The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink

Chapter 5

It was late afternoon when Paul Drake tapped out a code knock on the door of Mason’s private office.

Mason nodded to Della Street, who opened the door.

“Hi, Paul,” she said. “How’s the sleuth?”

“Fine. How’s tricks?”

Drake entered the office, placed one hip on the round of the arm of the overstuffed leather chair, balanced himself in a posture which indicated his intention of making this a flying visit.

“How busy are you, Perry? Got time to listen to something?”

Mason nodded.

Della Street indicated the pile of unsigned mail.

“Go ahead,” Mason said, “talk. And I’ll sign letters while you’re talking. Have you read these, Della?”

She nodded.

“All ready for my signature?”

Again she nodded.

Mason started signing letters.

Drake said, “There’s something screwy about this case, Perry.”

“Go ahead, Paul, what is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you know there’s something screwy?” Mason asked, his pen dashing off signatures as Della Street handed him one letter after another then blotted the signatures as Mason signed.

“The police are interested.”

“They should be.”

“Not from anything we know, Perry. It’s a deeper interest than that.”

“Go ahead. What seems to be the angle?”

“Well, in the first place, you gave us a pawn ticket on a Seattle hock shop.”

Mason nodded.

“Know what that was?”

Mason shook his head and said, “It was an eighteen-dollar item. That was the amount stamped on the back of the ticket, and I figured that eighteen dollars plus one per cent a month, plus...”

“I know,” Drake said. “You figured you couldn’t go wrong as far as value was concerned. Now I’ll tell you what the article was.”

“What was it?”

“A gun.”

“Any good?”

“Apparently so. A thirty-eight Smith and Wesson special.”

“You picked it up?” Mason asked.

Drake shook his head. “The police did.”

“What police?”

“The Seattle police.”

“How come? You had the pawn ticket, didn’t you? I wanted you to mail it to Seattle, and...”

Drake said, “When the police went to Alburg’s cafe last night, they naturally asked Alburg what he knew about the girl. Alburg told them he didn’t know a damned thing, that she’d applied for a job as waitress, that she needed money, that it was the first of the month, and...”

“I know,” Mason said. “He told me all that.”

“The officers looked around a bit and found this girl’s handbag had been picked up by the ambulance driver and taken to the hospital. Just as a matter of routine they made an inventory.”

“That was the traffic detail?”

“Yes — traffic accidents.”

“Go ahead.”

“They found lipstick, keys that don’t mean anything yet, a compact, and a ticket on a Seattle pawn shop.”

“Another one?”

“That’s right.”

“So what did they do then?”

“Sent a teletype to Seattle. The police went around to investigate. That pawn ticket was for a diamond ring. The pawnbroker remembered her. He said she’d hocked a gun at the same time. The police took a look at the gun. Then things began to happen.”

“What sort of things, Paul?”

“I can’t find out for sure, but it touched off a lot of activity down here. Police began to go places and do things. Alburg’s restaurant is crawling with detectives.”

“Where’s Morris Alburg?”

“Lots of people want to know,” Drake said.

Mason quit signing mail. “I’ll be damned,” he said.

Drake said, “Alburg could just be out on business.”

“What else, Paul?”

“Alburg never told the police anything about the fur coat, but one of the waitresses did. She told the police that Alburg had given the fur coat to you, and that your secretary had worn it out.”

“Observing brats, aren’t they?”

“Uh-huh,” Drake said. “And apparently there’s a certain amount of friction and jealousy on which I think we may be able to capitalize.”

“How come?”

“I think Alburg is giving you a bum steer.”

“Alburg is?” Mason asked. “Good Lord, Paul, I’m doing this for Alburg.”

Drake nodded.

Della Street blotted the last of the letters, took them out to the stenographic room to be folded and mailed, then returned and seated herself at her secretarial desk.

Drake said, “One of the waitresses is named Nolan, Mae Nolan. She just might have had an idea that Morris Alburg was noticing her a little bit.”

“Does he play around with his waitresses?”

“Apparently not,” Drake said. “And that may be part of the trouble. However, there are a lot of angles to be considered. There are certain tables that are choice, as far as tips are concerned, others that aren’t so good, and stuff of that sort.”

“It goes on a basis of seniority?”

“It goes on a basis of favoritism,” Drake said. “At least the girls seem to think so.”

“What about this Mae Nolan?”

“She’s in my office. I’ve just taken a statement from her. I thought perhaps you’d like to talk with her.”

“Sure thing,” Mason said. “If Morris Alburg is cutting any corners with me, we’ll show him where he gets off.”

“Well, you talk with this girl and then see what you think,” Drake said.

“All right, bring her in.”

Della Street said, “I can run down and get her, Paul, if you and the chief want to talk.”

“Not that,” Drake said. “But I’m sure lazy, Della. If you’ll do the leg work, it’ll help... She’s in my office. The girl at the telephone desk knows her. Just tell her to come on down here.”

“I’ll introduce myself?” Della Street asked. “That is, is there any reason why she shouldn’t know that...”

“None whatever,” Drake said, “not as far as I’m concerned.”

“Sure,” Mason said. “Go ahead, Della.”

“You have that Seattle pawn ticket?” Mason asked.

“Our Seattle correspondent has it,” Drake said. “They telephoned as soon as they’d contacted the pawn shop. He found the pawnbroker running around in circles, acting as though he’d been caught sucking eggs.”

“Wasn’t his nose clean?”

