The Case of the Demure Defendant

Chapter Eleven

Mason turned his car into the freeway.

“Where are we going?” Locke asked,

“Just at the moment,” Mason said, “we’re going wherever traffic is the heaviest. The police are looking for you. They’re probably looking for me. I thought that I’d get you and that we’d try to find Nadine before the police found her. Now the main problem is to keep the police from finding you until we work out some method of handling this thing.”

“What method can we work out?” Locke asked.

“If I knew the answer,” Mason said, “we wouldn’t be driving around. I can tell you one thing. If Nadine is guilty of murder she’s going to have to face the facts.”

“She isn’t. Mr. Mason, I can assure you absolutely and positively that she isn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know Nadine.”

“Because you have faith in her,” Mason said. “That’s your only reason. And the reason you have faith in her is because you’re in love with her.”

“Don’t you feel the same way?”

“Not right now I don’t,” Mason said. “I’m not in love with her... not by a damn sight.”

“Well, we can’t drive around this way all night,” Locke said. “If the police are looking for me they’ll — I tell you, Mr. Mason, I don’t have to tell them this. I can keep my own counsel. I know I can.”

Mason’s silence was an eloquent refutation.

“Couldn’t I get an attorney to represent me? Couldn’t he advise me not to answer questions on the ground that it would incriminate me?”

Mason shook his head, then after a moment said, “You’d simply make matters worse.”

Della Street caught Mason’s eye after looking at him significantly for a few moments. “Do you suppose,” she said, “Paul Drake has something new to report?”

“It’s a thought,” Mason admitted.

“He may have the whereabouts of the person—”

Mason nodded, then interrupted by turning to John Locke. “Look here, John,” he said, “I want you to be frank with me. You knew that something was troubling Nadine?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have any idea what it was?”

“At the time, no.”

“You have now?”

“I understand that Mosher Higley had told her she had to go away and... well, that he wouldn’t permit us to get married.”

“Do you know why?”

“No, I don’t,” Locke said angrily. “Mr. Mason, you try not to hold things against the dead, but every time I think of that it makes my blood boil.”

“Did he perhaps have some idea that Nadine wasn’t good enough for you?”

“Probably the other way around,” Locke said. “Although of course, I’m not exactly an angel, I think I’m perhaps average. Mosher Higley lived such a completely isolated life I don’t think he ever... well, he never had any human emotions. He was just a damned old—” Locke caught himself in the midst of what threatened to become an angry tirade.

“Nadine never told you what he had... what he was holding over her?”

“All he was holding over her was an arbitrary authority,” Locke said. “You didn’t know Mosher Higley. You have no idea how cold that man could be, how petty, how overbearing, how completely domineering. I tried to be respectful to him. He was a friend of my family and... well, of course, he was an older man.”

“All right. Now let’s talk about Jackson Newburn,” Mason said.

“You don’t mean his wife?”

“No, I mean Jackson himself.”

“All right, what about him?”

“How did Nadine feel toward him?”

“More friendly than she did toward any of the others. Jackson tries to be reasonable. And I think Jackson saw a lot of things.”

“Any attachment?” Mason asked. “Anything personal?”

“Between Jackson and Nadine?” Locke asked in surprise.

Mason nodded.

“Good heavens, no!”

“Sure?” Mason asked.

“Of course I’m sure. Jackson is married to Sue and Nadine is... well, Nadine’s affections are spoken for.”

“Meaning with you?” Mason asked.

“I didn’t want to express it in just that way and in just those words,” Locke said, “but Nadine and I are in love and want to get married.”

“She has nothing in common with Jackson Newburn?”

“Nothing.”

Mason eased the car over to the right and left the freeway on one of the cross streets.

“Where are we going?” Locke asked somewhat apprehensively.

“I’m going to a telephone,” Mason told him. “I have a detective working on the case and I want to find out if he’s learned anything. While I’m telephoning I’d like to have you think over every possible place where Nadine might be. Perhaps you’ll think of some place where you can reach her by telephone.”

