Mason walked over to the telephone, picked up the receiver, said to the operator, “I want Lt. Tragg at—”
“Wait!” Mrs. Farrell screamed at him. “Wait! You’ve got to help me.”
Mason said into the mouthpiece of the telephone, “Never mind.” He dropped the phone into its cradle.
“All right,” she said. “All right! I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you the whole story. I’ve been frightened stiff ever since it happened. But I didn’t kill her. I didn’t! Please, please believe that I didn’t kill her.”
“Who did?” Mason asked.
“Gifford,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“He must have. He’s the only one. He thought she was selling out. I guess he must have followed me to the hotel. He knew I was there.”
“Go on,” Mason said. “You only have a minute or two. Get it off your chest. What happened?”
She said, “I wanted to give Mr. Conway the lists of stockholders who had sent in proxies. I wanted to do it under such circumstances that Gifford would think his little mistress had sold him out. She was at the Redfern Hotel. She had this room in 728. She was typing. You could hear her through the transom banging away on a portable typewriter like mad. I told you the truth about getting the used carbon paper.”
“Why did you do all this?” Mason asked. “Why did you rent that suite?”
“I didn’t want Jerry Conway to lose control of Texas Global.”
“Why?” Mason asked. “I would think your interests would have been elsewhere. I would think that your only hope of getting money out of your husband depended upon letting him get in the saddle by—”
“I had to look at it two ways,” she interrupted. “I’ve already told you. I felt that under Conway’s management my Texas Global stock would be valuable. I wasn’t so sure about Gifford’s management. I figured that by the time this tramp he was running around with got hers, and when the next tramp he would be running around with got hers, my stock would be worthless.”
“All right,” Mason said, “what did you do?”
She said, “I knew that my husband was playing around with Rose Calvert. I followed her to the hotel. She registered as Ruth Culver.”
Mason’s voice showed excitement. “Had she registered that way before?”
“Yes. In two hotels.”
“I want the names of those hotels,” Mason said.
“I can give you the names, the dates and the room numbers.
“While she was at those other hotels, my husband was bringing her data, and she was typing out lists of proxy holders on her portable typewriter. Then one day she left a copy of the list in her car. The car was parked, and the doors weren’t even locked. I realize now it was a trap. I didn’t know it at the time. I reached in and got this list. That, of course, was a completely phony list that they were hoping would lull Conway into a sense of security. I walked right into that trap.”
“Go on,” Mason said.
“I wanted Conway to have that list, but I didn’t want him to know where it came from. So I telephoned him, and disguised my voice. I told him to remember me by the name of Rosalind.”
“You told him a lot of things about being followed by detectives and goon squads?” Mason asked. “Why was that?”
“That was just to protect my identity and make him cautious.”
“Actually you didn’t know he was followed?”
“I didn’t think he was. This Gashouse Baker was entirely a figment of my imagination.”
“All right. Go ahead. What happened?”
“Well, I decided I’d do a little amateur detective work. I thought I’d get down to where I could follow Rose Calvert from her apartment. I wanted to know exactly what she was doing and where she was going.
“On the morning of the sixteenth, she went to the Red- fern Hotel and registered as Ruth Culver. She was given Room 728.
“Once or twice during the morning, I went up in the elevator and walked down the corridor. I could hear her pounding away like mad on her typewriter. She stopped once around twelve-thirty when Room Service brought her lunch.
“You see, I had all the advantage because I knew what she looked like, but she didn’t know me when she saw me. I was just a complete stranger as far as she was concerned. I had pictures of her in a Bikini bathing suit. I had pictures of her in the nude. I had followed my husband to her apartment. I knew all about her, and she knew nothing about me.
“What happened at the hotel?” Mason asked, looking at his watch impatiently.
“Well, about ten minutes to two, I guess it was, Rose came downstairs and went out. She tossed her key on the counter for the clerk to put away. The clerk was busy, and when he had his back turned, I just walked up and took the key to room 728. And then just after I’d picked it up and before I could turn away from the counter, the clerk turned around and came toward the counter and asked me if there was something I wanted. Then was when I had a brilliant inspiration. I told him that I was a secretary for Gerald Boswell, that Gerald Boswell had some work he wanted done, and had asked me to get a suite in his name. I told him that, since I didn’t have any baggage, I would pay the price of the suite and Mr. Boswell would move in sometime that evening. I asked him if he would give me two keys to the suite, so that I could get in and so I could give one to Mr. Boswell.
“The clerk didn’t think anything of it. I suppose he may have thought it was a date with a married woman sneaking away to meet her lover, but things like that don’t even cause a lifted eyebrow in that hotel — not from what I hear.”
“Go on,” Mason said. “Never mind the hotel. We want to know what you did.”
“Well, I told the clerk I wanted something not too low down and not too high up, something around the seventh floor. He said he had 729 vacant and I took that. I didn’t have any baggage so there was nothing to take up to the room. I took the key, and after a while I walked up and settled down to listen. My room was right across the corridor from 728.I left the door slightly open and sat there watching.
“About two-thirty Rose Calvert came back.”
“But you had her key?”
“Yes, but you know how those things are. Keys are always getting lost around a hotel. They have several keys for each room, and sometimes the clerk will put one in the wrong box, or a tenant will walk away with it, so they always have duplicates. I don’t suppose Rose had any trouble whatever getting a key to the room. She simply said she’d left hers at the desk, and the clerk dug one out for her.”
“Then what happened?’“
“Well, then she didn’t do any more typing, and I began to realize that probably the list I had was either obsolete or else a completely phony list they wanted to use as a red herring.”
“So what did you do?”
“So, I went down and telephoned Mr. Conway. I took the name of Rosalind, and gave him the old rigmarole.”
“You didn’t call from the room?”
“No, I didn’t even call from the hotel. I walked a couple of blocks to a phone booth and phoned from there.”
“Go ahead,” Mason said.
“Well, I went down and put in this telephone call, then I went shopping for a few things. Then I phoned again and went back to the room.”
“Then what?”
“Well, I started watching again.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Mason said. “Let’s fix this time schedule. You were in your room at two-thirty?”
“That’s right.”
“Rose Calvert was back in her room by that time?”
“Yes. That’s when she came in.”
“Then you went out to telephone Conway?”
“Yes, twice. In between I walked around a little while getting some fresh air and doing some shopping.”
“What time did you get back?”