Back in Drake’s car, the detective said, “Gosh, Perry, you certainly did a job on that.”
“We didn’t get very far,” Mason said, a little ruefully.
“Didn’t get very far?” Drake echoed. “You got all the information there was. He confirmed the situation you’d suspected about the reason for hiring the brunette actress and all that.”
“There’s some more to that that I’d like to find out about. Did you notice his apartment, Paul?”
“What about it?”
“He’d evidently furnished it himself.”
“Sure. You don’t get that type of furniture in furnished apartments, even the swanky ones.”
“The whole effect was very — very harmonious, wasn’t it, Paul?”
“It’s a darn swell place, Perry.”
“No,” Mason contradicted. “The word for it isn’t ‘swell’ — it is ‘harmonious.’ Nice Venetian blinds, beautiful draperies and upholstery, good pictures effectively hung, handsome Oriental rugs, and a lot of excellent furniture — and all in a color scheme that is exactly right.”
“What are you getting at?” Drake asked. “What’s the apartment got to do with the thing we’re talking about? It’s a swanky apartment, probably sets him back five or six hundred a month unfurnished. So what?”
“You saw what Reedley is like — a man filled with turmoil and restlessness. It’s driving him from one thing to another as he goes through life. There’s an inner conflict, a desire for power, a certain ruthlessness. He’s like a volcano rumbling with molten lava — you can’t tell just when he’s going to erupt.”
“Okay, I’ll agree with you on all that.”
“What I’m getting at,” Mason said, “is this: a man with that temperament never furnished an apartment in the way that one’s furnished.”
“Oh-oh!” Drake exclaimed.
“You see it now, don’t you? There’s a woman’s touch there. Another thing — did you notice that telephone conversation of his?”
“What about it?”
“He was rather enigmatical.”
“It was from the Interstate,” Drake said. “They were relaying on some information to him and he was sitting tight because he didn’t want to discuss it while we were there.”
“What makes you think it was the Interstate?”
“He used the word ‘information,’ didn’t he?”
“Exactly,” Mason said. “Now think back a minute. Before the telephone rang, what was he doing?”
“He sat there and talked with us.”
“No, he didn’t. He got up and walked over to the window. He took a few steps up and down, walking restlessly around, and then he went over to the window. And do you remember what he did then?”
“Came back and— No, before he came back he turned the Venetian blind so that he could see out.”
“Or so that someone else could see in.”
“Well... yes,” Drake admitted.
“That someone else could have looked into the apartment, could have seen us there, could have telephoned, could have said, ‘You have a couple of men there. What do they want?’ And he could have said, ‘Information.’ ”
Drake gave a low whistle.
“Of course,” Mason said, “I’m just sticking my neck out. But it’s a logical deduction. Here we have Reedley, apparently a man of considerable means, with a restless, driving temperament that makes him turn from one thing to another and would naturally make him go from one woman to another. As he gets older, his changes will be made less frequently; but that type of man never celebrates a golden wedding anniversary.”
“And you think there’s someone there in the apartment house who—”
“Sure. The man’s nobody’s fool, Paul. His wife has been on his trail with private detectives. She’s had him shadowed for months. He knows it. She’s kept tabs on his visitors — those she knows about. But suppose he’s friendly with a woman in an adjoining apartment? Or suppose he puts the woman with whom he’s friendly in an adjoining apartment?”
“Gosh, Perry, it’s logical all right. It’s getting a lot of answers from just one or two clues — sure. But when you stop to think of it, it’s the only solution that fits the facts.”
“I’m not getting it as a solution,” Mason said. “I’m getting it as a clue on which we can work. See if you can’t find out who has the adjoining apartment, how long it’s been occupied. Get a floor plan of the building. It may not be the adjoining apartment; it may be one of those across the court. But the person must be someone who can see in through that window when Reedley fixes the Venetian blinds right.”
“I’ll get busy on it, Perry. Anything else?”
“Keep men on Reedley. I don’t suppose it will do very much good, but I’d like to know a little more about him.”
“Just who is the client in this case, Perry?”
Mason grinned. “Darned if I know. I guess it’s Eva Martell. I’d like to get just a little more information in order to protect her in case it becomes necessary. But I think the real truth is that in part I’m my own client. I have some healthy curiosity about what’s happening. It’s a mystery, and mysteries interest me. I’d like to find out just a little more about Reedley — particularly about how his apartment came to be furnished with such excellent taste.”
“Okay, I’ll get to work on it. We’re going back to your office?”
“That’s right. Della’s waiting.”
Drake turned in at the parking lot next to the office building, and he and Mason went up.
“Coming down to my place?” Mason asked.
“Not unless you want me, Perry. I’ve got quite a bit of stuff to check up on.”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
“You’ll let me know in case there’s anything you want?”
