The Case of the Daring Decoy

Chapter Eight

It was five minutes after eight when Mason swung his car into the Gladedell Motel and drove to Unit 21.

Jerry Conway was waiting for him.

“All ready?” Conway asked. “Shall I follow you in my car?”

“Wait a minute,” Mason told him. “We’re, going to have to do some talking. I’ll drive my car down the road for a couple of blocks then pull into the curb. I’ll park my car there and drive in with you.”

“How about having me go in your car?”

“No, the police will want to search your car.”

“I’ve searched it,” Conway said, “and I’ve found something that bothers me.”

“You’ve found something?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“It was under the front seat where a man ordinarily wouldn’t look once in a couple of years. It was a neatly typed list of the stockholders who had sent in their proxies.”

“Let me look at it,” Mason said.

Conway handed him four typewritten sheets of paper neatly stapled together. He said, “It was there under the front seat where it might seem I had tried to conceal it where it wouldn’t be found. It was in a manila envelope.”

“How did it get there?”

“I don’t know. It could have been put there any time.”

“While you were parked near the hotel?”

“While I was parked near the hotel, while I was parked in front of the drugstore where I was telephoning, while I was parked anyplace.”

“You keep your car locked?”

“No, I take the ignition key with me, of course, but the doors and windows are unlocked.”

“What about the list? Have you checked it?”

“As nearly as I can. There’s one peculiar thing about it.”

“What?”

“It’s almost too good.”

“What do you mean, almost too good?”

“Almost too reassuring. The people who have sent in proxies are, for the most part, the very small shareholders, and some of them I know were discontented, anyway. They’d have sent in proxies even if there hadn’t been any advertising campaign.”

“On a percentage basis what does it figure?”

“As nearly as I can figure without having access to the books of the corporation, there’s only about 17 per cent of the outstanding stock represented on this proxy list.”

“Any date on it?”

“Yes, it’s dated only a couple of days ago. It’s supposed to be right up to date.”

“How much have you handled it?”

“Handled it? Quite a bit. Why?”

“Then you’ve probably obliterated any chance of tracing it,” Mason said.

“What do you mean? You can’t get fingerprints from paper, can you?”

“Sometimes you can,” Mason said. “Using iodine fumes, you can quite frequently bring out latent fingerprints.”

“I didn’t handle the envelope much. I’ve gone over the list pretty thoroughly.”

“I’m afraid it’s part of the trap,” Mason said. “Let’s get started and I’ll tell you about my information. You’ve had breakfast?”

“Sure, I had breakfast early this morning. I didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Who did?” Mason asked.

“You were worried?” Conway asked in alarm.

“I was busy,” Mason told him. “Come on, let’s get started.”

“What about your list of stockholder proxies, and why do you think my list is a trap?” Conway asked.

Mason produced the sheets of carbon paper from his brief case. “Take a look at these and you can see for yourself.”

“Where did you get these?” Conway asked.

“Straight from the horse’s mouth.”

Conway held the sheets of carbon paper to the light one at a time, studied them carefully.

When he had finished he said, “If these are the straight goods, Mason, I’m licked.”

“That bad?”

“That bad.”

“These could be phony,” Mason said, “but I don’t think so.”

“What will I do with that other list, the one I found in my car?”

“You’ll have to give it to the D.A. Tell him you found it when you searched your car. You don’t know where it came from so you’ll have to tell him the whole story. They’ll be searching your car this morning.”

“Do I tell him anything about these sheets of carbon paper you have?”

“Not unless you want a one-way ticket to San Quentin.”

“You’re damned mysterious, Mason. I’m your client.”

“That’s why I’m being mysterious. I’m going to get you out of this, but I’ll do it my way.”

“That’s a promise,” Conway said. “Let me tell them I’m checking out. Then you drive your car down the street and I’ll pick you up.”

“Okay,” Mason said. “We’ve got lots of time.”

Mason drove a block before he found a parking space. He slid his car into the curb, put the ignition keys in his pocket, took his brief case and moved over to Conway’s car.

Conway was preoccupied, thinking about the proxy battle. “I’m afraid those ads have done more damage than I realized,” Conway said.

“Of course,” Mason pointed out, “the ads have been running for a while, and most of the people who would be swayed by that type of reasoning would already have sent in their proxies. Don’t throw in the sponge... You have that gun with you?”

“Yes... How did you get that list, Mason?”

“It’s a long story,” Mason told him, “and we haven’t time to discuss it now. We’re going to have to go to the district attorney’s office, and you’ll have to tell your story. You’re going to be questioned, and the newspaper reporters are going to have a field day.”

“That will suit Farrell just fine!” Conway said bitterly.

“Don’t be too certain,” Mason said. “I think Farrell is having troubles of his own.”

“How come?”

“I planted a couple of time bombs on him,” Mason said. “The police haven’t made any public announcement as yet, but I think they’ve identified the corpse.”

“Who is she?”

“A Rose Calvert who worked in a brokerage office, and—”

“Rose!” Conway exclaimed.

“Do you know her?”

“Of course I know her. She works in the brokerage office that handles my accounts. That is, she did work there. I think she left two or three months ago. I haven’t seen her for a while.”

“You used to talk with her?”

“Yes.”

“Kid her along?”

“Yes.”

