The Case of the Cautious Coquette

Chapter 30

Paul Drake, Della Street, and Perry Mason relaxed in Mason’s private office. Della Street, perched on a corner of the desk, held one knee in her interlaced fingers. Mason was tilted back in his swivel chair and Drake was sprawled in his customary sideways position in the big clients’ chair.

“You mean you knew who it was all along?” Drake asked.

“Of course not,” Mason said, “but as soon as I knew that Argyle’s car hadn’t hit Finchley, I wondered why it was that Argyle would so willingly part with cold, hard cash to settle a claim for which he wasn’t responsible. Then I began to wonder if he wasn’t buying an alibi.”

“Well, of course, it’s plain enough now,” Drake said, “but I’m darned if I see how you got it at the start.”

Mason said, “Here’s a pretty good reconstruction of what happened, Paul. Argyle, Hollister and Gates were associated in some oil deals. Hollister furnished most of the capital and took the largest share of the profits. Argyle and Gates started double-crossing Hollister. Hollister either caught them at it, or smelled a rat. He called a conference to take place at his home in Santa del Barra on Monday the third. Argyle and Gates very reluctantly drove up there.”

“Did Pitkin drive them up?” Drake asked.

Mason grinned. “No, Pitkin was in San Francisco.”

“I don’t get it,” Drake said.

“Gates and Argyle were in such a spot that they could have been sent to jail for embezzlement. Hollister finally had the goods on them. Gates knew it. Argyle only suspected it. Gates had decided that if it came to a showdown, he’d shoot his way out, if he had half a chance.

“So he’d purchased a plane ticket to Honolulu in his name. Then he paid Pitkin to travel the first leg of the journey under his name.

“That gave Gates an alibi in case he had to use one. And he put a .45 automatic in his pocket so he’d be prepared.

“It was as bad as he thought. Hollister served his ultimatum, probably calling on the men to strip themselves of everything. It called for quick decision. Gates made it with his automatic.

“Argyle was almost crazy. Gates had had things all planned for what had to be done in case he killed Hollister. He whipped Argyle into line. They brought in waterproof canvas from the trunk of Gates’ car, swiftly rolled the body into a bundle, carried it to the side door and slipped it into the trunk of Hollister’s car.

“Then they drove both Argyle’s car and Hollister’s car up the canyon road. Gates outlined his alibi to Argyle, but Argyle realized he was left without an alibi. Gates told him to rush back to his club and report his car as having been stolen. That was to protect them in case anyone had seen them on the grade. They then smashed Hollister’s wrist watch with the hands registering 5:55, and the car clock with the hands at 6:21. Then they parked Argyle’s car, drove up to where they could turn Hollister’s car around, rolled the body over the bank, shoved earth over it, then sent Hollister’s car over a steep ledge and dashed back to Santa del Barra.

“Gates put his alibi into effect by using Hollister’s name and calling for Gates at the San Francisco airport from Hollister’s phone. Pitkin answered in the name of Gates. That clinched Gates’ alibi.

“When Hollister was shot, the body fell on a thick, expensive but small Oriental rug. The two murderers had no time to clean the rug and replace it. So they removed the rug so the bloodstains wouldn’t betray them when the housekeeper came to work the next morning. She knew Hollister was intending to take a business trip so she thought nothing of his absence, but she did wonder what had happened to the rug. The day previous, Hollister had mentioned something about giving a rug to Lucille for her apartment. The housekeeper wired Lucille, asking if Hollister had given her the Oriental rug. Lucille became angry, replied that she had the rug Hollister had intended she should have. The housekeeper didn’t think much about it until after Hollister’s body was found.

“Argyle rushed back here. Pitkin returned by plane. Gates flew to San Francisco, picked up the ticket Pitkin had left for him and went on to Honolulu. Pitkin was smart enough to know he hadn’t been paid a large chunk of money to build an alibi for nothing. From that moment he decided to find out why and collect blackmail — and Argyle decided to kill Pitkin.

“Argyle went to his club, reported his car as having been stolen and tried to bribe an alibi. As soon as he calmed down he knew that was a poor way to do it.

“Then Argyle saw our ad in the Blade and conceived the idea of buying himself a real alibi by pretending he’d been the hit-and-run driver. He felt he could square that rap and make the insurance company stand most of the expense.

“In searching Hollister’s body, Argyle had found keys to Lucille Barton’s apartment and garage. He must have known Hollister was going to marry her and what the whole relationship was.

