The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

Chapter 18

Mason was awakened from deep slumber by the bugling of a burro. Almost immediately the other burro joined in the chorus, and Mason was grinning even as he opened his eyes.

The dawn was crisp and cool. One or two of the bright stars were still visible. There was not enough moisture in the sky to form even the faintest wisp of cloud, nor was there any trace of dew on the outside of the sleeping bag. The distant mountain range to the east was a narrow sawblade of black, outlined against a greenish blue illumination that tapered off into darkness. It was as yet too early to distinguish colors, but the sleeping camp showed objects in gray outlines.

Mason struggled to a sitting position and, as his back and shoulders emerged from the sleeping bag, the body warmth which the down covers had wrapped around him was whisked away in the cold still air, and Mason promptly shot back down into the warm covers.

The burros had seen him move, and, walking with dainty, careful feet, moved over to his sleeping bag. Mason felt a silky soft nose nuzzling around his ear. Then, after a moment, lips nibbled at his hair.

The lawyer laughed and struggled out of the sleeping bag and into his clothes. Apparently the braying of the burros had not aroused any of the other sleepers. The bags were motionless mounds in the increasing light of early dawn.

Mason kept feeling colder as he dressed. There was no breath of air stirring, but the crisp mountain air was definitely cold. He looked around for feed for the burros and could find none, nor did the animals seem to expect any. Apparently they had only wanted human companionship, desired only to see the camp stirred into life. Once Mason started moving around, the burros sagged into a posture of contentment, ears drooping forward, heads lowered.

Mason broke up dry sagebrush, kindled it with a match, soon had a fire going. He was looking around for supplies when Salty Bowers, a businesslike six-shooter strapped to his hip, came swinging out from behind the rock outcropping and into the open.

Salty nodded to Mason, apparently avoiding conversation that would waken the other sleepers. He moved over to the burros, rubbed his hand along their necks and ears, poured ice-cold water from a canteen into a basin, washed, then put coffee on the fire. As Mason washed, the bracing water stung glowing circulation into his face and hands.

“Cold up here,” he said.

“Nights are cold,” Salty agreed. “You’re way up, up here. Wait until the sun rises and you won’t be bothered none with cold.”

Mason helped with the cooking, noticing that Della Street’s sleeping bag became convulsed with motion as she did most of her dressing under cover of the bag. A few moments later she joined him at the fire.

“Sleep?” Mason asked.

“Sleep!” she exclaimed. “The most marvelous sleep I’ve ever had in my life. Usually when I sleep so heavily, I wake up feeling drugged. Now my lungs feel all washed out and— When do we eat?”

“Pretty soon,” Salty said.

The east became a dazzling sheet of vivid orange. The edges of the silhouetted mountains seemed coated with liquid gold. The first small segment of sun put in a dazzling appearance. The desert began taking on pastel shades of color. Mason, seeing the need for more firewood, broke up brittle, dry sage and brought it in to where Salty was slicing bacon with a razor-keen knife.

The sun swung clear of the mountains, hung poised for a few moments as though gathering strength, and then sent rays of golden warmth flooding the camp. For the next quarter hour, Mason was too busy assisting in the preparations to pay too much attention to his surroundings. Then suddenly he realized that not only had he ceased being cold, but that it was getting hot.

The aroma of coffee mingled with the smoky tang of bacon. Velma Starler and Dr. Kenward joined the group around the fire. Soon they were eating golden brown hot cakes swimming with melted butter, rich with syrup, with strips of meaty bacon to add just the right tang of smoky salt. The coffee was a clear deep brown with plenty of full-bodied flavor.

“What’s the secret?” Velma Starler asked, laughing. “Doesn’t rationing bother you?”

Salty grinned. “Banning Clarke laid in a cache of canned goods up here a while back.”

“Didn’t he declare them?” Mason asked.

“Sure he declared them. They’ll be tearing half the coupons out of his book from now until the middle of nineteen-seventy-six. He liked his grub, and he hated to carry too much stuff in by burro-back, so he trucked stuff out part way and got packers to bring it in. You’d be surprised how long canned butter keeps when it’s buried in a cool place. Same with vacuum-packed coffee. — Rationing’s all right for people in the city,” Salty went on with some feeling, “but you take a prospector that has to go in and load up with enough provisions to last him for months, and he just can’t get by on ration stuff. He has to use all canned goods and dried foods. — Oh well, we’re all right, thanks to the stuff we got cached around here. You can eat all you want an’ stay as long as you like and it won’t hurt a bit.”