“Ever date her?”

“You aren’t kidding?”

“No.”

“She’s married, Mason. It’s Mrs. Calvert.”

“And you never dated her?”

“No.”

“Never tried to date her?”

“No.”

“But you did kid her along?”

“She liked to kid. She was jolly and liked attention from the customers.”

“The masculine customers,” Mason said.

“That’s right. She had a good figure and she knew it.”

“All right,” Mason said. “Now, here’s where you let your hair down and tell me the truth. Did you try to do any gun juggling?”

“What do you mean?” Conway asked.

“I know it was a temptation,” Mason said. “You felt that you had been framed. You felt that Gifford Farrell was back of it. You didn’t want to sit still and take it. You probably felt that if you could get rid of that fatal gun and substitute another gun in its place, there was no way on earth they could ever prove that it was the fatal gun that you had taken away from that girl.”

Conway said, “You’ve probably been reading my mind.”

“All right,” Mason told him, “what did you do about it?”

“Nothing. You’re my lawyer. I followed instructions.”

“You didn’t try to switch guns?”

“No.”

“You were tempted?”

“I thought of it.”

Mason said, “In a case of this kind, you really can’t tell what to do. If you switch guns, you’ve got the other people in an embarrassing position. They can’t swear that the guns have been juggled without disclosing their own guilty knowledge.

“The whole crux of their frame-up depends upon getting you to tell a story that sounds improbable on the face of it, something that sounds like a desperate attempt to account for having the fatal gun in your possession, as well as a list of stockholders which somehow must have been taken from Rose Calvert. You add to that the fact that you asked for mail under an assumed name, went up to a room in which the body was subsequently found, entered that room with a key, and it builds up to a pretty darned good case of first-degree murder.”

“It gives me the creeps to hear you summarizing it,” Conway said.

“Well, don’t worry too much about it,” Mason told him, “because there’s one weak point in the case.”

“What’s that?”

“They had to force you to take the fatal gun,” Mason said. “The weak link is that the fatal gun can be traced.”

“You’ve traced it?”

“Yes.”

“Who bought it?”

“You did.”

“What?” Conway shouted. “What are you talking about?”

“You bought it,” Mason said. “At least you authorized its purchase.”

“What are you talking about? I never saw this gun before in my life.”

“That may be,” Mason said, “but apparently some three years ago the cashier convinced you that he needed a gun for protection, and you authorized the purchase of a weapon at the Pitcairn—”

“Heavens, yes! I remember it now,” Conway said, “but I never even saw the gun. The voucher came through, and I put my okay on it. The cashier was the one who went down and bought it.”

“What happened to that cashier?” Mason asked.

“He died eight or ten months later.”

“While Farrell was with the firm?”

“I believe so.”

“And what happened to the gun?”

“That I don’t know.”

“You didn’t check it?”

“Good Lord, Mason, the Texas Global has options on potential oil land scattered halfway across Texas. I’m trying to figure where the oil deposits are, how much we can afford to pay, how deep we should go with our wells... I had no time to go take an inventory of the property in the desk of a cashier who dies suddenly.”

“Exactly,” Mason said. “That’s the weak point in the scheme. Farrell had just as good access to the gun as you did, and when it comes to proving motivation or having connection with the corpse, Farrell is in a very delicate position. He had been playing around with this young woman, had taken photographs of her in the altogether, and his wife was planning to name her as corespondent in a divorce suit.”

“Oh-oh,” Conway said.

“So,” Mason told him, “if your nose is clean, and if you didn’t try to get smart by juggling weapons between the time you left Drake’s office and the time I took the number off that gun, I think we can get you out of it. I know we can put you in such a position that the district attorney won’t dare to proceed against you without more evidence.”

Conway drove for a while in silence, then said, “Mason, don’t underestimate Gifford Farrell. He is not a sound thinker, but he has a chain-lightning mind. He’ll completely dazzle you. He’ll reach some conclusion after seemingly brilliant thinking, and then, for some cockeyed reason or other, the conclusion will turn out to be unsound.”

“I know the type,” Mason said.

“Well, don’t underestimate him,” Conway pleaded. “He’s clever, he’s ingenious, and he’s utterly ruthless.”

Mason nodded.

“Now, what do I do at the district attorney’s office?” Conway asked.

“You tell them the truth,” Mason said. “Unless I stop you, keep on talking.”

“Tell them the entire truth?”

“The entire truth.”

“That might call for a little thought here and there.”

“It calls for nothing,” Mason said. “You have no guilty knowledge of the crime. You know what happened, and your job is to convince the officers. The minute you start getting cagey and trying to withhold something, or emphasizing one fact and minimizing another, trying to spread gilt paint over the truth, they’ll know exactly what you’re doing. They’ve had so much experience with liars, they can just about tell when a man starts lying.”

“All right,” Conway said, “I’ll tell them the truth. But I’m worried about that gun.”

“I was at first,” Mason told him, “but I’m not any longer. When it comes to a showdown, we can probably prove that Farrell took that gun out of the cashier’s desk, or at least had more opportunity than you did.”

Conway thought things over for several minutes, then said, “Mason, I’m afraid that you may be trying to oversimplify this thing.”

Mason lit a cigarette. “Just quit worrying, tell the truth, and leave the rest to me,” he said.