It was seven o’clock when Della Street made her report over the unlisted phone.
“I’m in a booth out here at the airport, Chief. I haven’t been able to get to first base with her.”
“Did you contact Drake’s man?” Mason asked.
“Yes, that is, he contacted me. Paul certainly described him all right. I was looking all around for an inconspicuous man and not being able to find him, and then something kept rubbing against me, and it was the elbow of the man standing next to me at the newsstand. I moved away and then suddenly I looked at him and knew that was the man.”
“And you picked out Grace Compton?” Mason asked.
“He did. She’d have fooled me.”
“What’s she done?” Mason asked.
“Well, she has on dark glasses, the biggest lensed, darkest dark glasses I’ve ever seen. Her hair is in strings. She’s wearing a maternity outfit with—”
“A maternity outfit!” Mason exclaimed.
“That’s right,” Della Street said. “With a little padding and the proper kind of an outfit a girl with a good figure can do wonders.”
“And you couldn’t get anywhere with her?”
“Nowhere,” Della Street said. “I’ve sobbed into my handkerchief. I’ve made every approach I could think of that wouldn’t be recognized as an approach. I’ve got precisely nowhere.”
“Anything else?” Mason asked.
“Yes. When she got slowly up and started for the rest-room, I made a point of beating her to it. I knew where she was heading so I was in there first. I found out one reason why she’s wearing those heavy dark glasses.
“That girl has had a beautiful beating. One eye is discolored so badly that the bruise would show below the edge of the dark glasses if she didn’t keep it covered. She stood in front of a mirror and put flesh-colored grease paint on her cheek. I could see then that her mouth is swollen and—”
“And you’re not getting anywhere?” Mason asked.
“Not with any build-up I can think of. No.”
Mason said, “Go out and contact Drake’s man, Della. Tell him that you’ll take over the watching job while he calls me. Have him call me on this phone. Give him the unlisted number. Tell him to call at once. You keep your eye on the subject while he’s doing it.”
“Okay, I’ll contact him right away, but I’d better not be seen talking to him. I’ll scribble a note and slip it to him.”
“That’s fine,” Mason said. “Be darn certain you’re not caught at it. Remember, that’s one bad thing about dark glasses. You can never tell where a person’s eyes are looking.”
“I’ll handle it all right,” she said, “and you can trust Drake’s man. He can brush past you and pick up a note without anyone having the least idea of what’s happened. He looks like a mild-mannered, shy, retiring, henpecked husband who’s out for the first time without his wife, and is afraid of his own shadow.”
“Okay,” Mason said. “Get on the job. Now, Della, after this man telephones me and comes back out of the phone booth, grab a cab and come on back to the office.”
“What a short-lived vacation!” she said. “I was thinking of a two-weeks’ stay in Acapulco.”
“You should have got her talking then. I can’t pay out my client’s money to have you sob your way down to Mexico unless you get results.”
“My sobbing left her as cold and hard as a cement sidewalk,” she said. “I should have tried a maternity outfit and the pregnancy approach. I can tell you one thing, Chief, that woman is scared stiff.”
“She should be,” Mason said. “Get Paul’s man to phone, Della.”
Some five minutes later Mason’s unlisted phone rang. The lawyer picked up the receiver, said, “Hello,” and a man’s voice talking in a low, drab monotone, said, “This is Drake’s man, Mr. Mason. You wanted me?”
“Yes. How did she work the disguise?”
“She came out of her apartment wearing a veil and heavy dark glasses. She got in a taxicab, went to the Siesta Arms Apartment House. She went inside. I couldn’t see where she went, but I managed to butt my car into the rear end of the waiting taxi, got out and apologized profusely, got the guy in conversation, gave him five dollars to cover any damage that might have been sustained, which of course was jake with him because there wasn’t any. He told me that he was waiting for a fare who had gone upstairs to pack up for her sister, that her sister was pregnant and was going to the airport to take a plane to San Francisco. This sister was to pick up the cab.”
“Okay, then what happened?” Mason asked.
“Well, I waited there at the apartment house, right back of the cab. This woman didn’t suspect a thing. When she came out, I would sure have been fooled if it wasn’t for her shoes. She was wearing alligator skin shoes when she went in, and despite all the maternity disguise, she was wearing those same shoes when she came out. I let the cab driver take off, and I loafed along way, way behind, because I was pretty sure where they were going.”
“They went to the airport?”
“That’s right.”
“And then what?”