“Thanks for your hospitality, Salty, but we’re heading toward Mojave right after breakfast.”

Della glanced quickly at the lawyer, fighting surprise back from her eyes.

“Better look up Nell Sims when you get there,” Salty said.

“We intend to.”

“Maybe she’ll have her pies going by today. She said she would.”

“Suppose Pete went with her?”

Salty’s lips clamped into a tight line. “I wouldn’t know.”

“You don’t care much about Pete?”

“He’s all right.”

Mason grinned. “Well, I’ll go take a look at Mojave.”

“You don’t know when — That is — the funeral?”

“No. They won’t release the body for a while, Salty. Not until tomorrow anyway.”

Salty suddenly thrust out his hand. “Thanks,” he said.

They said good-by to the others, loaded their car and started down the dusty, winding road, Della Street at the wheel.

“Thought you planned to stay for a day or two,” Della said.

“I did,” Mason admitted. “I wasn’t exactly running away, but I didn’t want to be available for questioning until the situation had clarified itself somewhat. If I don’t produce that stock certificate, I’m in bad. If I do, it becomes apparent that the endorsement is, as matters now stand, a forgery. Then there’s one other thing that bothers me. The minute Mrs. Bradisson finds that other will has disappeared she’ll know who has it. You see she knows I couldn’t have gone in that room and fallen asleep, because she left it only a relatively short time before I was discovered in there at the desk.”

“What will she do when she finds out, Chief?”

“I don’t know. Her position will then be untenable, so she may decide to beat me to the punch. All in all, I thought it would be better to keep out of circulation for a while. But that information about the ipecac — well, if they start anything, we can fight back.”

“At that you’re in hot water again,” she observed after a few minutes during which she silently concentrated on driving the car.

“It’s hot all right,” Mason admitted, “and it keeps getting hotter. It won’t be long until it starts boiling.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’ll become even more hard-boiled.”

“For one like that, you deserve to be conversationally ostracized,” she proclaimed. “I’m going to put you in verbal quarantine.”

“It’s really justified,” he admitted, letting his head drop back to the cushions, closing his eyes. “I really should be shot.”

Mason dozed while the dusty miles slipped behind. Then the dirt road joined a ribbon of paved highway and the car purred smoothly toward Mojave, topped a little rise, and the town of Mojave sprawled out across the face of the desert as listless, when seen from this distance, and as sun-bleached as a dried bone.

“Well,” Della Street said, easing the pressure on the foot throttle, “here we are. Where do we go?”

Mason, still with his eyes closed, said, “Nell Sims’ restaurant.”

“Think we can find it all right?”

Mason chuckled. “Her return should be quite an event in the history of Mojave. Doubtless there will be some manifestation. Her individuality is too strong to be swallowed without a trace in a town of this size.”

The road swung along for a short distance parallel to the railroad track. Della Street said, “Looks as though it had been snowing.”

Mason opened his eyes. Pieces of paper were plastered up against every clump of greasewood that dotted the face of the desert.

“Railroad track over here,” Mason said with a gesture, “and the winds come from that direction, and you’ve never really seen the wind blow until you’ve been in Mojave. Trains always spew out pieces of paper, and along here the winds blow them against the little greasewood bushes so hard that they stick. The accumulation of years along here. Down here a way, a man had a hat farm.”

“A hat farm?” Della asked.

“That’s right. It gets hot in the desert and people stick their heads out of the train windows. A certain percentage of hats blow off, and the wind rolls them along the ground like tumbleweeds until they fetch up against the greasewood on this fellow’s little homestead. His neighbors plowed up the ground on their homesteads and tried to grow things. The country starved them out. This man left all the natural brush in place and picked up enough hats in the course of a year to keep him in grub.”

Della Street laughed.

“No kidding,” Mason told her; “it’s a fact. Ask some of the people around here about the hat farm.”

“Honest injun?”

“Honest injun. You ask them.”

The road went down a little dip, made a slight curve and entered Mojave. At closer range the little desert metropolis presented more signs of external activity.