“It was supposed to have been, but something was bothering him. Under the circumstances my Seattle man didn’t tip his hand once he found out the police had the gun.”

Mason reached for a cigarette. “Want one, Paul?”

Drake shook his head. “Not now.”

Mason was just lighting up when they heard the sound of quick steps in the corridor, and Della Street, escorting a young woman into the office, said, “This is Mr. Mason, Miss Nolan.”

“How do you do, Mr. Mason.”

Mae Nolan was an artificial blonde, somewhere in her thirties. Her face was held in the lines of perpetual good nature, but the blue eyes above the smiling mouth were swift in their appraisal, and cold in their scrutiny.

“Sit down,” Mason invited.

“Thank you,” she said, with her best company manner.

Drake smiled indulgently and said, “No need to mince around any, Mae. Just tell Mr. Mason your story.”

She flashed him an angry glance, and said, “I wasn’t mincing around.”

Mason said, “I think you misunderstood Paul Drake, Miss Nolan. He merely was referring to the fact that you could get right down to brass tacks. He wasn’t referring to your manner, but pointing out there was no need for any verbal detours.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said, smiling at Mason, and batting her eyelashes. Then, swiftly turning to Paul Drake, said, “I’ve been nervous and upset today. What with one thing and another, I haven’t had a chance to get much sleep. We go on at six o’clock and work until twelve-thirty in the morning, right straight through.”

“Pretty tough job?” Mason asked.

“Sometimes.”

“The tables fill up pretty well?”

“Well, of course, it varies. On Saturday night we’re packed jammed. Then on Monday night there isn’t quite so much business. But, of course, every night during the rush hour everything is jammed. Then things taper off around ten o’clock except on Saturday night. Then there’s about an hour when things quiet down, but they start off again with a rush as soon as the theaters are out.”

“Certainly must be a job,” Della Street said sympathetically, “being on your feet all the time like that.”

“You don’t know the half of it, dearie,” Mae Nolan said, turning to Della Street. “You have a cinch in a job like this. Gosh, I— Oh, well, never mind. You folks aren’t interested in my troubles... It isn’t the work so much as it is the people who are unappreciative, the people who bawl you out for their own mistakes... A man will order roast beef and forget to tell you that he wants it rare. Then afterwards he’ll swear that he told you he didn’t want it unless it was real rare, and... Oh, what’s the use?”

“I thought you asked them how they wanted it when you took the order,” Della Street said.

Mae Nolan flashed her a cold glance. “I just used that as an illustration, dearie.”

“You were going to tell us something about Dixie Dayton,” Paul Drake said.

“Oh, was I?”

“I thought you were.”

“I don’t know whether I should go around shooting my mouth off. I don’t know what there is in it for me.”

“Probably nothing,” Mason said.

She studied him thoughtfully. “You come to the place every once in a while. I’ve waited on you.”

Mason nodded.

“And,” she said, “you’re a good tipper... Most of the time you sit in the stalls though, don’t you?”

“I like privacy,” Mason said. “When I eat I like to relax, and when I’m out in the main dining room I’m recognized occasionally...”

“Occasionally? You should hear what people say about you when you eat out there. I know how you feel. I don’t blame you... I don’t think I’ve waited on you over twice in all the time I’ve been there. I suppose one of these times I can get the privilege of waiting on the booths, if I stay there long enough. I’ll probably drop dead in my tracks before that waiter who’s in there now ever lets go.”

“As I remember it, you’re a very skillful waitress,” Mason said. “If I gave you a large tip, I can assure you it was because the service was more than satisfactory.”

“Well, thank you ever so much for those kind words. We don’t hear them too often. Like I was saying, when you’re out in front people crane their necks all over and there’s a lot of whispering. Then when I go to other tables to get the orders, people will beckon me to lean over closer, and say, ‘Isn’t that the famous Perry Mason over there at that other table?’ and I’ll nod, and then you know what they want to know, Mr. Mason?”

“What do they want to know?” Mason asked, winking at Paul Drake.

“They want to know who’s that woman with him.”

“And what do you tell them?” Mason asked.

“And then,” she said, “is when I draw myself up and tell them it’s none of their business.”

“You were going to tell us about Dixie,” Paul Drake interpolated.

“Oh, was I? I — that may be what you thought, but...”

Mason turned to Paul Drake and said, “You know, Paul, there’s something funny about that Dixie Dayton.”

“In what way?” Drake asked, catching Mason’s eye.

“Well, she somehow didn’t seem to fit in,” Mason said. “I don’t know just how to express it but I had the idea that perhaps Morris Alburg was giving her the breaks.”

“Well, that’s the way I understood it,” Drake said. “Of course, Mae, here, evidently doesn’t want to discuss it any more.”

“I think I’ve shot off my big mouth all that’s good for me,” Mae Nolan said.

Mason ignored her, and continued to Paul Drake: “Of course, I’ve known Alburg for quite a while, and if he was giving Dixie Dayton any favors you can be pretty certain that it was because she was in a position to earn them — I mean in a business way. I think by the time you check into her past history, you’ll find that she had waited tables in some of the real swanky spots over the country, and that Alburg knew that and...”

Mason was interrupted by a loud, brazen laugh from Mae Nolan.

The lawyer turned to her and raised inquiring eyebrows.