“When Argyle saw your ad in the Blade he realized that if he could pose as the driver of the hit-and-run car, he could pay off the claims, mostly with money furnished by the insurance company, and have a perfectly swell alibi. Obviously, if he had been at the intersection of Hickman Avenue and Vermesillo Drive at five P.M. on the evening of the third, he couldn’t have been in Santa del Barra at the time the murder was committed. Remember that he did have a good alibi for the rest of the evening. He saw to that. Hollister’s housekeeper had left at four-thirty on the afternoon of the third. Hollister was alive then and had told the housekeeper he was going to have a short conference and then leave on a business trip.

“Argyle went about killing Pitkin with calm deliberation and considerable shrewdness. He sent a letter to you, enclosing a key to Lucille’s apartment. He felt certain that would send someone out to talk with him. He had a new right rear wheel put on his automobile; he dented the fender and had it covered with paint. Then he did the thing which was diabolically clever, the thing by which he intended to give himself an ironclad alibi for Pitkin’s murder.”

“What?” Drake asked. “If you ask me, he had an ironclad alibi. Hell, Perry, he was sitting in your office at the time the minder was committed.”

Mason said, “He went to an employment agency sometime on the fifth, hired a chauffeur, and arranged to pick him up, to have him start work shortly before five o’clock in the afternoon. He explained that this chauffeur would have to go to Detroit by bus in order to pick up a new automobile and drive it down to Mexico to meet him. In that way, the chauffeur would never read any of the papers about Pitkin’s death.

“Argyle was smart enough to know that if a man wearing a chauffeur’s cap and an overcoat should be seen sitting in his car, witnesses would naturally assume that the chauffeur was Pitkin. At least people who didn’t know Pitkin.

“From the attitude Pitkin had toward Argyle, I am assuming Pitkin may have been trying to blackmail Argyle even before Hollister’s murder. At any rate, Pitkin had become suspicious of the alibi he’d been building for Gates and wondered if Argyle wasn’t in on it too. Argyle evidently had been investigating Pitkin. He’d found out that Pitkin was Lucille’s first husband, that she was planning to marry Hollister and that she was out of the apartment from two to five each afternoon. As soon as he got the keys to Lucille’s apartment he started planning the murder of Pitkin. My ad in the paper gave him what he doubtless felt was the opportunity of a lifetime. He started prowling in Lucille’s apartment and when he found there was a gun in the desk he had everything just the way he wanted it.

“He got Pitkin down to Lucille’s garage. Now, the interesting thing is that Pitkin didn’t know where Lucille lived. When they went to the garage at 719 South Gondola, it probably meant nothing in the world to Pitkin. He had seen Lucille, knew she was in the city somewhere, and was trying to find her, but he didn’t know where she lived.

“On some pretext, Argyle got Pitkin to monkey around with the timing on Lucille’s automobile — and it’s just possible he knew that Arthur Colson had been rewiring the car. Remember he’d been collecting data on Pitkin, Hollister and Lucille for some time. It was a very sweet setup for Argyle. He waited until the car was sputtering and backfiring so that the noise of the revolver shot would simply sound like one more backfire and wouldn’t have any significance whatever to any person who might be listening. He simply pulled the trigger, pocketed the gun, stepped into Lucille’s car, drove it across the street, and parked it at the curb. He left the keys in the car, went back to close and lock the garage, then went up to Lucille’s apartment and put the gun back in the desk. After that he got in his own car, drove out to pick up his new chauffeur, and was waiting in front of my office by the time Della arrived. He was careful enough to let the man at the cigar stand see a chauffeur driving the car around, looking for a parking place and eventually finding one. He had luck in that Della Street also noticed the car and chauffeur.

“He waited around for me as long as he dared. Then he rang up the insurance adjuster, who promptly told him not to have anything to do with me.

“The insurance adjuster came out and picked up Argyle. Argyle told him a story which scared the insurance company to death, offered to stand some of the settlement himself, and they went out to see Bob Finchley.”

“How did Argyle know you found the desk locked on that first visit to Lucille’s apartment?”

“He must have been waiting where he could watch the apartment. He saw me go in. Probably he’d just found out Lucille kept the desk locked. When I did nothing about hunting him up he knew I hadn’t got the license number he’d planted in the notebook, so he sent me a key to the desk, special delivery.

“You see Lucille went out as soon as I’d left so Arthur Colson could tell her what to say. She thought I might be setting a trap for her.

“And when Argyle saw her go out, all dolled up like a million dollars, he felt certain she was going to see Colson. Argyle had previously made himself a duplicate key to the desk just in case.

“He dashed off a special delivery letter and sent me the key.

“There was Argyle’s plan and it was a peach. If it hadn’t been for the fact that our ad in the paper actually struck pay dirt in having Carlotta Boone come in and put the finger on Caffee, we never would have suspected anything.

