The Case of the Negligent Nymph

Chapter 16

THE SUNSET HUSH HAD SETTLED LIKE A MANTLE OVER THE still water as Mason, Della Street, and Paul Drake walked out over the echoing planks, studying the forest of stubby masts which from time to time swayed gently in the little swells made by the passing of an occasional speedboat.

From somewhere in the distance came the sound of an accordion, and a cracked baritone voice singing a sentimental ballad of a bygone era. Then the singing ceased, but the accordion played on.

“I think,” Drake said, “that’s our man. He’s supposed to spend an hour or so every night playing over some of the old times. The story goes that he was very much in love with a girl who died, and now he lives alone, true to her memory and playing the songs he sang while he was courting her. If you serve that subpoena on him, Perry, think of what a sob sister could do with the story. That’s your angle for getting the stuff about the bottled letter into the press.”

“I don’t want it in the press,” Mason said, “I want it in evidence—and the way I feel about my client right now I wouldn’t doubt but what she did grab off some jewelry on that Saturday night … Well, we’ll have to wait and see what other unpleasant surprises Claud Gloster has in store for us.”

They walked along the long pier until finally they made out the form of a grizzled seaman, sitting in the bow of a trim fishing boat, playing the accordion, his face, granite hard from wind and salt spray, etched with deep lines.

Della Street put a restraining hand on Mason’s arm, whispered, “Wait until he finishes.”

Drake turned, caught her eye, and she gently shook her head.

The three of them stood in the lee of a weather-beaten shed all but invisible in the shadows, watching the dim figure of the man in the boat below, listening to old tunes which had been popular forty years ago.

At length the number was finished. The man eased his accordion to his lap, raised his head, and looked out toward the west where the last tint of color was fading, leaving an evening star in sole possession of the sky an evening star so bright that the reflection of it made a shimmering thread of gold in the water.

The man heard their steps as they moved forward, looked up and watched them curiously.

Mason, in the lead, introduced himself and his companions.

Cadiz studied them, nodded, and turned back toward the western sky for a moment.

Della Street said sympathetically, “It’s romantic, isn’t it, out here on the water in the twilight?”

Cadiz nodded.

“We wanted to ask you some questions about that bottle,” Mason said, “The one you found with the letter in it”

Cadiz looked at him and said nothing.

Della Street said impulsively, “I presume you don’t feel much like talking after living with those old memories, and . .

Suddenly Cadiz stepped to the rail and shot a stream of tobacco juice down into the water, then he turned back to them and said, “It ain’t that, ma’am, it’s that damned tobacco juice. What about the bottle?”

Paul Drake caught Mason’s eye. Della Street, intercepting the glance, smiled, and Mason said, “I want to know just exactly what happened. I want to know all about how you happened to find that bottle, where it was, and what you did with it.”

Pete Cadiz thought for a moment, then spat the quid of tobacco over the side, ran his tongue around his teeth to clear his mouth, spat once more, turned and faced his visitors.

“I’m independent. I don’t like civilization.”

“Who does?” Mason asked, grinning.

“Well,” Cadiz said, “the way I figure things out, a man gets to playing around too much with civilization and he gets taxed one way and another so much he has to keep working harder to make more money to get taxed more.”

“Income tax bothering you?” Mason asked.

“Not the income tax, just the tax that civilization puts on a person. Ycu have a poor job, you make a little money. You get a better job and you have to start wearing good clothes. Then you have cleaning bills and laundry bills.

Then you have to work harder in order to get a better job to pay for that, and by the time you’ve done that you have to start entertaining, and that means you need a house and have to have a car. Then you work harder and you get a better job…”

“Don’t” Paul Drake grinned. “You’re killing me.”

Pete Cadiz ran an eye up and down Paul Drake’s well-dressed figure and said, “The hell I am. You’re killing yourself.”

“Go on,” Mason said, his voice showing his interest “What do you do, Pete?”

Cadiz said, “I do as I damn please.”

“You might give us the formula,” Drake said.

