“What happened this morning?” Mason asked.
“Well, this man came again with some clothes for the boy. Right after the man left she went to the phone and called a taxicab. I heard her say she wanted to go to the airport.”
“The cab came?”
“That’s right.”
“And she left?”
“Yes, she and the boy.”
“How long ago?”
“Well, it must have been — oh I guess an hour and a half ago.”
“Did you have any idea where they were going?” Mason asked.
“The man said something about Mexico.”
Mason got up and gave his hand to Miss Adrian. “Thank you very much for your co-operation,” he said. “We’re just checking.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake, I’ll certainly say you’re checking, coming around to see a body on a Sunday morning. Can you tell me what it’s all about?”
“I’m sorry,” Mason said. “We just wanted to make sure that the boy had left.”
“Yes, he left all right, but can you tell me why all this mystery?”
Mason smiled and shook his head. “I’m terribly sorry, Miss Adrian, I hate to be a one-way street on these things, but you know how it is.”
She sniffed, “Well, I can’t say as I do. It seems to me that if I give you information, you should give me information.”
“I may be back after a while,” Mason said. “It may be a few hours or it may be a few days, but I’ll talk with you some more and by that time I may be able to give you a little more information.”
“Well, I’d certainly like to know what it’s all about,” she said. “It’s not that I’m curious, you understand. I like to lead my own life and let other people lead theirs, but what’s all this about a boy crying because he thinks he’s fired a gun that his daddy didn’t want him to, and all of that?”
“Oh, children do have nightmares,” Mason said.
“Yes,” she snapped. “Nightmares of shooting people and then they’re brought to a baby sitter at half-past-four on a Saturday morning and then a lawyer and a detective come and ask questions. Don’t think I’m foolish, Mr. Mason. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
Mason shook hands with her, held her hand for a long moment in his, patted the back of it with his left hand and said, “Now, don’t go making a mountain out of a molehill, Miss Adrian, and please don’t say anything to anybody else, at least for a while. I’d like to have the information all to myself for a day or so.”
“And then you’ll tell me what it’s all about?”
Mason lowered his voice and said, “Look, if you’ll be co-operative, I think I can promise you that you’ll have an opportunity to get on the witness stand and—”
“The witness stand!” she almost screamed in dismay.
“That’s right,” Mason said, “you’ll pose for newspaper photographs and your testimony may make quite a commotion. But that will only happen if you’re very, very careful not to say anything to anyone prior to the time of trial.”
“Good heavens, I don’t want to get on the witness stand.”
“Why not?”
“Standing up in front of all those people and telling how old I am.”
Mason shook his head, “You won’t have to tell how old you are, just say that you’re over thirty...” He paused to lean forward and look at her intently. “You are over thirty, aren’t you?”
Miss Adrian was suddenly coy.
“Well,” she said, “it’s all right if someone doesn’t ask me how much over thirty I am... it’s longer than I like to think of.”
“That’s all right,” Mason said, “the judge will protect you. You won’t have to tell anything about your age. Now, we’ve got to move on, Miss Adrian, but if you’ll just try to think over the events of the last day or so — just so someone doesn’t get you mixed up on cross-examination.”
“Cross-examination?”
“Of course,” Mason said casually, “all witnesses have to be cross-examined, but that’s nothing.”
“Well, I’d always heard it was quite an ordeal.”
“Not if you’re telling the truth.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“And not if you remember all the details and don’t get confused.”
“Well, I remember all the details, but I don’t know whether I’m going to get confused standing up there in front of a whole crowd of people like that.”
Mason smiled affably. “Just start planning on what you’re going to wear, Miss Adrian. I’m sure you’ll want to look your best. Sometimes the flashlight photographs they use in newspapers aren’t the most flattering photographs a person can have but... you’ll be all right.”
“Well, I’m glad you gave me some notice in advance,” she said, going over to the mirror, patting her hair and smoothing the wave around back of the ears. “I’ll tell the world some of those newspaper pictures are terrible!”
“Good-by,” Mason said. “Remember now, not a word of this to anyone.”
Mason let himself and the detective out in the corridor.
“Pay dirt,” Smithy said under his breath.
“Pay dirt,” Mason agreed. “Now we’ve got to phone Paul and get some operatives out at the airport in a rush.”
Chapter Eleven
From the nearest phone Mason called Paul Drake.
“Rush some men out to the airport, Paul. Look for Robert Selkirk, a boy of seven years of age, aristocratic in bearing. He’s accompanied by a woman named Grace Hallum, blonde, blue eyes, twenty-seven years old, with a good figure. She worked for a while as a model, married, collected some alimony and is living now partially on alimony and partially by supplementing her income by baby-sitting. They’ll probably have a couple of hours’ start on you and will have been on a plane for someplace outside of the jurisdiction of the local courts. Try Mexico City first, then try everything you can get. Cover all passenger lists, see if you can locate a woman, any woman, traveling with a seven-year-old boy.”
“There’ll be hundreds of them,” Drake said.
“Not with a departure time of the last two hours. My best guess is that reservations were first made over the telephone, then Barton Jennings took some cash and some of the kid’s clothes in a suitcase up to Grace Hallum’s apartment. He transferred the clothes there, came out with the empty suitcase.
“A taxicab went to the Cretonic Apartments and picked them up. See if you can locate the cab driver, find out what airline they were traveling on. Get busy.”
“Okay,” Drake promised. “You coming up here?”
“We’re on our way,” Mason told him.
The lawyer hung up the phone and he and Smithy drove back to the parking place at the office.
“I could tell by the way he was carrying that suitcase when he came out that there was something wrong,” Smith said. “That’s what it was, all right; the suitcase was empty when he came out.”
Mason nodded.
They entered the elevator.
“Your secretary just came in,” the operator told Mason.
“Stop at Paul’s office?” Mason asked.
“I don’t think so. I think she went on down the corridor to your office.”
“I’ll pick her up,” Mason said.
They stopped at Drake’s office. “Go on in,” Mason told Smith, “and tell Paul about what happened. I’ll see if Della Street has anything on her mind and then come back.”
Mason walked down to his office, latchkeyed the door, found Della Street standing in front of the mirror.
“Hello,” she said. “I just got here.”