The Case of the Haunted Husband

Chapter 20

Mason sat in his room in the Gateview Hotel. From time to time he looked at his watch. The pile of cigarette stubs in the ash tray mounted higher. Toward noon, Mason called his office. “Anything new, Della?”

“Everything quiet and serene at this end.”

Mason sighed. “I am afraid Tragg’s interference has wrecked my little scheme. If you don’t hear from me in half an hour, call Tragg and ask him to come up here, will you?”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“That is all. Be seeing you, Della.”

Mason clicked the receiver into place, took another cigarette from his hammered silver case, and heard a knock at the door. “Come in,” he called. The door opened. Mrs. Greeley entered. Mason jumped to his feet. “Why, Mrs. Greeley, I had no idea you were coming!”

“I hope I haven’t disturbed you, Mr. Mason, but I have found something...”

Mason glanced at his wrist watch. “Can’t it wait, Mrs. Greeley? I am expecting someone else.”

“It will only take a minute.”

Mason hesitated, then quickly closed the door, and placed a chair for her. “I don’t want to seem inhospitable,” he said, “but I am expecting someone who may come at any minute.”

“Mrs. Warfield?” she asked.

“What makes you think of her?”

“Because I have found that correspondence you were asking about.”

“Where is it?”

“Here.” She indicated a brief case. “Do you want to look at it now?”

Mason once more consulted his watch, hesitated, said, “Could you leave it with me?”

“Yes.”

“I am sorry,” he apologized, “but seconds are precious. I am trying to...”

“I understand,” she interrupted. “I shall just put these over on the bed. I am frightfully nervous, Mr. Mason. I am wondering if my own life isn’t in danger.”

“Frankly,” Mason said, “I think it is.”

“Mr. Mason, did you know what was in these letters?”

“I had an idea.”

“Do you know who the man was my husband was protecting?”

“I think I do.”

“Can you tell me?”

“I would prefer not to — not right now.”

She said, “There is something in that first letter, the one on top, I would like to have you read now.”

Mason reached for the letter. “This one?” he asked.

“Yes. That...”

Mason whirled. His hand clamped on her wrist.

An involuntary half scream left her lips. Something heavy dropped from her right hand, struck the edge of the bed, thudded to the floor. The fingers of her left hand continued to clutch at the pillow. Her right hand sought his arm, gripped it until her fingers dug into his muscles.

Mason said, “You are perfectly safe here, Mrs. Greeley, but you are not going to be safe if you carry that gun and draw it at the slightest noise.”

“There is someone at the door! Someone turned the knob!”

Mason strode quickly to the door, and jerked it open.

There was no one in the corridor.

“I heard someone,” she said. “Someone was turning the knob, very slowly and stealthily. The door was sliding open.”

Mason frowned. “I am afraid you have ruined everything.”

“I am sorry.”

“It is as much my fault as yours. And as for carrying that gun — you are foolish. Your life is in danger but it is nothing you can ward off with a gun. The persons who are after you are far too clever to be disposed of that way.

“Now, look here, you are nervous, unstrung, and hysterical. Go to your family physician and ask him to give you a narcotic which will make you sleep for at least twenty-four hours. How long since you have slept?”

The corners of her mouth twitched. “Not more than an hour or two since...” Her face was distorted by a spasm. “I can’t get it out of my mind! I can’t. I can’t! I am going to be next. I know it. I have been followed. I have been...”

Mason said, “Mrs. Greeley, I want you to go see a doctor right now. I can’t give you any more time now. Promise me you will go to your doctor at once. Will you do that?”

His hand patted her shoulder.

Her eyes blinked up at him through tears. “Mr. Mason, you are absolutely wonderful. I shall go at once.”

She took a deep breath, and tried to smile. “I am sorry I lost control,” she said. “Good-bye, Mr. Mason.”

“Good-bye.”

Mason closed and locked the door. Some thirty minutes later, in response to another knock, he tiptoed to stand on one side of the door so that a bullet sent crashing through the panels would miss him.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Tragg.”

“I don’t recognize your voice.”

“What is the idea?” Tragg asked. “Can’t you...”

Mason unlocked the door. “I just wanted to be sure.”

“Why all the caution?”

“I am expecting the murderer to call on me.”

“So I gathered. What is the idea?”

