“I see. Thank you, Mr. Mason. Good night.”
“Good night,” Mason said.
Eva Martell, turning impulsively, gave Mason her hand and a flash of gratitude from dark eyes. “Thank you,” she said in a low voice. “You’ve been so kind. Will we see you again?”
“Perhaps.”
“I thought perhaps you’d drop in and have a drink with us, and there might be some questions you’d want to ask some time in the future.”
“There won’t be a thing,” Adelle Winters said positively. “The case is all closed as far as Mr. Mason is concerned. Come on, Eva.”
A few minutes after they had left, Mason’s private phone rang. Since only Della Street and Paul Drake knew that number, Mason scooped up the receiver and said, “Yes, hello, Paul. What is it?”
“Something red-hot, Perry. And I mean it is red-hot.”
“Shoot.”
“Well, the police got those Interstate men on the carpet and gave them a pretty thorough grilling. They made the boys kick through with everything they had.”
“Naturally the police would do that,” Mason said. “What happened?”
“Well, the boys turned in their notes, giving a complete picture of what had been done with shadowing operations on the two women, telling exactly where they went, the license numbers of the cabs they took — all that kind of thing.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Mason asked.
“Well, it seems that at two-twenty this afternoon, very shortly after the two women got to that hotel where they went and waited, Adelle Winters went exploring. In a passageway she found a lot of garbage cans from the kitchen waiting to be picked up by the garbage man. She lifted the cover of one of the garbage cans and looked in. The man who was shadowing her made a note of what she had done, but didn’t pay much attention to it.”
“Okay, Paul, go ahead. What happened?”
“Well,” Drake said, “the police did pay some attention to it, as a matter of routine check-up; they thought she might have been ditching something. They rushed a couple of the boys down to the hotel. By that time the cans were pretty well filled with garbage, but the Interstate man was able to point out the one that Mrs. Winters had looked into. So the police spread out a canvas and dumped out the contents — and what do you think they found?”
“Well — what?”
“A .32-caliber revolver with one chamber fired,” Drake said.
Mason whistled.
“And,” Drake went on, “the bullets were of a certain old-fashioned obsolete type. Exactly the same as the bullet the autopsy surgeon has taken from the head of Robert Hines. Of course, they haven’t made tests in the ballistic department yet to make certain that the bullet was fired from that particular gun. But nine hundred and ninety-nine chances out of a thousand it was. That mean anything to you, Perry?”
“It means a hell of a lot to me. Della!” Mason shouted, turning from the phone, “sprint down the corridor. Try and get those women before they get to the elevator and bring them back. Wait a minute — Paul, you’re closer to the elevator — dash out and stop them. They’ve just left the office.”
“Right away,” Drake said, and slammed up the receiver.
Ten minutes later Drake was back in Mason’s office. “Missed them at the elevator, Perry. There’s only one cage running at this hour of night. By the time I managed to get it up to this floor they’d had time enough to make a getaway. I got out of the car and took a look around the block, but couldn’t see anyone answering the description of the pair you wanted. According to the elevator man, they must have had a head start of a minute and a half or two minutes, which is a lot of time in a situation of this sort.”
“Well, I know where they live,” Mason said, “and I can get them. But I’ve got to see them before the police do.”
Drake grinned. “And the police would like to see them before you do. Is she your client, Perry — the Winters woman?”
“I don’t think she is. I was retained to look out for Eva.”
“Of course,” Drake pointed out, “the girl could have a clean nose. The Winters woman could have been a lone wolf. By the way, Perry, Eva Martell told the police he’d had a wallet pretty well stacked with dough. It wasn’t there when the police searched.”
“He has a wallet all right. You say there was no money on the body?”
“Less than ten bucks.”
“Did Eva say she was with Adelle Winters all the time?”
“Every minute. That’s why the police let ‘em go. Their story seemed okay, and each of ‘em gave an alibi for the other.”
Mason said, “But Eva Martell wasn’t with her all the time — I know that much. She was talking with me on the telephone for a while, and... Gosh, Paul, I’d like to get hold of her and get her to change her statement and tell the truth. I suppose the old gal has a lot of influence over her — though even at that, you can’t see Eva standing by while her friend pumped the .32 bullet between Hines’s eyebrows. It must have been that when they left the apartment Mrs. Winters stayed on for a few minutes and then joined Eva Martell on the sidewalk; or perhaps after they had left the apartment Mrs. Winters thought of something she had forgotten and went back to get it. Then, later on, after they’d ‘found’ the corpse, Mrs. Winters could have told Eva it would simplify matters for her if Eva would swear they’d been together all the time. And Eva, thinking that of course there was no possible chance her friend had committed a murder, gave the police that story.”
“Well,” Drake said, “I’m sure sorry I couldn’t catch up with them. I cruised around the block. They must have had a cab.”
“It’s all right,” Mason said. “I’d like to have caught up with them, but I think I can reach them. What was that number Cora Felton left for us, Della? That’s where Eva will be going. Put through a call and... I’ll tell you what you do: get Cora Felton on the line.”
Della Street nodded, consulted the file cards that listed clients’ telephone numbers, and put through the call.
They waited an anxious ten seconds. Then Della shook her head. “No answer.”
Mason said, “Do we have the number of Adelle Winters’s place?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“There’s not one chance in a hundred that the police won’t be on the job there. They’ll nail her the minute she shows up. But see what you can do, Della.”
Della Street tried that number without success.
“All right. Try Cora Felton again.”
Again there was no answer.
“I guess there’s only one thing to do, Paul,” said Mason. “You and I will go down and wait at Cora Felton’s apartment. Della will stay here.
“Della, in case Eva Martell telephones, which she may do, get her out of circulation and notify me. In the meantime, I’ll have my car and be waiting at the girls’ apartment. If I can get her before the police do, I’ll see what can be done. Come on, Paul.”
Chapter 8
With Paul Drake sitting in silence beside him, Mason drove out to Cora Felton’s apartment house. He cruised slowly around the block, cautiously sizing up the situation. There were two cars parked within half a block of each other; and two men occupied each of the cars. One car was up the street from the apartment house entrance; the other was down the street. Both cars were so parked, however, that the men inside could watch the entrance They were husky, well-fed, broad-shouldered. Mason, sizing them up, dared not circle the block more than once.
“What do you make of it, Paul?” he asked.
“Nothing to it,” Drake said. “The cops have the place sewed up.”
“Of course, they don’t know Cora Felton.”