The D.A. Breaks an Egg

Selby said, “I have a friend who’s supposed to be waiting to meet us at the apartment, a newspaper woman...”

“Friendly newspaper?”

“Yes.”

“Sure, bring her along,” Hardwick said. “It’s okay by me. My instructions are to co-operate with you boys to the limit. Whatever you want is what I want.”

They rounded the corner and Sylvia Martin in her car, seeing the three men walking toward the entrance to the apartment house, gave Selby a tentative flashing glance, then demurely lowered her eyes and turned her head, taking the part of a modest young woman who, while waiting for her escort to return, has yielded to a brief flicker of curiosity.

“That your friend?” Hardwick asked.

Selby walked over and opened the car door. “It’s all right, Sylvia,” he said. “Miss Martin, may I present Bert Hardwick, of the local sheriff’s office?”

“Glad to know you,” Hardwick said. “Mr. Selby here says you’re to come along, and these boys are running the show as far as we’re concerned.”

Sylvia smiled her thanks, and the four of them entered the apartment house and without even pausing at the manager’s office climbed up two flights of stairs to the apartment Rose Furman had rented.

Hardwick inserted the passkey and opened the door, then stood to one side.

Rex Brandon entered the room. Doug Selby followed, then Sylvia Martin, and after them came Hardwick who closed the door behind him.

Brandon said, “I’m going to ask you to stand over in a corner, Sylvia, and not touch anything. Keep your eyes open, but let Doug and me make the search.”

It was a two-room apartment. The living room had been fitted up as an office with a typewriter, a small safe, and a cabinet containing stationery. A waste basket by the small desk was cleaned out so that there was not so much as a crumpled piece of paper on the bottom. The typewriter, however, was open on the desk, and there was a piece of paper in it as though the occupant of the apartment had been interrupted in the midst of a letter and forced to leave upon some urgent matter of business.

Hardwick, Brandon and Selby, moving in concert, walked over to the typewriter.

The document was addressed to Barton Mosher, and was headed “Final Report.”