The Case of the Cautious Coquette

Chapter 13

Whistling a tune, his hat pushed jauntily to the back of his head, Mason opened the door of his office and found Della Street pounding away at her typewriter.

“For heaven’s sake,” Mason exclaimed, “you do enough work during office hours. When I leave you here like this at night to keep an eye on things, don’t try to ruin your nervous system by pounding away at that typewriter.”

“This was some stuff that’s important, and...”

“And your health is important too,” Mason said. “This job isn’t particularly easy on the nerves. What happened to the police, Della?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard a peep out of them.”

Mason frowned. “That’s something I can’t understand. They should have been here hours ago.”

“You didn’t hear anything?”

“No, I’ve been out at the hospital.”

“How’s Bob Finchley?”

Mason grinned and perched himself on the edge of his desk. “Now there, Della,” he said, “we have the bright spot of my entire legal career.”

“Tell me about it.”

Mason said, “The better class of insurance companies are always willing to deal with a lawyer, but there’s a certain type of adjuster who loves to cut a lawyer’s throat.”

Della Street nodded.

“Obviously,” Mason went on, “they figure they can settle with a client a lot cheaper than they can with a lawyer, and if they can get the client to make a settlement by assuring him that they’ll agree to pay his lawyer ‘a reasonable fee’ the client thinks that’s all there is to it. He doesn’t realize that the insurance company will then offer the lawyer a nominal fee and tell him to file suit if he wants to get any more.

“That puts the lawyer in the position of having to throw in a lawsuit in order to get what’s really coming to him and even then a jury is usually inclined to look at the thing from a layman’s viewpoint, so he takes the offer and grits his teeth.

“A lawyer has a lot of overhead. He has to keep his office running and when he handles a personal injury case, he has to get a pretty good fee from the ones he wins in order to compensate for all of the time, energy and money spent in connection with the ones he loses.”

“Are you trying to tell me the financial problems of running a law office?” Della demanded. “If you could see the bookkeeping headaches I have with five people on your payroll...”

Mason grinned. “No, Della, I’m simply feeling so darned good that I have to begin from scratch.”

“Well, then,” she told him, smiling, “by all means proceed from scratch.” She pushed her chair back and came over to sit on the desk beside Mason. “All right, what happened?”

“The long arm of coincidence is playing right into our hands, Della.”

“How come?”

“Evidently Argyle’s chauffeur must have had the car out on the third and hit someone. He went to Argyle and without telling him any details let Argyle know he was in a mess. So Argyle decided to be smart, took the car out, parked it in front of a fireplug and then went to the club and reported it as being stolen. And to make his story stand up, bribed the doorman to say he hadn’t been out all afternoon.”

Della frowned. “Then Argyle’s chauffeur was the one who was driving the car that hit...”

Mason grinned. “Don’t be silly. It was Daniel Caffee, but Argyle thought his chauffeur was guilty.”

“So what happened?”

Mason said gleefully, “I can see by the twinkle in your eye that you know what happened, but you don’t want to rob me of the pleasure of telling you about it. And believe me this is a real pleasure.”

“Go ahead,” she said, smiling, “tell me all the sordid details.”

“Well,” Mason said, “Argyle evidently got in touch with his insurance carrier and some young adjuster came out. This young adjuster was full of vim, vigor and vitality, and anxious to make a record with the main office. So he put the idea in Argyle’s head. They consulted records of traffic accidents, found out the name and address of the victim, learned what hospital he was in, and went out there.”

“When did they do all this?”

“Apparently,” Mason said, “we can make a pretty good pattern. Almost immediately after I talked with Argyle he jumped in his car and came up to my office. He was waiting here for me when you arrived. Then he went down and dismissed his chauffeur. His chauffeur proceeded to go out and get himself murdered, and...”

“Yes,” Della Street prompted, as Mason came to a frowning stop.

“Damn it,” Mason said, “I’m so tickled about that insurance business that I’m letting my mind get away from the murder.”

She placed her hand on his, gave a firm, steady pressure. “Go on, chief. The murder doesn’t mean anything to us, but this insurance business does.”

Mason pushed back his chair. “It’s beginning to worry me. Why the deuce do you suppose the police haven’t been in touch with me?”

“I can’t guess.”

“Well,” Mason said, getting to his feet. “We’re going to find out. Well just drive casually down South Gondola Avenue and see how much excitement is going on, how many police cars are parked there, and so forth. If the police cars are still there, we’ll know they’re grilling Lucille Barton in her apartment. If the police cars have gone, well find a crowd of curious people still standing around in doorways, and we can get out and walk around and pick up enough from bits of conversation to know what happened.”

“Let’s go,” Della Street said.

Mason held her coat for her. She put on her hat in front of the mirror, and Mason, putting on hat and topcoat, switched off the office lights.

Mason stopped in Drake’s office long enough to say, “Okay, Paul, we’re leaving now. You haven’t found out anything new?”

“Yes, I have, Perry.”

“What?”

