The Case of the Empty Tin

Chapter 18

Mason was drifting into that warm lethargy which comes just before sleep when the telephone by the side of his bed rang with shrill insistence.

He groped for the receiver, said, “Hello,” in a drowsy voice. “What is it?”

The voice which came over the wire was hysterical, the words intermingled with sobs. “This is Mrs. Gentrie. I could see that you knew all the time. I can’t last it out. Do what you can for Junior. I got into this for him. I suppose murder is never justified, but then a mother — that Opal Sunley was — Mr. Mason, I can’t — please don’t let Junior hold it too much against me. You’ve got my fingerprints. The message in the tin said so. Lieutenant Tragg switched tins. I had a pencil in my pocket and surreptitiously made a copy of the message. You were too clever for me. I knew there was no use fooling you. I know you’ll try to stop me, but you can’t do it. You’re clever, Mr. Mason — too clever. Good-by. I...”

Mason interrupted her, his voice thick with the accents of a man who has been drinking heavily. “Thash a’right, sister. Go right ahead. Have you li’l fun. Betcha you don’t know what I’ve been doin’. I’ve been shelebratin’ a weddin’ party. Rodney Wenshton got married. Li’l Doris Wickford. Nishe girl, too. Lotsh champagne! Ran onto ’em coupla blocks down street. Never dranksh sho much champagne ’n all my life. Now, don’t try talk no bus’ness with me now. Tomorrow — tomorrow — I tol’ you I’d try gettin’ Junior out tomorrow — hic, yesh, tomorrow — tomorrow I be a’right. Goo’-by!”

Mason dropped the receiver into place, flung off the covers, stripped off his pajamas, wrapped a robe around him, pushed his feet into slippers, and raced down the corridor to where a pay telephone was ensconced. Mason dropped a coin, dialed Operator, and said, “Get me police headquarters just as quickly as you can. This is an emergency. Rush that call.”

Almost at once, Mason heard a voice saying, “Yes, this is headquarters.”

“Perry Mason. Is Lieutenant Tragg where I can get in touch with him?”

“No, Lieutenant Tragg’s off duty. He... What’s that?... Just a minute... Oh, hello. They say he just came in from San Francisco. Want to talk with him?”

“Get him at once,” Mason said. “It’s important as the devil.”

“Hold the line.”

A few seconds elapsed, then Mason heard Tragg’s crisply hostile voice saying, “Yes, Mason, this is Tragg.”

“Lieutenant, don’t stop to argue. Throw out a call lor radio cars that are in the vicinity. Send them rushing to the Gentrie residence. No sirens. Handle it very quietly, but get into that house and hold every person there until you can get there. Don’t let anyone have a chance to kill anyone else or to commit suicide.”

“What’s the idea?” Tragg asked.

“Dammit,” Mason said irritably, “I told you not to argue. Do what I tell you to, and you’ll be having the congratulations of the chief tomorrow. Fall down on it, and you’ll be on the carpet right. I’ll meet you there.”

Mason didn’t stop to give Tragg any further opportunity to argue, but slammed up the telephone receiver; then sprinted back down the corridor to his room. He flung off the robe and dressed in frenzied haste. When he had his clothes on, he paused long enough to dial the number of Della Street’s apartment.

“Hello,” he heard Della Street’s sleep-drugged voice saying.

“Wake up,” he told her. “The lid’s blown off.”

“Who?... What?... Oh, yes,” she said, crisp wakefulness flowing into her voice. “Where are you?”

“Just leaving for the Gentrie house. Get a taxi and get up there as fast as you can. Bring a notebook. Better bring a portable typewriter. We might even get a confession out of it. You can’t tell. The criminal seems properly repentant; but every second counts now. I’ve got to rush up there. Be seeing you.”

Mason dropped the receiver, picked up his hat, and dashed out of the apartment without even taking time to switch off the light.

Through an arrangement with the garage attendant, Mason’s car was parked in a position where it was always ready to go, and Mason had only to fling open the door, jump into the seat, and step on the starter. The garage-man watched him careen around the corner of the driveway, shook his head dubiously; then looked at his watch. It was five minutes past five in the morning.

“That guy should join a union,” the attendant muttered to himself.

Two radio cars were already parked in front of the Gentrie residence when Mason arrived, and, as he was switching off the ignition to his car, Lieutenant Tragg, in one of the fast cars of the Homicide Squad, came skidding around the corner.

