The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

Chapter 12

It was a good three minutes before Mason could get himself up out of the depths of the chair and resume his search for Velma Starler.

He passed through heavy drapes and entered the reception hallway, tiptoeing his way along the waxed tiles. The wide sweep of the curved staircase with its wrought iron balustrades stretched gracefully upward. Somewhere a wall clock was ticking monotonously. Aside from that, there was no sign of life in the house.

Mason climbed the wide staircase, oblivious alike of architectural beauty and painstaking construction. To him the stairway was only a painfully laborious means of enabling his wobbling legs to reach the second floor.

In the upper corridor, Mason tiptoed down the long passageway looking for an open door. He felt certain that Velma Starler would be dozing fitfully, her clothes on, ears tuned for the slightest sound from her patients, a skillful nurse making intermittent rounds to see that her patients were all right, catching little catnaps in between.

Mason passed a long file of closed doors, then came to one that was open. He glanced inside.

He saw a sumptuous bedroom elaborately appointed. A bed had been slept in, the covers thrown down. It was quite evidently the bedroom of a woman. But even with the standard of luxury prevailing throughout the entire establishment. Mason had some difficulty realizing that this must be the bedroom of Velma Starler.

As he stood in the doorway, another door slightly ajar caught his eye and feeling certain that this would be far more apt to be the room he wanted, Mason moved with swiftly silent steps down to this partially opened door, gently pushed it farther open. Then, as the door swung on silent hinges so that he could see into the room, Mason abruptly caught himself. This was Banning Clarke’s room.

A woman clad in a negligee was seated at the roll-top desk in the far corner. For the moment Mason could not recognize her, but the back of the head, the lines of the neck, and the slant of the shoulders hardly indicated Velma Starler. They were a little too heavy — a little too...

The woman half turned her head as though some faint sound had caught her ears.

Mason had no trouble in recognizing the profile. It was that of Lillian Bradisson, and the illumination from the green-shaded desk lamp on the top of the roll-top desk etched the lines of expression on her face-lines of cunning greed, an avarice which had become unchained and had wiped all of the carefully cultivated smirk from her face. In that moment, Mrs. Bradisson’s emotions had lost their protective covering and stood unpleasantly naked for his inspection.

Whatever slight noise had caused her to raise her head and listen was apparently dismissed as being of no consequence after a few seconds of motionless waiting. Her head swung back so that Mason could no longer see the face. Her shoulders moved slightly. Mason could not see her hands, but, after a moment, realized she was skillfully and thoroughly searching through the pigeonholes in the desk.

Mason stood silently in the doorway.

The woman at the desk was now too completely engrossed in what she was doing to listen for suspicious sounds. She was running through papers taken from each pigeonhole before pushing them back, then pulling out the contents of the next pigeonhole.

As Mason watched her, she found that for which she had evidently been searching — an oblong, folded document, which she unfolded and read. As she read, she turned to get the light on the page, so that Mason could once more see her face, could watch her expression of curiosity change to one of angry determination.

Mrs. Bradisson reached down through the opening in her negligee, took out another folded paper, so similar to the first at that distance as to be indistinguishable. She placed this paper back in the pigeonhole of the desk. Mason watched her push back the creaky, dilapidated swivel chair preparatory to rising, transfer the folded paper to her left hand, her right reaching toward the switch on the green-shaded desk lamp.

Quietly, Mason tiptoed down the corridor, picked the first door on the left and tried the knob. The door was unlocked.

Mason stepped far enough into the room to be invisible, in case Mrs. Bradisson should take occasion to look back down the corridor.

Someone was sleeping in this room, and Mason could hear the sound of gentle, rhythmic breathing.

The partially opened door caused a current of air to blow briskly through the room, billowing the curtains and sweeping directly across the bed and Mason, fearing that this current of air might arouse the sleeper, pulled the door almost shut, peering impatiently down the corridor, waiting for Mrs. Bradisson to emerge.

But Mrs. Bradisson didn’t make her appearance. After almost two minutes, Mason heard a peculiar intermittent thump — thump — thump from the room where Mrs. Bradisson had been going through the contents of the roll-top desk. A moment later there was another series of pounding sounds.

Exasperated, Mason realized the predicament into which he had betrayed himself. If he started once more toward the room to see what Mrs. Bradisson was doing, he was apt to meet her face to face as she emerged. If he remained where he was, he would be in complete ignorance of what was going on.

The sleeper stirred restlessly in the bed.

Mason resolved to take a chance. He stepped out into the corridor. At that moment, Mrs. Bradisson emerged from the room. Mason, caught between two fires, hastily stepped back into the bedroom.

Bedsprings creaked suddenly, a figure sat up in bed.

“Who is it?”

Mason, his hand on the knob of the door, standing poised on the threshold, grinned as he recognized Della Street’s voice. He closed the door, said, “How do you feel, Della?”

“Oh, it’s you! I woke up and saw someone standing there — there was something stealthy about — Is everything all right, Chief?”

“Everything’s okay if you’re feeling all right.”

“I’m better,” she said. “My gosh, wasn’t that the most awful experience? — What time is it?”

“Getting along toward four o’clock,” Mason said switching on the light.

“I’ve been sleeping quite a little while. I remember the nurse was in here. She gave me a hypodermic. Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m wobbly,” Mason admitted. “You knew that Banning Clarke was dead?”

“Yes. Miss Starler told me they’d found him — but he wasn’t poisoned. As I understand it, he’d been killed by a bullet.”

“An interesting legal situation,” Mason said sitting down on the edge of her bed. “Want a cigarette?”

“No, thanks. My mouth still has a peculiar taste. I don’t think I’d enjoy it. — What about the legal situation?”

“Suppose,” Mason said, “I should give you a dose of poison and you should die. That would be murder, wouldn’t it?”

She laughed. “Sometimes when I’ve made mistakes I think it would be justifiable homicide. But go on. What’s the idea?”

“But,” Mason went on, “suppose that before the poison had quite resulted in death, someone came along, whipped out a gun, fired a fatal shot, and made his escape. — Who is guilty of murder?”

Della Street frowned. “Both of them,” she ventured.

Mason shook his head. “Not unless there’s a joint venture, or a conspiracy. In the absence of any joint effort, or any conspiracy, only one could be convicted of murder.”

“Which one?”

“Figure it out.”

“I can’t. You mean that the victim would have enough poison so that he’d surely die?”

“That’s right.”

“And was actually dying?”

“Yes. Only be a matter of minutes — perhaps seconds.”

Della Street said, “Well, in any event, I’m not going to bother about it now. I have other things to think of. You should wake me up at four o’clock in the morning to propound legal puzzles! Get out of here and let me dress. I take it you want to leave?”

Mason got up off the bed. “We,” he announced, “have work to do.”

“What sort of work?”

“I think,” he told her, “that what I am about to do is something that would be very irritating to Sam Greggory.”