The Case of the Empty Tin

Chapter 12

Mason left the elevator and came walking down the long corridor of his office building. His hat was tilted back on his head at a jaunty angle, and his hands were thrust deep in his pockets. He was whistling the catchy chorus of one of the popular tunes and his manner was that of a man who was very well pleased with himself and the world.

The door of Paul Drake’s office opened, and Della Street, thrusting out her head, came running after him down the corridor.

Mason turned and looked down at her with smiling eyes. “Hi, Della,” he said. “What’s the rush?”

“I was waiting for you,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get you.”

“What’s the excitement?”

She looked up and down the corridor, slipped her hand through his arm, said, “Come on into Paul Drake’s office.”

Slowly the smile faded from Mason’s eyes. He walked back the half dozen steps which took him to Drake’s office, and Della Street piloted him past the girl at the switchboard, down the glassed-in partition to Paul Drake’s private office.

Drake looked up as Mason entered, said to Della Street, “See you got him.”

She nodded.

Mason perched a casual hip on the edge of Paul Drake’s desk. “What is the excitement?” he asked.

Drake said, “They found out something about that telephone, Perry.”

“Which one?”

“The one in Hocksley’s flat.”

“You mean the fingerprints on it?”

“No. Something else.”

“What?”

“The thing had been rigged up into an ingenious burglar alarm. There was a small hole in the base which looked as though it might have been a place for a wire. In reality, it was a little lens. A beam of invisible light ran through it, and when anyone stepped across that beam, it worked the alarm. Lifting the telephone receiver disconnected the whole thing. Then you had only to walk over to a switch by the safe, throw that, turn back, and put the telephone receiver back in place. Because it was a dial phone, the thing didn’t interfere with the operation of the telephone.”

Mason said, “Oh-oh.”

Della Street and Paul Drake were watching him anxiously.

“See where that leaves young Gentrie?” Drake asked after a while.

Mason nodded.

“And,” Della Street said, “it all ties in with the message in the tin. Tragg can really go to town on that.”

Mason lit a cigarette. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully, “that would account for it. The tin itself was a signal. Whenever the can was placed on the shelf, it meant the time had come to rob the safe. If any unforeseen developments necessitated a minor change in plans, that would be noted in code on the inside of the tin top.”

“It was noted,” Drake said, “and the person for whom the message was intended got it all right.”

“And acted on it,” Della Street supplemented with a meaning glance at Mason.

“And,” Drake added, “they’re Junior’s fingerprints on the telephone. Now just suppose, for the sake of the argument, Perry, that message has something to do with the telephone. You could see where that would leave young Gentrie.

“Of course,” Drake went on, “they may never decipher that code. But they have some pretty clever cipher men knocking around these days. Whatever that message is, it’s an even money bet Tragg will have it all worked out within a week or two, perhaps a lot sooner than that.”

Mason lit a cigarette, blew out twin streams of smoke through his nostrils. “Just as a gambling proposition, Paul, what would you say the percentage of chances was?”

“Percentage on what?”

“That the message has anything to do with the telephone.”

“I’d say it was even money,” Drake said.

“Well,” Mason told him, avoiding Della Street’s eyes, “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Anything else new?”

“Yes,” Della said. “Rodney Wenston’s waiting in the office. There’s a woman with him who claims to be the daughter of Karr’s partner. Wenston thinks she’s an impostor, and wants you to trap her.”

“Has she seen Karr?”

“No. Karr arranged with Wenston to answer the phone and handle all calls that came in on that ad. Wenston says that unless she can really produce some evidence, he’s not even going to let her talk with Karr. He said he was against Karr’s putting that ad in the paper. He says it’s certain to attract swindlers. He thought that if Karr wanted to do anything, he should quietly engage a firm of private detectives to find out what had happened to the daughter. Karr got impatient and said he couldn’t wait.”

“Where is this woman now?” Mason asked.

“Waiting in the office with Wenston. He hasn’t let her tell her story. He wants you to be with him the first time she tells it.”

