Silently, the officer took Mason’s fingerprints.
“You can get up and wash the ink off your hands now,” Tragg said.
Mason grinned. “No, thanks. Your witness might come popping in. Della, I think you have some cleaning tissues in your desk. You might bring them to me and I’ll wipe the ink off my hands with those. No need to get the washbowl all smeared with ink.”
Tragg said, “Try sitting there if you want to, but you can’t stay there forever. You’re going to have to leave this office sometime. I’ll have the witness watch you walk through the foyer. I’ll have him watch you at various places and if this fingerprint evidence comes out the way I think it’s going to I may have him watch you in a shadow box.”
Della Street handed Mason a box of cleaning tissue, and some cleansing cream. “Put the cream on your fingers, chief,” she said. “Rub it in. That will clean off the ink.”
“Thanks,” Mason said.
The officer handed Tragg the fingerprints. Tragg took a photograph from his pocket, compared the fingerprints one at a time, then suddenly gave an exclamation of satisfaction. He whipped a magnifying glass from his pocket and began examining the prints more closely, comparing one of them with the print on the photograph.
Suddenly he said, “Mason, that’s your fingerprint on that murder weapon!”
“Is it indeed?” Mason said.
“What have you to say to that?”
“Nothing.”
“Mason, I’m going to tell you officially that gun was used to murder Hartwell L. Pitkin. I can now establish definitely that gun has your fingerprint on it. Now, then, in the face of that evidence, what have you to say?”
“Nothing,” Mason told him. “I’m protecting the confidence of a client.”
“You can’t protect the confidence of a client to the extent of failing to explain your fingerprint on a murder weapon.”
“There seems to be a difference of opinion about that,” Mason said. “By the way, Della, Lieutenant Tragg didn’t ask about that second letter. Miss Barton didn’t tell him anything about that because she didn’t know anything about it. She wrote the first letter to me, but that second letter must have been written by someone else without her knowledge.”
“What letter are you referring to?” Tragg asked.
“Get that second letter, Della. The one that enclosed the key to the desk in her apartment.”
Della Street once more went to the files, brought out the second letter, and handed it to Lieutenant Tragg.
“This letter came by special messenger,” Mason explained.
Tragg read the letter, asked ominously, “There was a key in it?”
“Oh, yes,” Mason said, “a key to the desk.”
“Where is it?”
Mason said, “I have both keys right here, Lieutenant. Would you like them?”
Tragg took the keys which Mason handed across the desk, regarded them in frowning concentration.
“So you see,” Mason said, “I quite naturally felt that Miss Barton wanted me to get the evidence, but didn’t want to take the responsibility of being the one who gave it to me. So when she and Arthur Colson over there came to my office yesterday afternoon I took advantage of her presence here to slip down to her apartment and open the desk. Sure enough, the key fitted the desk and in the upper right-hand pigeonhole was a notebook and a gun. Now, Lieutenant, if you can find the person who wrote that second letter, you can go a long ways toward discovering the murderer of this man Pitkin, in the event your premise is correct and the man was murdered.”
Mason interrupted sharply, “Come, come, Lieutenant. Once more you’re getting your cart and your horse all mixed up. I didn’t enter the apartment without permission. Lucille Barton wrote that first letter and sent me the key. That certainly gave me permission to enter her apartment by using the key, which she had so conveniently placed at my disposal. But that second letter, that must have been a trap, Lieutenant. That...”
“You opened that desk,” Tragg said. “Was that gun in there?”
“I will go so far as to say this, Lieutenant — a gun was in there. Now you can see what that means. The desk was kept locked. Someone had a key to that desk, a duplicate key. Someone sent me that key. Now, quite obviously, Lieutenant, since Miss Barton was here at the office at that time, and the gun was there in the desk at that time, Miss Barton couldn’t have been carrying that gun. And if you didn’t find her fingerprints on the gun you can’t prove that she ever had it. But I really can’t tell you anything more, Lieutenant. I’ve given you some hints. In fact, I think I’ve stretched a point in giving you some hints.”
Lieutenant Tragg said suddenly to the officer, “Take Colson and this Barton woman out of here. He isn’t talking to me. He’s using me as a sounding board to tell these two what he wants them to say.”
The officer rose abruptly. “Come on,” he said to the others.
Mason said, “My advice to you, Miss Barton, under the circumstances, is to say absolutely nothing. In view of the hostile attitude of the police I suggest you refuse to answer any questions on the advice of counsel.”
“On the advice of counsel!” Tragg said. “Wait a minute. Are you going to represent her in this murder case?”
“Is she accused of murder?”
“She may be.”
“Well, as I pointed out to you,” Mason said, “when I went to call on her at her apartment yesterday, she retained me to act as her attorney.”
“For what?”
“That I can’t tell you.”
Tragg turned to Lucille Barton and said, “You didn’t tell me that.”
“You didn’t ask me specifically,” she answered evasively.
“Well, what was it you wanted him to do?”
“Tut, tut, Lucille,” Mason said, wagging a warning finger. “Not a word, remember now, not a word.”
She turned to Tragg. He face showed relief. “You heard what my lawyer just told me,” she said.
Tragg said to the officer, “Get them out of here,” and then chewed angrily on his cigar while the officer herded the pair out into the reception office.
Tragg scraped a match into flame on the sole of his shoe, lit his cigar once more, turned to Mason, said, “Mason, I don’t want to drag you into this unless I have to.”
“Thanks.”
“But the way you’re doing things, I’m afraid I’m going to have to.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“You know what it will look like in the newspaper — LAWYER’S fingerprint found on murder weapon.”
“You feel you should release that information to the newspapers?”
“I’ll have to.”
“Yes,” Mason said, “that certainly will make headlines.”
“Then there’ll be another headline, LAWYER REFUSES TO EXPLAIN.”
“Yes, I can see where that will make sensational newspaper reading.”
“Hang it, Mason,” Tragg said, “you and I are on opposite sides of the fence, but I don’t want to crucify you. I’m not certain that you were the one who was with her when Goshen looked across there at the garage. If you were with her, I think it was because she’d got hold of you and dragged you out there to show you something and you didn’t have any idea what it was. If you can explain that, for heaven’s sake go ahead and explain it.”
Mason said, “Let’s follow that thought a little farther, Lieutenant. Suppose that’s what did happen. Would that relieve me of responsibility?”
Tragg said, “I’m not prepared to give you a definite and final answer on that.”
“Well, give me an indefinite and temporary answer.”
Tragg said, “The time of death is particularly important. We can fix the time of death within an hour or so the way things are now, but if we’d been notified, say at six o’clock, we could have fixed the time of death almost to the minute. You had a duty to notify police.”