The D. A. Breaks a Seal

Erle Stanley Gardner

CAST OF CHARACTERS

MAJOR DOUG SELBY—ex-D. A. of Madison County, spends his five-day furlough matching wits with a murderer.

HATTIE IRWIN—little woman from Kansas, awarded first place in a contest she never heard about.

SYLVIA MARTIN—reporter for the Clarion, has her own ideas about tracking the facts.

A. B. CARR—criminal lawyer with a facile tongue and a million-dollar client.

REX BRANDON—sheriff of the tough and true school, with all of the work and none of the laurels.

CARL GIFFORD—district attorney, bent on political plums and pettiness.

INEZ STAPLETON—attractive counsellor-at-law, whose client’s case takes a turn toward murder.

FRANK NORWALK—proprietor of Madison Hotel, finds a guest who checked out as a corpse.

FRED ALBION ROFF—ordered two breakfasts before he died.

OTTO LARKIN—chief of police, whose bluster is exceeded only by his boners.

ANITA ELDON—beauteous blonde from Hollywood, comes to town to be made an heiress.

HARRY PERKINS—the coroner with a happy outlook.

ELEANOR PRESTON—may have made her will under undue influence.

HERVEY PRESTON—surviving brother of Eleanor Preston.

MARTHA OTLEY—Eleanor Preston’s housekeeper and companion.

HENRY-FARLEY—hotel-waiter, the “cup bearer.”

COLEMAN DEXTER—prospective fruit grove, buyer, saw a woman leave the murdered man’s room.

DOC THURMAN—physician on the case.

W. BARCLAY STANTON—small-town lawyer with an un-staunched flow of rhetoric, counsel for Hervey Preston.

BARBARA HONCUTT—Inez Stapleton’s client, cut out of a million-dollar will.

CARL HASTLE—comes to town in a rumpled suit with a white gardenia.

ELMER D. FLORIS—the man in charge of bookings.

MRS. DIXON—former employee of the late Eleanor Preston.

FRANKLIN L. DAWSON—witness at the signing of Eleanor Preston’s will.

HELEN ELIZABETH CORNING—sister of Martha Otley, and A. B. Carr’s star witness.

1

The transcontinental Pullmans, creaking like some huge snake whose vertebrae had gone dry, crawled across the last weary miles of desert. Joshua palms, thrusting up grotesque spine-covered arms, made the scenery resemble some fantastic reconstruction of life on another planet. Yet within forty minutes the train would wind its way through a canyon and shortly thereafter glide through the dark green of fertile orange groves.

Doug Selby, distinguished looking in his major’s uniform, and with five days of his furlough still to run, let his eyes drink in the familiar scenery. The train topped a summit, and Selby knew that he was once more in Madison County, where for years he had been the district attorney. Rex Brandon, the grizzled ex-cowboy who had been elected sheriff at the same bitterly contested election,’ had gone into the courthouse with him, and the pair had stayed in there, fighting an organized opposition, until that fateful December seventh when a bigger, more desperate fight had called Doug Selby into the Army.

The train was gathering speed now, twisting and turning down sharp grades. Another ...