Free Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson Page B

reaction to it. He didn’t believe that he had heard Farnum correctly. He said, “What did you say?”
    “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You came to arrest me. I’m glad it’s all over. I was going to call you, anyway. I couldn’t let an innocent man take the blame.” Farnum added, as if it explained everything. “That wouldn’t have been decent.”
    “I guess it wouldn’t,” Holt murmured. He wanted to sit down but Farnum occupied the only chair so he chose the edge of the unmade bed and stared at the confessed murderer. He had been prepared for almost anything except this and the surprise was great enough to make him try to seek other means of explaining it away. Was Farnum just a crackpot? Every murder case turned up a few, even one or two willing to confess to crimes with which they had no connection, driven by obscure compulsions that were beyond the ken of more normal persons. It was possible that Farnum was one of these, and that his entire knowledge of the murder came from what he had read in the newspapers. Holt said cautiously, “You know what you’re confessing to, don’t you?”
    “Yeah. Aren’t you going to arrest me?” Farnum pondered. “Funny how things turn out, Mr — what’d you say your name was? — Mr. Holt. I didn’t really figure on hurting anybody when I bought the dynamite. I was just going to pay Old Man Linneker back a little. But it worked out the other way.”
    “You must have had a reason.”
    “Sure, I had a reason. What do you think I am?” Farnum looked aggrieved. “He was persecuting me. I didn’t mean him any harm but he wouldn’t let me be. I had to protect myself. That’s just human nature.”
    There was something in Farnum’s pathetic sincerity that compelled belief, fantastic though the outright confession seemed. That he had a warped intelligence was obvious, but hadn’t Holt felt from the beginning that the crime was the work of an immature and underdeveloped mind? Ernest Farnum fitted the picture he had mentally drawn of the dynamiter much more than did Delmont Shayon. But he still wanted the final bit of corroboration. He said, “I want you to tell me one thing. Where did you buy the dynamite?”
    “Up the coast. A little dump named Seacliff. I was up there looking for work one day and I got the idea.” Farnum stirred impatiently. “Aren’t you going to arrest me?”
    “Yes,” said Holt and stood up. “I am now.” Farnum might have gotten the rest of the story from the newspapers but the source of the dynamite had still not been revealed. Only the police knew it — and the man who had bought it. Formally, he said, “Ernest Farnum, I arrest you for the murder of Rudy Linneker on the evening of January twenty-fifth of the present year.”
    Farnum sighed, almost contentedly. “That’s good. We going down to the jail now?”
    “Eventually. I want you to talk to some people first, make a statement.”
    “Okay.” Farnum rose to get his coat. The newspaper slid off his lap to the floor and lay there, unheeded. At the doorway, Farnum hesitated. “I really should leave a note for the people here. They’ll want to rent the room. Or maybe you can tell them I won’t be back.”
    “They’ll hear about it,” said Holt. “They won’t expect you.”

CHAPTER NINE
    I, E RNEST F ARNUM,
testify that the following statement, given and signed by me on this the 6th day of February, is wholly voluntary and given without threat of coercion or promise of immunity by any official person or persons …
    So began Farnum’s confession to the dynamite murder of Rudy Linneker. At midnight, Mitch Holt sat in the district attorney’s private office and read through a carbon copy while in the larger room outside the confessed killer signed the original. It was a sordid and petty document, as such things usually were, and to absorb its contents Holt had withdrawn from the maelstrom of the outer office where police, reporters, photographers and the