Hannah Bass blinked for a moment, then abruptly got up and without a word walked out into the corridor, pulling the door shut behind her.
Mason smiled reassuringly at Alice Colton. “You may take the child back now, Mrs. Colton, and thanks a lot. We certainly appreciate your co-operation. You may have aided the cause of justice.”
Chapter Ten
It was ten o’clock on Sunday morning when Mason’s unlisted telephone rang.
Mason picked up the receiver. “This is Perry.”
Paul Drake’s voice, sharp with urgency, came over the telephone. “I have something, Perry, that you’d better look into. I’m afraid my man pulled a boner, but there was nothing to tip him off.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I had tails put on the Jennings’ house the way you wanted. Barton Jennings went out this morning, visited an apartment house and then came back. My man tailed him both ways, but he’s a little uneasy about it.”
“Why?” Mason asked.
“Call it an investigator’s sixth sense, if you want,” Drake said, “but my man feels that Barton Jennings went out there on a specific errand and managed to accomplish that errand right under the nose of the operative.”
“Where’s your man now?”
“Up here.”
“You’re at the office?”
“Yes.”
“Hold him there,” Mason said. “I’m coming up.”
Mason telephoned the garage man in the apartment house to have his car ready for action. He took the elevator to the garage, jumped in his car, drove to the all but deserted parking lot in front of the office building, left his car and went to Drake’s office.
Drake’s operative was a small man whose silvery-gray eyes were thoughtfully watchful beneath bushy white eyebrows. He was small in stature, somewhere in his late fifties, and as keenly incisive as a sharp razor. He had, nevertheless, cultivated a habit of blending into the background as successfully as a chameleon.
Mason had a vague impression that this man’s name was Smith. He had met him on half a dozen different cases but had never heard him referred to by any other name than “Smithy.”
Paul Drake, tilted back in his chair with his heels up on the desk, smoking a contemplative cigarette, waved a greeting to Mason.
Smithy shook hands.
Mason sat down.
“You tell him, Smithy,” Drake said.
The operative said, “At eight o’clock this morning Barton Jennings left his house carrying a suitcase. He was moving with some difficulty. His leg was bothering him. He had a cane in one hand, the suitcase in the other. He got in his automobile and drove very slowly and casually down to a gas station. He had the car filled up with gas, the windshield washed, the tires checked, then he drove around the block and started back toward home.
“Just something about the way the fellow was driving the car made me feel he had something in mind that he intended to do, if he was certain he wasn’t wearing a tail. So I hung way, way back, just taking a chance.
“Then I saw him swing over to the side of the road a bit. I’ve had guys pull that trick on me before, so I turned down a side street, went for half a block and made a U turn.
“Sure enough, Jennings did just what I thought he was going to do. He made a complete U turn and came tearing back down the street going fast. I was where I could get a brief glimpse of the maneuver, so I came dawdling out of the side street at slow speed and crossed the intersection just ahead of him. That gave him a chance to pass me and it never occurred to him I was following him. After about eight or ten blocks at high speed he slowed down and then drove directly to this apartment house.
“He parked the car, took the suitcase, went in, and was there for about half an hour; then he came out and drove to his house. After he left the apartment house, he didn’t take any precautions to see that he was free of a tail. He had all the assurance of a man who had accomplished a mission and wasn’t worrying about anything any more. He had the same suitcase with him that he’d taken in.”
“He went home?” Mason asked.
“He went home, put his car in the garage, went in the house, and after a while came out and sat on the porch, ostensibly reading the Sunday papers, but actually looking around to see if anybody was keeping him under surveillance.
“When a subject does that, it’s a lot better to get off the job and have somebody else come on, so I beat it to a phone, telephoned Paul for a relief and told him I had something to report.”
“You have any idea what apartment the guy went to?” Mason asked.
“No.”
“What apartment house was it?”
“The Cretonic. It’s a small apartment house out on Wimberly. I don’t think there are over fifteen or twenty apartments in the place altogether. It’s a walk-up, two-story affair, moderately priced apartments — the kind that would appeal to persons in the low white-collar brackets.”
“Let’s go,” Mason said.
“I thought you’d want to take a look,” Smithy said. “Two cars?”
“One,” Mason said. “We’ll go in mine. You sit here on the job, Paul, and we may telephone for some help. Come on, Smithy, let’s go.”
Smithy and the lawyer took the elevator down to Mason’s car, drove out to the Cretonic apartments. Mason got out and looked the place over.
“Jennings needed a key,” Mason said, “to get in or else he pressed the bell of some apartment and they buzzed the door open.”
Smithy nodded.
“You don’t have any idea which?”
“No, Mr. Mason, I don’t. I just wasn’t close enough to see what he was doing, and I didn’t dare to get close enough. I can tell you one thing though, he was stooped over here at the side of the building. I could see his left elbow hanging pretty well down.”
“Well, that’s a clue,” Mason said. “Let’s look at the lower cards.”
Mason took his notebook, jotted down some names, said, “There’s half a dozen, but that’s still too many.”
“I’ll tell you what, Mr. Mason,” Smithy said, “if you’ll stand right here in the doorway and look down at the names on the directory and let your left arm stick out a little bit the way it would if you were leaning over and punching a button with your right thumb, I might be able to do a better job. I’ll go back to the same place where I had my car parked and in that way we may be able to narrow it down a little bit.”
“Go ahead,” Mason told him.
He waited until the detective was in the right position and then Mason stooped down and made a pretense of jabbing each one of the lower call buttons with his thumb.
When he had finished, Smithy came moving up and said, “I think it’s the lowest one on the left-hand side, Mr. Mason. Your elbow looked just about right then.”
Mason examined the card. It was oblong, but evidently from an engraved calling card, and said simply, Miss Grace Hallum.
“We’ll give it a try,” Mason said.
“Any idea what you’re going to tell her?”
“I’m not going to tell her anything,” Mason said. “She’s going to tell us.”
He pressed the button.
There was no answer.
Mason pressed the button two or three times more, then pressed the button marked Manager.
A moment later the outer lock buzzed open and Mason entered the small lobby. A door opened behind a counter in the corner of the lobby and an intelligent looking, well-kept woman in her early fifties stepped out to smile at the lawyer and the detective.
“Something for you gentlemen?” she asked.
“Vacancies?” Mason asked.
She smiled and shook her head.
“I understood that Grace Hallum’s apartment was to be vacant,” Mason said. “I tried to ring her but she doesn’t answer. Do you know anything about her?”