The Case of the Buried Clock

Chapter 9

Myrna Payson’s ranch was some two miles beyond the point where the road turned off to the Blane cabin. Here the country changed to a rolling plateau, with little tree-filled valleys and several small lakes. In the distance, the peaks of mountains that bordered the plateau lifted crests that were some eight thousand feet above sea level.

Up here on the plateau, away from the shadows of the mountains, there was still enough sunlight, when Mason turned his car into the gate marked “M Bar P,” to turn the winding graveled road to a ribbon of reddish gold. An old-fashioned picket fence cast long, barred shadows. A sagging gate that hung disconsolately from one hinge reminded Mason somehow of a weary pack horse standing with its weight on three legs.

The house was a roomy, old-fashioned structure, weathered and paintless.

Mason parked his car, climbed three steps to a somewhat rickety porch, and, seeing no doorbell, knocked loudly.

He heard motion on the inside. Then the door was opened, and an attractive woman in the early thirties was sizing him up with curious eyes.

“Miss Payson?” Mason asked.

“Mrs. Payson. I’m a widow,” she corrected. “Won’t you come in?”

She had taken care of her figure, her skin, her hands and her dark hair. Her nose was perhaps a bit too upturned. Her mouth required makeup to keep the lips from seeming a shade too full. Her eyes looked out on life with a quizzical, slightly humorous expression, and she was quite evidently interested in people and things.

It was, Mason decided as he accepted her invitation and entered the house, an interest which would make this woman very fascinating. This was not the eager curiosity of the youngster, nor the exploitation of the adventuress, but rather the appraisal of one who has acquired a perspective, has lost all fear that events may get out of hand, and is quite frankly curious to see what new experiences life has to offer.

Mason said, “Aren’t you a little afraid, being out here alone like this?”

“Of what?”

“Of strangers.”

She laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever been afraid of anything or anyone in my life... And I’m not alone.”

“No?”

She shook her head. “There’s a bunkhouse out here about fifty yards. I have three of the toughest bowlegged cowpunchers you ever saw. And you have, perhaps, overlooked the dog under the table.”

Mason took a second look. What was apparently a patch of black shadows proved on closer inspection to be a shaggy substance that was taking in everything that was happening with watchful, unwinking eyes.

Mason laughed. “I will amend my statement about your being alone.”

“ ‘Spooks’ doesn’t look formidable,” she said, “but he’s a living example of still water running deep. He never growls, never barks, but believe me, Mr. Mason, I have only to give him a signal and he’d come out of there like a steel spring.”

“You know who I am, then?” Mason asked.

“Yes. I’ve seen your photograph in the papers, had you pointed out to me once or twice in night clubs... I presume you want to ask me about what I saw when Rod and I went to town last night.”

Mason nodded.

She smiled. “I’m afraid it won’t do any good to ask.”

“Why not?”

“In the first place,” she said, slowly and distinctly, “I sympathize with that woman. I sympathize with her very, very much. In the second place, I wasn’t interested in what she had in her hand. I was fascinated by what I saw on her face.”

“What did you see on her face?” Mason asked.

She smiled. “And I know enough to realize that’s not proper evidence, Mr. Mason. I don’t think a court would let me testify to that, would it? Doesn’t it call that opinion evidence, or a conclusion, or something of the sort?”

Mason smiled. “You’re not in court, and I am very much interested in what you saw on her face. I don’t know but what I’d be even more interested in that than in what she had in her hand.”

Myrna Payson narrowed her eyes, as though trying to recall some vague memory into sharp focus. Abruptly she said, “But I haven’t offered you a drink. How inhospitable of me!”

“No drink,” Mason said, “not now, thanks. I’m very much interested in what you saw in Milicent Hardisty’s face.”

“Or a cigarette?”

“I have my own, thank you.”

“Well now, let’s see,” Mrs. Payson said thoughtfully, “just how I can describe it... It was a fascinating expression, the expression of a woman who has found herself, who has reached a decision and made a renunciation.”

“That sounds rather definite and deliberate.”

“Well?”

“The story, as I gathered it, is that Mrs. Hardisty was completely hysterical and emotionally upset.”

Mrs. Payson shook her head. “Definitely not.”

“You’re certain?”

“Well, of course, Mr. Mason, when it comes to reading facial expressions, we all have our own ideas, but I’ve been interested in faces and in emotions. I have a very definite idea about Mrs. Hardisty from what I saw. And it’s not anything I’m going to tell in court”

“Could you tell me?” Mason asked.

“You are acting as her lawyer?”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Payson thought for a moment, then said, “Yes, I think I could tell you — if there were any reason why I should.”

“There is,” Mason assured her. “The authorities have buried Mrs. Hardisty. I can’t get in touch with her. I’m called on to defend her for murder.”

Mrs. Payson said, “Well, you’ll laugh at me when I’ve told you, Mr. Mason.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ll say it’s impossible for a person to learn so much of another’s problems and decisions by a fleeting glimpse of a facial expression.”

“I’ll promise not to laugh,” Mason said. “I may smile, I may doubt, I may question — but I won’t laugh.”