Drake said, “There’s one other thing, Perry.”

“What?”

“Wenston acts the part of the wealthy playboy. He has quite a place down between Culver City and Santa Monica. There’s a hangar and a swell little private landing field. He flies back and forth to San Francisco quite a lot. Guess who he has for a passenger on nearly all of the trips?”

“Karr?” Mason asked.

Drake nodded.

“Anything else?”

“Yes. When Karr’s taking the plane, a big limousine comes to Wenston’s place. The driver opens a locked gate in the fence around the estate, follows the driveway around back of the house to the hangar, then past the hangar out to the far end of the flying field. Wenston has his plane all warmed up. He taxies out there, and turns around; then a door opens, a couple of men get out — that Chinese servant and Johns Blaine, who apparently is a bodyguard. Then Karr gets out and...”

“Wait a minute,” Mason interrupted. “You say gets out?”

“That’s what I said.”

“You mean he walks?”

“Uh huh. Not very well, but he walks.”

Mason said excitedly, “How did you get that, Paul?”

Drake said, “Talking with a queer old hobo who lives in a scrap house down on the edge of the railroad right of way near where Wenston has his landing field. You know the sort. They squat down on waste land that no one cares anything about and build houses out of flattened-out coal-oil tins, old pieces of corrugated iron, and a few boards here and there.”

Mason nodded.

“This chap’s seen Wenston take off and come back from trips. Occasionally a passenger gets aboard or gets out down at the far end of the landing field. A heavy-set man who’s probably Johns Blaine is always on hand. Also there’s a Chinese. The passenger usually walks the few steps from the plane to the automobile, and gets in. He walks rather slowly, but he walks. From the description, it has to be Karr.”

“Is that hobo on the level?” Mason asked.

“I can’t guarantee him,” Drake said. “I think he’s okay, but he’s a queer cuss. I spotted his shack and thought it might be worth while trying to pump him for information. You told me to get a line on Wenston. I don’t think any amount of money would have bribed the old codger, but I got some old clothes and a roll of blankets and came walking along the railroad. I stopped to pass the time of day with him, and had a bottle of cheap liquor in my blanket roll. We got pretty well plastered. I’ve still got a headache from it. But he loosened up and told me a lot of stuff.”

Mason grinned. “Perhaps I’d better go out and talk with him.”

Drake said, “You! Hell’s bells, Perry, if you’d had to go through what I did, you’d have died. That booze was awful. My head feels like a toy balloon just before it busts.”

Mason slid off of Drake’s desk, said, “Why don’t you get better booze when you want to get plastered, Paul? It’s on the expense account. First time I ever knew you to economize on it.”

Drake said grimly, “Yeah. A nice time I’d have hitting the rails as a hobo, and then pulling a bottle of bonded hooch out of my blanket roll. Here I sit up most of the night finding bodies for you, grab a couple of hours’ sleep, go out and get drunk on cheap rotgut, and this is all the thanks I get.”

Mason started for the door. “It’s lack of imagination, Paul. You should have told him you were a hijacker, or poured some bonded stuff in a bottle with a cheap label.”

Drake snorted. “Let’s see you try that stunt on this coot. Go right ahead, my lad. Hop to it.”

Out in the hallway, Mason asked, “These people waiting, Della?”

“Yes. I told them you were in conference in another lawyer’s office, and I couldn’t reach you on the telephone, as you’d left word you weren’t to be disturbed, but I thought I could go over, explain the situation, and get you to come back with me. How about it? Did you plant that tin?”

“Nothing to it,” Mason said. “I walked in with a bulging brief case and wearing gloves, said I wanted to look the premises over again, and particularly wanted to see the smudges of paint on the garage door. They sent Hester, the stolid servant who certainly seems none too intelligent, down to show me around. I waited until her back was turned and slipped the tin up on the shelf.”

“You don’t think she spotted it?”

