stuttered moistly.

  “I n-n-never s-saw Th-thornburgh,” he said, “and I n-n-never had any m-mail for him. C-coons”—it sounded like one of these things butterflies come out of—“used to c-come in once a week t-to order groceries—they d-didn’t have a phone. He used to walk in, and I’d s-send the stuff over in my c-c-car. Th-then I’d s-see him once in a while, waiting f-for the stage to S-s-sacramento.”

  “Who drove the stuff out to Thornburgh’s?”

  “M-m-my b-boy. Want to t-talk to him?”

  The boy was a juvenile edition of the old man, but without the stutter. He had never seen Thornburgh on any of his visits, but his business had taken him only as far as the kitchen. He hadn’t noticed anything peculiar about the place.

  “Who’s the night man at the garage?” I asked him, after we had listened to the little he had to tell.

  “Billy Luce. I think you can catch him there now. I saw him go in a few minutes ago.”

  We crossed the road and found Luce.

  “Night before last—the night of the fire down the road—was there a man here talking to you when you first saw it?”

  He turned his eyes upward in that vacant stare which people use to aid their memory.

  “Yes, I remember now! He was going to town, and I told him that if he took the county road instead of the State Road he’d see the fire on his way in.”

  “What kind of looking man was he?”

  “Middle-aged—a big man, but sort of slouchy. I think he had on a brown suit, baggy and wrinkled.”

  “Medium complexion?”

  “Yes.”

  “Smile when he talked?”

  “Yes, a pleasant sort of fellow.”

  “Curly brown hair?”

  “Have a heart!” Luce laughed. “I didn’t put him under a magnifying glass.”

  From Tavender, we drove over to Wayton. Luce’s description had fit Handerson all right; but while we were at it, we thought we might as well check up to make sure that he had been coming from Wayton.

  We spent exactly twenty-five minutes in Wayton; ten of them finding Hammersmith, the grocer with whom Handerson had said he dined and played pool; five minutes finding the proprietor of the pool-room; and ten verifying Handerson’s story.

  “What do you think of it now, Mac?” I asked, as we rolled back toward Sacramento.

  Mac’s too lazy to express an opinion, or even form one, unless he’s driven to it; but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth listening to, if you can get them.

  “There ain’t a hell of a lot to think,” he said cheerfully. “Handerson is out of it, if he ever was in it. There’s nothing to show that anybody but the Coonses and Thornburgh were there when the fire started—but there may have been a regiment there. Them Coonses ain’t too honest looking, maybe, but they ain’t killers, or I miss my guess. But the fact remains that they’re the only bet we got so far. Maybe we ought to try to get a line on them.”

  “All right,” I agreed. “I’ll get a wire off to our Seattle office asking them to interview Mrs. Comerford, and see what she can tell about them as soon as we get back in town. Then I’m going to catch a train for San Francisco, and see Thornburgh’s niece in the morning.”

  Next morning, at the address McClump had given me—a rather elaborate apartment building on California Street—I had to wait three-quarters of an hour for Mrs. Evelyn Trowbridge to dress. If I had been younger, or a social caller, I suppose I’d have felt amply rewarded when she finally came in—a tall, slender woman of less than thirty; in some sort of clinging black affair; with a lot of black hair over a very white face, strikingly set off by a small red mouth and big hazel eyes that looked black until you got close to them.

  But I was a busy, middle-aged detective, who was fuming over having his time wasted; and I was a lot more interested in finding the bird who struck the match than I was in feminine beauty. However, I smothered my grouch, apologized for disturbing her at such an early hour, and got down to business.

  “I want you to tell me all you know about your uncle—his family, friends, enemies, business connections, everything.”

  I had scribbled on the back of the card I had sent into her what my business was.

  “He hadn’t any family,” she said; “unless I might be it. He was my mother’s brother, and I am the only one of that family now living.”

  “Where was he born?”

  “Here in San Francisco. I don’t know the date, but he was about fifty years old, I think—three years older than my mother.”

  “What was his business?”

  “He went to sea when he was a boy, and, so far as I know, always followed it until a few months ago.”

  “Captain?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I wouldn’t see or hear from him for several years, and he never talked about what he was doing; though he would mention some of the places he had visited—Rio de Janeiro, Madagascar, Tobago, Christiania. Then, about three months ago—some time in May—he came here and told me that he was through with wandering; that he was going to take a house in some quiet place where he could work undisturbed on an invention in which he was interested.

