The Case of the Crying Swallow

Chapter five

Mason, studying the tire tracks, said, “It was an automobile and a house trailer, Paul. The round place which marks the location of the spout bucket can be taken as being approximately in the middle of the trailer. You can see over here the mark of an auxiliary wheel attached to the front of the trailer to carry part of the weight while the trailer was parked. That enables us to estimate the length of the trailer.”

Drake said, “The trailer must have been backed in between these trees, Perry.”

Mason started prowling along the edge of the fence. “Took some clever handling to get it in there. Let’s look around for garbage. If the trailer remained here overnight, there are probably some tin cans... potato peelings, stuff of that sort.”

Mason, Della Street and Drake separated, covering the ground carefully.

Abruptly Della said, “Chief, don’t look too suddenly, but casually take a look up there at the big house on the hill. I think I saw someone moving in the glassed-in observation tower.”

“I rather expected as much,” Mason said, without even looking up. “However, it’s something we can’t help.”

Drake exclaimed, “Here it is, Perry, a collection of tin cans and garbage.”

Mason moved over to where Drake was standing. Here the water from the winter rains, rushing down the ditch at the side of the road, had eddied around one of the roots of the big live oak and formed a cave which extended some three feet back under the roots of the tree.

Mason, squatting on his heels, used two dry sticks to rake out the articles.

There were three cans which had been flattened under pressure, some peelings from onions and potatoes, waxed paper which had been wrapped around a loaf of bread, an empty glass container bearing a syrup label, and a crumpled paper bag.

Mason carefully segregated the items with his sticks. As he did so he kept up a running fire of conversation.

“That flattening of the cans is the trick of an old out-doorsman,” he said.

“Why flatten them?” Della inquired.

“Animals get their heads stuck in cans sometimes,” Mason said. “Moreover, cans take up less room when they’re flattened and require a smaller hole when they’re buried. This little garbage pit tells quite a story. The occupant of the trailer must have been a man. Notice the canned beans, a can of chili con came, potatoes, bread, onions — no tomato peelings, no lettuce leaves, no carrots, in fact, no fresh vegetables at all. A woman would have had a more balanced diet. These are the smallest cans obtainable and... hello, what’s this?”

Mason had pulled apart the paper bag as he talked. Now he brought out a small oblong slip of paper on which figures had been stamped in purple ink.

Della Street said, “That’s a cash register receipt from one of the cash-and-carry grocery stores.”

Mason picked up the receipt. “And a very interesting one,” he said. “The man bought fifteen dollars and ninety-four cents’ worth of merchandise. There’s a date on the back of the slip and this other figure refers to the time. The groceries were bought at five minutes past eight on Saturday morning. It begins to look, Paul, as though this is where you take over.”

“What do you want me to do?” Drake asked.

Mason said, “Get a room in the hotel at Silver Strand beach. Open up something of an office there. Get men on the job. Get lots of men. Have your men buy groceries. See if the printing on the slip from any cash register matches this. If it does, try to find out something about the single, sun-bronzed man who purchased fifteen dollars and ninety-four cents’ worth of groceries at five minutes past eight on Saturday morning. A sale of that size to a man just a few minutes after the store opened might possibly have attracted attention.”

“Okay,” Drake said. “Anything else?”

“Lots else,” Mason said. “Della, where’s that slip of paper, the copy you made of what you found in the observation tower?”

Della ran to the glove compartment and brought back the square of paper on which she’d made the copy.

Drake looked at it, then said, “What is it, Perry?”

“Stuff Della found in the observation tower. What do you make of it?”

“Some sort of dimensions,” Drake said. “Here’s this number 8 inches and 5280 feet, 9 inches and half a mile, 10 inches and quarter of a mile. What’s the idea, Perry? Why should the inches run 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and...?”

“Suppose they aren’t inches?” Mason said. “Suppose they’re ditto marks.”

“Well, it could be.”

“Then what?” Mason asked.

Drake said, “Then the numbers could have something to do with a lottery of some sort.”

“Add them up,” Mason said dryly.

“The total is already here,” Drake said. “49″37817.”

Mason handed him a pencil.

Della Street, leaning over Drake’s shoulder, was the first to get it. “Chief,” she exclaimed, “the total isn’t correct.”

“I knew it wasn’t,” Mason said. “I didn’t know just how much it was off, however. Let’s find out.”

Della Street said, “The total is... Wait a minute, Paul, I’ll get it... 45″33113, but the total that’s marked there is 49″37817.”

“Subtract them,” Mason said. “What do you get?”

Della Street’s skillful fingers guided the pencil as she hastily wrote down numbers and performed the subtraction. “4″4704,” she said.

Mason nodded. “I think,” he said, “when we get this case solved, we’ll find the important figure is the one that isn’t there. Bear that figure in mind, Paul. It may turn up later.”