“All right,” he said wearily, “let’s have it. You’ve got some wild-eyed plan in view. Let’s hear what it is. At any rate, I’ll listen.”
I said, “Take these handcuffs off and…”
“Not by a damn sight!”
I said, “Let’s use our heads. This man, Tom Durham, was mixed up in it. We know that because Minerva Carlton wanted to find out about him. He was the contact man. He must have been. Now then, Amelia Jasper and her maid, Susie, are mixed up in blackmail, and by this time, murder. They may make a run for it, but before they do, they’re going to pick up Tom Durham, who is also on the lam. And, unless I miss my guess, they’re going to give Durham a story to tell. And after Durham has told that story, then the two women will switch their own stories, stand together on it, appeal to the chivalry of an American jury, and convict Durham of first-degree murder.”
“You talk and talk and talk,” Sellers said. “Where the hell’s that taxicab?”
Almost as though the cab had been waiting for the words, we heard the sound of a horn out front.
Sellers lumbered to his feet, said, “Okay, everybody, let’s go.”
Sellers hooked the fingers of his left hand around my arm, said, “On your way, Smart Guy.”
I held back long enough to say, “It’s all right with me if that’s the way you want to play it, but if you play it smart you can come back to Headquarters driving your own police car, with the Lucille Hollister murder solved and the killing in the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT all cleaned up.”
I thought I felt some of the tension go out of his fingers.