“This woman got a tourist permit, bought a ticket to Acapulco, and checked the baggage. When she went down there she didn’t have any more idea when the next plane was leaving than I did. She just sat down to wait for the next plane to Mexico City.”
“She isn’t suspicious?”
“Not a bit.”
“Ride along on the same plane with her, just to make sure she doesn’t try to disguise her appearance again. You’ll be met in Mexico City by Paul Drake’s correspondents there. You can work with them and they’ll work with you. They know the ropes, speak the language, and have all the official pull they need. It will be better to handle it that way than for you to try and handle it alone.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Now get this,” Mason said. “This is important! You saw Paul Drake and me when we went up to call on Grace Compton?”
“You saw her when she came out?”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t come out and go anywhere between the time Drake and I left and the time she came out with the baggage and got the taxicab?”
“That’s right.”
“How much traffic was there in and out of that apartment building?”
“Quite a bit.”
Mason said, “Some man went in. I’d like very much to spot him.”
“Do you know what he looked like?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea as yet,” Mason said, “but I may have later. I’m wondering if you could recognize such a man if I dug him up. Could you?”
The expressionless voice, still in the same drab monotone, said, “Hell, no! I’m not a human adding machine. I was there to watch that blonde and see that she didn’t give us the slip. Nobody told me to—”
“That’s all right,” Mason interrupted. “I was just trying to find out. That’s all.”
“If you’d told me, then I might have—”
“No, no, it’s all right.”
“Okay, anything else?”
“That’s all,” Mason said. “Have a good time.”
For the first time there was expression in the man’s voice. “Don’t kid yourself, I won’t!” he said.
When Della Street returned to the office, she found Perry Mason pacing the floor.
“What’s the problem?” she asked.
Mason said, “I’ve got some cards. I’ve got to play them just right to be sure that each one of them takes a trick. I don’t want to play into the hands of the prosecution so they can put trumps on my aces.”
“Do they have that many trumps?” Della Sreet asked.
“In a criminal case,” Mason said, “the prosecution has all the trumps.”
Mason resumed his pacing of the floor, and had been pacing for some five minutes, when Drake’s code knock sounded on the panel of the exit door.
Mason nodded to Della Street.
She opened the door. Drake came in and said, “Well, you had the right hunch, Perry. The babe’s rent was up on the tenth. She told them there had been a change of plans because her sister expected to be confined in San Francisco and was having trouble. She said she had to leave for San Francisco almost immediately. She left money, for the cleaning charges and all that, and told the landlady how sorry she was.”
“Wait a minute,” Mason said. “Was this a face-to-face conversation or—?”
“No, she talked with the landlady on the telephone,” Drake answered.
Mason said, “Some fellow gave her a working over. I’d sure like to find out who it was.”
“Well,” Drake said, “I put my operatives on the job and they tied up the apartment. They gave the landlady a fifty-dollar deposit, told her they wanted to stay in there and get the feel of the place for a while. She said to stay as long as they wanted.
“So they went all over the place for fingerprints and lifted everything they could find. Then they cleaned the place off so that no one could tell lifts had been made.”
“How many lifts?” Mason asked.
Drake pulled an envelope out of his pocket. “They’re all on these cards,” he said. “Forty-eight of them.”
Mason shuffled through the cards. “How are they identified, Paul?”
“Numbered lightly in pencil on the back.”
“Pencil?”
“That’s right. We ink the pencil in afterwards before we go to court. But just in case there are two or three prints you wouldn’t want to use, you can change the numbers when they’re written in pencil. In that way, when you get to court, your numbers are all in consecutive order. Otherwise, you might get into court and have prints from one to eight inclusive, then a gap of three or four prints, and then another set of consecutive numbers. That would be an invitation to opposing counsel to demand the missing fingerprints and raise hell generally.”
“I see,” Mason said.
“Well, that’s it,” Drake told him. “We’ve got our deposit up on the apartment. It won’t be touched until the fifteenth. Now then, do you want the police to get a tip?”
“Not yet! Not yet!” Mason said.
“With that babe down in Acapulco, you may have trouble getting the evidence you want,” Drake said.
Mason grinned. “I already have it, Paul.”
Drake heaved himself up out of the chair. “Well, I hope you don’t get another brain storm along about midnight tonight. See you tomorrow, Perry.”
“Be seeing you,” Mason said.
Della Street looked at Mason in puzzled perplexity. “You’ve got the expression of the cat that has just found the open jar of whipping cream,” she said.
Mason said, “Go to the safe, Della. Get the fingerprints that Elsa Griffin got from that motel unit number twelve.”