“What a hot detective you turned out to be,” she said, and then, raising her hand, made the gesture of one shooing a fly away from her face. “That girl a waitress? Phooey! Whatever she had on the ball that appealed to your friend, Morris Alburg, wasn’t anything she displayed during working hours. Not that girl.”

“Bad?” Mason asked.

“Bad? She stunk.”

“But I can’t understand it,” Mason said, his voice showing that he was puzzled. “Alburg is such a keen businessman.”

“ ‘Keen businessman’?” she repeated. “Where do you get that noise? He may be a keen businessman when it comes to running the kitchen and putting the prices on the menu so that he’s damned certain he won’t lose any money, but don’t kid yourself that he’s a businessman when it comes to handling waitresses. My Gawd, I’ve seen girls twist him right around their fingers, just absolutely right around their fingers.”

“Indeed?” Mason said.

“You can bet your bottom dollar. I’ve waited tables ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, Mr. Mason, and I’ve yet to find the man running a joint who couldn’t be handed a line of taffy by a good-looking, up-and-coming hustler.”

Mason made his voice sound all but incredulous. “Do you mean to tell me that Morris Alburg could be taken in by...”

“Could he? Say, I guess you don’t know Morris very well. And that Dixie girl was the girl that did a job on him, too.”

“A fast worker, eh?”

“Well, I don’t know how fast she was, but she certainly was thorough.”

“Apparently she’d known him before,” Drake said.

Mason slowly shook his head.

“What are you shaking your head about?” Mae Nolan demanded. “Why, Morris Alburg knew her... Say, you’re not talking to me! When she came walking into the joint Morris Alburg was having one of his spells of efficiency. He wanted ‘more this’ and ‘more that’ and ‘more the other,’ and then he looked up and saw that girl coming toward him, and his jaw fell open and his eyes bugged out like he was seeing a ghost.”

“What did he say?” Mason asked.

“He took a step or two back, and then his face broke into a smile, sort of a dubious smile, and he put out his hand and came forward, and that was when this Dixie pulled her first fast one.”

“What do you mean?”

“She spoke right up before he had a chance to say anything and she said, ‘Are you the proprietor here? Well, I understand you’re looking for a waitress, and I’m looking for a job.’ ”

“Then what happened?”

“Then Mr. Alburg sort of caught himself and straightened up and said, with dignity, ‘Well, if you’ll step into one of the booths there in back, I’ll talk with you in a few moments. Right now I’m busy giving instructions to my waitresses about how to handle the business. I’m expecting a heavy night tonight. Just step right in there and sit down.’ ”

“And she did?” Mason asked.

“Gave us girls one of those patronizing smiles and swept on past us to the booth at the farthest end of the line,” Mae Nolan said.

“Then what happened?”

“Then Mr. Alburg went into the booth and was in there for — oh, I guess ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Then what?”

“Then he came out and introduced Dixie to the rest of us girls and told us he was going to put her on as a waitress.”

“That was about a week ago?”

“Just a week ago, yes.”

“And then what?”

“Well,” Mae said, her manner thoughtfully judicial, “she had waited tables somewhere, but not very long, and it wasn’t a really high-class place. She wasn’t good at it. She made too many trips back to the kitchen, she didn’t space them so she could kill two birds with one stone, and she got terribly tired. And every time she did, Mr. Alburg would fix things so that people who came in went to the other tables.”

“Did she lose tips that way?”

“She lost tips and she got out of work, but, if you ask me, Mr. Alburg was making it up to her in some way because she’d flash him one of those grateful, gooey smiles whenever he’d steer customers over to the other tables and let her take it easy during the rush hour.”

“You other girls didn’t mind that?” Mason asked.

“Oh, we didn’t care. We’d have taken on the extra work for the extra tips, but what made us sore was the fact that when business was light and some person would come in who was a regular customer and was known as a good tipper, Mr. Alburg would steer him over to Dixie’s table. Now that isn’t right. If a man’s going to run a place that like, he should run it on a fair basis. If he wants to have friends, he can have them on the outside. We don’t care what he does, just so he’s fair to us girls in working hours.”

“You girls commented on this among yourselves?” Mason asked.

“Not so much. Morris doesn’t like for us to have those huddles. When he sees us talking together he manages to break it up, one way or another; puts us to work doing something. That way we keep pretty much to ourselves.”

“Then you haven’t talked this over with the other girls?”

“Not to speak of.”

“Then it may be your imagination.”

“What is?”

“What you’ve been telling me about his favoritism.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I guess I’ve been in this racket long enough to know when I’m getting a run-around and when I’m not.”

Mason took a wallet from his pocket, took out a crisp twenty-dollar bill and handed it to her. “I’m sorry,” he said, “that I haven’t been at your table lately, Miss Nolan. Perhaps you would accept this by way of an apology and in lieu of the tips I would have left if I had been there.”

“Say, now,” she said, “that’s what I call being real decent. You really are okay, Mr. Mason, and remember, any time you come in if you sit at my table you’ll get the best, and — well, you know you get the best any place, but — well, thank you.”

She folded the bill, pulled up her skirt without any pretense of modesty, and inserted the bill in the top of her stocking.

“Anything else?” Paul Drake asked.

Mae Nolan slowly pulled down her skirt. “Well, now,” she said, “this is a little different. It’s always a pleasure to do what I can for a couple of good sports... I suppose you know Mr. Alburg gave her that fur coat?”

“Alburg did?” Mason asked.

“That’s right.”

“He certainly didn’t let on to me that he had,” Mason said. “I can’t believe that he’d...”