“There was a time,” Mason said, “when the only people who lived here were those who didn’t have carfare enough or gumption enough to get out of town. This was too civilized to have the real advantages of the desert, and too much of the desert to have the advantages of civilization. Now, with air-conditioning and electric refrigeration, the place is quite livable, and you can see the difference in the whole appearance of the city. — I guess this is the place we want, Della, dead ahead. See the sign?”

A sign made of bunting had been rigged up and hung out across the sidewalk. It proclaimed in vivid red letters at least three feet high, “NELL’S BACK!”

Della Street eased the car to a stop. Mason held the car door open while she slid out from under the steering wheel, across the seat, and, with a flash of trim legs, stood on the sidewalk beside him.

“Any particular line we use?” Della asked.

“No. We just barge in and start talking.”

Mason held the restaurant door open for her. As they entered the room, after the glare of the desert, their sun-tortured eyes took a second or two to adjust themselves so they could see into the shadows. One thing, however, which was clearly visible as soon as they entered the room was a long thin piece of bunting stretched over the mirror behind the lunch counter. On it was painted in big letters: “BECAUSE I RUN A BETTER RESTAURANT, THE WORLD HAS BEAT A MOUSE TRAP TO MY DOORS.”

“This,” Mason announced, “is undoubtedly the place.”

From the dark coolness near the back of the room, Nell Sims exclaimed, “Well, for the land sakes! Now, what on earth are you two doing here?”

“Just looking for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie,” Mason said, grinning and walking across to shake hands. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. Well, you folks certainly do get around.”

“Don’t we?” Della said laughing.

“It’s just a little early for me to get my shelves stocked with pastry,” Nell Sims apologized, “but I’ve got some pies coming out of the oven in just a minute now. How’d you like a piece of hot apple pie with a couple of scoops of ice cream on top of it and a nice big slab of cheese on the side of the plate?”

“Can you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Serve pie, cheese, and ice cream at one time?”

“I ain’t supposed to, but I can. Out in these parts Hospitality can’t read — at least, any of these new-fangled government regulations. Sit right down and I’ll have those pies out of the oven in just a minute or two. You’ll like ’em. I put in plenty of sugar. Never did care for desserts that were just half sweet. I put in lots of butter and sugar and cinnamon. May not be able to bake so many pies, but those I do bake certainly taste like something.”

“Anything new around here?” Mason asked casually, as he slid up to the counter.

“Lots of excitement in town over the new strike. If you ask me, there’s something awfully fishy about it.”

“What?” Mason asked.

“That prospector,” she said, and stopped.

“The man who located the mine?”

“The man who says he located the mine.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Mason asked.

“He’s a tenderfoot. If he’s a prospector, I’m a diplomat. He’s certainly got the gold, though. Showing it around everywhere.”

“What’s he doing?” Mason asked.

“Drinking mostly.”

“Where?”

“Just any place around town where he can find a parking place and a bottle. That cattleman is with him, and they’re doing the craziest things.”

“Where,” Mason asked, “is your husband?”

“Haven’t seen him since I landed. When they going to have the funeral, do you folks know?”

“I don’t think anyone does. There’s a lot of red tape in connection with post-mortems and things of that sort.”

“A mighty good man,” Nell Sims said. “It’s a crying shame men like him have to go. He was just like a brother to me. Leaves me all broken up. Don’t s’pose they’ve found out who did it yet... Land sakes! I’m almost forgetting about my pies.”

She dashed back into the kitchen. They heard an oven door open and, a moment later, the delicious aroma of freshly baked pie warmed their nostrils.

The door opened. Two men entered the restaurant. Della Street, looking back at the door, closed her fingers on Mason’s forearm. “It’s Paul Drake and Harvey Brady,” she said in a whisper.

“Hi!” Paul Drake exclaimed in the loud voice of a man who has been drinking and feels that his thoughts become increasingly important as they are expressed in a louder voice.

Mason’s back was rigid.

“Madam,” Paul Drake said, a slightly thickened tongue interfering a little with his grandiloquent manner, “I have been advised that the civic life of this c’munity has turned over a new page, with the auspicious advent of your return to the scenes of your earlier triumphants. In other words, Madam, to express myself more directly, they say you make damn good pie.”

Harvey Brady said, “Unless my nose is mistaken, the pies are just about ready to come out of the oven.”

Mason slowly turned.

Brady regarded him with the casual interest a man bestows upon a total stranger.

