The Case of the Spurious Spinster

Chapter 5

Out in the corridor Mason, Della Street, and Susan Fisher walked slowly towards the elevator.

Midway to the elevator Sue Fisher said, “Mr. Mason, can’t we do something to find Carleton? He’s had that English governess of his take the boy and go somewhere.”

Mason said nothing until they had reached the elevator and the lawyer had punched the button. “The boy,” he said, “didn’t know what was in the shoe box, did he?”

“No, he just knew it was Daddy’s treasure.”

“And his daddy,” Mason said, “insists the treasure was a pair of dress shoes. So that isn’t going to help us very much... Even if we recover the shoe box full of money you can’t prove anything, because Endicott Campbell will swear that there was a pair of dress shoes in it when he let his son take the box. He can’t help it if you threw the dress shoes into the trash and filled the box full of hundred-dollar bills, the result of your embezzlement.”

Sue Fisher looked at him in dismay as the full significance of the situation dawned upon her. “Well,” she asked, “what can we do?”

“That,” Mason said, “will depend very largely upon certain developments in the situation and on what kind of woman Miss Corning is.”

“She looks to me like someone who would be hard to fool,” Susan Fisher said.

“In that case,” Mason pointed out, “Endicott Campbell is probably having a handful of problems right now.”

“So we wait for something to... to turn up?”

Mason gave her one of his warm smiles. “You do, Sue,” he said, “but we are going to take steps which will encourage things to turn up. There’s a saying in the newspaper business that a good reporter makes his own luck and I think we are going out to make some luck.”

“Where?”

“Oh, various places.”

“Mojave?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t be too surprised,” Mason said.

“Oh, Mr. Mason, can I go with you, please? Can I...?”

The lawyer shook his head. “We don’t want you to do anything which could even be remotely considered as flight or avoiding questioning. You go right to your apartment and stay there. Stay by the telephone. If anything out of the ordinary happens, telephone Paul Drake at once.”

The elevator cage slid into position and the door glided open.

Mason patted her shoulder. “Remember,” he said, “that we’re playing a game and we’ve got to play our cards just right... just — exactly — right.”