to Whitacre’s having the apartment on Greenwich Street, while if Ogburn and the Landis woman were thick, they’d need a meeting-place of some sort. The rest of the box of cartridges there helped some too.
“Then tonight I put on a little act in Ogburn’s apartment, chasing a nickel along the floor and finding traces of dried mud that had escaped the cleaning-up he no doubt gave the carpet and clothes after he came home from walking through the lot in the rain. We’ll let the experts decide whether it could be mud from the lot on which Bob was killed, and the jury can decide whether it is .
“There are a few more odds and ends—like the gun. The Landis woman said Whitacre had had it for more than a year, but in spite of being muddy it looks fairly new to me. We’ll send the serial number to the factory, and find when it was turned out.
“For motive, just now all I’m sure of is the woman, which should be enough. But I think that when Ogburn & Whitacre’s books are audited, and their finances sifted, we’ll find something there. What I’m banking on strong is that Whitacre will come in, now that he is cleared of the murder charge.”
And that is exactly what happened.
Next day Herbert Whitacre walked into Police Headquarters at Sacramento and surrendered.
Neither Ogburn nor Mae Landis ever told what they knew, but with Whitacre’s testimony, supported by what we were able to pick up here and there, we went into court when the time came and convinced the jury that the facts were these:
Ogburn and Whitacre had opened their farm development business as a plain swindle. They had options on a lot of land, and they planned to sell