“Well, he did all right. He went out and got it for her.”

“Where?”

“That’s what we’ve been asking ourselves, Mr. Mason. Some of the girls think he got it out of a closet in his apartment. He might have been keeping it for her.”

“But he’s the one who got it?”

“I’ll say. He went out and when he came back he had a bulky brown paper parcel under his arm. He took it into the kitchen. The next thing we knew, one of us went into the little girls’ room and here was this same brown paper all stuffed into the wastebasket...

“And Dixie Dayton cried all that afternoon. We couldn’t figure out why she was crying until we saw her flash this mink coat. And then we saw the moths had got into it.

“That’s just like Morris Alburg. He’d been keeping it for her, all wrapped up in paper. He never thought to put any moth balls in with it.

“My Gawd, that coat set somebody back a chunk of dough at one time. Personally, I don’t think Dixie was classy enough to promote it. I think it was stolen.”

“Well,” Paul Drake said, “I guess that’s a piece of news. Anything else?”

She thought for a minute or two, then said, “I guess that’s all. I’ve got to go. Thanks for the buggy ride.”

She gave them a dazzling smile, got up and stretched, smoothed her skirt over her hips.

Drake got up and held the door open. Mae Nolan flashed another glance at Perry Mason, smiled and batted her eyelids several times, then, with a slightly exaggerated hip motion, swept from the office only to turn suddenly and say, “Hey, wait a minute. You aren’t going to tell Mr. Alburg anything about this, are you?”

Mason shook his head.

“Thanks,” she said.

The door closed. Della Street picked up a newspaper and made fanning motions to clear the atmosphere of the perfume.

Mason cocked a quizzical eyebrow. “I didn’t notice it was as bad as that, Della.”

“You wouldn’t,” she said.

“No?”

“No. Not with those legs and the way she bats her eyes. Personally, I wouldn’t take the word of that little tramp for anything.”

“A lot of it could be imagination,” Mason said, “but not all of it. Let’s see if we can get Alburg on the phone, Della.”

“On the private line?”

Mason nodded.

“Ten to one you draw a blank,” Drake said.

Della Street went over to her desk, said to the girl at the switchboard, “Give me an outside line, Gertie,” and then, with swift, competent fingers, dialed the number of Alburg’s restaurant.

“I want to talk with Morris Alburg,” she said. “This is Mr. Mason’s office... What’s that?... When?... When do you expect him?... Well, ask him to call Mr. Mason as soon as he comes in, will you?”

She hung up and said to Mason, “He went out about two hours ago and hasn’t been back.”

“Anyone know where he is?”

“Apparently not. They said they didn’t know where we could reach him, but they’d have him call as soon as he came in.”

The interoffice phone on Della’s desk exploded into a series of three short, sharp rings.

Della Street turned to Perry Mason. “Lieutenant Tragg is on his way in. That’s a code signal I fixed up with Gertie—”

The door from the outer office pushed open. Lieutenant Tragg, in plain clothes, stood surveying the room. “Hello, folks,” he said. “Are you busy, Mason?”

“Heavens, no,” Mason said. “I just rent the office so I’ll have a place to work up a private handicap on the races. I used to try doing it down on the street corner, but the traffic noises tended to distract me, so I got this place up here.”

Tragg walked in, closed the door behind him, said, “Don’t feel so put out, Mason. I always give Gertie a chance to let you know I’m on the way, and hesitate long enough so you can hide anything you want to ditch, but it’s beneath the dignity of the law for me to wait in anybody’s outer office.”

“I know,” Mason said sympathetically. “The taxpayers’ money has to be conserved, even at the expense of the taxpayers’ time.”

“Exactly,” Tragg said, settling himself into a chair and tilting his hat back on his head.

He studied Mason thoughtfully, then said, “I might have known that if I started pulling any chestnuts out of the fire for you I’d get my fingers burnt.”

“Are they burnt?” Mason asked.

“Well, they’re feeling pretty hot. I hope I don’t raise a blister. I could have got them burnt off.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I. I came in to find out.”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”

Paul Drake got up, said, “Well, I’ll toddle along and see how the overhead is clicking in my office.”

“Don’t let me frighten you away, Drake.”

“Just away — not frightened,” Drake said, and flashing Mason a glance, eased out of the exit door.

Tragg drew a cigar from his pocket, clipped the end, looked at Mason shrewdly and lit up. “How’s business?”

“Too much business, not enough money.”

“I know,” Tragg sympathized. “Some days when you don’t make even a measly thousand dollars... What’s your tie-up with that Alburg case?”

Mason said, “I was in the restaurant when all the excitement took place. I eat there once in a while. Alburg asked me a few questions.”

“What questions?”

Mason smiled at Tragg and said, “I can’t remember, Lieutenant.”

Tragg inspected the end of the cigar to see that it was burning evenly, gave Mason a grin and said, “You know, Counselor, I like you.”

“Thanks.”

“That’s where the trouble comes in.”

“What trouble?”

“My trouble. There are those down in the department who don’t like you.”

“No?”

“No. They think you’re on the other side of the law.”

Mason said, “The law gives a man the right to have counsel and...”

“Save it,” Tragg said. “Someday a luncheon club may want you to make a speech and I’d hate to have you use up all your material.”

“I’m just rehearsing.”

“You don’t need rehearsal. You do all right when you ad lib. In fact sometimes you’re too good... What about the fur coat?”

