The Case of the Smoking Chimney

“I don’t get that,” Milred said.

“Because he had to have the body discovered soon enough so the autopsy surgeon could tell the time of death,” Gramps explained. “Otherwise, his alibi wouldn’t have been no good. Even if it hadn’t been for losin’ that editorial, he’d have had to come back here to pull the shades up an’ leave the lamp burnin’. If they hadn’t discovered the body for two-three days, his slick alibi wouldn’t have been worth a darn.

“While he was foolin’ around with Everett True, killin’ time, he got the idea of makin’ a suicide note, not to make the authorities believe it had been suicide, but to make ’em believe the murderer didn’t know that Reedley was Pressman. That would give him just a little more chance of divertin’ suspicion in case anybody ever became suspicious about that story of the man who was movin’ around in the house.

“Probably he hadn’t been here over a minute or two when Eva Raymond came walkin’ in. He’d lit the lamp, raised the shades, an’ picked up the proof sheet of the editorial when he heard the scream an’ the sound of feet runnin’ off the porch... It’s a darn good thing Eva Raymond ran... Sonders made his choice when he decided to cover up. After that, he couldn’t back up. When he heard Eva Raymond scream, he knew it was her life or his. He might not have killed her, but — well, he came back here tonight when he knew that I’d gone out to the cabin with Eva Raymond.”

“But how did he know that it was Eva Raymond that was on the porch?” Milred asked.

Gramps said: “A compact marked ‘E.R.’ — an’ then he seen me gallivantin’ around with a girl named Eva Raymond. I saw to that,” Gramps said, grinning. “I knew that Sonders an’ True were at that political rally tonight. I made it a point to ask ’em whether the person they heard in the cabin might not have been a woman — intimating I thought that person was the one who did the killing. That was gettin’ pretty close to home for Sonders.

“I figured,” Gramps announced with obvious pride, “that that bait would fetch him out here, at least to see what was goin’ on... It did... Well, I’ll be shovin’ off. You tell Frank goodbye for me, an’ tell him that I don’t enter in this case at all. He an’ the sheriff did all the solvin’ of it. An’ tell him to check up on Harvey Stanwood. I found that cut paper in his automobile just like I said I did. It was probably a practice attempt to see what he could do with it. Guess he figured he’d plant a cut newspaper with Mrs. Pressman to sort of drag her in for some third-degree stuff, so there wouldn’t be too much inquiry about himself. An’ I wouldn’t be a mite s’prised if a third degree would have got Mrs. Pressman in kind of a spot — then Frank might have had to prosecute her an’ maybe lost a case, or p’r’aps got an innocent woman sent to the pen.