Mason said, “Go back to your office, Paul, and bring him down here.”
“Anything else?” Drake asked.
“Get men working,” Mason told him. “Get your reports together. Let’s find out all the facts we can, and let’s try to find some of them first.”
“How serious can this be?” Drake asked.
“Can what be?”
“Hamilton Burger accusing you of planting a bottle for him to find—”
“Damn serious,” Mason said. “I can protest my innocence until I’m black in the face but no one’s going to believe me. It would have been such a shrewd, ingenious trick that people won’t stop to look at the ethics of it. They’ll simply smile and say that I was caught manipulating evidence.
“However, I can get around that in some way. What I’m worrying about is what it’s going to do to Nadine Farr.”
Mason turned to Della Street. “Have any idea where Dr. Denair was going, Della?”
She shook her head. “I could call his office and find—”
“Don’t. His nurse is keeping company with a police detective. That’s probably how the story of the tape recording leaked out. Okay, Paul, get busy. Bring Cap’n Hugo down here.”
Drake got up, started for the door, paused with his hand on the knob and said, “You want lots of action on this, Perry?”
Mason nodded.
“I may have to pay out a little money for fast information — getting leads on—”
“Pay out anything you have to,” Mason said, “only get the information.”
After Paul Drake had left, Della Street glanced at Perry Mason. There was no concealing the worry in her eyes.
“What do you suppose happened?” she asked.
Mason shrugged his shoulders.
“Do you suppose Nadine got to thinking about that confession she had made, went and got some sugar substitute tablets, put them in a bottle with some shot and went out and threw them off the pier?”
“Why would she have done that?” Mason asked.
“Good heavens, why not? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred that would have been all there was to it.
“Gosh, Chief, just look at the facts. Nadine took a truth serum test. She probably thought she could control what she said. She couldn’t. She told everything about Mosher Higley’s death. Then we played that tape recording back to her. She said she wanted twenty-four hours to think things over. And whatever she was planning to do was something she wanted to do in private. Remember that she wouldn’t even let Dr. Denair drive her when she left here?
“What’s more logical than for her to take some of those sugar substitute tablets, put them in a bottle with some shot, throw the bottle off the end of the pier and then sit down to wait? She knew that sooner or later a search would be made.”
“She’d have to be diabolically clever to have thought all that up,” Mason said, his manner thoughtful.
“Well,” Della Street told him, “there are clever women, you know.”
“I know,” Mason said. “It might interest you to know that Mrs. Jackson Newburn, Mosher Higley’s niece, came in to warn me about Nadine Farr.”
“What did she think of Nadine?”
“Her appraisal agreed with yours.”
Before Della could say anything else, Drake’s code knock sounded on the door of the private office.
Della Street opened it and Paul Drake said, “Here’s Cap’n Hugo to talk with you, Perry, and if you’ll excuse me I’m on my way. I’ve got some hot stuff coming in over the wire. If there’s anything you want, get in touch with me and I’ll be right down.”
Chapter Nine
“So you’re Mason, the lawyer,” Cap’n Hugo said, shuffling forward and extending his right hand.
“That’s right,” Mason said, “and you’re Cap’n Hugo.”
“That’s me.”
Mason stood for a moment sizing the man up.
Cap’n Hugo would have been around six feet tall if he had stood straight, but an easygoing slouch had been crystallized by age so that now his head was thrust forward, his shoulders rounded. The man seemed abnormally thin except that the forward thrust of his spine had pushed his stomach out so that he seemed a little paunchy in the middle. His neck, arms, wrists and ankles were pipestem thin.
He had high cheekbones, a pointed jaw and a sloping forehead. The forward thrust of his neck held his face downward so that he had to look up when he wanted to meet a person’s eyes. He accomplished this by a little sideways, upward toss of the head and an elevation of his eyebrows. For the most part the man seemed intent on looking at the floor. From time to time he darted these elfin glances upward in what almost seemed a deliberately droll manner.
Mason said, “Sit down, Cap’n. Paul Drake told me you were an interesting character and I wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“Go right ahead,” Cap’n Hugo drawled. “They paid me ten dollars for just sittin’ down an’ talkin’. Easiest money I ever made in my life. What you want me to talk about?”
He eased his figure down into a chair, put his hands on his knees, flashed an upward glance at Mason, then relaxed so that Mason could see only the tip of the man’s nose, his bushy white eyebrows and the light glinting from the bald head.
“I understand the police are investigating the death of Mosher Higley,” Mason said.
This time the head came up with a jerk, the gray eyes flashed from under the bushy eyebrows.
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?” Cap’n Hugo demanded.
“That’s my understanding,” Mason said.
For a moment Cap’n Hugo held his head up, looking at Mason, then, as though the upthrust position caused him pain in his spine, he lowered his head again and said, “Hell, there ain’t nothin’ to investigate. Old Mosher Higley kicked the bucket just like all of us are goin’ to do some day. I understand some doc got Miss Nadine full of dope and she had a pipe dream. If the police are goin’ to investigate all dope dreams like that the real crooks couldn’t ask for nothin’ better. Cops’ll be too damn busy to work on real crime. Hell, they’ll be all worn out.”
“You were with him at the time he died?” Mason asked.
“Sure I was with him.”
“I mean in the room with him?”
“Nope, I was washin’ windows in the dinin’ room. Don’t ordinarily do it. Figure that’s a woman’s work. But those windows were pretty danged dirty and it’s hard to get women these days. We have a housekeeper so-called, comes in once a week, charges a dollar an hour — makes me mad every time I think of it.”
“Did you work by the hour?”
“Me?” Cap’n Hugo asked, flashing Mason another quick glance, then dropping his head again. “Hell no! I didn’t work by no hour. I worked by the job. Guess I prob’ly ain’t goin’ to have no more jobs now. Old Mosher cut me right off at the pockets. Don’t blame him none. But I been with old Mosher Higley so long I couldn’t work for nobody else anyway. He understood me and I understood him.”
“What’ll you do?” Mason asked.
“Old Mosher left me half salary for four months. Wouldn’t have done any good if he’d left me more. The estate can’t pay out. There ain’t half enough unless they strike oil on that Wyoming property. The niece’s husband who specializes in oil properties seems to think there’s oil up there, been pesterin’ Mosher for eighteen months tryin’ to get Mosher to sell. Mosher just told him nope, he hated to do business with relatives.”
Cap’n Hugo treated himself to a dry chuckle which shook his thin shoulders and caused his head to nod slightly.
“Was that the real reason?” Mason asked.
“Hell no,” Cap’n Hugo said. “Mosher figured he could make a better deal if he waited. He thought Jackson Newburn had his eye on it and I guess the boy did, all right. Can’t blame him for tryin’. But Mosher was too goldinged smart for him. Mosher wouldn’t let it go for what Newburn was willin’ to give.”