“What fur coat?”

“The one Della wore out of the restaurant last night.”

Mason turned to Della Street with mock sternness. “Della, have you been shoplifting again?”

She nodded, contritely. “I can’t help it, Chief. It’s that awful impulse. Everything goes black, and when I come to, there I am standing on a corner in a fur coat with the price mark still on it, and I know that my amnesia has been playing tricks on me again.”

Tragg clucked and sadly shook his head. “Poor kid,” he said to Mason, “It’s something she really can’t control. It’s an occupational disease. It comes from working for you.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Della Street said quickly. “It’s hereditary. It came from my paternal grandfather’s side of the family — old Captain Street, the pirate. He used to take what he wanted whenever he could find a cutlass handy.”

“Why don’t you try going to a psychoanalyst?” Tragg asked.

“I did. He told me that my conscience was at war with my inherited impulses. And so whenever I wanted to take anything I blacked out so I wouldn’t know what I was doing. It was what he called a defense mechanism.”

“Offer any cure?” Tragg asked.

“He wanted me to lie on a couch and tell him about my early life.”

“It didn’t help?” Tragg asked.

“Not a bit.”

“Well,” Tragg said, “I’m going to give you a treatment of my own that may cure you, Della.”

“What is it?”

“I’m going to give you twenty minutes to get that fur coat in my possession.”

“Which fur coat?” Mason asked.

“The fur coat she wore out of Alburg’s restaurant last night.”

“Well, now, let’s see,” Mason said. “Was that the Hudson Bay rabbit, or the clipped beaver cat, Della?”

Lieutenant Tragg interrupted. “It was the ‘mink stole.’ ”

“A mink stole?” Mason asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Perhaps that is the wrong use of grammar,” Tragg said. “I should have said the ‘mink stolen.’ ”

Della Street glanced at Perry Mason.

“Stolen from whom?” Mason asked.

“That I can’t tell you, yet.”

“Come again when you can.”

“No, I want the coat, Mason.”

Mason lit a cigarette and settled back in his chair.

“You could get in bad over this thing,” Tragg told him.

Mason asked politely, “How was the elevator service coming up, Tragg?”

“Lousy.”

“It frequently is this time of night. The fellows who can clear up their desks early leave their secretaries to handle the last-minute rush of stuff, and start streaming out of the building and getting in their cars so they can beat the traffic rush going home.”

Tragg nodded.

“So that sometimes you have to wait awhile for an elevator. And yet, Tragg, people do put up with that inconvenience. They come all the way downtown and pay for a parking lot for their car. Then they put up with all the inconvenience of the elevators and come up here to see me just to ask me to protect their rights. You know, after a person has gone to all that trouble, I feel that I really should give him at least a run for his money.”

“Anybody ask you to protect her rights on the fur coat?”

“If I answered that question,” Mason said, “you’d probably ask me another.”

“I’d ask you two more.”

“I thought so.”

Tragg said, “So I’m going to tell you something.”

“Go right ahead.”

“Ever hear of Robert Claremont?”

Mason shook his head.

“Don’t remember reading about him?”

Again Mason made a gesture of negation.

“Bob Claremont,” Lieutenant Tragg said, almost musingly. “A pretty darned nice kid. I worked on that case. A fine, clean-cut, upstanding young chap who had always wanted to be on the force. That was his ideal. The war came along and put a crimp on his ambition for a while, and then he was discharged and used the schooling he had coming to study up a lot of stuff about police science so he’d be a better cop... Can you imagine that, Mason, a fellow going to school day after day, studying. So many people think of cops as being beetle-browed gorillas who go around smacking citizens on the head with night sticks, collecting payoff from the bookies...”

“And then retiring to ranches down in Texas,” Mason interrupted.

For a moment Tragg frowned. Then he said, with repressed anger in his voice, “That’s the hell of it, Mason. That’s what gives the decent cop a hard row to hoe, a few rotten apples in the barrel. Citizens don’t remember the story of the cop who gave his life trying to stop a hold-up. All they can remember is the cop who has the bad memory and can’t recall for the life of him the name of the bank in which he deposited the last hundred thousand dollars.”

“I was only kidding,” Mason said.

“I’m not kidding,” Tragg told him. “You have any idea what it means to be a cop, Mason? You’re off duty. You go to a market or a service station or a liquor store. The door opens. Three men stand there with sawed-off shotguns. It’s a stick-up.

“If you were a citizen you’d reach for the ceiling. Your friends would make a hero out of you because you didn’t faint. But you’re a cop. You reach for the ceiling and the hoodlums would frisk you and take your gun and badge. The angry citizens would swamp the department with letters of protest.

“So you go for your gun. You haven’t a chance in a million. You’re off duty. You’re at a disadvantage, but you have the tradition of the force on your shoulders. You take your one chance in a million. You go for your gun. You brace yourself against the bite of the slugs in your guts so you can squeeze the trigger a couple of times before you cash in.

“Then citizens make wisecracks about oil wells in Texas.”

“Okay,” Mason said. “There are cops and cops. You’re on the square, Tragg. I didn’t mean you when I talked about the millionaires. You told me to save my line for a luncheon-club speech when I tried to talk about the lawyers. I’ve let you talk about the cops. Now tell me about Claremont.”

“Bob became a rookie. He went ahead rapidly. Everybody liked him. He was alert, on the job every minute of the time, and if anyone had told him there was corruption anywhere on the force, he’d have smeared the guy. The force was his ideal. It represented the law, standing guard over the helpless.”