“On the strength of that promise, I’ll tell you about Mrs. Hardisty. She had the expression of a woman waking up, of a woman who has definitely reached a decision, a decision to put something old out of her life and to go on with something new. I’ve seen that same expression two or three times before. I–I went through that experience myself once. I know what it’s like.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said, as she hesitated.

She said, “Mr. Mason, I’ll tell you something you can’t use as evidence. It isn’t worth a snap of your fingers anywhere. If you tell it to anyone, they’ll laugh at you, but you can take it from a woman who knows her way around that Milicent Hardisty went out there to kill her husband. She went out with the deliberate intention of murdering him. Probably not because of the hurt he had inflicted on her, but because of the hurt he had inflicted on someone else. She came within an ace of killing him. Perhaps she even fired a shot and it missed. And then suddenly she realized the full potential effect of what she had almost done, realized what the gun she held in her hand really was. It ceased to be a mere means by which she could remove Jack Hardisty from her life forever, but became the key which fitted the door of a prison cell. It became the symbol of a bondage to the law, something that would chain her to a cell until she was an old woman, until love had left her life forever. And she had this sudden revulsion of feeling, and wanted to get rid of that gun. She had a horror of it. She wanted to throw it so far she’d never see it again. And then she was going to the man she loved. And, regardless of consequences, regardless of gossip, regardless of conventions, she was going to live her life with that man... Now, go ahead and laugh, Mr. Mason.”

“I’m not laughing, not even smiling.”

“And that,” Mrs. Payson announced, “is all I know.”

“That is what you would call the result of a woman’s intuition?”

“That is what I would call applied psychology, the knowledge of character one gets when one has lived and gone through a lot — and I have.”

Mason couldn’t resist asking one more question. “How about Miss Strague?” he asked.

“What about her?”

“What do you deduce from her expressions?”

Mrs. Payson laughed. “Would that help you to clear Mrs. Hardisty?”

“It might.”

Mrs. Payson said, “Lola Strague is a delightful girl. She’s fresh, sweet, and she’s spoiled. She waits on her brother hand and foot, but her brother idolizes the ground she walks on, and watches over her.

“She thinks I’m an adventuress; she’s in love with Rodney Beaton; she thinks I have designs on him. She’s somewhat amateurish in her little jealousies, and just a little hypocritical. She gets jealous, but she won’t admit it, even to herself. She tries to rise above all the petty emotions. She pretends to herself that she’s done so. And when she puts on that particular mask, she makes me terribly ill, because then she’s being a damned little hypocrite. But, in her inexperienced way, she’s a very nice little girl... However, I don’t think she’s the sort that Rodney Beaton would marry.”

“And how,” Mason asked, “do you feel toward Rodney Beaton?”

She looked him frankly in the eyes and laughed at him.

“Well, now let’s see,” Mason said. “What else can I ask you?”

“You seem to have taken rather a wide latitude.”

“I’ve asked you just about everything I could think of. Could you swear that Mrs. Hardisty tossed the gun down the barranca?”

“I couldn’t swear that she tossed anything down a barranca. I think I saw her arm move. I couldn’t swear to it. I don’t know what was in her hand. I was watching her face. I tell you I was completely and utterly fascinated with her face.”

“How about Burt Strague?” Mason asked.

“What about him?”

“What do you think of him?”

She hesitated a moment, then slowly shook her head.

“Not going to answer that one?” Mason asked.

“Not all of it,” she said. “There’s something about Burt Strague that just doesn’t fit into the picture. He has a sister complex. He’s intensely loyal, emotionally unstable; he has a swift, devastating temper; he’s undoubtedly just what he says he is, and yet — and yet, there’s something about him that—”

“Doesn’t ring true?” Mason asked, as she hesitated, groping for words with which to express the idea.

“It isn’t that,” she said. “There’s something about him — something that he’s afraid of, something that his sister is afraid of, something they’re fighting, some very dark chapter in his life.”

“What makes you think that?”

“The way he’s always watching himself, as though some careless word might betray something that must be kept secret at all costs... There, I’ve told you more than I intended to tell you, and I presume you know why.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to help Mrs. Hardisty. I wish all women could realize how much better it is to write off their emotional liabilities and turn to the future while there still is a future. Time slips through one’s fingers so very imperceptibly, Mr. Mason, that it’s tragic. When one is seventeen, twenty is getting old. When one is in the twenties, the thirties seems positively doddering, terribly distant. And the woman in the forties has to conceal her emotions; otherwise people laugh at her... And there’s a peculiar shifting viewpoint. When one is in the thirties, one looks at the thirties as being just the prime of life; when one’s in the forties, one looks at the thirties with a feeling that they’re still a little callow. Time is a clever robber.”

“How does a woman of forty look to a man of forty?” Mason asked.

Mrs. Payson smiled. “She doesn’t have a chance. A man of forty considers himself in the prime of life and starts ogling girls in the twenties. He reasons that other men of forty may be a little passé, but not him. He’s ‘exceptionally well preserved.’ He’s a man who ‘looks ten years younger.’ ”

Mason grinned at her. “Well, how about the men in the sixties and seventies?” he asked.

Mrs. Payson reached for a cigarette. “I think,” she announced laughing, “that you’ve got something there.”