Mason paused at the foot of the front steps to beckon to Tragg. Tragg, running across to join him, said, “I certainly hope you’re not giving me a bum steer on this, Mason.”

“I hope so, too,” Mason said. “Let’s go.”

Tragg tried the front door. It was unlocked. The men pushed their way into a strange gathering. Four radio officers were guarding the members of the Gentrie household: The younger children, huddled and frightened; Rebecca, swathed in a heavy robe, her hair in curlers, her face without make-up, her eyes glittering with indignation; Mrs. Gentrie, trying to take things philosophically; Arthur Gentrie, clad in pajamas and bathrobe, managing a prodigious yawn as Mason and Lieutenant Tragg entered the room.

“Perhaps,” Rebecca snapped to Lieutenant Tragg, “you’ll be good enough to tell me what this is about.”

Tragg made a graceful little bow, turned to Mason, and said, “Perhaps, Counselor, you’ll be good enough to tell me what this is about.”

Mason grinned with relief as he saw the little household assembled under the eyes of the radio officers. “My telephone rang a few minutes ago,” he said, “and Mrs. Gentrie confessed to having committed the murders and said she was going to shoot herself.”

Mrs. Gentrie said promptly, “Why, I never did any such thing. I absolutely deny it. You’re crazy, Mr. Mason.”

Mason grinned at her. “It was your voice all right. By pretending to be so drunk that I couldn’t have been trusted to remember what happened or what was being said over the telephone, I threw the contemplated suicide out of schedule.”

“I tell you I didn’t telephone you,” Mrs. Gentrie said indignantly. “If you say that I did, you’re saying something that’s not so.”

“Of course,” Mason went on, “your voice sounded somewhat strained, which was only natural in view of the fact that you were hysterical, but there were certain little mannerisms of expression which were undoubtedly yours.”

“You’re crazy,” Mrs. Gentrie announced flatly.

“You also told me,” Mason said, “something which came as a very valuable piece of information — that Lieutenant Tragg had found the can I had planted on the shelf, and removed the top, that he had then placed another decoy can there. That explained a feature of the case which had hitherto puzzled me.”

Mrs. Gentrie said, “That’s true about lieutenant Tragg. He told me not to say anything about the tin; so I didn’t. I didn’t have any idea you’d put the tin there.”

Tragg turned to Mason. “You planted that?” he asked.

Mason nodded. “To help clear up the case. I could have had it solved earlier if it hadn’t been for your interference there.”

“But I put a tin back to take its place,” Tragg said, “and had the same code message copied and placed in the lid.”

Mason smiled. “But don’t you see that the person for whom the message was intended was present when you opened the tin, and so actually got the message without the necessity of having the can removed from the shelf. You crossed me up there, Lieutenant.”

Tragg frowned, looked at Mrs. Gentrie, and said, “Mrs. Gentrie, I’m going to ask you...”

“You don’t need to,” she flared. “I’ve put up with a lot of official stupidity and a lot of bungling in this case. I realize that people can’t be perfect, but I’ve never seen such utter ignorance as...”

Mason interrupted to say to Lieutenant Tragg, “Of course, she’ll make all sorts of denials — now. She wanted to lure me down here so that she could kill me — probably not here in the house, but maybe as I left my apartment. You see, she’d got that message and believed what it said. And, in case you haven’t as yet figured out the code...”

“I have,” Tragg interposed.

“Then you understand what I was trying to do?”

Tragg nodded slowly. “I didn’t realize it was a trap at the time,” he said. “I thought you were holding out on me, and I was planning to do something about that.”

Mason yawned, said, “Well, as soon as the telephone rang, I began to stall her along. I made her think I was pretty drunk. You see, Tragg, only two persons have the number of my private unlisted telephone. They are Paul Drake and Della Street; but, in an emergency the other night, we gave the number to the woman who was pretending to be Mrs. Sarah Perlin. That person must have murdered Mrs. Perlin. So when my telephone rang and it wasn’t either Della Street or Paul Drake, I knew I was talking to the murderer. I pretended that the champagne I’d taken at Rodney Wenston’s wedding had been too much for me.”

“Wenston’s wedding!” Tragg exclaimed in surprise. “Is he married?”

“You didn’t know?” Mason asked.

Tragg shook his head.

Mason said, “He married Doris Wickford. You can rest assured Wenston would never have permitted Doris Wickford to have made a claim against a full half of Elston Karr’s property without having seen to it that she couldn’t give him the horselaugh afterwards.”