“What happened to him?” Mason said.

“No one knows exactly. Apparently he saw something about an automobile that made him suspicious. He must have stopped the car to question the driver. Why he would have done it, no one knows. He wasn’t on traffic, and he wouldn’t have stopped a car for a routine shakedown. There was definitely something about the car that aroused his suspicions.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“There must have been at least two men in the car, and perhaps more,” Tragg said, “because they undoubtedly surprised him and forced him to get into the car with them.”

“Why would they do that?” Mason asked.

Tragg shook his head.

“Go ahead,” Mason invited.

“As nearly as we can put things together,” Tragg said, “he was forced into the car. They made him lie down on the floor. They took his gun away from him, and then they drove about ten miles out of town. And then while he was still lying down on the floor of the car, they pushed the gun against his head — a contact wound. Ever see a contact wound, Mason?”

Mason raised his eyebrows.

Tragg said, “They’re not nice to look at. The gun is held right against the head. The bullet goes in and so do the gases from the gun. When the gases get inside the head, they keep on expanding.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said, “but don’t torture yourself, Lieutenant.”

“Hell, I can’t get over it,” Tragg said bitterly. “You should have talked with the guy’s wife, and his two kids, a couple of fine upstanding children who looked like their father with steady, honest blue eyes. The older one was old enough to know what had happened. The younger one wasn’t.”

“And the wife?” Della Street asked.

Tragg looked at her for a moment, then tightened his lips and said, “She knew what had happened, all right... A darned nice girl. She and Bob Claremont had been in love for years, but the war came along and he went overseas. You know what it means, praying for someone every night, looking for a letter from him in the mail, dreading the delivery of a telegram, hating to hear the phone ring... All right, she went through that, so did a lot of other people. That’s war. Her man came back to her. Lots of men didn’t come back.

“She was lucky that far. He came back on leave. They got married. He never did see his son until the war was over. The boy was over a year old then... Then Bob started studying, studying so he’d be a credit to the profession. He had an idea law enforcement was a career. Used to claim that the scientific investigator would be as important in the public eye as the lawyer or the doctor. Spent all of the money he could get hold of buying books on crime detection, criminology, legal medicine, and that sort of stuff.”

“You said it was a contact wound?” Mason said.

“One of them was. The others weren’t. It was the contact wound that caused death. Then they went on and emptied the gun into him just to make sure. Or else because one of the guys was trigger-happy and liked to hear the bullets thud.”

“Then what happened?” Mason asked.

“Then,” Tragg said, “they dumped him out.”

“Right where he was shot?” Mason asked.

“Nobody knows where he was shot,” Tragg said. “Apparently it was in a speeding car. They dumped him. They didn’t even bother to stop the car — just opened the door and let him hit the pavement and roll over and over like a sack of meal, leaving little splotches of blood every time he hit. The car kept on going.”

Tragg puffed thoughtfully at his cigar for a moment, then said, “We saved the bullets, of course... Now here’s a funny one. We’ve got a man in Ballistics who has been collecting a bank of specimen bullets. Every cop has to fire a bullet from his gun into a tube of cotton waste. The bullets are saved and filed.

“So we had test bullets from Bob Claremont’s gun. We compared them with the fatal bullets. They matched. Bob had been shot six times with his own gun.”

“Well?” Mason asked.

Tragg shook his head. “It couldn’t have happened that way. Bob Claremont wouldn’t have knuckled under and let them take his gun. That’s why I was telling you about cops, Mason. Even if there’s only one chance in a million, a cop has to take it. If there’s no chance at all, a cop goes out fighting — Bob Claremont’s kind of cop.

“They wouldn’t have found six shells to have shot at him from his own gun. He’d have fired a shot or two — if he’d stopped an auto to shake it down.”

“What about his gun?” Mason asked.

“It never showed up. That’s strange. Ordinarily they’d have tossed the gun out before they’d gone a hundred yards. Remember the gun was empty. It was an officer’s gun and it was hot.”

“You searched, of course?”

“Searched?” Tragg said. “We combed the sides of that road — every inch of it. Then we got mine detectors and looked around through the tangled weeds.”

“And found nothing?”

“Not a thing.”

“I presume,” Mason said, “you’re telling me the story for some particular reason?”

“For a particular reason,” Tragg said. “Bob Claremont was murdered September seventeenth — a year ago... Believe me, Mason, we turned everything upside down. We had one suspect.”

“Who?” Mason asked.

Tragg hesitated.

“Don’t tell me if you don’t want to,” Mason said. “I was just trying to get a picture of the case.”

“No, I’ll tell you,” Tragg said. “I’m putting all the cards on the table, because this may be awfully damn important, Mason. The suspect was a fellow by the name of Sedgwick. His name was Thomas E. Sedgwick, and he was making book. Claremont was on to him. Claremont was hoping to get the goods on him, and run him in. Claremont hadn’t learned all of the angles yet. That is, he knew them but he didn’t want to use them. He wouldn’t work through stoolies. He wanted to get evidence himself. He was working on Sedgwick at the time he was bumped off.

“We wanted to round Sedgwick up for questioning on the murder, not that we had anything specifically on him, but we knew that Claremont was working on him.”

“Go ahead.”

“And,” Tragg said, “we couldn’t find Sedgwick. He had vanished, disappeared, swallowed his tail, gone. We’d like very, very much to know where Thomas E. Sedgwick is.”

