The Case of the Drowning Duck

Chapter 11

Driving toward town, Della Street said, “You whisked me out of there so fast I didn’t have an opportunity to get it all straight. What happened?”

“Milter was murdered.”

“By whom?”

“The police are going to nominate Marvin Adams within about twelve hours unless we do some fast work.”

“Is that why Lois went running out?”

Mason grinned. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Why didn’t you let me do it, Chief?”

“Do what?”

“Whatever had to be done.”

“I wanted to keep it all in the family.”

“You can’t trust her, as far as that boy is concerned. She’s simply crazy about him. If you let her in on anything that might hurt you, she’d betray you if she ever thought it would help him.”

“I know. But I had to rely on her because, in the first place, the dogs knew her, and in the second place, she knew her way around the ranch. You’d have got into trouble. I realize the risk of using her. It’s a big risk.”

“Where are we going now?”

Mason said, “We’ve got an errand to do in town. Then we’re going to overtake that midnight train. It hauls a sleeper up to the main line, and switches it off to wait for the through train to Los Angeles. I understand the car’s hooked up about three o’clock in the morning. That gives us less than an hour.”

“Did that blonde girl from the detective agency take the train?’

“Uh huh.”

“Anyone else?”

“Marvin Adams.”

“They’re on the train together?”

“Well, they’re both on the train.”

“Is that just a coincidence?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s the errand in town?”

“I want to see Alberta Cromwell. She has the apartment that adjoins Milter’s.”

“His common-law wife?”

“Widow.”

“Do you think she knows of the murder?”

“She must if she’s home.”

“Suppose she isn’t home?”

“That’s one of the things I want to find out.”

“Won’t the police still be in possession of Milter’s apartment?”

“Probably.”

“Will you take a chance on running into them?”

“No.”

“But won’t you have to, to find out if she’s home?”

Mason grinned. “There are two ways of finding out if a young lady isn’t home. One of them is to look in her home.”

“What’s the other?”

“To find her away from home.”

“Come on,” Della said. “Quit holding out. Where?”

Mason said, “There are also just two ways of leaving town, for a young woman who has no automobile. One is by the train. The other is by bus. The last train has gone. We’ll look in the bus station first.”

“Would you know her if you saw her?”

“I think so. In any event, I met a young woman who claims to occupy the apartment next to Milter and who gave her name as Cromwell.”

Della Street settled back in the seat. “Pumping you for information when you don’t want to loosen up is like trying to get water out of a dry well.”

Mason grinned. “I can’t very well give something I haven’t got.”

“No, but if you had, you wouldn’t. I’m going to snatch forty winks. I don’t suppose you want me to go into the Greyhound depot with you?”

“Definitely not.”

“Okay, just wake me up when you come out.”

She twisted her shoulders until she got her head in a comfortable position, and closed her eyes. Mason drove on at high speed until he reached the main street of El Templo. Then he slowed and drove to within half a block of the Greyhound bus depot. Apparently Della Street was still asleep as he slipped quietly out of the car, gently closed the door, and walked rapidly down the sidewalk.

There were four persons sitting on the wide benches, waiting for the three o’clock bus to Los Angeles. Alberta Cromwell was occupying an isolated corner, her elbow resting on the arm of the bench, her chin propped on the palm of her hand. She was staring with fixed, unseeing eyes at a rack of magazines in front of her.

As Mason sat down almost beside her, she turned her head just far enough to take in his feet and legs, then swung her eyes back toward the magazine rack.

Lurid covers, featuring various so-called authentic detective cases, were stacked in rows, one above the other. These covers for the most part showing well-curved young women engaged in a desperate struggle for life and, one would gather from the state of their clothing, for honor.

After several seconds had elapsed during which Alberta Cromwell remained motionless, Mason said calmly, “Rather depressing thinking about a murder against that background, isn’t it?”

She jerked her head around at the sound of his voice. As she recognized him, an involuntary nervous start betrayed her emotion, but after a moment, when she spoke, her voice was calm. “Are you, too, going to Los Angeles?” she asked.

Mason held his eyes steadily on her profile. “No.”

She turned once more to look at him then, and her eyes faltered. She turned quickly away.

Mason said, “Don’t you think it would be better to tell me about it?”

“There’s nothing to tell. About what?”

“Your reason for going to Los Angeles so suddenly.”

“I don’t think it’s sudden. I’ve been planning to go for some little time.”

“Let’s see,” Mason said. “You don’t seem to be carrying a suitcase. Not even an overnight bag.”

“Is that any business of yours?” she asked. “After all, I think you’re presuming entirely too much upon what was, merely a— a—”

“Yes,” Mason prompted. “Merely a what?”

“An attempt to be neighborly.”

“You told me that you only knew Leslie Milter slightly.”

“Well?”

“I suppose any wife could say as much of her husband,” Mason observed.

She tilted her chin upward, dropped her lashes, and made it quite plain that she didn’t care to continue the conversation.

Mason got up, walked over to the newsstand, and bought four or five of the magazines. He came back to the bench, seated himself beside her, and casually started turning pages. Abruptly he said, “Interesting thought here, that the criminal really does more to bring about his own capture than the police. Trying to cover up nearly always gives the police something definite on which to work — regardless of what clues might connect a person with the original crime.”

She said nothing.

