Horace Selkirk came strolling out from the rear portion of a huge patio to meet his guests. The patio contained a swimming pool, a barbecue grate, a picnic table and luxurious lounging furniture.
The patio had been ingeniously designed so that it could be opened to the sun or completely roofed over and glassed in, if desired. Wet splotches on the cement indicated the pool had been in recent use. Two inflated inner tubes floated on the water. A toy boat had drifted to one side of the pool. A floating rubber horse nodded solemnly in the pool, actuated by a faint breeze. Highball glasses were on the table, one partially filled. Ice cubes in the glasses had melted down to about half size.
“How do you do?” Selkirk said, somewhat coldly. “This is rather an unexpected visit.”
Mason said, “So it is.”
“Usually,” Selkirk said, “those desiring to consult with me telephone and ask for an appointment.”
“So I would assume,” Mason said.
Selkirk’s eyes were frosty. “It is a procedure I like to encourage.”
“Doubtless,” Mason said. “However, since you seem so well versed as to my movements, I thought perhaps it would be unnecessary.”
“I am not telepathic,” Selkirk said.
“You said that you relied on the services of private detectives.”
“I do.”
“If I were having you shadowed,” Mason told him, “I would know when you were coming to call on me.”
“You think I’m having you shadowed?” Selkirk asked.
“Someone is,” Mason said. “It was rather neatly done. I appreciate the technique.”
“What do you mean?”
“The manner in which the shadowing was done. A casual appearance from time to time of two different cars which would pass me, then turn a corner, appear once more behind me and then again pass me. And at times in the city I would notice that I was being shadowed by a car which must have been running on a course parallel to my own, some two blocks distant. That is, I believe, electronic shadowing which is made possible by means of a small device fastened somewhere to the underside of my car, which emanates a certain radionic signal that can be picked up and located by the shadowing car — I’ll have to have my car looked over by a mechanic, I suppose.”
Selkirk suddenly threw back his head and laughed. “It won’t do you any good, Mason. By the time you found one device, my men would have something else pinned on.”
“And,” Mason said, “I assume my car has been bugged so my conversations can be duly recorded?”
“No, no, not that,” Selkirk protested. “We’d get into difficulties with that and besides, I would want you and your very estimable secretary to be able to discuss business matters in private without feeling that I was eavesdropping. But do come in.
“It’s a little warm today but not really warm enough here in the patio where it’s really delightful, just shirtsleeve weather, and if Miss Street has no objection you might as well slip off your coat and be comfortable.”
“Thanks,” Mason said, removing his coat.
Selkirk led the way to a shaded corner where a breeze blowing up the hill was somehow funneled through steel latticework to cool a deeply shaded L-shaped nook. Light filtered in through heavy plate-glass windows which had been tinted a dark green.
“I took the liberty of having a couple of mint juleps prepared for you,” Selkirk said. “I was drinking one and I thought you and Miss Street would care to join me.”
He indicated a table on which there was a tray and two frosted glasses decorated with sprigs of mint.
“Perfect hospitality,” Mason said, as Della Street seated herself and picked up one of the glasses. “Next time you might telephone your guard that we’re coming so that the gates can be opened.”
Selkirk shook his head. “I trust my detectives, but not quite that far. I like to have visitors inspected before they arrive.”
Selkirk tilted his glass toward his visitors. “Regards,” he said.
Mason sipped the drink.
Selkirk raised his eyebrows inquiringly.
“Excellent,” Mason said.
“Thank you. Now what was the object of your visit?”
“Your grandson,” Mason said.
Selkirk’s body became instantly motionless; his face was a frozen mask. The man seemed to be holding his breath, yet without displaying even a flicker of changing expression. “What about Robert?”
“His mother,” Mason said, “seems to have arranged for him to be taken to Mexico City by a baby sitter named Grace Hallum.”
“Mexico City?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Apparently because sometime Friday night Robert fired a Colt .22 Woodsman in the general direction of a prowler — or someone who was moving around outside his tent, perhaps with the idea of taking Robert away while his mother and Barton Jennings were at the airport greeting Norda Allison.”
“Do you know this or do you surmise it?” Selkirk asked.
“I know it.”
“How do you know it?”
“That is something else,” Mason said. “I thought you would be interested in the information.”
“They’re in Mexico City?”
“No. I said that Robert’s mother had arranged for him to be taken to Mexico City. I don’t think they made it.”
“What do you think happened?” Selkirk asked, still holding his glass motionless halfway to his lips, his body tense, leaning slightly forward, his eyes cold, hard and watchful.
“Detectives?”
“I think so,” Mason said. “A porter remembers two men with that indefinable air of authority which sometimes characterizes police officers. They removed the baggage from the scales at the checking-in counter of American Airlines. Robert and Miss Hallum accompanied these two men.”
Selkirk digested the information for a moment, then settled back in his chair, raised the mint julep glass and took a long sip of the cooling contents.
“Why did you come to me?” he asked after a moment.
Mason said, “It is possible that your grandson is being subjected to suggestion and repetitious assertion of certain things which he is told must have happened while he was asleep. There is also, of course, the possibility that your son was planning to take Robert outside the jurisdiction of the California courts before new guardianship or custody proceedings could be instituted, and that Robert, hearing a prowler, pointed and discharged Barton Jennings’ .22-caliber automatic.
“In any event, there is persuasive evidence that the shot fired from the tent where Robert was sleeping found a human target.”
“What sort of persuasive evidence?” Selkirk asked.
“A blood trail which led from the vicinity of the tent to the curb where a car was parked. The blood trail was removed, at least in part, by a stream of water played on the grass and the sidewalk through a hose early yesterday morning.”
“Barton Jennings?”
Mason nodded.
Selkirk toyed with his glass for several seconds, his eyes hard with concentration, his face a mask.
“Just what do you expect me to do, Mason?”
“There are two things which can be done. You can do one. I can do the other.”
“What would you suggest that I do?”
“As the child’s grandfather, you might insist that the police detention is violating the law. You might allege that Grace Hallum was contributing to the delinquency of a minor in trying to lead your grandson to believe that he had fired the shot which had resulted in his father’s death. You might file a writ of habeas corpus stating that Grace Hallum, an entirely unauthorized person, has the child in custody. This would force Lorraine Jennings, the child’s mother, either to yield the point or to come out in the open and state that she had ordered the child removed from the jurisdiction of the court.”