Mason dropped into a chair, lit a cigarette. “Mrs. Warfield came to this hotel. She didn’t stay in her room that night.”

“Certainly not. She went to Greeley’s room. I found her baggage there.”

“Where did she go after that?” Mason asked.

“She stayed right there.”

“After shooting Greeley?”

“Yes. Why not?”

“She couldn’t be certain someone hadn’t heard the shot.”

“No, of course not,” Tragg admitted, “but it didn’t sound like a shot. Two or three people heard the noise, but thought it was a car exhaust.”

“She, of course, had no way of knowing that.”

“What are you getting at?”

“She didn’t leave the hotel until the next morning.”

“She stayed there in the room, with Greeley’s body?”

“Why not?”

“The bed wasn’t slept in. She would hardly be down with a corpse and go to sleep.”

“And she would hardly sit up all night in the room with a dead man. Granted that she has a pretty strong stomach, it is still asking too much.”

“What did she do?” Tragg asked.

“Spent the night in another room.”

“Whose?”

Mason shrugged. “There are a lot of things about this case that can’t be proved — yet. But, Tragg, we know what the answer is, and if there is anything wrong with my reasoning, point it out.”

“All right, go ahead.”

“When I realized what must have happened here at the hotel, I had Drake look up the registrations. Two single rooms were rented within fifteen minutes of the time Mrs. Warfield registered. One was to a man who answered the description of the driver of the car. So I didn’t bother with the other. I realize now I should have.”

“Who was the other?”

“A woman. Don’t you get it?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Mrs. Warfield must have spent the night with that woman.”

“But her baggage was in Greeley’s room...”

“Certainly,” Mason said. “Mrs. Warfield registered and went to her room, then she went back to the lobby to try and pick up some back numbers of Photoplay Magazine. I had shown her a photograph of Homan. I asked her if it wasn’t her husband or Spinney. She had been trying to locate Spinney — to find out who he really was. She thought this was Spinney’s picture. Through him, she thought she could reach her husband. When she found she couldn’t get the magazine she wanted, she returned to her room. Greeley was probably there waiting for her.”

“You think Greeley was Spinney?”

“Yes.”

“Then who was her husband?”

“Greeley.”

“I don’t get you.

“Greeley created Spinney out of thin air to give himself a go-between.”

“Go ahead,” Tragg said.

“Now Greeley takes Mrs. Warfield down to his room. Naturally, he takes her baggage along. Remember he is her husband, and she is crazy about him.”

“You think he was waiting for her when she got back from the lobby?”

“Sure. Otherwise she would have at least washed up and used the soap and a towel. All right, now we have got Mrs. Warfield in Greeley’s room. He makes the mistake of trying to confess and ask her forgiveness. In place of that, he gets a bullet in his brain. Mrs. Warfield has been through too much to do any forgiving. She has been working to the limit of her endurance, and sending every cent she could possibly spare to a man whom she loved. When she finds out he has been deliberately milking her of money so she wouldn’t have enough carfare to come to the Coast and investigate...”

“All right, she shot him,” Tragg interrupted. “Then what?”

“She goes back to her room, prepares to make an escape. That’s when the woman found her.”

“Who was the woman?”

“Mrs. Greeley.”

“What?”

“Yes. It must have been.”

“And what did Mrs. Greeley want?”

“Mrs. Greeley was suspicious. She didn’t have proof — not then. She wanted to pump Mrs. Warfield.”

“What happened?”

“Mrs. Warfield recognized a marvelous opportunity to escape. She strung Mrs. Greeley along, stayed with her that night, and calmly walked out in the morning.”

“That’s a pretty fancy story.”

“It checks with the evidence. Mrs. Greeley is in love with Jules Homan. In Hollywood, they handle those things very nicely. The husband steps aside. There is a quiet divorce, and the parties marry. But Greeley wasn’t of the Hollywood crowd. He became suspicious and wanted to hook Homan for big damages for alienation of affections. Homan couldn’t stand that. It would hurt his business career.”

“How do you get all this?” Tragg asked.

Mason said, “Homan must have been driving that car Tuesday. Mrs. Greeley must have been with him on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. That’s the only way you can put the evidence together so it fits. They left Beverly Hills Tuesday, went to a mountain cabin which Homan owns in the mountains back of Fresno. You will probably find the third key on that ring fits the lock on that cabin. Those were Homan’s keys, an extra set he kept for his expeditions with Mrs. Greeley when he could get away — sometimes on the yacht, sometimes up to this mountain cabin.”