“She didn’t even so much as look back when I started upstairs. She’s either just an ox, or she’s trying to keep out of the mess by seeming to be one. So now we’ve baited the trap, and we’ll wait to see what walks in.”

“I don’t like the bait,” Della said. “Be careful someone doesn’t steal it.”

“I’ll do that little thing,” Mason promised.

He unlocked the door of his private office, and pushed it open. Della Street said, “I’ll go and bring them in. Mr. Wenston wants to talk with you before you see this girl.”

“All right, get him in. Let’s see what’s on his mind.”

Wenston, looking very trim and military, entered Mason’s private office. He had a courteous bow for Della Street, a handclasp for Mason. “This ith a complication,” he said. “This girl ith an imposter. I have refused even to listen to her. I want you to hear her story the first time she tells it. I don’t want to take her to the guv’nor until after you’ve talked with her. After that, I won’t have to. You can trap her, and expose her as an impothtor.”

“What makes you think she’s an impostor if you haven’t talked with her?” Mason asked.

“I don’t know,” Wenston said, “unless it’s some sort of a telepathic intuition. She doesn’t theem genuine. There’s something phoney about her whole approach.”

“And you want me to talk with her?” Mason asked.

“I want you to cross-examine her — give her the works.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to do that in front of Mr. Karr?”

“No. I know most of the facts. I want to see if she’s telling the truth. If she isn’t, I’m not going to let her even get near Karr.”

“And you want me to cross-examine?” Mason asked.

Wenston nodded.

Mason said, “Well, let’s have her in here and see what she looks like.”

Doris Wickford followed Della Street into the office. She was between twenty-seven and thirty, Mason judged, with very dark hair, dark, thin eyebrows, long lashes, slate-colored eyes, and a pale skin which, coupled with a poker-faced immobility of countenance, gave her a peculiarly detached manner. She said, “Good afternoon. You’re Mr. Mason, aren’t you?” and came over to give him her hand. The slate-gray eyes gave him a long, steady scrutiny. She said, “I presume Mr. Wenston has told you I’m an imposter.”

Mason laughed.

Wenston said with dignity, “I told him to give you a croth-examination.”

“I expected that,” she said. “The reason I didn’t tell Mr. Wenston all the details is that I don’t want to keep going over them again and again. I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Mason, that I know Mr. Wenston isn’t the one who put that ad in the paper. For one thing, it’s very apparent that Mr. Wenston is rather young to have been in partnership with my father in 1920. I also know it because I know something about the persons with whom my father had that partnership. One of them was a man by the name of Karr, and I presume that he’s the one who’s really back of this ad in the paper. I’ve asked Mr. Wenston if that wasn’t a fact, and he refused to answer. I’ve asked him if he isn’t related to a Mr. Karr or employed by him, and he told me we’d go over that when we got to your office. Well, the way I look at it, if Mr. Karr is the one who’s really interested, why can’t we go to see him and then have it settled one way or the other?”

Wenston shook his head firmly. “I won’t subject the guv’nor to the strain of such an interview unleth I know it’s justified. You’ve got to convince me before you can ever see him.”

“How much convincing are you going to require?” Miss Wickford asked, her eyes surveying Wenston in a head-to-toe glance, which was something less than cordial.

“I’m going to need lots of convincing.”

“All right, here goes,” Miss Wickford said cheerfully, drawing up a chair and unfastening the snap on a large purse which she had carried under her arm.

“Tell me the name of your father,” Wenston said, glancing at Mason meaningly. “It might save time.”

Her glance was scornful. “His name was Wickford. He had trouble with creditors, so he went to the Orient. While he was in Shanghai, he took the name of Tucker.”

Wenston frowningly studied her. “He had rather an unusual firtht name. Perhaps you can tell us what that was.”

“I can tell you what it was,” she said, “and I can tell you how he happened to take it. The name was D-O-W, and it consists of the initials of my name. Doris Octavia Wickford. Octavia was my mother’s name, and when my father wanted some distinctive first name, he coined the word Dow from those initials.”