“Suppose I don’t go home tonight at all — won’t that look bad?”

“That would look very bad indeed,” Mason said. “You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to do anything that will make the police suspicious. But you have two hours, or perhaps three hours, before you have to show up. You can tell them you were doing some research work.”

“Suppose I say I was at a movie?”

“They’ll ask you to describe it and all about it.”

“I can do that. I’ll pick out one that I’ve already seen.”

“It’ll have to be in a big theater,” Mason said, “where no one will remember you. Buy a ticket, walk in, keep the stub of the ticket, then after a few minutes walk out. I’ll take you to a theater as soon as I can find a phone. There doesn’t seem to be much along this street. Oh-oh, here’s a phone booth.”

Mason had to drive around the corner in order to find a place to park the car. “You two wait here,” he said, then walked back to the phone booth and called Paul Drake.

“Hello, Paul,” Mason said when he had Drake on the line. “What’s new? Anything?”

“Nothing particularly startling.”

“Located Nadine Farr?”

“No, but I’ve located Jackson Newburn.”

“And she’s with him?”

“Definitely not.”

“Why do you say definitely not?”

“I intimated that she might be and got a very, very cold turndown.”

“How come?”

“I had a man trying to get Newburn located on the phone. I was calling every possible place where he might be. I guess the police were probably doing the same thing. Anyway, I got to him first, or at least I think I did.”

“Where?”

“I looked up all the clubs he belonged to and called them all, leaving word that it was important that he call me as soon as he got in. I left the same message at every one of the clubs. Finally he called in from the Wildcat Exploration and Development Club. That’s a small group of plungers who go in for wildcat wells. I understand it’s quite some club — lots of action and horseplay and that sort of stuff.

“According to the story Newburn told me he’d just walked into the club. They’d given him my message and he’d called. Well, I told him that it was a matter of considerable importance and that I had to reach Nadine Farr right away.”

“What happened?” Mason asked.

“His voice got cold. He told me that he believed there was a phone in the house where she was staying, that the phone was listed under the name of Mosher Higley, and that if I’d call up and ask for Nadine she’d answer, otherwise he had no suggestions to make.”

“Then what?”

“I told him that we’d been calling the house and had no luck.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes, I told him that I understood she’d been with him earlier in the evening. He said that I had been misinformed, so then I couldn’t resist trying to drop a bombshell. I told him that one of my men had reported that Nadine Farr had checked out of a motel at the beach and that he had been with her when she checked out.”

“What did that do?” Mason asked.

“Well, that had to be either kill or cure,” Drake said, “and it definitely wasn’t a cure. He told me that I was completely and absolutely mistaken, that he didn’t like the insinuation I was making, that he didn’t like the tone of my voice, that he had not been with Nadine Farr, and that if I repeated that statement or if any of my employees repeated that statement he would be forced to take action.”

“Then what?”

“Then he hung up — rather he slammed the receiver into place so it sounded like an explosion.”

“Where is he now?”

“At that club as nearly as I can tell. I started a man over there to check on him and report but the man hasn’t had time to get there yet.”

Mason said, “I want to see him, Paul.”

“Well, why not come up here and wait until my man reports? Then—”

“Because I’m hot, and I have somebody with me who is even hotter than I am.”

“Nadine Farr?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Then it must be—”

“No names, Paul.”

“Okay, the person you went out to contact.”

Mason said, “I have some information that’ll be very valuable. I’ll take a chance on Jackson Newburn being at that club. I think I want to try and interview him there.”

Drake said, “I have a few clients who are in the oil business. I’m quite certain one of them is a member of the Wildcat Club. Do you need a guest card?”

“It would simplify matters if I had one, but I can’t spare the time. I’ll just go to the door and ask for Newburn. If he refuses to see me—”

“Okay, if you run into trouble let me know and I’ll see what I can do.”

Mason hung up, walked back to his car, opened the car door, said, “Hello, what’s happened to Locke?”

“He thought of something.”

“What?”

“He felt certain he knew where he could find Nadine.”