“I have a hunch your friend, the chauffeur, Hartwell L. Pitkin, is a blackmailer.”

“The devil!”

“Nothing a hundred per cent definite at this time,” Drake said, “but one of my men has uncovered an associate of Pitkin’s, a friend who is a little more than a casual friend, and that chap intimated that Pitkin is making money from some source, that it’s cash money, that it comes in in large quantities and that Pitkin doesn’t need to hold his job as chauffeur unless he wants to, that he’s only holding that job as sort of a blind to divert suspicion from himself.”

Mason gave a low whistle.

“So,” Drake said, “my operative put the screws on this chap and found out as much as the fellow knew, which wasn’t a great deal, but it indicates Pitkin may be shaking someone down.”

Mason exchanged significant glances with Della Street. “A woman?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” Drake said. “If it’s a woman, she must be someone who has a reasonable amount bf money, because Pitkin seems to be pretty well heeled with cash — that is, no really big money, but he can always pull out a roll with two or three hundred dollars in it.”

Mason said, “Well, keep on working, Paul, but don’t lose any sleep over it. If you’ve got your men out, let them do the work.”

“I’m about ready to knock off,” Drake said. “Getting a bunch of men out on an investigation is a job. What about Argyle? Do you want me to keep on him?”

“No,” Mason said. “I’ve changed my mind about Argyle. You can take your men off the house and let Argyle do whatever he wants. I’ll drop in and see him sometime within the next two or three days, and after he recovers from my visit, he’ll know he’s had a shock.”

“You certainly seem to be sitting on a cloud,” Drake said.

“I’m sitting on a cloud and the cloud’s right on top of the world,” Mason grinned. “You might find out something about Pitkin — anything you can — hell, Paul, there must be something... oh well, never mind. Want to hear what happened?”

“Well,” Mason said, “call your men off Argyle. He isn’t important any more. I’d like to find out a little more about Pitkin, and in the morning you can find out about that gun. I wish you could have found out about it tonight.”

“I think I can get something on that,” Drake said. “I have a man who does work for me who lives in Santa del Barra. It’s about eighty miles from there to Rushing Creek and I got hold of this chap and told him to go up to Rushing Creek and see if he couldn’t get hold of the proprietor of the Rushing Creek Mercantile Company. It’s probably a one-man concern.”

“Okay,” Mason said. “Let me know if you hear anything. Come on, Della. I’ll take you home. Don’t lose any sleep, Paul. It’s not that important.”

“Okay,” Drake said. “I’ll keep in touch with the office by telephone and let you know if I get anything.”

“Don’t call me if it’s later than an hour from now,” Mason said. “I’m going to roll in. Good night, Paul.”

“Good night.”

Mason escorted Della out of the office, down to his waiting automobile, said, “Well, let’s just drive by the neighborhood and see what’s doing, Della.”

“You want me to drive?”

“No, I’ll drive.”

Mason slid in behind the wheel of the automobile, nodded to the parking station attendant, gunned the car, and rolled out of the parking station to the street. He piloted the car with deft skill through the late traffic and swung into South Gondola Avenue.

Mason said, “Okay, Della, keep your eyes open. I’ll drive slowly. You see how many police cars you can spot.”

“Which place is the apartment housed?”

“The one at 719. It’s in the middle of the next block on the left-hand side, and...”

“Oh, yes, I have it spotted now.”

“Quite a few cars around there,” Mason said.

He drove slowly across the intersection.

“That’s right, and long radio antennas. Gosh, Della, I don’t see a one.”

“Well, they’ve probably taken Lucille down to Headquarters for questioning and...”

“But the neighborhood would hardly have quieted down this soon,” Mason said. “I’m going to drive very slowly. As I pass the entrance to the alley well take a good look at the garage and see what’s around there.”

Mason slowed the car almost to a stop.

They looked up the alley. The row of garages was dark and silent, illuminated only by such light as filtered in from the street lamps.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Mason said, “something’s wrong.”

“What?” Della Street asked.

Mason braked his car to an abrupt stop. “Sit over behind the steering wheel, Della,” he said. “Here, give me the flashlight out of that glove compartment. No, wait a minute. I’m going to drive in there. I think we can drive in and then back and turn around.”

“Chief, what’s wrong? What do you think...”

“I don’t know,” Mason said. “There’s something fishy about the whole business.”

“If there is, hadn’t you better keep out and...”

“I have to find out what it is,” Mason said.

He looked back to make certain the road was clear, backed a few feet, then turned the car so it was headed toward the garages, and slowly entered the alleyway.

He drove to the garage bearing the figures 208, said, “Okay, Della, you sit here. Give me that flashlight.”

Mason took the flashlight, jumped out of the car, approached the garage, saw that the doors were closed but unlocked. Mason eased the right-hand door back a few inches, and flashed the beam of the light into the interior of the garage.

Abruptly, he ran back to the car, jumped in, threw the flashlight over on the back seat, backed the car swiftly, and turned it around.

“What’s the matter?” Della Street asked.

“Everything,” Mason said grimly. “We’re hooked!”