Seven o’clock found Paul Drake back in perry Mason’s office.
“What do you know about this Binney Denham, Perry?” the detective asked.
“What do you know about him?” Mason countered.
“Only what the police know. But it’s beginning to pile up into something.”
“Go on.”
“Well, he had the lock box in joint tenancy with Harry Elston. Elston went to the lock box, and now police can’t find him. That’s to have been expected. Police found where Binney Denham was living. It was a pretty swank apartment for one man who was supposedly living by himself.”
“Why do you say supposedly?”
“Police think it was rather a convivial arrangement.”
“What did they find?”
“Forty thousand dollars in cash neatly hidden under the carpet. Hundred dollar bills. A section of the carpet had been pulled up so many times that it was a dead giveaway. The floor underneath it was pretty well paved with hundred dollar bills.”
“Income tax?” Mason asked.
“They haven’t got at that yet. They’ll enlist the aid of the income-tax boys this morning.”
“Makes it nice,” Mason said.
“Doesn’t it,” Paul Drake observed.
“What else do you know?”
“Police are acting on the theory that Binney Denham may have been mixed up in a blackmail racket and that he may have been killed by a victim. The man and the girl who occupied those two units could have been a pushover for a blackmailer.
“The police can’t get a line on either one of them. They’re referring to the man as Mr. X and the girl as Miss Y. Suppose Mr. X is a fairly well-known, affluent businessman and Miss Y is a week-end attraction, or perhaps someone who is scheduled to supplant Mrs. X as soon as a Reno divorce can be arranged. Suppose everything was all very hush-hush, and suppose Binney Denham found out about it. Binney drops in to pay his respects and make a little cash collection and gets a bullet in the back.”
“Very interesting,” Mason said. “How would Binney Denham have found out about it?”
Drake said, “Binney Denham had forty thousand bucks underneath the carpet on the floor of his apartment. You don’t get donations like that in cash unless you have ways of finding out things.”
“Interesting!” Mason said.
“You want to keep your nose clean on this thing,” Drake warned.
“In what way?”
“You’re representing somebody. I haven’t asked you who it is, but I’m assuming that it could be Mr. X.”
Mason said, “Don’t waste your time assuming things, Paul.”
“Well, if you’re representing Mr. X,” Drake said, “let’s hope Mr. X didn’t leave a back trail. This is the sort of thing that could be loaded with dynamite.”
“I know,” Mason said. “How about some of this coffee, Paul?”
“I’ll try a little,” Drake said.
Della Street poured the detective a cup of coffee. Drake tasted it and made a face.
“What’s the matter?” Mason asked.
“Thermos coffee,” Drake said. “I’ll bet it was made around midnight.”
“You’re wrong,” Della Street said. “I had it renewed a little after three this morning.”
“Probably my stomach,” Drake said apologetically. “I’ve got fuzz on my tongue and the inside of my stomach feels like a jar of sour library paste. Comes from spending too many nights living on coffee, hamburgers and bicarbonate of soda.”
“Anybody hear the shot?” Mason asked.
“Too many,” Drake said. “Some people think there was a shot about eight-fifteen; some others at eight forty-five; some at nine-thirty. Police may be able to tell more about the time of death after the autopsy.
“The trouble is this Staylonger joint is on the main highway and there’s a little grade and a curve there right before you get to turn-in for the motel. Trucks slack up on the throttle when they come to this curve and grade, and quite a few of them backfire. People don’t pay much attention to sounds like that. There are too many of them.”
Drake finished the coffee. “I’m going down and get some ham and eggs. Want to go?”
Mason shook his head. “Sticking around a while, Paul.”
“Jeepers!” Drake said. “Mr. X must be a millionaire.”
“Just talking, or asking for information?” Mason asked.
“Just talking,” Drake said and heaved himself out of the chair.
Twenty minutes after he had left, Elsa Griffin tapped on the door of Mason’s private office, and when Della Street opened the door, slid into the room with a furtive air.
Mason said, “You look like the beautiful spy who has just vamped the gullible general out of the secret of our newest atomic weapon.”
“I did a job,” she said enthusiastically.
“Good!” Mason told her. “What happened?”
“When I got there everything had quieted down. There was a police car in the garage and apparently a couple of men were inside units fifteen and sixteen, probably going over everything for fingerprints.”
“What did you do?”
“I drove in to unit twelve, parked my car, went in and turned on the lights. I waited for a little while, just to see if anyone was going to show up. I didn’t want to be dusting the place for fingerprints in case they did.”
“What happened?”
“The manager came over and knocked on the door. He was sizing me up pretty much—I guess he thought perhaps I had a wild streak under my quiet exterior.”
“What did you do?”
“I put him right on that. I told him that I was a member of a sorority and that we’d been having a reunion, that I came up to town for that and we’d had a pretty late party, that I was going to have to grab a few hours’ shut-eye and be on my way in order to get back to my job.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Not about the murder. He said there’d been a little trouble, without saying what it was, and then he said that some woman had been in my motel and asked if it was all right, and I told him, ‘Heavens, yes,’ that she was one of the sorority members who was to meet me and I’d told her that if I wasn’t there to go in, make herself at home. I said I’d left the door unlocked purposely.”
“Did he get suspicious?”
“Not a bit. He said there’d been some trouble and he’d been trying to check back on anything that had happened that was out of the ordinary; that he’d remembered this woman and he’d just wondered if it was all right.”
“Tell you about what time it was?” Mason asked.
“Well, he didn’t know the hour exactly, but as nearly as I can figure she must have been in there while I was out chasing that blonde. I had to follow her for quite a ways before I dared to swing alongside.”
“And it was the blonde who was driving?”
“That’s right, it was Geraldine Corning.”
