Burke looked at his watch, then again at Kennedy. “Really, I think you ought to go back to town,” he reiterated, “and take the case up there.”
“And leave these people all here to do as they please, cover up what they will?” objected Hastings, who had tried to prevent just that sort of thing by bringing Kennedy out post-haste.
“My men are perfectly competent to watch anything that goes on at Westport,” returned Burke. “I have them posted all about and I’m digging up some good stuff. Already I know just what happened the night before the conference. That cabaret dancer, Paquita, motored out here and arrived about the time the Sybarite cast anchor. She met Shelby Maddox at the Casino and they had a gay supper party. But it ended early. She knew that Marshall Maddox was coming the next day. I know he had known her in the city. As to Shelby we don’t know yet. The meeting may have been chance or it may have been prearranged.”
I recalled not only the little incident we had just seen, but the glance of jealousy Paquita had given Shelby when she saw him with Winifred. What did it mean? Had Shelby Maddox been using Paquita against his brother, and now was he trying to cast her off? Or was Burke’s theory correct? Was she a member of a clever band of super-criminals, playing one brother against the other for some ulterior end? Was the jealousy feigned or was it real, after all?
“What I am endeavoring to do now,” went on Burke, “is to trace the doings of Paquita the night of the murder. I cannot find out whether she came out at the invitation of Marshall Maddox or not. Perhaps it was Shelby. I don’t know. If it was Marshall, what about his former wife? Did he suppose that she would not be here? Or didn’t he care?”
“Perhaps—blackmail,” suggested Hastings, who, as a lawyer, had had more or less to do with such attempts.
Burke shook his head. “It might have been, of course, but in that case don’t you think you, as Maddox’s lawyer, would have heard something of it? You have not—have you? You don’t know anything about her?”
Burke regarded the lawyer keenly, as though he might be concealing something. But Hastings merely shook his head.
“Mr. Maddox did not confide his weaknesses to me,” Hastings remarked, coldly.
“If we are going back to the city,” returned Burke, cheerfully changing the subject, to the evident surprise of Hastings, “I must find my operative, Riley, and let him know what to do while we are gone.”