  “He lived at the Francisco Hotel while he was in San Francisco. After a couple of weeks, he suddenly disappeared. And then, about a month ago, I received a telegram from him, asking me to come to see him at his house near Sacramento. I went up the very next day, and I thought that he was acting very queerly—he seemed very excited over something. He gave me a will that he had just drawn up and some life insurance policies in which I was beneficiary.

  “Immediately after that he insisted that I return home, and hinted rather plainly that he did not wish me to either visit him again or write until I heard from him. I thought all that rather peculiar, as he had always seemed fond of me. I never saw him again.”

  “What was this invention he was working on?”

  “I really don’t know. I asked him once, but he became so excited—even suspicious—that I changed the subject, and never mentioned it again.”

  “Are you sure that he really did follow the sea all those years?”

  “No, I am not. I just took it for granted; but he may have been doing something altogether different.”

  “Was he ever married?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Know any of his friends or enemies?”

  “No, none.”

  “Remember anybody’s name that he ever mentioned?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t want you to think this next question insulting, though I admit it is. But it has to be asked. Where were you the night of the fire?”

  “At home; I had some friends here to dinner, and they stayed until about midnight. Mr. and Mrs. Walker Kellogg, Mrs. John Dupree, and a Mr. Killmer, who is a lawyer. I can give you their addresses, or you can get them from the phone book, if you want to question them.”

  From Mrs. Trowbridge’s apartment I went to the Francisco Hotel. Thornburgh had been registered there from May tenth to June thirteenth, and hadn’t attracted much attention. He had been a tall, broad-shouldered, erect man of about fifty, with rather long brown hair brushed straight back; a short, pointed brown beard, and healthy, ruddy complexion—grave, quiet, punctilious in dress and manner; his hours had been regular and he had had no visitors that any of the hotel employes remembered.

  At the Seamen’s Bank—upon which Thornburgh’s check, in payment of the house, had been drawn—I was told that he had opened an account there on May fifteenth, having been introduced by W. W. Jeffers & Sons, local stock brokers. A balance of a little more than four hundred dollars remained to his cr
edit. The cancelled checks on hand were all to the order of various life insurance companies; and for amounts that, if they represented premiums, testified to rather large policies. I jotted down the names of the life insurance companies, and then went to the offices of W. W. Jeffers & Sons.

  Thornburgh had come in, I was told, on the tenth of May with $4,000 worth of Liberty bonds that he wanted sold. During one of his conversations with Jeffers, he had asked the broker to recommend a bank, and Jeffers had given him a letter of introduction to the Seamen’s Bank.

  That was all Jeffers knew about him. He gave me the numbers of the bonds, but tracing Liberty bonds isn’t the easiest thing in the world.

  The reply to my Seattle telegram was waiting for me at the Agency when I arrived.

  MRS. EDWARD COMERFORD RENTED APARTMENT AT ADDRESS YOU GIVE ON MAY TWENTY-FIVE GAVE IT UP JUNE SIX TRUNKS TO SAN FRANCISCO SAME DAY CHECK NUMBERS GN FOUR FIVE TWO FIVE EIGHT SEVEN AND EIGHT AND NINE

  Tracing baggage is no trick at all, if you have the dates and check numbers to start with—as many a bird who is wearing somewhat similar numbers on his chest and back, because he overlooked that detail when making his getaway, can tell you—and twenty-five minutes in a baggage-room at the Ferry and half an hour in the office of a transfer company gave me my answer.

  The trunks had been delivered to Mrs. Evelyn Trowbridge’s apartment!

  I got Jim Tarr on the phone and told him about it.

  “Good shooting!” he said, forgetting for once to indulge his wit. “We’ll grab the Coonses here and Mrs. Trowbridge there, and that’s the end of another mystery.”

  “Wait a minute!” I cautioned him. “It’s not all straightened out yet! There’s still a few kinks in the plot.”

  “It’s straight enough for me. I’m satisfied.”

  “You’re the boss, but I think you’re being a little hasty. I’m going up and talk with the niece again. Give me a little time before you phone the police here to make the pinch. I’ll hold her until they get there.”