This time Wenston managed to keep his face more of a mask. “What else?” he asked. “Have you any proof?”

She took a somewhat dog-eared envelope from her purse. The envelope had a Chinese stamp and postmark. She said, “This letter was sent from Shanghai, January 8, 1921.”

Wenston and Mason both moved over to take a look at the envelope. Wenston reached for it. She pushed his hand back with a quick gesture and said, “Naughty, naughty! You can look, and that’s all.”

“Your father wrote that?” Wenston asked.

“That’s right, and you’ll notice the name, Doris O. Wickford, written on the envelope.”

“The return address in the upper left-hand comer,” Mason said, “is that of George A. Wickford at Shanghai.”

“That’s right. That was his real name. Here’s a photostatic copy of his marriage license to my mother. September, 1912, and here’s a copy of my birth certificate, November, 1913. You’ll notice my mother’s name was Octavia, and you’ll note that I was christened Doris Octavia Wickford.”

Mason examined the photostatic copies of the documents, then raised his eyes to meet Wenston’s perplexed gaze.

She said, “Now I’ll read you some of the excerpts from this letter. After all, remember I was a child of eight at the time, and he’s written to me the way a father would write to a girl of that age.”

She took some folded sheets of paper from the envelope. They were written in pencil. The paper was a thin, limp rice paper characteristic of Chinese manufacture. She read, “ ‘My dear daughter: It seems like a very long time since your daddy has seen you. I miss you very much and hope you are being a good girl. I don’t know just when daddy is coming back to you, but I hope it won’t be long. Over here, I am doing some good business and expect to return and clean up all of the debts I owe. You must remember not to mention to anyone where daddy is because some of those people who made so much trouble for me would try to keep me from getting enough together to pay off what I owe. If they will only leave me alone for a little while longer, I can not only pay off everything, but have money left. Then I will come back to you, and we will be together for a long time. You can have nice dresses and a pony if you still want one.’ ”

She looked up and said, “I had written him saying that I wanted a pony for Christmas.”

“Your mother?” Mason asked.

“She died when I was six, just before Dad went to China.”

“Go ahead.”

She turned back to the letter and read, “ ‘I have a very fine business here now, but I can’t tell you what it is. I have a partner. His name is Karr. Don’t you think that is a funny way for a man to spell his name? But he is a good partner, and he has lots of courage. Three weeks ago we were on a trip up the Yangtze River, and the boat he was in tipped over. Some of the Chinese boatmen clung to the overturned boat, but one of them was swept away. The current was very swift. This man couldn’t swim. He was only a Chinese, and over here the life of a laborer is not very valuable. I doubt if any one of the Chinese would have tried to rescue him, even if they had been strong swimmers. But my partner, Karr, swam out to the aid of this Chinaboy and brought him back to the boat. By that time my boat had come alongside, and the coolies managed to get it turned right side up. But we lost a lot of things in the river which we never recovered.

“ ‘The water of this river is very yellow. It is filled with a kind of mud. Even after it flows out into the ocean, it stains the whole region around the mouth of the river. It is a very big river, and Shanghai is on a branch of it called the Whangpoo.

“ ‘Shanghai is a very big city. You would never dream of the noise and bustle of one of these Chinese cities. It seems as though everyone is always screaming something at the top of his voice. You wouldn’t believe people could make that much noise.

“ ‘Now daddy wants Doris to be a good little girl, and study hard in school. Your daddy is sorry he couldn’t send you that pony for Christmas, because there is no way of sending a pony from China to the United States, but some day soon when your daddy comes back, you shall have your pony. Lots of love from a lonely father to his little girl. Your loving DAD. P.S. When you write me over here, you can write the letter addressed to me, but be sure you put it care of Dow Tucker and send it care of the American Express Company. I will get it all right.’ ”

She folded the letter, held it for a moment in her fingers as though contemplating whether she should pass it over to Mason for his inspection. Then abruptly she pushed it back into the envelope, and said simply, “I saved that one because it was the last letter I ever received. There were other letters, and I lost them. This one I kept. I never heard any more from him. I didn’t know what had happened to him.”