“You didn’t have anything else on him,” Mason asked, “only the fact that this officer had been working on Sedgwick...?”

“Sedgwick had a cigar counter,” Tragg said. “He was doing a pretty good business. He was doing a damned good business, when you put everything together. And the night Claremont was killed, Sedgwick left town. The next day there was a new chap in the cigar counter. Said that Sedgwick had sold out to him for a thousand dollars, and had a bill of sale to prove it. Said that he had been negotiating with Sedgwick for a purchase for a week or ten days, that at two o’clock in the morning Sedgwick had called him on the phone, told him that if he wanted to put up a thousand dollars in spot cash, the cigar business was for sale, lock, stock and barrel, lease, good will, cigars on hand, inventory, everything.

“The fellow jumped at the chance. Sedgwick wouldn’t take his personal check. He had to have cash. The guy finally raised the cash, and about four o’clock in the morning the deal was consummated. Sedgwick signed the bill of sale in front of witnesses, and that was the last anyone has ever seen of Thomas E. Sedgwick. Needless to say, the guy who bought the place sold cigars, that was all; just cigars. It was a good location. He sold cigars and he kept his nose clean. If he’d ever given us a chance to take him down to headquarters the boys would have worked him over. He never gave anybody the chance. We tried everything on him. We tried stoolies. We tried spotters. We tried everything we could think of. Hell, the guy was clean.”

“What happened to him?” Mason asked.

“He stuck around the place for about two months, then he sold it out to another guy who had a police record. That guy started making book and we flattened him so damn fast he never knew what hit him.”

“But no Sedgwick?”

“No Sedgwick.”

“I suppose this is leading up to something,” Mason said.

“Last night,” Tragg said, “there was this mix-up down at Alburg’s place. A waitress got terrified and ran out through the back alley. Someone threw a gun on her. She didn’t react the way the gunman probably expected she would act. She didn’t get in the car. She screamed and made a dash for the mouth of the alley.

“Sometimes things are funny that way. A man has a gun and it’s a symbol of power. The average person is deathly afraid of a gun. He looks down the big black hole and sees the wicked little bullets grouped around the cylinder, and his knees buckle... The more you know about guns the more you realize that it isn’t the gun that’s dangerous — it’s the man behind it. Some men can shoot a gun, some men can’t. A few men who pack rods couldn’t hit a man-sized target at a distance of fifteen feet, without stopping to take careful aim, and even then they might miss. Shooting a gun just by the feel of the weapon takes a little practice.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

“Whoever was driving that car hadn’t figured on the fact that the open door gave him a pretty narrow target. His first shot missed. He didn’t expect to have to shoot. When the waitress jumped forward she got out of the line of fire. The driver stepped on the throttle to speed up so he could get abreast of her. When he did that, the right-hand door jerked back shut. The fellow fired a second bullet, and, according to the story of witnesses, that bullet, which was fired just as the door was swinging closed, went through the right-hand door of the car.

“The girl screamed and gained the street. The bullets had missed her. A motorist knocked her down. The mouth of the alley was blocked by stalled traffic, by gawking pedestrians.

“The man in the car really knew his way around with an automobile. It isn’t an easy job to back an automobile at high speed. There wasn’t any room in the alley to turn around. The man was trapped. He had to get out of there fast. He could have abandoned the car and mingled with the pedestrians, but for some reason he didn’t dare to do that. He threw the car into reverse and went backing out of the alley just as fast as the reverse gear could propel the car backwards.”

“You found that out?” Mason asked.

“We found that out,” Tragg said. “A couple of witnesses saw the car backing up. They assumed that the driver was going to get out. The driver never got out. The car picked up speed. It went back in a straight line, without any wobbling or weaving. You know what that means, Mason. That means the man was an expert. The ordinary motorist doesn’t get to drive like that. A man who’s accustomed to running a squad car might do it, and a fellow who had been educated in the bootlegging or the dope-running business could do it. That’s part of their stock in trade, taking a car and whipping it around alleys and through traffic faster than other people can drive.”

“All right,” Mason said, “let’s come to the payoff.”

“The payoff,” Tragg said, “is that you asked me as a special favor to see that this woman was put in a private hospital. I did it. In a private hospital she had a better chance of walking out. She walked out. She took a powder, vanished.”

“Am I responsible for that?” Mason asked.

“I’m damned if I know,” Tragg said. “Wait until you get the punch line.”

“What’s the punch line?”

Tragg said, “Naturally, when she took a powder like that we became interested. It was a traffic department case. They went around to Morris Alburg’s place. They asked questions. Alburg didn’t seem to be trying to cover up particularly, but he certainly didn’t know much about this particular woman. He certainly was dumb.”

Mason nodded. “Go ahead.”

“However,” Tragg said, “the boys found the waitress’s purse. They looked in it. There was a pawn ticket on a Seattle pawn shop. The boys got in touch with the Seattle pawn shop detail and they went down and picked up the article that was on the ticket. It was a diamond ring, flanked with two small emeralds, a pretty good job. She’d got a hundred and a quarter on it. It was worth a thousand.”

“And?” Mason asked.

“And,” Tragg said, “naturally the boys got to asking questions, getting a description, finding out anything they could, and the pawnbroker remembered that there had been two transactions made at the same time. She’d pawned the diamond ring, and she’d pawned a gun.