“That’s right.”
“Any other instructions?”
“Just keep working on the thing. Find out as much about the murder as you can. Get some men investigating that apartment house setup. Keep a shadow on Reedley.”
“How about the operatives from the Interstate Investigators?”
“Forget them. You can take your men off them and put them on Reedley.”
“Okay, Perry. How do you want your reports?”
“Usual way. If anything’s really important, get in touch with me no matter where I am.”
“Okay.”
Walking on down the corridor, Mason latch-keyed the door to his private office. Della Street looked up, then held up her finger to her lips as a sign for silence.
Mason raised his eyebrows. She gestured with her thumb toward the outer office.
Mason walked quietly over, sat down close to her, and asked in a half-whisper, “What is it?”
“Eva Martell and Adelle Winters are out there.”
“Anything new?”
“I don’t know. They only arrived about five minutes ago, and all I told them was that I didn’t know whether you’d be in any more this evening or not. Thought I’d park them and find out whether you wanted to see them.”
“Let’s see them,” Mason said.
“Now?”
“Uh-huh. Bring them in. Tell them I just came back.”
Della Street went out and a moment later returned with Eva Martell and Adelle Winters.
“Well,” Mason said, “you seem to have run into quite a bit of excitement.”
“I’ll say we did,” Eva said.
“Sit down and tell me about it.”
“Well, there isn’t much to tell. We went back to the apartment and let ourselves in with the key Mr. Hines had given us and started making ourselves at home. I had taken off my hat and coat and was just going into the bathroom when I saw him.”
“Where was he?”
“In a big chair in the bedroom. All slumped down. And that bullet hole in his forehead, and the blood down the side of his face and over the shoulder of his shirt — it was terrible!”
“What did you do?” Mason asked.
“Screamed her head off,” Adelle Winters said, interposing her competent personality as a barrier between Mason and further questioning of the girl. “I clapped my hand over her mouth and told her to be her age. I went over and took a look at him, saw he was dead, and told her to telephone you for instructions.”
“He was shot in the forehead?” Mason asked.
“Yes — right between the eyes.”
“Did you notice any powder burns?”
“I didn’t look for them, but I didn’t see any.”
“I understand he was shot with a .32 revolver.”
Mrs. Winters shrugged her shoulders.
“You had a .32 revolver, I believe, Mrs. Winters. You’d better—”
“Who? Me?”
“You did have one, didn’t you?”
She threw back her head and laughed. “Good heavens, no!”
“Why, I thought you said that... ”
“Oh, that’s just one of my little ways of running a bluff, Mr. Mason. I’ve never yet seen the man that I had to be afraid of, but it doesn’t do any harm to let them think they’re dealing with a hellcat, so I always tell ‘em that I’m carrying a gun. It’s a good bluff.”
Mason frowned. “You told me you carried a gun and had no permit to do so. I told you to get rid of the gun or else get a permit to carry it.”
Her eyes twinkled at him. “And you remember I wasn’t a darn bit worried about not having a permit for it. That’s because I didn’t really have any gun — so naturally I wasn’t worried at all.”
Eva interrupted. “But I always thought you carried a gun. You told me you did, several times, Aunt Adelle.”
Mrs. Winters chuckled delightedly. “Well, it made you feel safer because I told you that, didn’t it? I’ll run a bluff, but when something like this comes up, there’s no percentage in sticking your neck out.”
Mason was watching her with a puzzled frown on his forehead. “Now, let’s be frank about this,” he said. “If you did have a gun, the police are pretty likely to find out you had it. Then-if you deny it... ”
“Good heavens, Mr. Mason, what a fuss you make over what was just a plain bluff! I never carried a gun in my life.”
“That’s your final answer?”
“Of course it is. It’s the truth.”
“How long had Hines been dead when you found him?”
“Well, I couldn’t say. The body was still warm, but... well, sort of lukewarm. It’s pretty hard to tell about the temperature of a body without putting your hand inside the clothes somewhere. I just touched his wrist. His coat was hung on the chair.”
“Felt for his pulse?”
“That’s right.”
“Touch anything else?”
“No.”
“You didn’t go through the clothes at all?”
“Good heavens, why should I go through his clothes?”
“Were you with her all the time?” Mason asked, turning to Eva Martell.
“What’s the idea of asking questions like that?” Adelle Winters exclaimed irritably. “That’s the same sort of stuff the police have been asking.”
“I was just trying to find out.”
“Yes, I was with her all the time,” Eva Martell said.
“How about when you were telephoning to me?”
“Well, that was just a second or two.”
“And you’ve been together all day?”
“That’s right.”
“Every minute of the time?”
“Every single solitary minute.”
