“She became conscious, perhaps thirty minutes later, tried to orientate herself, found the overturned car, made her way out to the highway, and—”
“Gates open at that time?” Tragg asked.
“Gates open at that time,” Mason said. “She hitchhiked home. That’s her story.”
“You think it’s true?”
“It checks with my theory.”
“All right. What about this woman who was driving the car, the one your client took to the Ancordia Apartments?”
“I feel that woman must have known Beatrice Cornell more or less intimately.”
“Why?”
“She knew her name, she knew her address, and, in some way, she knew some of the models that Beatrice Cornell had listed. It must have been because of that knowledge that she knew Dawn Manning.”
Tragg thoughtfully puffed at his cigar.
“What have you done about locating this other woman — provided Dawn Manning is telling the truth?”
“Dawn Manning has to be telling the truth,” Mason said. “She doesn’t fit the description given by my client of the young woman he drove home — at least I don’t think she does.”
“And what have you done about locating the other woman?”
“Nothing yet. I’m thinking.”
“All right, let’s quit thinking and act.”
“What do you mean, let’s?”
“You and me,” Tragg said.
Mason thought that over for a moment.
“You know,” Tragg said, studying Mason over the tip of his cigar, “you’re acting as though you had some choice in the matter.”
“Perhaps I do,” Mason said.
“Maybe you don’t,” Tragg told him. “We’re taking over now. What you apparently don’t realize is the fact that I’m giving you an opportunity to come along as a passenger and take a look at the scenery.”
“Okay,” Mason told him, “let’s go.”
Tragg pushed back his chair, walked over to the telephone booth, dialed a number, talked for three or four minutes, then came back to join Perry Mason.
“All right,” he said, “you’re clean.”
“Thanks,” Mason said.
“What’s more,” Tragg said, “we’re not going to be trying to pick up Della Street. We are going to talk with George Ansley.”
“How does Ansley’s name enter into the picture?” Mason asked.
Tragg grinned. “When he put his coat over the barbed wire on that wall, part of the lining tore out. It was the part that had a tailor’s label in it. You couldn’t have asked for anything better. All we had to do was read the guy’s name and address, then match the torn lining with the lining that the tailor knew had been put into his coat.”
“Simple,” Mason said.
“All police work is simple when you come down to it. It’s just dogged perseverance.”
“Want to go see Beatrice Cornell?” Mason asked.
“Why?”
“Because she must have a clue somewhere in her list of clients. This woman, whoever it was, must know Beatrice Cornell pretty well and is probably a client.”
“Could be,” Tragg said. “We’re trying the simple ways first.”
“What’s that?”
“Combing all the taxi companies,” Tragg said. “After all, we’ve got the location, the Ancordia Apartments. We’ve got the time, probably a little before ten. The guy got in touch with you a few minutes past ten, and you went out there and did some running around before the gates closed. What time do you suppose you got there?”
“I would say that we must have arrived around ten minutes before eleven. We were there about that long before the gates closed, and, as I remember it, the gong sounded and the gates closed right at eleven o’clock.”
“Right,” Tragg said. “Okay, we’ve got the time. Police are searching taxi calls. There’s a phone booth in the lobby of the Ancordia Apartments. It’s almost a cinch this babe went inside, waited just long enough to see Ansley drive off, then stuck a dime in the telephone and called a cab.
“What do you say we go on down to my car? I’ve got a radio on it and I’ll get in touch with Communications. They’ll have the information for me by the time we’re ready to go.”
Mason said thoughtfully, “There’s a lot of advantage being a police officer.”
“And a hell of a disadvantage,” Tragg said. “Come on, let’s go.”
Chapter Seven
The loud-speaker on Lt. Tragg’s car crackled.
“Calling Car XX-Special. Calling Car XX-Special.”
Tragg picked up the mouthpiece, said, “Car XX-Special, Lt. Tragg.”
The voice replied, “Go to telephone booth and call Communications. Repeat, telephone booth, call Communications. Information party desired now available.”
“Will call,” Tragg said, and dropped the transmitter back on the hook.
He grinned at Mason and said, “That means they’ve located something. They don’t want it put out on the general communications system. They —
“Tragg glanced swiftly behind him and swung the car into a service station where a telephone booth was located at the back of the lot.
“Sit here and hold the fort, Perry,” he said. “If a call comes in for XX-Special, just pick up the receiver and state that Lt. Tragg is calling Communications on a telephone circuit and any message can be sent to him there.”
Tragg hurried into the phone booth, and Mason could see him talking, then taking notes.
Tragg hung up the phone, returned to the car, grinned at Mason. “All right, we have our party.”
“You’re sure it’s the one we want?” Mason asked.
“Hell, no!” Tragg said. “The way we work we’re not sure of anything. We just run down leads, that’s all. We run down a hundred leads and finally get the one we want. Sometimes the one we want is the second one we run down, sometimes it’s the one hundredth. Sometimes we run down a hundred leads and don’t get anything. This looks pretty live. A woman about thirty years old, height, five-feet-four, weight, 115 to 120, called for a taxi to go to the Ancordia Apartments last night. She gave the name of Miss Harper. We chased down the number of the cab, found that he took her to the Dormain Apartments in Mesa Vista, and that’s where we’re going now.”
“About a chance in a hundred?” Mason asked.
“Make it one in ten,” Tragg said. “But I have an idea it’ll pay off. Remember the police system is to cover leads. We ring doorbells. We cover a hundred different leads to find the one we want, but we have a hundred people we can put on the job if we have to. And don’t ever discount the efficiency of that system, Mason. It pays off. We may look pretty damned stupid when we’re running down one of the leads that takes us up a blind alley, but sooner or later we’ll get on the right trail.”
Tragg piloted the car through the city traffic with a deft sureness that marks the professional driver.
“You’re out in traffic a lot,” Mason said. “Have any accidents?”
“Hell, no!” Tragg told him. “The taxpayers don’t like to have their cars smashed up.”
“How do you avoid them?”
“By avoiding them.”
“How?”
“You keep alert. You watch the other guy. Accidents are caused by people being discourteous, paying too little attention to what they’re doing, and not watching the other guy.
“When I’ve got a car, I know damn well I’m not going to hit somebody. It’s the other man who’s going to hit me; therefore, the other man is the guy I watch. This is a cinch. But remember that we get leads we have to run down on bad nights, holidays, rush-hour traffic... And the really bad hours are around one to four o’clock in the morning. The man who’s had a few drinks and knows he’s had a few drinks is pretty apt to be driving cautiously. In fact, the traffic boys pick up a lot of those fellows because they’re driving too slowly and too cautiously.