“Wait a minute,” Conway interrupted. “The car wasn’t parked at nine o’clock because it was still in the parking lot. And I didn’t park it at nine or ten or any other time, because I couldn’t have. Why don’t you look for the man who did — at least you know he had a mustache and was practically hunchbacked.”
Davis’s glance at Ramsden was somewhat disconcerted. They muffed that one, Conway thought. Bauer, however, did not hesitate.
“There’s a dozen five-and-tens and souvenir stores along Santa Monica and Hollywood Boulevard open that time of night,” he said. “And they all sell those disguise kits for kids. You parked around a corner on a dark street, locked the car, went into one of those places, paid your quarter, trimmed the mustache a little, and stuck it on. All you have to do to look like a hunchback is hunch up your coat, hunch over your shoulders, and, see?” — the sergeant demonstrated — “I’m a hunchback.
“Another thing, just so you know I haven’t missed any details,” the detective continued to Davis, “he had a hat when he got out of the parked car. Naturally, to help hide his face. What happened was this: he left the hat in the car with her coat, so he had no hat in the drugstore. He wears the hat when he gets out of the car, after he’s parked it, and when he gets a couple blocks away from it, he takes off the mustache, throws it away, rips up the hat and gets rid of the pieces, and arrives at the theatre with no hat. I did a little looking around his house the other day — not a sign of a hat anywhere.”
“I haven’t worn, or owned, a hat since I came to California — like thousands of other men,” Conway said.
“Well, you coulda bought that, too,” Bauer said. “But I’m surprised a man like you would go in for kid stuff like that disguise. I s’pose you were pretty rattled, though. Must of been, to think we’d pay any attention to that.”
Conway resolutely refused to let himself become panicked. But he could feel that all-too-familiar constriction of the throat begin to come on, and he wondered how much longer he could continue this show of nonchalance.
“Anyhow, you walked up to Santa Monica Boulevard, which took you about twenty minutes,” the detective continued, and then added to Davis, “I checked that. You were shot with luck, because a trolley car came along there at nine twenty-two, which was just about when you hit Santa Monica, and got you back to the theatre at nine-thirty — just in time to let you see the audience leaving the theatre after the picture.”
“No trick to it at all,” Conway said. “All I had to do was to be in two places at the same time.”
“The doorman let you into the lobby,” Bauer went on, “you went into the theatre, threw the glove under a seat, got the manager, and let him watch you find the glove. All very neat.”