Tragg said, “I think it is cuckoo, but I shall hear the rest of it.”

“Tanner, the chauffeur, had been bribed by Greeley to act as his spy. Greeley was in San Francisco taking the identity of Spinney for the purpose of keeping Mrs. Warfield where he wanted her. He knew, of course, that it must be during his trips to San Francisco that Homan was taking advantage of his absence. Tanner telephoned Greeley in San Francisco twice. The first time, he told Greeley that Homan had taken the car and left. The second time that Homan hadn’t gone to the yacht, and, therefore, must be in the cabin back of Fresno. And at least once Greeley telephoned Tanner at Homan’s residence.”

“The calls charged to Homan’s phone?” Tragg asked.

Mason smiled. “That’s poetic justice.”

“Go ahead.”

“It was sometime late Tuesday night when Tanner definitely found out they were at Homan’s mountain cabin. Greeley took a plane to Fresno, hired a car, investigated, found Homan and his wife were there. He couldn’t steal Homan’s car without leaving his hired car for them to get away in. So he drove back, hired a car with a driver, got out on the highway somewhere within a mile or so of Homan’s mountain hide-out, took Homan’s car, so as to leave the lovers abandoned in their love nest.”

“Why didn’t he bust in on them and call for a showdown,” Tragg asked.

“For one reason, he wasn’t ready for a showdown. For another, they weren’t there.”

“I don’t get you.”

“They were back in town Wednesday afternoon. There is only one answer. They must have spotted him snooping around on his first visit, telephoned for a plane, and rushed back here. It is less than two hundred miles in an air line. I don’t know, mind you, but I shall bet twenty to one that there is some sort of landing field near that cabin. There has to be.”

“Why the hell didn’t they take Homan’s car? Why leave it and take a plane?”

“Time, for one thing. Then they knew Greeley had actually seen the car. The best way to establish an alibi was to rush back by plane, and report the car as stolen.”

“Why wasn’t Greeley ready for a showdown?”

“Because of Mrs. Warfield. He already had a wife. It would be rather embarrassing for him to sue for a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and then have some smart lawyer bring Mrs. Warfield into court. This way, he steals the car and thinks he is leaving them marooned in the mountains. Back in Los Angeles, he will abandon Homan’s car and go home. His wife won’t be there. She will show up after a while, very much alarmed, and with some plausible lie that he will certainly be able to disprove when the time comes. But as it turned out, it was he who did the hitchhiking.”

“He wanted Mrs. Warfield to get a divorce?” Tragg asked.

“At first,” Mason said. “Later on, I think he decided to kill her.”

Tragg snorted. “Next thing I know you will be trying to prove self-defense.”

“Well... let us say she beat him to the punch, if that is what you mean. Understand, Tragg, I am not a mind reader. I am only giving you a solution which fits the evidence. If you can punch any holes in it, go ahead.”

Tragg scratched his head and thought things over. Then he said suddenly, “But Mrs. Greeley talked with her husband in San Francisco.”

“No. After Greeley died, she said she did.”

“She talked with someone.”

“Sure. Part of her alibi. She telephones some friend from a pay station and arranges for the second station-to-station call. That way, she establishes the fact, by the telephone company records, she was in Los Angeles, and doesn’t have to drag her friend’s name into it.”

“How do you know all this?” Tragg asked.

Mason said, “I don’t, but it’s the only way the evidence fits together.”

Tragg pushed his hands down deep into his pockets, stood staring down at the tips of his shoes. “Anything else?”

“A lot of minor corroborating facts,” Mason said. “Greeley, of course, was having detectives keep an eye on Mrs. Warfield. When they reported she was coming to Los Angeles to take a job with a Mr. Drake, Greeley was waiting for her at the bus depot — keeping out of sight of course.”

“And he followed you folks to the hotel?”

“Yes.”

“And how about Mrs. Greeley?”

“She must have followed Greeley. Maybe she even saw the wire reporting Mrs. Warfield’s arrival. Remember, she was watching her husband like a hawk on those days because she suspected he knew of her affair.”

“How about that stained shirt?”