“Well, that’s fine,” Mason said. “I wanted him to telephone her and—”

“He thought he could get to where he could see her and he might not be able to get her on the phone.”

“Did he say where she was?”

“No.”

“You should have found out,” Mason said. “I don’t like the idea of his running around loose.”

“Will the cops catch him?”

“Sooner or later.”

“He seemed to understand the necessity of keeping away from the officers.”

“Hang it,” Mason said, his voice edged with annoyance, “I told him to stay here and wait. You heard me, Della.”

She nodded.

“You should have kept him here.”

“He’s nervous and impulsive and when he gets an idea through his head it gets in there all at once. He suddenly realized where Nadine must be and he wanted to go to her.”

“Well, how did he go?” Mason asked. “He didn’t just start out walking.”

“He talked to the driver of a car that was getting gassed up at the service station across the street. The man gave him a ride.”

“All right, who was the fellow?” Mason asked. “What was his license number?”

She shook her head.

“What kind of a car?”

“Well, it was a sedan, sort of a black sedan.”

“Big or little?”

“One of the medium-sized cars.”

“Old model or new?”

“Well, fairly new but not right spanking new.”

“In other words, you didn’t notice.”

“Frankly, Chief, I didn’t notice.”

Mason started to say something, caught himself, started the car, drove back toward the freeway, then suddenly pulled in to the curb.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

Mason said, “Look at me, Della.”

She raised her eyes to his in surprise.

“That wasn’t like you,” he said.

“What?”

“You heard me tell Locke to stick around. You could have held him until I had finished telephoning.”

“He’s hard to hold. When he gets an idea through his head he’s gone.”

Mason regarded her thoughtfully for several seconds, then said, “All right, come clean.”

“On what?”

“His departure.”

She was silent. For a moment she tried to meet his eyes, then hastily averted her own.

“What were you doing?” Mason asked.

She smiled wanly and said, “I was practicing law.”

“Doing what?”

“Practicing law. I thought I knew the answer and I thought it was an answer you didn’t want to give him. He kept asking me what he could do, so I told him.”

“Which was what?” Mason asked, his voice cold.

“They’re in love,” Della Street said. “They’d been wanting to get married. Mosher Higley prevented them. Then after Mosher Higley’s death it wouldn’t have looked exactly right for—”

“In other words, you told them to get married. Is that it?” Mason asked.

“That’s it,” she said. “I told him if he married her there was no power on earth that could make him testify; that if he didn’t marry her they could force the testimony from him and the fact that he was in love with her would make it all the more damaging.”

Mason was silent for several seconds.

“Angry?” she asked.

“No,” Mason said, grinning. “You did about the only thing you could have done, but I hope the Bar Association Committee on the Unauthorized Practice of Law doesn’t get hold of you, young lady.”

She smiled. “Gosh, I’m glad you aren’t mad, Chief, but he had put you in an impossible position. Once he told you about finding the cyanide and knowing that there were four tablets missing... well, no matter what you did after that you’d be vulnerable. After all, he wasn’t your client. He’s a witness. He told you a very material fact. If you had tried to suppress that fact or if you had told him not to tell the police you’d have been in an impossible position legally. I know enough law to know that.

“I also know that if he ever gets on the stand and tells his story, the jury will convict Nadine Farr. They’ll hate to do it because John Locke seems such a nice young fellow, but the district attorney will point out that after all the greatest kindness the jury can do the young lover will be to keep him from marrying a murderess.

“So when he told me that he had one hunch, one place where he thought he could locate Nadine, that if she was there the police wouldn’t be looking there and that if he could find her there the police wouldn’t locate him, I... well, I told him that you quite probably wouldn’t want to be put in the position of telling him so but that if he and Nadine managed to get across to Yuma and got married before the authorities picked them up they couldn’t force him to testify against her and in all probability the case would blow up.”

“Of course,” Mason said, “you know what the newspapers will do. They’ll feature statements by the police and the district attorney. It will look as though Nadine was guilty of murder and they covered it up by a hasty marriage.”

