The D.A. Breaks an Egg

“I doubt if she left any documentary evidence lying around here in her apartment,” Selby pointed out. “She was evidently away for days at a time and she certainly was too smart...”

“I didn’t bank on that,” Hardwick said. “There’s one other angle that might help.”

“What’s that?”

“The telephone. There’s a switchboard down here and they charge by the call. I told the manager downstairs to have a list prepared of all the telephone numbers she had been calling in the last two or three weeks. The manager hated to do it, but she finally came around. Just a second and I’ll call the manager. She should have the list ready and I’ll make a quick check for repeat numbers.”

Hardwick went over to the telephone, talked with the manager a few minutes, then hung up, said over his shoulder, “Okay, boys, I’ll call the office. I think I can have some information for you in just a minute. I have a telephone number that she’s been calling a few times lately. Let me call the office and I’ll translate that into a name and an address and we can start working from there.”

Hardwick called the office and held the phone. After a few moments he said, “Okay, boys. The party we want is Mrs. Barker C. Nutwell at the Willington Apartments. They’re out on Western Avenue. Want to finish looking around here, and then take a look at Mrs. Nutwell?”

“There’s darn little to find here,” Brandon said. “She must have carried most of her business in her head. Look at that report she was making in the typewriter. She didn’t even put in a sheet of carbon paper for so much as a single carbon copy, and there isn’t a filing case in the apartment. Even the wastebasket is cleaned slick as a whistle.”

“I know,” Hardwick said. “The manager said she didn’t even get her mail here... Let’s go talk with this Nutwell party. She may know something.”

“You have the address on Western?” Selby asked.

“I have it,” Hardwick said. “Let’s all go in my car. I know the short cuts and which intersections I can go through without slowing down.”

“You can slow down for all of them, as far as I’m concerned,” Brandon said. “We’re not in that much of a hurry.”

“We probably aren’t at that. How about the reporter?”

Sylvia Martin looked pleadingly at Doug Selby.

“She comes,” Selby said.

“Okay, you’re the boss. We’ll all go in my car. Let’s get started.”

The low drone of the siren moved into higher frequencies until it became a peremptory scream as the big car split its way through traffic, rocketed through red lights, passed up boulevard stops, and swung around streetcars.

Within a matter of minutes, Hardwick brought the car to a stop in front of the Willington Apartments and two minutes later they were knocking on the door of an apartment.

They heard slow, shuffling steps, the thump-thump-thump of a cane. Then the door was opened a crack until the safety chain locked it in position.

Skeptical gray eyes peered out at them with cold hostility from a wrinkled face.

“Mrs. Nutwell?” Selby asked.

“That’s right. Who are you? What do you want?”

“I’m Mr. Selby, the district attorney of Madison County. And this is Rex Brandon, the sheriff of Madison County, with me. This other gentleman is Mr. Hardwick, of the sheriff’s office here.”

Hardwick pulled back his coat so she could see the badge which he was wearing.

“Well, what do you want?”

“We want to talk with you.”

“You’re talking.”

“We’d like to have more privacy.”

“You’ve got all you need.”

“Some of the things we have to say are confidential.”

“Not as far as I’m concerned.”

“Very well, then. Why did you employ a private detective? And when did you last hear from her?”

The gray eyes surveyed Selby’s face in careful appraisal. “You fooled me at first,” she said. “Looked too soft to be a district attorney. I guess you’re all right. Who’s that girl there?”

“A friend of mine,” Selby said.

“Where’s she from?”

“Madison City.”

“Well, all right, I guess it’s okay for you to come in. Come on.”

She loosened the chain on the door, then stood to one side, and opened the door.

The four visitors filed in, and Mrs. Nutwell closed the door, slipped the safety chain into catch, then turned the bolt on the door.

She was a woman in the late sixties, evidently afflicted with rheumatism, and her bony hand clutched a cane which she used as she walked, but there was a birdlike dexterity about her, a quickness, and a deft assurance with which she planted the cane on the floor, which made her seem surprisingly light of foot.

The apartment was spacious and apparently consisted of several rooms. It was well furnished, with an abundance of deep, comfortable chairs, spread about in advantageous positions as though Mrs. Nutwell was accustomed to entertaining rather large groups of friends and was anxious to see that they were all comfortable.