Mason smiled. “Now comes the touch of real comedy. You will remember, Homan and Mrs. Greeley rushed off to their love nest at night after Mrs. Greeley found her husband was going to be detained in San Francisco. Homan didn’t stop to change his dinner jacket, but just threw some other clothes in a bag. Now, when they were getting out of the cabin, they must have been in a panic, grabbing things right and left. In the confusion of packing, Homan’s stiff shirt got put in Mrs. Greeley’s bag. When Mrs. Greeley found that shirt, the logical place to hide it was in her husband’s laundry bag. She dropped it in there, intending to dispose of it later.

“After her husband’s death, she realized that I was working on the Warfield angle, and checking up pretty closely on Homan. She and Homan were both in a panic for fear I would bring out the evidence of their little affair. The best way to head all that off was to get Stephane Claire acquitted. One way to do that was to prove that Greeley had been driving the car. So she went to his laundry bag, grabbed the first stiff shirt she came to, smeared lipstick on it, and brought it to my office. Poor girl, it was a last desperate attempt. By that time her mind must have been going around in circles, or she would have remembered Homan’s shirt.”

“Why did you come here, Mason?” Tragg asked.

“To check on the identity of the woman who had registered immediately after Greeley.”

“But evidently you knew that already.”

“I surmised it.”

“Any idea where Mrs. Warfield is?”

“She might be on Homan’s yacht. Remember, his brother Horace wanted to use it, but Jules suddenly refused to let him.

Tragg studied him thoughtfully. “What is that stuff on the bed?”

“Some papers Mrs. Greeley brought — correspondence between her husband and Mrs. Warfield, stuff she found after his death.”

“Well, I guess... hello, what’s this?”

Tragg’s eyes had come to rest on the gun lying on the floor.

“Mrs. Greeley dropped it.”

“Dropped it?”

“Yes. She is hysterical and has an idea that someone is trying to kill her. I made her promise she would go to her doctor and get him to give her some sleeping stuff.”

Tragg picked up the gun. “A small caliber automatic.”

“Yes. It fits nicely in her bag. Do you want it?”

Tragg studied it for a moment, then dropped it into his hip pocket. “Mason, I congratulate you.”

“I haven’t done anything,” Mason said, “except put the evidence together.”

“That’s enough, isn’t it? It is a triumph for you.”

“I don’t want any of it, Tragg. You take the credit. All I want is to have Stephane Claire acquitted of that negligent homicide.”

Tragg’s face flushed. “Gosh, Mason, that is damned white.”

Mason said, “I am an amateur. You are the professional. You turn up the murderer. I shall get my client off.”

Tragg turned toward the telephone. “I will get headquarters and...”

“Wait a minute.”

“What’s the idea?” Tragg asked.

“There is no hurry.”

“The devil there isn’t! We have really got something on Mrs. Warfield now — if she is on Homan’s yacht...”

Mason broke in, “There are a couple of angles I want to check, and I have been hoping something would turn up here in the hotel. Let us go have a drink, Tragg, and check the evidence over carefully.”

Tragg’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the idea?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Mason said, “only before you talk to the...”

Tragg suddenly snatched up the telephone. “Get me through to headquarters,” he said. “Yes, police headquarters. This is Lieutenant Tragg. Rush that call!”

Mason said, “Don’t do that, Tragg.”

Tragg looked at him over the top of the telephone. “Damn you, Mason! You had me sold. The only thing that tipped me off was the way you tried to keep me from sticking my neck out just now... Hello, headquarters. This is Tragg. Get the dispatcher to throw out a dragnet for Mrs. Adler Greeley. We have her description and photograph... Yes, first-degree murder... Her husband and Ernest Tanner. And cover all drugstores in the vicinity of the Gateview Hotel, and see if a woman answering her description has tried to buy poison. Get that started at once. I will call back later with details.”

Tragg dropped the receiver into place. “You could have fooled me,” he said to Mason, “if you hadn’t been such a softie. You knew that if I called headquarters and gave them that line on Mrs. Warfield, it would sound like a logical solution. The newspaper boys would make me out a regular Sherlock Holmes and tomorrow morning when they found Mrs. Greeley’s body and her confession, I would be the laughing-stock of the town. I presume you told her to commit suicide.”

Mason sighed. “I only told her to see her doctor, Tragg.”