“I’m telling you,” Cadiz said, “I’ve been through the mill. I started out in the packing department of a big plant, moving boxes around. Then I studied salesmanship in my spare time and got to be a salesman. Then I got to be assistant sales manager. Then I got to be sales manager. Then I had ulcers and then I fell in love and… Oh, hell, what’s the use?”

He turned back toward the ocean, stood at the rail looking down into the dark, swirling waters. Then he swung back once more to face his visitors. “Okay, I said to hell with the whole business. I didn’t have anything left by the time I got my debts paid except a few five-dollar ties, some silk shirts, a collection of pajamas, five tailor-made suits and … well, you can draw the picture yourself.”

“Well, now the letter,” Drake said, “was . .

Mason nudged him with his elbow and Drake became abruptly quiet

“Well,” Cadiz said, “I found a boat that was for sale. I had a few commissions coming to me and I managed to finance the boat out of the commissions. I didn’t have much left to live oa People talked to me about going into the commercial fishing business. Then I needed a crew, I needed gasoline, I needed ice—and I asked them what I did with the fish after I caught them, and they told me I sold them, of course so then I asked them what I did with the money, and they explained to me that I used the money to buy food, get more gasoline, pay off the crew and catch more fish.”

“So what did you do?” Mason asked.

“So I just started out by myself, and because I was my own crew I didn’t have to pay me. Then when I caught fish, instead of selling them to the public to eat and taking the money for the fish to buy food, I bought the fish from myself, but since I owed the money to me I didn’t have to pay anything. And then I ate the fish.”

bounds simple,” Mason said.

“The hell of it is,” Cadiz observed, “it is simple.”

“How long have you been doing this?” Mason asked.

“Long enough to get rid of the ulcers and get happy and healthy. Now the point that I’m getting at is that since I have what you might call a close-coupled economy with myself, working for myself, employing myself, getting wages from myself, selling fish to myself, and … “

“Don’t you need any money?” Paul Drake asked.

“Well,” Pete Cadiz pointed out, “there isn’t a great deal of outside money comes in, so I aim to be pretty self-sufficient. I make a few lobster traps and when I get ready to make them I don’t have money to go buy lumber. I find my lumber in the form of driftwood. I get around and catch abalones, sell some abalone-shell ornaments, I pick up odd bits of driftwood, sell a few knickknacks here and there to yachtsmen. I drift around wherever I happen to want to be. Sometimes I have to pour some gasoline into the engine but for the most part I use the wind. The wind is free and it’ll get you there. Not always on schedule, but what the hell is a schedule? Living the sort of life I live you don’t have to worry about clocks and calendars.”

Mason nodded.

“Well,” Cadiz went on, “there’s a little half-moon bay below here that’s sandy and shaped just right to catch a lot of drift. I don’t know exactly why it is, except that the currents, the wind, and the way the tide sets keep that little cove piled full of drift stuff. If there’s anything drifting around it’ll come into this cove.

There’ll be a hell of a surf running in there and quite a tide when there’s a storm out at sea, but when it’s quiet you can slide in there in a skiff, if you know how to handle a skiff. You’ll always find stuff in there that you can use in making lobster traps. You’ll get driftage, salvage, firewood, and all that stuff.

“Well, I was making some lobster traps and I had a spell of calm weather for about a week. I anchored my boat offshore and I’d row in and out with my skiff, just combing the beach, picking up stuff and ferrying it out to my boat.”

“How big a cove?” Mason asked.

“Just a tiny little place nestled down in some hills. Not many people know about it Well, I was prowling along the edge of the tide line, looking pretty sharp because I’d just about combed the place clean, and then I happened to see this bottle. I took a look at it and saw it had been corked up and turned adrift, and there was a letter of some sort in it and I could look through the glass and see that it was on the stationery of the Thayerhelle.

“Well, I get around where the yachtsmen are quite a bit. They get a kick out of me. Some of them feel sorry for me. Poor devils, if they knew how sorry I felt for them, holding their noses on the grindstone and running like hell in the economic treadmill to keep the grindstone turning faster and faster.

