Whipple thought a moment.
“Yes, sir, I’m fairly certain. But I know Mrs. Gantvoort wasn’t out. To tell the truth, I didn’t see Mr. Charles from about eight o’clock until he came downstairs with this gentleman”—pointing to me—“at eleven. But I’m fairly certain he was home all evening. I think Mrs. Gantvoort said he was.”
Then O’Gar put another question—one that puzzled me at the time.
“What kind of collar buttons did Mr. Gantvoort wear?”
“You mean Mr. Leopold?”
“Yes.”
“Plain gold ones, made all in one piece. They had a London jeweler’s mark on them.”
“Would you know them if you saw them?”
“Yes, sir.”
We let Whipple go home then.
“Don’t you think,” I suggested when O’Gar and I were alone with this desk-load of evidence that didn’t mean anything at all to me yet, “it’s time you were loosening up and telling me what’s what?”
“I guess so—listen! A man named Lagerquist, a grocer, was driving through Golden Gate Park tonight, and passed a machine standing on a dark road, with its lights out. He thought there was something funny about the way the man in it was sitting at the wheel, so he told the first patrolman he met about it.
“The patrolman investigated and found Gantvoort sitting at the wheel—dead—with his head smashed in and this dingus”—putting one hand on