“I know,” Della Street said. “It will take them a long while to live it down, but if she’s convicted of murder and sent to prison it would take even longer for her to live it down, in case she ever got out. And by the time she got out, her youth would be gone, her life would be gone, and her lover would be gone. John Locke would eat his heart out for a few years and then some sympathetic girl would place his poor little aching head on her bosom, gently stroke his hair back from his forehead, sympathize with him, offer to be a sister to him and wind up being his wife.”

“In other words, you don’t think he loves her enough to wait,” Mason said.

“He does now,” she told him, “but who can stand the strain of years of waiting? Think of all the competition there is in the matrimonial market. Some smart little babe will be just waiting to dish up the sympathetic sisterly approach.”

“All right,” Mason said. “I’m glad you did it, Della. If we’d been able to locate her, I’d probably have suggested either Yuma or Las Vegas and a marriage.”

“Well, you didn’t suggest anything of the sort,” Della Street said. “Your conscience is absolutely clear. I told him that as a lawyer you probably wouldn’t want to suggest that he marry the defendant in order to keep from testifying against her, but that if he acted on an impulse and went ahead and married the girl he couldn’t be put on the stand as a witness against her.”

Mason said, “Okay. I’ve got a line on Jackson Newburn. Let’s go see what he has to say.”

“I’ll bet he puts on an act of righteous indignation and denies he was anywhere near Nadine,” Della Street said.

“He already has, to Paul Drake, over the phone,” Mason told her.

“Suppose it’s a case of mistaken identity?” Della Street asked.

“In that case I’m going to lead with my chin.”

“You don’t think—?”

“No. I think Jackson Newburn is a cool, polished liar.”

“And that you can break him down?”

“I can try.”

Mason drove the car out to the Wildcat Club on West Adams Street.

“Want a witness?” Della Street asked as he parked the car.

“I want one,” Mason told her, “but I can probably accomplish a lot more without one. Sit in the car, Della, and hold the fort.”

The Wildcat Exploration and Development Club was in a house which some thirty years ago had been an elegant mansion. But the growth of the city had surrounded it, and others as fine, with businesses and apartments. Finally the tenants had moved away, the houses had yielded to pressure and been given over to millinery shops, cleaning establishments, dancing academies, business colleges and similar activities.

The Wildcat Club had purchased one of these mansions and, finding it ideally suited for their purposes, had completely renovated the building so that it stood out as a bright spot against the drab background of once proud houses, now badly in need of paint, awaiting the inevitable end in somber disarray.

Mason ran up the steps to the wide, illuminated porch, and rang the bell. A colored attendant in livery opened the door. Mason stated his errand.

“Just a moment,” the man said. “I’ll see if he’s here.”

He went back in and closed the door.

Mason waited.

Some two minutes later the door opened. A slender, well-knit man in the middle thirties, with gray penetrating eyes, and the quick step of an athlete, extended his hand.

“Mason?” he asked.

“That’s right. You’re Newburn?”

“Right.”

They shook hands.

“You’ll pardon me,” Newburn said, “if I don’t invite you in. There are quite a few club members here and you’re rather well known. The interview might be... misconstrued.”

“That’s quite all right,” Mason said. “I have my car parked at the curb. We can talk there.”

“Are you alone?”

“My secretary is with me. I—”

“Well then, let’s move over here to the corner of the porch. It’s as good a place as any.”

Newburn, without waiting for Mason’s acquiescence, walked quickly over to the far corner of the porch away from the direct illumination of the light. He turned back toward Mason.

“I had rather an annoying experience tonight.”

“Yes?” Mason asked.

“Someone on the phone, some detective agency or other, insisted that I’d been with Nadine Farr earlier in the evening.”

“You found that embarrassing?” Mason asked.

“Let’s say that I found it annoying.”

“Why?”

“Because I wasn’t with her.”

“You know her?”

“Naturally.”

“Is there any reason why you should be annoyed at the suggestion that you had been talking with her?”