“We didn’t have the pawn ticket for the gun so the Seattle police didn’t know about it, but the pawnbroker remembered it. He got the gun and the Seattle police telephoned a description down to us, just in case. They gave us the serial number.”

“And?” Mason asked.

“And,” Tragg said, “it was Bob Claremont’s gun — the gun that had been missing ever since the night someone jerked it out of Bob Claremont’s holster, held it against his head, pulled the trigger and snuffed out his life, then fired five more shots into his twitching body, and callously dumped him out of the car like a sack of meal.”

Tragg stopped talking. He looked at the end of his cigar, seemed surprised to find that it had gone out, took a match from his pocket, scraped it into flame on the sole of his shoe, rotated the cold cigar carefully while he nursed the end into flame, then dropped the match into an ashtray, settled back in the overstuffed leather chair and started smoking, apparently concentrating on his thoughts and the aroma of his cigar.

Mason and Della Street exchanged glances.

There was a thick, ominous silence in the office.

Mason pinched out his cigarette, started drumming slowly on the edge of his desk, using only the tips of fingers, making almost no sound.

Tragg kept on smoking.

“When did you find this out?” Mason asked, at length.

“About half an hour before I started up here.”

“Where were you during that half-hour?” Mason asked.

“Where the hell do you suppose? I was trying to find Alburg.”

“And where is Alburg?”

Tragg shrugged his shoulders, made a little gesture with spread palms and went on smoking.

“And just why are you telling me this?” Mason asked.

“For one thing,” Tragg said, “I like you. You’ve cut corners before. You’ve managed to get away with it because they were cases where you were in the right. If you’d been in the wrong you’d have been lashed to the mast. As it was, you wormed out. You’re smart. You’re damned smart. You’re logical, you’re a two-fisted fighter. You stick up for your clients... You’ve never been in a case before where an officer was killed in the line of duty. Take my advice and don’t get in one. Things happen in cases of that sort. You could get hurt. You will get hurt.”

Tragg ceased talking, went on smoking his cigar. Then he turned to Mason and said, “I want that fur coat.”

Mason gave that problem frowning consideration, while his fingertips once more drummed on the edge of the desk.

“Do I get it?” Tragg asked.

Mason, still drumming with his fingers, said, “Let me think it over for a minute.”

“Take your time,” Tragg said. “This isn’t tiddlywinks you’re playing.”

There was an interval of silence. Della Street’s apprehensive eyes were on Mason’s granite-hard face.

Abruptly Mason stopped drumming. “No question about it being the same girl?” he asked.

“Sure, there’s a question,” Tragg said. “There’s a question about everything. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk with Alburg again... But the girl who pawned that ring was the same girl who pawned Bob Claremont’s gun.”

Mason resumed drumming with his fingertips, then said abruptly, “The thing that I simply can’t understand, Tragg, is why the hell she would do anything like that. Whoever killed Claremont knew that gun was hot as a stove lid. That gun would put somebody right in the gas chamber. The lawyer doesn’t live who could get an acquittal in the case of the person who showed up with Claremont’s gun. Not if there is the faintest scintilla of other evidence to hang anything on.”

“Are you telling me?” Tragg said.

“How much did she get for the gun?”

“Eighteen dollars.”

“In good shape?”

“Just as perfect as the day Bob Claremont kissed his wife and kids good-by and put it in his holster for the last time.”

Mason said, “The murderer simply wouldn’t have been that dumb, Tragg.”

“The murderer was that dumb. I’ll tell you something else, Mason. It’s hard to get fingerprints from a gun. Don’t be kidded by what you read in stories. Ninety-five times out of a hundred you can’t find a fingerprint on a gun. But we found one on this. It had been out in the wet somewhere and someone had touched the rough inside of the frame with a wet finger. Then rust had formed on the lines of moisture.”

“And do you know whose fingerprint it is?” Mason asked.

“It’s the print of Thomas Sedgwick’s right index finger,” Tragg said.

Mason abruptly turned to Della Street. “What did you do with the fur coat, Della?”

“I took it to a safe place.”

“Where?”

“A fur storage place.”

“Where’s the receipt?”

“In my purse.”

“Give it to Lieutenant Tragg.”

Della Street opened her purse, took out a blue pasteboard ticket, handed it to Tragg.

Tragg got up, flicked ashes from his cigar and said, “Thanks.”

“Just a minute,” Mason said. “We want a receipt.”

“Write it out,” Tragg said to Della Street.

“Let me see the ticket, please.”

Tragg gave her the ticket. Della Street sent her fingers flying over the typewriter keyboard, whipped the paper out from the roller, and gave it to Tragg to sign.

Tragg twisted the cigar over to one corner of his mouth so the smoke wouldn’t get in his eyes as he bent over and scrawled his name on the sheet of paper.

Slowly, as though debating something with himself, he took a cellophane-covered photograph from his pocket. It was mounted on Bristol board and showed a young, ambitious face, a face with good features, keen eyes that held a humorous twinkle, a mouth that was firm without being coarse, cruel or hard, a good chin, straight nose, and a well-shaped forehead surmounted by wavy black hair.

“Good looking,” he said.

“I’ll say!” Della Street exclaimed. “Who is he?”

“He isn’t. He was. Look at the youthful purpose, the square-deal eyes... Hell, I’m getting too sentimental to be a cop.”

“Bob Claremont?” Mason asked.

“Bob Claremont,” Tragg said, and walked out.