Della Street brought in the envelopes.
“Two sets,” she said. “One of them the prints that were found to be those of Elsa Griffin, and the others are four that are prints of a stranger. These four are on numbered cards. The numbers are fourteen, sixteen, nine, and twelve respectively.”
Mason nodded, busied himself with the cards Drake had handed him.
“All right, Della, make a note,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Pencil number seven on Drake’s list is being given an inked number fourteen. Number three on Drake’s list given an inked number sixteen. Number nineteen on Drake’s list given a number nine. Number thirty on Drake’s list given the number twelve in ink. You got that?”
She nodded.
“All right,” Mason said. “Take these cards and write the numbers in order on them—fourteen, sixteen, nine, and twelve. I want it in a woman’s handwriting, and, while I wouldn’t think of asking you to commit forgery, I’d certainly like to have the numbers as near a match for the numbers on these other cards as we can possibly make it.”
“Why, Chief,” Della Street said, “that’s—Why those are the numbers of the significant lifted prints from unit twelve down there at the motel.”
“Exactly,” Mason said. “And as soon as you have these numbers copied on the cards, Della, you’ll remember to produce them whenever I ask for latent prints on cards fourteen, sixteen, nine, and twelve.”
“But, Chief, you can’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“Why that’s substituting evidence!”
“Evidence of what?”
“Why it’s evidence of the person who was in that cottage. It’s evidence that Mrs.—”
“Careful,” Mason said. “No names.”
“Well, it’s evidence that that person was actually in that unit.”
“How very interesting!” Mason said.
Della Street looked at him in startled consternation. “Chief, you can’t do that! Don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re just changing things all around. Why … Why—!”
“What am I doing?” Mason asked.
“Why you’re numbering those cards fourteen, sixteen, nine, and twelve and putting them in that envelope, and Elsa Griffin—Why she’ll take the numbers on those cards, compare them with her notes and say that print number fourteen came from the glass doorknob and … well, in place of the person who was in there being there, it will mean that this blonde was in there instead.”
Mason grinned. “And since the police have a whole flock of the blonde’s fingerprints they’d have the devil of a time saying they didn’t know who it was.”
“But,” Della Street protested, “then they would accuse Grace Compton of being the one who was in unit twelve when… when she wouldn’t have been there at all.”
“How do you know she wasn’t there?” Mason asked.
“Well, her fingerprints weren’t there.”
Mason merely smiled.
“Chief, isn’t … isn’t there a law against that?”
“A law against what?”
“Destroying evidence.”
“I haven’t destroyed anything,” Mason said.
“Well, switching things around. Isn’t it against the law to show a witness a false—?”
“What’s false about it?” Mason asked.
“It’s a substitution. It’s shuffling everything all around. It’s—”
“There’s nothing false about it,” Mason said. “Each print is a true and correct fingerprint. I haven’t altered the print any.”
“But you’ve altered the numbers on the cards.”
“Not at all,” Mason said. “Drake told us that he put temporary pencil numbers on the cards so that it would be possible to ink in the numbers that we wanted.”
Della Street said, “Well, you’re practicing a deception on Elsa Griffin.”
“I haven’t said anything to Elsa Griffin.”
“Well, you will if you show her these prints as being the ones that she took from that unit number twelve.”
“If I don’t tell her those were the prints that came from unit number twelve, I wouldn’t be practicing any deception. Furthermore, how the devil do we know that these prints are evidence?”
Della Street said, “Chief, please don’t! You’re getting way out on the end of a limb. In order to try and save Mrs. … well, you know who I mean if you don’t want me to mention names. In order to save her, you’re putting your neck in a noose and you’re … you’re planting evidence on that Compton girl.”
Mason grinned. “Come on, Della, quit worrying about it. I’m the one that’s taking the chances.”
“I’ll say you are.”
“Get your hat,” Mason told her. “I’ll buy you a good steak dinner and then you can go home and get some sleep.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Oh, I may as well go to bed myself. I think we’re going to give Hamilton Burger a headache.”
“But, Chief,” Della said, “it’s substituting evidence! Faking evidence! It’s putting a false label on evidence! It’s—”
“You forget,” Mason said, “that we still have the original prints which were given us by Elsa Griffin. They still have the original numbers which she put on them. We’ve taken other prints and given them other numbers. That’s our privilege. We can number those prints any way we want to. If by coincidence the numbers are the same, that’s no crime. Come on. You’re worrying too much.”