Paul Drake lurched forward, peered up at Mason with the intense scrutiny of someone who is having some difficulty focusing his eyes. “Hello, stranger,” he said. “Let me introduce myself. My name’s Drake. I’m half owner in the richest bonanza ever discovered in the whole mining history of the West. I’m happy. You, my boy, look hungry. You look thirsty. You look dissatisfied. You look unhappy. In short, my lad, you look like a Republican on an appropriations committee. There’s nothing I can do here in the form of liquid refreshment to alleviate your deplorable condition, but I can show you the true hospitality of the West by buying you a piece of pie.”

“His pie is already spoken for,” Nell Sims said.

Drake nodded owlishly. “How many pieces of pie?” he asked.

“One,” Mrs. Sims said.

“That’s fine. I’ll buy him the second piece. The first piece he has on himself. The second piece he has on me.”

Drake turned to Harvey Brady. “Come on, partner. Sit up to the counter. Let’s have pie. What do we care for the various vicis-s-s... Whoa! Guess I’d better back up and take another try at that one.” He took in a deep breath. “What do we care for the various vicis — viciss — ssitudes of life when we have pie? Madam, we shall have pie, or as you would doubtless express it, eat — drink — and be merry, for tomorrow we pie.”

Nell Sims said, “That isn’t the right quotation.”

“What is?” Drake asked belligerently.

“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow roll on their dreary course.”

Drake put his head in his hands and thought that over.

“You’re right,” he agreed at length.

Mrs. Sims said, “I’ve just taken the pies out of the oven. Just a minute and I’ll bring them in.”

She retired to the kitchen.

Paul Drake leaned forward and said in a confidential voice that was almost a whisper, “Look, Perry, let’s make some dough on the side. I’ve met a real prospector who’s working some property he thinks doesn’t amount to much. There are some black pebbles that constantly get in his sluices. Perry, those pebbles are gold nuggets once you scrape off the black. The poor chap doesn’t realize this. I wouldn’t outsmart him on the whole claim, but I can get a half interest in it.”

Mason drew back from the detective’s breath. “Paul, you’ve been drinking.”

“Of course I’ve been drinking,” Drake said truculently. “Why the hell shouldn’t I be drinking? How can I act the part of a drunk without drinking — at least in this town where people watch every move you make. Hell’s bells! I’m famous!”

Nell Sims appeared with the pie, served Della Street and Mason, then cut off smaller pieces for Brady and Drake.

The cattleman gave Mason’s arm a surreptitious reassuring squeeze, then settled down at the table next to Drake.

Drake turned once more to Mason, regarded him with the alcoholic persistence of a drunk who has been rebuffed and has made up his mind he isn’t going to take it. “Another thing,” Drake said, “is that... Say, how’s it happen he gets ice cream on his pie, and we don’t get ice cream on our pie?”

“That’s government regulations,” Nell Sims said; “leastwise I think it is. That’s what they told me when I took over the restaurant.”

“How about him?” Drake demanded, pointing his finger at Perry Mason.

Nell Sims never batted an eyelash. “He has an A-i-A priority rating from the local war board.”

Drake regarded Mason with widened eyes. “I’ll be a son-of-a-gun!” he exclaimed.

Mason, watching his opportunity, said in a low voice, “Want to see you alone as soon as we can get out of here, Paul.”

Brady, keeping his voice equally low, said, “So does all the rest of Mojave, Perry. Stick your head out of the door and you’ll see ten or fifteen people sort of casually hanging around the sidewalk. The point is that wherever we go those same ten or fifteen people—”

He broke off as the screen door banged open. A frightened little whisper of a man scuttled through the doorway and made for the kitchen.

“Hey, Pete!” Paul Drake yelled, jumping to his feet, his manner enthusiastically cordial. “Come on over here. Right over here, Pete old boy!”

Pete Sims either didn’t hear him or paid no attention. “Nell!” he half screamed. “Nell, you’ve got to see me through this! You—!”

Once more the door banged open. Sheriff Greggory’s form bulked large against the eye-dazzling glare which beat down on the town’s single main street.

“Hey, you!” he yelled. “Come back here. What the hell did you run for? You’re under arrest.”

Drake gave Mason a woebegone look. “Oh, my gosh,” he said dolefully. “That’s the guy who was going to sell me a half interest in the mining claim.”