“You mean Wenston was back of that?” Tragg asked.

“Of course, he was,” Mason said with an amused smile. “Karr had some money that would have belonged to Tucker’s heirs. He didn’t know, however, his dead partner had left an heir until he found it out by accident. He advertised to try and find her.

“That, of course, was too good an opportunity for Wenston to miss. He knew that he had only to fake a few letters, putting in facts which he already knew from his intimate association with Karr in order to make a pretty good claim. If he could have the claimant produce a picture of her father which would tally with that of Dow Tucker, it would make the case absolutely ironclad.

“The probabilities are that Wenston stumbled on to the person he planted as the daughter by accident, and before he got the idea of palming her off as the heiress. In all probability, Doris Wickford’s father actually did go to China, and wrote her a few letters. As a stamp collector, she had saved the envelopes. Wenston probably happened to be looking over her stamp album, and, seeing the entire envelope with its postmark and canceled stamp, got the idea. Well, Lieutenant, I’ll leave you with your case. If you’ll take Mrs. Gentrie into custody, I feel quite certain you’ll be able to work out a good case against her. And now, if you’ll pardon me, I’ll go back and try to get some sleep.”

Mason turned and started for the door.

“Look here,” Tragg said, coming after him, “you can’t walk out on me this way. I’m not certain you’ve even got a good case against Mrs. Gentrie. As far as that telephone business is concerned, it’s your word against hers.”

Mason said, “Well, I’ve given you enough stuff to work on, Lieutenant. The obvious facts are now in your command. You can let them all go now, except Mrs. Gentrie.”

One of the children began to cry. Mrs. Gentrie got slowly to her feet. “You’re not going to do this in front of my children. You’re not...”

One of the radio officers put a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Sit down,” he said.

Arthur Gentrie pushed back his chair. “Now, you listen...”

Two officers held him.

Mason said, “That’s all there is to it, Lieutenant. Good night.”

He opened the door and ran rapidly down the steps.

Tragg shouted after him, “Hey, you! Mason! You’re not leaving now!” He jerked open the door and ran down the steps after the lawyer.

Perry Mason paused by the curb. Tragg came running up to him, his manner bristling with indignation. “You look here,” he said in a loud voice. “You’ve given me some ingenious theories, but...” He drew close to the lawyer, suddenly lowered his voice, said, “What is this, a trap?”

“Uh huh,” Mason said. “Come on, Tragg. We should be in at the finish.”

“Where?”

“This way.”

Mason ran lightly around the corner by the garages. “Give me a boost up the fence, Tragg,” he said, “and then I’ll pull you up.”

Tragg boosted Mason up the high board fence. Once on top, Mason reached down and gave Tragg a hand up. Together, the two men dropped silently into the dark yard between the Gentrie house and the two-flat building.

“Now what?” Tragg whispered.

“Wait,” Mason said.

They waited in the darkness for almost a minute. Then quietly the door in the garage opened, and a dark figure tiptoed silently across the yard to the side door of the Hocksley flat. A key clicked against the lock. The door was opened, and the figure slipped inside.

Mason and Tragg moved cautiously across the lot. The door was still ajar. Motioning for silence, Mason led the way into the warm darkness of the flat. Listening intently, they could hear the sound of the dial on a telephone; then, after a moment, a woman’s voice sharp with emotion said, “What kind of a game do you think you’re playing? What’s this I heard about you marrying that little devil, that... Yes, you did, too! You were married to her this morning. Well, last night then. Don’t lie to me! After all I’ve done for you, don’t think I’m going to let you get away with that. The minute you try anything like that, you’re all finished... Well, he said so... Mr. Mason... I don’t think it was a trap. No. I didn’t say a word... You wouldn’t lie to me? You darling No-o-o-o-o. I didn’t really believe it, not down in my heart, but I wanted to find out. I–I must get back. The officers are over there. Mason is getting awfully close to what actually happened. You’ll have to do something about him at once. Remember now, I’ve taken care of the others for you. You’ve got to do this for me. All right, lover.”

The receiver clicked. There was the sound of rustling garments as a figure approached them.

“Okay,” Mason said in a low whisper.

Lieutenant Tragg’s flashlight sent a pencil of white brilliance through the darkness, a pencil which stabbed the white, frightened face of Rebecca Gentrie, and held it in a pitiless glare.