“Let’s get this straight, Mason,” Newburn said. “I’m married. My wife is broad-minded, intelligent and attractive, but she’s feminine and human. She has an idea that Nadine Farr wouldn’t be at all averse to having an affair with me. There’s absolutely no foundation for any such feeling on my wife’s part, but it exists. Therefore any insinuation that I was with Nadine Farr this afternoon or evening would be exceedingly annoying. I don’t know who employed the detective who made that insinuation, but if any such statement is made in the presence of witnesses, publicized or given to the press, I intend to sue whoever is responsible. Do I make myself plain?”

“Quite.”

“Very well. Under those circumstances I’m perfectly willing to answer questions so that I can clear up any misunderstanding, but I have warned you about my position.”

“In other words,” Mason said, “if I make the statement to anyone that you were with Nadine Farr, you’ll sue me for damages?”

“I’ll brand the statement as false and in the event that statement causes me any embarrassment at home I’ll... oh, what’s the use, Mason? You’re a lawyer. You understand the situation. I’m trusting to your discretion.”

“All right,” Mason said. “There are no witnesses here, just you and me. Now, were you with Nadine Farr or not?”

“Definitely not.”

“Did she telephone you this afternoon?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you learn in any way that she was at a motel at the beach known as the High-Tide Motel?”

Newburn’s laugh was the laugh of one who brushes aside an absurd statement. “Of course not, Mason,” he said. “Good heavens, don’t let these detective agencies fool you by turning in these thoroughly cockeyed reports. You’ve had enough experience to know that those operatives always try to send in reports that’ll lead to more work. They find out what the client wants and—”

“The manager of the motel,” Mason interrupted, “said that a young man who answered your description drove up to the motel in a two-tone Oldsmobile, that Nadine got in the car and the man drove away.”

“That Olds is a popular car,” Newburn said. “You’ll find thousands of them registered around here, and I’ll bet there are several hundred thousand people who answer my general description.”

“And,” Mason went on, as though there had been no interruption, “the manager said she saw the driver of the car turn in at a service station just down the block. Now then, the records of the service station show that someone who was driving your car and using your credit card stopped in for gasoline, and the signature on the delivery slip seems to be your signature.”

Mason stopped talking.

Jackson Newburn looked at him in speechless consternation.

Mason lit a cigarette.

When the silence had lasted for a good thirty seconds, Newburn said, “Who else knows this, Mason?”

“I know it,” Mason said, “the detective agency that I retained knows it, and the police will know it when they interview the manager of the motel.”

“Damn!” Newburn exclaimed in complete exasperation.

Mason lifted his eyebrows.

“I’m cursing my own stupidity in stopping in at that service station. I had no idea I was being watched.”

“Managers of motels get a little curious about attractive young women who register alone and then are met by well-dressed men driving high-priced cars,” Mason told him.

Newburn snapped his fingers two or three times in quick exasperation.

“Cigarette?” Mason asked.

He shook his head.

“Well?” Mason inquired after a while.

“I’m thinking.”

“That may not be the right thing to do.”

“What do you mean?”

Mason said, “You’re trying to think of a story that will satisfy me and give you an out. Don’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because a story which might satisfy me might not satisfy the police — not in the long run. And if they catch you trying to cover up something then the fat will be in the fire.”

Newburn said, “The truth unfortunately is rather awkward.”

Mason said, “Get this straight. You’re dealing with a murder case. No matter how awkward the truth is, you can’t fabricate a situation that will meet all of the requirements. You can’t get a falsehood that will dovetail in with all of the facts. Sooner or later all of the other facts will be known. If your story doesn’t dovetail you’ll have to change it. If you change it under pressure the truth will then be ten times more awkward.”

Newburn said, “Nadine wanted help.”

“Financial?” Mason asked.

“She didn’t say so.”

“What kind of help?”

Newburn again snapped his fingers in quick nervousness.

“Relax,” Mason told him. “A lie will simply get you in deeper.”

“I don’t like to be accused of lying,” Newburn said coldly. “For your information, Mr. Mason, I don’t lie.”

