Mason said, “Go to an all-night drugstore. Buy shaving things and toothbrush. You’ll have to get along without the clean shirt.”
“Surely you don’t think they’d spot me if I went to my apartment?”
“Why not?” Mason asked. “Someone set a trap for you. We don’t know when that someone intends to spring the trap. Perhaps he’d like to have you sit tight for four or five days before giving a tip-off to the police and having you picked up. By that time, your silence would have made it seem all the worse. On the other hand, perhaps he knows that I’m in the picture and has decided to tip off the police so they can pick you up before I’ll have a chance to find out what it’s all about and advise you what to do.”
“Well, you can’t do anything between now and nine o’clock tomorrow morning,” Conway said.
“The hell I can’t!” Mason told him. “I’m going to have a busy night. You go to an all-night drugstore, get what you want, then come back here and stay here.”
“Do I keep the gun?”
“You keep it!” Mason said. “And be damned sure that nothing happens to it!”
“Why? Oh yes, I see your point. If I should try to get rid of it, that would be playing right into their hands.”
“Right into their hands is right,” Mason said. “It would amount to an acknowledgment of guilt. I want you to tell your story, tell it in your way up to the time you left the hotel, got in your car and drove away.”
“I stop there?”
“You stop there,” Mason said. “Don’t tell them where you spent the night or anything about it. It’s none of their damned business. I told the police I’d have you at the D.A.’s office at nine o’clock in the morning, and you’re going to be there.”
“You know what this means?” Conway said. “Unless I can convince the police, it’s going to put me behind the eight ball. If the police should detain me or accuse me of having fired the fatal shot, you can realize what would happen at that stockholders’ meeting!”
“Sure!” Mason said. “Why do you suppose a trap was set for you in the first place?”
“Somehow,” Conway said, “I can’t believe that it was a trap.”
“You can’t believe it was a trap!” Mason exclaimed. “Hell’s bells! The thing sticks out like a sore thumb. Here was this girl in her undies pulling a gun on you, her hand shaking, and she walked toward you, kept walking toward you!”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?”
“Everything!” Mason said. “A girl half-nude getting a gun out of the desk would have been backing away from you and telling you to get out of the room. She didn’t tell you to get out of the room. She told you to put your hands up and she kept walking toward) you with the gun cocked and her hand shaking. You just had to take it away from her. She did everything but shove it in your hand.”
“You think it will turn out to be the murder weapon?”
“I know damned well it will be the murder weapon!” Mason said. “And you’ll probably find that the young woman who was murdered was someone who had this list of stockholders who had sent in their proxies.”
Conway thought that over for a moment. “Yes, that part of it was a trap, all right. It had to be a trap. Yet somehow, Mason, I have the distinct feeling that there was an element of sincerity about that woman who called herself Rosalind. I think if we can ever get to the bottom of it, we’ll find that — I wonder if that young woman who was killed was Rosalind.”
“Chances are about ten to one that she was. This girl told you that she was Rosalind’s roommate, and that was their suite. That suite has been stripped clean. There isn’t so much as a pair of stockings in the place, no clothes, no baggage, nothing.”
“But won’t that make it look all the more like a trap? Can’t we explain to the D.A. that I was framed?”
“Sure we can,” Mason said. “Then we can try to make it stick. A good deal depends on whether we can find something to back up your story. The way you tell it, it sounds fishy as hell!”
“But I’m telling the truth,” Conway said.
“I know,” Mason told him, “but the D.A. is going to be cold, hostile, and bitter. He won’t like it because you didn’t go to the police instead of consulting an attorney. What’s more, we don’t know yet how much of a trap you’ve walked into.”
“You think there’s more?”
“Sure, there’s more,” Mason said. “But there are some things about it I can’t figure.”
“Such as what?”
“If the idea had been to frame you for murder,” Mason told him, “they’d have gone about it in a different way. If the Farrell crowd had been willing to take a chance on a killing, it would have been easier for them to have killed you and let it go at that.
“The evidence seems to indicate that they’d been planting one kind of trap for you to walk into, and then something happened and they found themselves with a corpse on their hands. So then they worked fast and tried to switch things around so they had you on a murder rap. When they start moving fast like that, they can easily make mistakes. If they make just one mistake, we may be able to trip them.”
Conway said, “I know that I look like a fool in this thing, Mason, but hang it! I can’t get over feeling that this Rosalind was sincere, that she really had this information she wanted to give me, that she was in danger. She said herself that she might be killed if anyone thought she was going to turn over this information to me.”
“That makes sense,” Mason told him. “If she wasn’t tied up with Farrell in some way, she wouldn’t have had access to the information you wanted. If she was tied up with Farrell and was going to run out on him, almost anything could have happened.”
Suddenly Conway’s face lit up. He snapped his fingers.
“What?” Mason asked.
“I’m just getting an idea,” Conway said. “Why should I have to wait here like a sitting duck while they start sniping at me? Why couldn’t I double-cross them at this stage of the game?”
“How?” Mason asked.
“Let me think. I may have an idea.”
“Ideas are all right,” Mason told him, “but let’s be damned certain that you don’t do anything that backfires. So far you’ve had things done to you. Let’s keep it that way.”
Conway thought for a moment, then said, “Hang it, Mason! Farrell is mixed up in this thing. He had to be the one who killed that girl. He—”
“Now, wait a minute,” Mason said. “Don’t start trying to think out antidotes until we’re sure what the poison is and how much of a dose you’ve had.”
Conway was excited now. “I tell you I’m certain. This girl Rosalind was sincere. She was terrified. She told me herself that she was afraid she’d be killed if anyone knew... Farrell found out what she was doing and—”
“And you think Farrell killed her?”
“No,” Conway said, “but I think this Gashouse Baker, or some of his thugs did, and then Farrell got in a panic and tried to blame it on me.”
“That checks,” Mason said. “I’m willing to ride along with you on that, but so far it’s just an idea.”
“Farrell tried to trap me,” Conway said. “I—”
Abruptly he broke off.
“Well?” Mason asked.
“Let me think,” Conway told him.
“All right. Do your thinking,” Mason said, “but don’t start moving until you know where you are. In the meantime, ring up your secretary and tell her that I’m coming up to talk with her.”
“Shall I tell her anything about what happened?”