“What about fingerprints?” Mason asked.
She said, “I got a flock of them. I’m afraid most of them are mine, but some of them probably aren’t. I have twenty-five or so that are good enough to use. I’ve put numbers on each of the cards that have the lifted prints and then I have a master list in my notebook which tells where each number came from.”
“Clean up the place when you left?” Mason asked.
“I took a washrag, used soap and gave everything a complete scrubbing, then I made a good job by polishing it with a dry towel.”
Mason said, “You’d better leave your fingerprints on a card so I can have Drake’s men check these lifted prints and eliminate yours. Let’s hope that we’ve got some prints of that prowler. Do you have any idea who she might have been?”
“Not the least in the world. I just simply can’t understand it. I don’t know why in the world anyone should have been interested in the cabin I was occupying.”
“It may have been just a mistake,” Mason said.
“Mr. Mason, do you suppose that these … well, these blackmailers became suspicious when I showed up? Do you suppose they were keeping the place under surveillance? They’d know me if they saw me.”
Mason said, “I’m not making any suppositions until I get more evidence. Go down to Drake’s office, put your fingerprints on a card, leave the bunch of lifted fingerprints there, tell Paul Drake to have his experts sort out all of the latents that are yours and discard them, and bring any other fingerprints to me.”
“Then what do I do?”
Mason said, “It would be highly advisable for you to keep out of the office today.”
“Oh, but Mr. Bedford will need me. Today will be the day when—”
“Today will be the day when police are going to come to the office and start asking questions,” Mason said. “Don’t be too surprised if they should have the manager of The Staylonger Motel with them.”
“What would that be for?”
“To make an identification. It would complicate matters if he found you sitting at your secretarial desk and then identified you as the occupant of unit twelve.”
“I’ll say!” she exclaimed in dismay.
“Ring up Mr. Bedford. Explain matters to him,” Mason said. “Don’t tell him about having gone back to cabin twelve and taken the fingerprints. Just tell him that you’ve been up most of the night, that I think it would be highly inadvisable for you to go to the office. Tell Mr. Bedford that he’ll probably have official visitors before noon, that if they simply ask him questions about the traveler’s checks to tell them it’s a business transaction and he cares to make no comment. If they start checking up on him and it appears that they’re making an identification of him by his fingerprints as the man who drove that rented car or as the man who was in the motel, or if they have the manager of the motel along with them, who makes an identification, tell Mr. Bedford to keep absolutely mum.
“Have him put on a substitute secretary. Have her call my office and call the office of the Drake Detective Agency the minute anyone who seems to have any connections with the police calls at the office. Think you can do that?”
She looked for a moment in Mason’s eyes and said, “Mr. Mason, don’t misunderstand me. I’d do anything … anything in the world in order to insure the happiness or the safety of the man I’m working for.”
“I’m satisfied you would,” Mason said, “and that’s what makes it dangerous.”
“What do you mean?”
“In case he was being blackmailed,” Mason said, “it might occur to the police that your devotion to your boss would be such that you’d take steps to get rid of the blackmailer.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t have done anything like that!” she exclaimed hastily.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t,” Mason told her, “but we have the police to deal with, you know.”
“Mr. Mason,” she ventured, “don’t you think this Denham was killed by his partner? He mentioned a man, whom he called Delbert. This Delbert was the insistent one.”
“Could be,” Mason said.
“I’m almost certain it was.”
Mason looked at her in swift appraisal. “Why?”
“Well, you see, I’ve always had an interest in crime and detective work. I read a lot of these magazines that publish true crime stories. It was because of an ad in a magazine that I took my detective course by mail.”
Mason flashed a glance at Della Street. “Go on.”
“Well, it always seems that when a gang of crooks gets a big haul, they don’t like to divide. If there are three, and one of them gets killed, then the loot only has to be split two ways. If there are two, and one of the men gets killed, the survivor keeps it all.”
“Wait a minute,” Mason said. “You didn’t read that in the magazines that feature true crime stories.
“That gambit you’re talking about now is radio, motion pictures and television. Some of the fiction writers get ideas about a murderer cutting down the numbers who share in the loot. The comic strips play that idea up in a big way. Where did you read this story?” Mason asked. “In what magazine?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Come to think of it, I have the impression that this story I referred to was in a comic strip.
“You see, I like detective works. I read the crime magazines and see the crime movies—I suppose you can say I’m a crime fan.”
“The point is,” Mason said, “the authorities aren’t going to charge any accomplice. They’re going to charge Stewart Bedford. That is, I’m afraid they are.”
“I see. I was just thinking, Mr. Mason. If a smart lawyer should get on the job and plant some evidence that would point to Denham’s accomplice, Delbert, as the murderer, that would take the heat off Mr. Bedford, wouldn’t it?”
“Smart lawyers don’t plant evidence,” Mason said.
“Oh, I see. I guess I read too much about crime, but the subject simply fascinates me. Well, I’ll be getting along, Mr. Mason.”
“Do that,” Mason told her. “Go on home and make arrangements to be ill so that you can’t come to the office. Don’t forget to stop in at Paul Drake’s office and leave your fingerprints.”
“I won’t,” she promised.
When the door had closed Mason looked at Della Street. “That girl has ideas.”
“Doesn’t she!”
“And,” Mason went on, “if she should plant some evidence against this Delbert … well, if she has any ideas of planting evidence against anyone, she’d better be damned careful. A good police officer has a nose for planted evidence. He can smell it a mile.”
Della Street said, “The worst of it is that if she did try to plant evidence and the authorities found it had been planted, they’d naturally think you were the one who had planted it.”
“That’s a chance a lawyer always has to take,” Mason said. “Let’s go eat, Della.”
69