“Well, that’s going to help.”
“That’s the way the police looked at it,” Adelle Winters said.
“Did the officers ask you how you happened to be living in that apartment?”
“Of course they did.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Told them the complete truth.”
“You told them all about Hines and how he had hired you?”
“Yes.”
“To impersonate Helen Reedley?”
“We weren’t impersonating anyone,” Adelle Winters said. “We took a job and he asked us to take a certain name for the job.”
“But you told them about me?”
“That’s right.”
“About how I got in touch with Helen Reedley?”
“Well, no,” Adelle Winters said. “We didn’t tell them too much.”
“What did you tell them?”
“We told them that we had this job and that you told us you didn’t want us to go ahead with it until you were positive it was all right, so that we wouldn’t be guilty of any crime. So we said you investigated and reported that it was all right; so then we went shopping, had dinner, and returned to the apartment. And when we returned, we found the body.”
“You didn’t tell them about being shadowed?”
“No.”
“And did you tell them anything else?”
“What else is there to tell? We just were hired and went to work, and that’s all there was to it. We didn’t know what the job was, but we certainly weren’t impersonating anyone. And we didn’t defraud anyone.”
“Did the police seem to think there was some scheme back of it?”
“No, to tell you the truth, Mr. Mason, the police didn’t seem so interested in that part. They seemed to know Hines — he had a police record for racetrack gambling. They didn’t even ask us for the phone number where we’d been calling him, and so we didn’t give it to them. I think they’d talked with some of the men who had been shadowing us. I don’t know for certain, but I think so. I saw one of them waiting there in the apartment house and thought he was waiting to be questioned.”
Mason said, “I guess they probably already had a statement from him. As a matter of fact, those were two detectives who had been hired to keep an eye on you. They’d been following you everywhere you went ever since you’d been on the job.”
“Well now, isn’t that something!” Adelle Winters exclaimed. “Great goings-on when a couple of respectable women are trying to make an honest living and detectives start traipsing around after them.”
“Did the police tell you to keep in touch with them?”
“No. I told them I’d be at my apartment, and Eva Martell told them she’d be back with Cora Felton. The police took the addresses and said they’d get in touch with us if there was anything else they wanted. But they seem to think it was a gambling murder.”
“Oh,” said Mason. “Well, I guess that’s about all, then.”
Adelle Winters got to her feet and nodded to Eva Martell. “We thought we’d drop in and tell you, Mr. Mason — you’ve been so nice to us.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“I guess... Well, Cora Felton hired you to see that everything was all right with us, and I guess now... Well, I guess there’s nothing more to do. We don’t want to run up too much of a bill, you know.”
Mason laughed. “You won’t.”
“But we don’t want you to be loser either, Mr. Mason. There isn’t anything more to do now, is there?”
“It’s hard to say just what the situation is.”
“Well, I think it would be better if you just — you know — let the whole thing drop and tell us how much we owe you, and that’ll be that. We’ll pay up. And how about this extra money we got from Hines? The amount that was over what we had coming to us?”
“Did you tell the police about that?”
“Well, no, I didn’t. I told them he’d paid us up to date, and they didn’t ask me how much, so I didn’t tell them.”
“Well, that’s right. You are paid up to date. In any event, the police won’t have anything to do with that phase of it. That will be up to the executor of Hines’s estate.”
“You mean that we don’t need to tell anyone just how much we received?”
“Not until the executor asks you. And then you can tell him that what you got was as a payment for services performed and in the nature of a guarantee that the contract would be carried out — so that if anything interfered you’d be assured of your money.”
“I see. Thank you, Mr. Mason. Good night.”
“Good night,” Mason said.
Eva Martell, turning impulsively, gave Mason her hand and a flash of gratitude from dark eyes. “Thank you,” she said in a low voice. “You’ve been so kind. Will we see you again?”
“Perhaps.”
“I thought perhaps you’d drop in and have a drink with us, and there might be some questions you’d want to ask some time in the future.”
“There won’t be a thing,” Adelle Winters said positively. “The case is all closed as far as Mr. Mason is concerned. Come on, Eva.”
A few minutes after they had left, Mason’s private phone rang. Since only Della Street and Paul Drake knew that number, Mason scooped up the receiver and said, “Yes, hello, Paul. What is it?”
“Something red-hot, Perry. And I mean it is red-hot.”
“Shoot.”
“Well, the police got those Interstate men on the carpet and gave them a pretty thorough grilling. They made the boys kick through with everything they had.”
“Naturally the police would do that,” Mason said. “What happened?”
“Well, the boys turned in their notes, giving a complete picture of what had been done with shadowing operations on the two women, telling exactly where they went, the license numbers of the cabs they took — all that kind of thing.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Mason asked.