“Well, anyway, I know most of the yachtsmen. I sell them stuff bait, and lobsters, and sometimes an interesting bit of driftage, and abalone-shell soap dishes, and things of that sort. I guess I know as many yachtsmen as anyone on the coast, and they know me and like me.

“Well, I had about combed this little beach out, so I got in my yacht and sailed up to San Diego and went to a telephone and put through a call collect to George Alder. I told him I had a bottle with some sort of a letter in it that evidently had been kicked overboard from his jj yacht He didn’t seem much interested at first and then he began to get curious and he suggested that I bring the I bottle in to him and he’d pay me for my time and trouble."

"Well … well, I did it.”

“And what happened?” Mason asked.

“Well, he took the letter out of the bottle and read it, if, and then he gave me fifty bucks. Then he asked me if I’d ” i read the letter and I told him it wasn’t my business to read letters but only to pick up bottles, and then he gave me a hundred bucks.”

Cadiz turned away, and once more looked down at the ocean.

Mason waited for several seconds, but the man didn’t turn back to face him. The silence became embarrassing.

“How was that bottle buried?” Mason asked.

“Sort of on a slant, half in the sand and half out, and the part that was out had all roughened up from sand blowing on the wind—you know, the way glass will when it’s exposed to sand blown by wind, sort of a ground-glass , effect”

“So Alder gave you fifty dollars?”

“That’s right”

“And then after a while made it a hundred?”

“Uh-huh … a hundred more.”

Mason said, “Alder’s dead now. You could be released I of your obligations to him, Pete.”

“What do you mean?”

Mason said, “I mean this, Pete, that if you had just picked up the bottle the way you said, you’d have put it in your boat someplace and the next time you happened to be over around the yachts and saw the ThayerbeUe anchored there you’d have got in your skiff, rowed over to pass the time of day with Alder, and casually mentioned this bottle you’d found. A man who has shaken the shackles of civilization the way you have doesn’t go around telephoning collect because he finds a bottle and … “

Cadiz whirled around to face him. “You mean I’m lying?” he demanded belligerently.

Mason measured the man with his eyes, brushed the belligerancy aside with a disarming smile, and said good-naturedly, “Pete, you’re not only lying but you’re making an awful job of it. It doesn’t come natural to you.”

Cadiz took a swift step toward the lawyer, then suddenly the anger left him and his pugnaciousness evaporated. A slow grin twisted his face. “Okay,” he said, “you’re doing the talking.”

Mason said, “My best guess is, Pete, that you read that letter in order to see what it was, and after you’d read it you knew that Alder would be interested in it so you took it in to him and it was after Alder found out that you had read the letter that he gave you the extra hundred dollars and made you promise that you’d forget all about it.”

“You’re doing the talking” Cadiz said.

“What would you do if you got on the witness stand?” Mason asked.

Cadiz thought that over for a while, then said, “Well, you’re a pretty smart lawyer. I ain’t saying anything right now. If Td made any sort of a deal with George Alder, I’d try to live up to it, but nothing was said about getting on the witness stand If I got on the witness stand and … Hell, I’d tell the truth-Mason pulled a folded paper from his pocket “Cadiz,” he said, “this is a subpoena which I am serving on you, a subpoena ordering you to appear in court tomorrow morning at ten o’clock to testify on behalf of the defendant in the case of The People of the State of California versus Dorothy Fenner. Now, we won’t be able to use you tomorrow morning, but you’ll have to be in court in accordance with the terms of this subpoena. You’re a witness for the defense, and there isn’t any reason for you to tell anyone about this talk or what you’re supposed to testify to. Now, while I can’t give you any more money than is allowed by law without it appearing that I’m trying to influence you, I can give you mileage which will bring you to court and youH be paid an amount which will compensate you for your loss of time.”

Cadiz took the subpoena, folded it, pushed it down into his pants pocket and said, That’s the hell of getting mixed up with civilization. I thought that hundred and fifty dollars was a little too easy.”

TouH be there?” Mason asked.

“IU be there,” Cadiz said. “I’m going to hate the thing all to hell, but I’ll be there.”