Wenston tried to keep from seeming impressed. “You have something else? Some better proof, perhaps?”

She looked at him with the impersonal appraisal one would give an insect impaled on a pin and said, “I’ve got lots of proof. Here’s a picture — a family group taken the year my mother died. I was six at the time, almost seven.”

She extracted a somewhat faded photograph from her purse. It was of the peculiar muddy tone which characterized the matte-surface prints of that period. It was a square picture three and a half inches by three and a half inches, and showed a man and a woman seated on what was apparently the upper step of a front porch. The man was holding a girl on his knee. Despite the pigtails and extreme youth of the girl in the picture, the resemblance to Doris Wickford was very pronounced.

Wenston pursed his lips, caught Mason’s eye, and almost imperceptibly nodded.

“You remember your father?” Mason asked.

“Naturally. Of course, it’s the memory of a girl of seven years of age. I was seven the last time I saw him. I suppose there are some things on which my memory is distorted, and you’ll have to make allowances for youth, but aside from that, I remember him quite distinctly, numerous little things about him, his tolerance, his unfailing consideration of the rights of others, and, what didn’t impress me as being particularly remarkable at the time but what does now that I’ve seen more of the world, is that I never knew him to lose his temper over anything, or say a sharp word to anyone. And yet the man must have been beset by worries.”

“Where did you live?”

“The address is on this letter,” she said. “It was in Denver, Colorado.”

“You lived there all the time until your father disappeared?”

“He didn’t disappear. He simply went away. There weren’t any jobs in Denver, and...”

“All right, have it your own way,” Mason interposed. “Had you lived there long? I notice that your birth certificate says that you were born in California.”

“That’s right. We lived in California for a while, then went to Nevada, and then to Denver. My father had work in the mines. Conditions got so bad Dad made complaints and eventually started organizing the men. Unions had never gotten a hold in that locality, and the company fired him. Dad opened up a little store, and the miners all started buying their things from him. Then the company simply ruined him. They forced him into disastrous competition. They wanted to get him out of the country. They said his cracker-box socialism was going to ruin the country. That’s when he incurred all those debts. He...”

Wenston said, “I guess, Mr. Mason, we’re going to have to see the guv’nor, after all.”

Mason said, “We can check the incident of that upset boat in the Yangtze River before going any farther.”

“We don’t have to,” Wenston said. “I’ve heard the guv’nor speak of it half a dozen times.”

Mason sat at his desk for a moment drumming thoughtfully with his fingers on the edge of the desk. Abruptly, he asked Miss Wickford, “And you saw this ad in the paper this morning?”

“No. The one that appeared yesterday morning.”

“Why didn’t you answer it at once?”

“I was working, and I — well,” she said with a little smile, “I arranged with my relief to have today off. I went to a hairdresser and then called the number mentioned in the ad. I asked for Mr. Karr. Mr. Wenston answered, said he was handling the preliminary interviews, and made an appointment. I never did have a chance to tell him any of my story. He rushed me right up here. Now, if that ad is on the level, I want to see Mr. Karr. It’s a matter of money with me. I’m not going to kid you, Mr. Mason, and I’m not going to kid myself. If there’s any money coming to me from my father, I need it.”

“You’re employed?” Mason asked.

“Yes. I’m an actress, and I can’t get a part. I had some bits in New York. A man promised he could get me a part in pictures if I came to Hollywood. He lied. Right at present I’m working as cashier in a cafeteria. And I don’t like it. It would be worth a good deal to be able to slap the boss’s face and walk out.”

“With whom were you living while you were going to school?”

“An aunt. She died about three years ago. Really, Mr. Mason, all of this can be verified. If there’s really anything back of this ad in the paper, we’re wasting a lot of time.”

“I think the guv’nor would want to see her,” Wenston said to Mason and then added, “Right away.”

Mason reached for his hat. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”