“You tried to lie to me a minute ago. You lied to my detective, and you’re frantically trying to think up a good lie right now, Newburn.”

The lawyer’s voice was impersonal, patient, tolerant and completely without antagonism.

Jackson Newburn squared his shoulders, looked up at the lawyer’s granite-hard features, then laughed nervously.

“Well, I did lead with my chin that time, didn’t I? The fact remains, Mason, that I’m not accustomed to lying and—”

Mason said, “You’re an athlete of some sort. What do you do? Play tennis?”

“How did you know?”

“The swing of your shoulders, the way you step around. How good are you?”

“Pretty good.”

“Tournaments?”

“Sometimes.”

“Win?”

“Not lately. I’ve been too busy to keep in practice.”

“That’s the point I was going to bring out,” Mason said.

“What?”

“You have to keep in practice to remain a good tennis player.”

“Well?”

“You haven’t had much practice lying,” Mason said. “It takes a hell of a lot of practice to make a good liar, one good enough to fool the police and the newspaper reporters in a murder case.”

“I see,” Newburn said after a moment.

Mason waited, patiently smoking the cigarette.

Newburn said, “All right, Mason, I’ll give it to you straight. I’ll ask you to keep my remarks in confidence. I—”

“I’m not keeping any confidences,” Mason said. “I’m representing my client. I’m making no promises.”

“Then I can’t tell you.”

“Because I won’t promise to keep a confidence?”

“Yes.”

“The police won’t promise to keep a confidence,” Mason told him. “The newspaper reporters won’t promise to keep a confidence.”

Newburn thought that over.

Mason ground out the end of his cigarette on his heel, tossed it away.

“Well?” he asked.

Newburn said, “I always liked Nadine — not the way my wife thinks, but I liked her. She’s a good kid and she was getting a raw deal from Mosher Higley.

“Mosher was my wife’s relative. He was no relative of mine. My wife was his only relative. Higley had property. I’m not mercenary or commercial but I’d be a damn fool if I didn’t appreciate the fact that my wife was his only heir.

“The fact remains that Higley was terribly mean to Nadine. I sympathized with Nadine. Sue — that’s my wife — didn’t. I think in the back of Sue’s mind was the fear that Nadine might get her hooks into Mosher and... well, get a larger share under the will.

“There’s some scandal about Nadine’s birth. She’s an illegitimate child. Mosher Higley knew her background. He was friendly with John Locke’s family. He didn’t want Nadine and John Locke to marry.”

“Why?” Mason asked.

“Because he knew Nadine was illegitimate and he knew that when that came out Locke’s family wouldn’t stand for it. I think perhaps in the long run the old codger was trying to do Nadine a good turn. He knew that she had come here, that she was making friends and... I guess he didn’t want that old family skeleton to come out.”

“Did Nadine know she was illegitimate?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Was Mosher Higley her father?”

Newburn hesitated a moment, then said, “No.”

“All right,” Mason said. “Go on. Tell me your story.”

“Damn it, I hate to do this,” Newburn said.

“You’ve made that very manifest,” Mason told him.

“All right,” Newburn blurted, “when I learned that Nadine was in trouble and I learned that she’d made that confession, I — You see, Mosher Higley was dead, and, while Cap’n Hugo was there in the house, the actual title to the house was vested in us under Higley’s will. Sue and I were there quite a bit and—”

“Go on,” Mason said. “I don’t know how much time we’ve got. You’ve squirmed and twisted and wiggled — now for heaven’s sake tell me the truth. You’ve started, so cut out the preliminaries and get to the point.”

“All right,” Newburn said. “I knew that she was supposed to have told the doctor while she was under the influence of dope something about having given Mosher Higley some cyanide tablets. I don’t know how much she told him under the dope or how much came later, but I understood she’d simply taken the remaining tablets and afterwards she’d cut open shotgun shells and thrown both of them in the lake and... well, I picked up a partially filled bottle of those chemical sweetening tablets there at the house, dumped in some shot, drove out and threw the bottle in Twomby’s Lake.