“Now, notice the most suspicious circumstance of all, when you come right down to it. When I talked with Argyle on the afternoon of the fifth, he let it appear that he had been driving the car. He showed all of the evidences of guilt, and the same was true of the time he went to see Finchley. But after he realized we had found the real hit-and-run driver he started blaming it all on his chauffeur.

“You see he realized what a precarious position he was in, so he extricated himself by reporting a purely fictitious conversation with Pitkin.”

“But didn’t that leave him wide open?” Drake asked.

“Sure, but there was nothing else he could do. Of course once he realized Hollister’s housekeeper thought the missing rug had been given Lucille, Argyle felt greatly relieved. If it hadn’t been for a mere fluke, Hollister’s car might not have been found for months. And if the car hadn’t been found the body wouldn’t have been found.

“But the breaks went against Argyle on Hollister’s death just as they were all in his favor on Pitkin’s death.

“You see Lucille didn’t want to call the police until she had made a settlement with Willard Barton. He pried the truth out of her and suggested she plant the gun so it would look like suicide. Arthur Colson very agreeably used a small wheel to grind the numbers off the gun. When Lucille saw the body of her ex-husband in the garage, she must have had at least a suspicion someone had taken her gun to do the job. Perhaps she noticed the desk had been ransacked in her absence. I’d emptied shells from the gun. They reloaded it, fired one shell and planted the gun in the garage.”

“They must have worked fast on the Hollister job,” Drake said.

“Sure. Gates had planned every detail, in case he had to shoot his way out. They arrived at Hollister’s house about twenty minutes to five. Hollister was blunt and angry, Gates cold-blooded and deadly. Hollister was killed and rolled in canvas within a few minutes. After that it wasn’t too great a job to do the rest of it. Argyle was back here by seven o’clock, and took care to have an alibi for the rest of the evening.”

“How did you make Argyle crack?” Drake asked. “That’s something I don’t get.”

“It was when I handed him that list of names,” Mason said. “It was a cinch. During the noon hour I rang up every employment agency in town and asked them the names of all persons who had been hired to act as chauffeurs on the fourth or fifth of the month. I had a list of fifteen names which included men who had been hired as butlers and general handymen. I presented that list to Argyle. He saw on there the name of the man whom he had employed and who was even then on a bus, riding to Detroit. That hit him hard. He knew then that I knew.”

“How did you ever get that Detroit angle?” Drake asked.

“I didn’t have it at the time,” Mason said. “At that time it was only a theory. Tragg checked the list after Argyle was removed from the wreck, taken to the hospital, and made a deathbed confession. He found one man — Orville Nettleton — who had given up his room, telling his landlady he had a job for a man who was going to send him to Detroit to pick up a new car and then drive it to Mexico, where his employer would meet him later on. The man was tickled pink over his job and mentioned the name of his new employer, Argyle.”

“Well,” Della Street said, “it was a nice case, but I don’t see any fee in it.”

“I’m afraid you won’t,” Mason said, grinning. “A lawyer occasionally has a case thrust upon him, and this is one we’re going to have to charge to profit and loss.”

Drake said, “It should teach you not to leave your fingerprints on guns.”

“And to keep out of girls’ apartments,” Della Street added.

“You’ll notice,” Mason told them, grinning, “that I promptly surrendered the key to the apartment to Lieutenant Tragg.”

“Gosh, yes,” Drake said. “I wonder what Tragg’s done with that key.”

“Well,” Della Street said, “you had some compensation, chief. You had a nice tête-à-tête and a breakfast with the much-married Lucille.”

“Much-married, but cautious,” Mason observed.

Drake winked at Della Street. “I wonder if Mason was also cautious?”

“I wonder,” Della Street said.

“Keep wondering, both of you,” Mason told them, grinning, “and remember that while I missed a fee in a murder case, I certainly made a killing on Finchley’s case.”

“Darned if you didn’t,” Drake admitted admiringly. “I certainly had to laugh when I saw Judge Osborn’s face when the real nature of that deal dawned on him. Particularly when Argyle quoted Finchley as saying you were going to teach certain insurance adjusters not to suck eggs.”

Mason said, “By the way, Paul, I saw your secretary as I came down the corridor. She said if you were in here to let you know that the client in the Emery case was anxious for a report.”

Drake came up out of the chair with a sudden bound. “My gosh,” he said, “I’d forgotten about Emery! Well, be good.”

Mason watched the door slowly close.

“You certainly built a fire under him,” Della Street said.

Mason nodded. “I thought,” he said, “we could arrange for a congratulatory dinner, in celebration of squeezing out of a trap through a darn narrow opening, Della.”

She glanced at him demurely. “Then why get rid of Paul Drake?”

“Because I didn’t think we needed a chaperon.”

“Sounds interesting,” Della Street said.