“Well, it seems that at two-twenty this afternoon, very shortly after the two women got to that hotel where they went and waited, Adelle Winters went exploring. In a passageway she found a lot of garbage cans from the kitchen waiting to be picked up by the garbage man. She lifted the cover of one of the garbage cans and looked in. The man who was shadowing her made a note of what she had done, but didn’t pay much attention to it.”
“Okay, Paul, go ahead. What happened?”
“Well,” Drake said, “the police did pay some attention to it, as a matter of routine check-up; they thought she might have been ditching something. They rushed a couple of the boys down to the hotel. By that time the cans were pretty well filled with garbage, but the Interstate man was able to point out the one that Mrs. Winters had looked into. So the police spread out a canvas and dumped out the contents — and what do you think they found?”
“Well — what?”
“A .32-caliber revolver with one chamber fired,” Drake said.
Mason whistled.
“And,” Drake went on, “the bullets were of a certain old-fashioned obsolete type. Exactly the same as the bullet the autopsy surgeon has taken from the head of Robert Hines. Of course, they haven’t made tests in the ballistic department yet to make certain that the bullet was fired from that particular gun. But nine hundred and ninety-nine chances out of a thousand it was. That mean anything to you, Perry?”
“It means a hell of a lot to me. Della!” Mason shouted, turning from the phone, “sprint down the corridor. Try and get those women before they get to the elevator and bring them back. Wait a minute — Paul, you’re closer to the elevator — dash out and stop them. They’ve just left the office.”
“Right away,” Drake said, and slammed up the receiver.
Ten minutes later Drake was back in Mason’s office. “Missed them at the elevator, Perry. There’s only one cage running at this hour of night. By the time I managed to get it up to this floor they’d had time enough to make a getaway. I got out of the car and took a look around the block, but couldn’t see anyone answering the description of the pair you wanted. According to the elevator man, they must have had a head start of a minute and a half or two minutes, which is a lot of time in a situation of this sort.”
“Well, I know where they live,” Mason said, “and I can get them. But I’ve got to see them before the police do.”
Drake grinned. “And the police would like to see them before you do. Is she your client, Perry — the Winters woman?”
“I don’t think she is. I was retained to look out for Eva.”
“Of course,” Drake pointed out, “the girl could have a clean nose. The Winters woman could have been a lone wolf. By the way, Perry, Eva Martell told the police he’d had a wallet pretty well stacked with dough. It wasn’t there when the police searched.”
“He has a wallet all right. You say there was no money on the body?”
“Less than ten bucks.”
“Did Eva say she was with Adelle Winters all the time?”
“Every minute. That’s why the police let ‘em go. Their story seemed okay, and each of ‘em gave an alibi for the other.”
Mason said, “But Eva Martell wasn’t with her all the time — I know that much. She was talking with me on the telephone for a while, and... Gosh, Paul, I’d like to get hold of her and get her to change her statement and tell the truth. I suppose the old gal has a lot of influence over her — though even at that, you can’t see Eva standing by while her friend pumped the .32 bullet between Hines’s eyebrows. It must have been that when they left the apartment Mrs. Winters stayed on for a few minutes and then joined Eva Martell on the sidewalk; or perhaps after they had left the apartment Mrs. Winters thought of something she had forgotten and went back to get it. Then, later on, after they’d ‘found’ the corpse, Mrs. Winters could have told Eva it would simplify matters for her if Eva would swear they’d been together all the time. And Eva, thinking that of course there was no possible chance her friend had committed a murder, gave the police that story.”
“Well,” Drake said, “I’m sure sorry I couldn’t catch up with them. I cruised around the block. They must have had a cab.”
“It’s all right,” Mason said. “I’d like to have caught up with them, but I think I can reach them. What was that number Cora Felton left for us, Della? That’s where Eva will be going. Put through a call and... I’ll tell you what you do: get Cora Felton on the line.”
Della Street nodded, consulted the file cards that listed clients’ telephone numbers, and put through the call.
They waited an anxious ten seconds. Then Della shook her head. “No answer.”
Mason said, “Do we have the number of Adelle Winters’s place?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“There’s not one chance in a hundred that the police won’t be on the job there. They’ll nail her the minute she shows up. But see what you can do, Della.”
Della Street tried that number without success.
“All right. Try Cora Felton again.”
Again there was no answer.
“I guess there’s only one thing to do, Paul,” said Mason. “You and I will go down and wait at Cora Felton’s apartment. Della will stay here.
“Della, in case Eva Martell telephones, which she may do, get her out of circulation and notify me. In the meantime, I’ll have my car and be waiting at the girls’ apartment. If I can get her before the police do, I’ll see what can be done. Come on, Paul.”