“Then I left word that I had to see Nadine at the earliest possible moment. I tried several times to get in touch with her but my wife was keeping an eagle eye on me. I did get word to Nadine to call me the very first chance she had. She called two or three times and since Sue was there, I stalled it off as a wrong number. It wasn’t until my wife went out to see you that I had my chance to contact Nadine.”

“When did you throw this bottle in the lake?” Mason asked.

“Last night.”

“No one saw you?”

“No one.”

“No fingerprints?”

“I was very careful to avoid leaving any fingerprints on the bottle.”

“Where did you get the bottle and the tablets?”

“We use that same sugar substitute. My wife watches her calories very closely. In fact, it was through talking with her that Mosher Higley discovered this sugar substitute.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“Well, I naturally had to get hold of Nadine and tell her that everything was all right, that she didn’t need to worry, to let them go ahead and search for the bottle, and when they found it they’d find there was nothing but harmless pills in it. That would kill her confession.”

“You told her that?”

“Yes.”

“And what happened?”

“Then I found out that the police had already recovered the bottle and the heat was off. Damn it, Mason, if you ever repeat this to anyone, if... but that’s the story.”

“All right,” Mason said. “I’ll give you the rest of the story. The police made another search. They found a second bottle. It was filled with cyanide tablets and shot. The heat’s back on. They’re looking for Nadine. When they find her they’ll arrest her and charge her with murder. The police think I’m responsible for the bottle that was tossed out in the lake with the harmless tablets in it.”

“My God, Mason,” Newburn said, “if the story of what I did comes out it will ruin my marriage. Sue will divorce me like that.” Newburn snapped his fingers in front of Mason’s face.

“The police are going to interview you,” Mason said. “What are you going to tell them?”

“I’m going to lie to them. I’ll tell them something. I’ll work up a story.”

“You can’t do it,” Mason said.

Newburn, suddenly angry, said, “Damn it, Mason, you talked me into telling the truth by telling me I couldn’t do it I... I don’t have to tell them that. I—”

“You can’t get away with it,” Mason said. “You—”

“Now just a minute,” Newburn interrupted. “You’re Nadine’s lawyer. You’re in this thing. You say the police think you tossed that bottle out there. Well—”

“Go on,” Mason said. “Follow that line of thinking to its logical conclusion and you’ll have your neck in a noose.”

“The hell with you,” Newburn said. “You’re advising me for your own interests. If the police think you tossed that other bottle out there, that... that takes me off the spot. They’d rather have something on you than on me.”

“And you’d like it that way?” Mason asked.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Newburn said. “My wife is a congenial companion. On the whole I’m happy. She’s just inherited some property that’s lousy with oil. You’re looking out for your interests. I’m going to start looking out for my interests.”

Newburn started walking toward the front door of the clubhouse.

“Just a minute,” Mason said. “You—”

“To hell with you,” Newburn told him. “I’ll get a lawyer of my own.”

He jerked open the door, went inside and slammed it shut.

Mason hesitated for a moment, then slowly walked down the steps to the car where Della Street was waiting.

“Well?” Della Street asked.

“Now,” Mason told her, “I wish I’d had a witness.”

“What did he say?” she asked.

Mason started the motor and spun the car into a U-turn.

“The last thing he said was all that counts,” he told her.

“And that was?”

“That I could go to hell, and that he was getting a lawyer to represent him.”

“Well,” Della Street asked, “what does he have to conceal?”

Mason said, “He’s the one who fixed up the bottle with the sugar substitute tablets and threw it out in Twomby’s Lake last night.”

“Chief!” she exclaimed, her voice triumphant “He admitted it?”

“He did to me. It’s the last time he’ll ever admit it,” Mason said. “He’ll get a lawyer and he’ll He like hell on the witness stand.”

“So what do we do?” she asked.

“Now,” Mason said, “we can eat.”

Della Street thought over the full significance of what had happened, then, after a moment, said dejectedly, “Now I don’t want to eat.”