“Now take your case, for instance,” Mason said, quite calmly, as though discussing the matter from a completely detached viewpoint. “Your absence won’t mean so much to the police tonight, but in the morning they’ll begin making investigations. At least, by noon, they’ll be looking for you. By afternoon, they’ll be searching for you. By midnight, you’ll be the prime suspect.”

“Of what?”

“Of murder.”

She whirled to stare with widening eyes and an expression which mirrored horror. “You mean... somebody... was killed?”

Mason said, “As though you didn’t know.”

“I don’t know.”

“You seemed in rather a hurry to leave the house about the time I was ringing the bell.”

“Did I?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what of it?”

“Nothing. Just a coincidence, that’s all. However, when the police start checking up on Milter, they...”

“Exactly what has Leslie Milter done now?” she asked.

Mason said, “He didn’t do it. It was done to him. He’s dead. Someone killed him.”

Mason could feel the bench move at her sudden start.

“Not so good,” the lawyer said.

“What?”

“The convulsive start. The first time when you saw me here, you did it naturally. This was rehearsed. There’s quite a difference between the two. You might have fooled me if I hadn’t seen that first jump.”

“Say,” she demanded, “who are you?”

“The name’s Mason. I’m a lawyer, from Los Angeles.”

“Perry Mason?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” she said in a tone which was faint with dismay.

“How about a little talk?”

“I–I don’t think I have anything to say.”

“Oh, yes, you have. People sometimes underestimate their own powers of conversation. Think things over a little.”

Mason gave his attention once more to the magazines. After a few minutes, he said, “Here’s a young woman who ran away. If it hadn’t been for that, the police never would have had anything on her. Strange thing about that desire to get away from something. A person wants to run and doesn’t stop to realize that it’s the worst thing he could possibly do. Let me see what they did with this woman.”

Mason turned the pages of the magazine, said, “She went to Tehachapi for life. That must be rather a terrible thing, a young, good-looking woman suddenly plunged behind the walls. Year after year, she watches herself getting older. When she eventually gets out, her skin is harsh, her hair is gray, her figure is gone. The lightness has left her step. The sparkle isn’t in her eyes. She’s just a dejected, middle-aged...”

“Stop it!” Alberta Cromwell all but screamed at him.

“Pardon me,” Mason said. “I was just talking about the magazine.” He looked at his wrist watch. “Another thirty minutes before the bus is due. I suppose the back door of your apartment opens onto a porch — place for garbage and perhaps a screen cooler. Is there a partition between that and the porch on the adjoining apartment, or is it just a railing?”

“A wooden railing.”

Mason nodded. “Was he perhaps fixing a hot buttered rum for you, and then you — Well, suppose you tell me what happened?”

She compressed her lips in a thin, tight line.

Mason said, “He was expecting this blonde girl from the detective agency when the Los Angeles bus came in. She had a key to the apartment. Probably he didn’t want you to know that.”

“But I did know it,” she blurted. “It was just a matter of business. I knew she was coming.”

“Oh, so he convinced you it was just a matter of business, did he?”

She made no answer.

Mason said, “You mean he tried to convince you, and you pretended that you’d let him.”

She turned, and he could see the torment in her eyes. “I tell you it was business. I knew she was coming down there. Her name’s Sally Elberton. She works for the detective agency where Leslie was employed. Their relationship is purely business.”

“Did you know she had a key?”

“Yes.”

“She must have come sooner than he expected,” Mason said.

She said nothing.

“Did Miss Elberton know about you?”

She started to say something, then checked herself.

“Quite apparently,” Mason said, “she did not. So she came, and you slipped out of the back door, climbed over the rail, and went into your own apartment. I wonder how long it was before you went back.”

She said, “It wasn’t Sally Elberton.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I–I was curious. After a while, I went to the window and watched.”

“And what did you see?”

“I saw him when he left the apartment.”

“Oh, it was a man?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know his name. I’ve never seen him before.”

“What did he look like?”

She said, “I jotted down the license number of his automobile.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not giving out that information.”

“A young man?” Mason asked.

Once more she refused to answer.

Mason said, almost musingly, “Then after he left, you went back to ask Leslie what it was all about. You looked through the little glass window in the back door. Or did you open the door and get a whiff of the gas? You wondered whether to leave the door open, whether — no, wait a minute. That back door must have been locked and the key turned in the lock. He would have done that, so that you wouldn’t have interrupted his tête-à-tête. That’s an interesting thought. If he’d trusted you a little more implicitly, if he’d left the back door unlocked, you might have got it open in time to have saved his life. So then you rushed back to your apartment and came downstairs to try the front door. You found me ringing the doorbell and knew the door was closed and locked. That, I guess, just about covers it.”

She said nothing.

Mason started thumbing through the magazine again. “Well,” he said, “if you can’t talk about crime, we can at least read about it. Here’s a photograph showing...”

With a quick motion of her arm, she knocked the magazine from his hand to the floor, jumped to her feet, and started out of the bus depot. She was almost running by the time she reached the door.

Mason waited until the door of the bus depot had swung shut before he moved; then he picked up the magazines from the floor, placed them in a neat pile on the wooden bench in the waiting room, and walked out.

Della Street wakened as he opened the door of the car. “See her?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Where is she?”

“Gone.”

“Where?”

“Home.”

Della smiled, a sleep-drugged, wistful little smile. “You do have a way with women, don’t you, Chief?”