Witherspoon said, “Yes,” in the voice of a man who doesn’t care particularly about having the subject of conversation changed.
“These heads are some that you’ve bagged?”
“Yes.”
“Some nice rifles there.”
“Yes.”
“I see you have some shotguns.”
“Yes.”
“And there are other shotguns, I take it, in those cases?”
“Yes.”
“Do some trapshooting occasionally?”
“Yes.”
“There are doves down here. You shoot those?”
“Well, not doves.”
“Do some duck hunting occasionally?”
“Quite frequently.”
“Good duck hunting around here?”
“Yes.”
“When you hit a duck in the air with the center part of the charge of shot, I presume it kills him instantly.”
For a moment, the glint of enthusiasm lighted Witherspoon’s eyes. “I’ll say it does! There’s nothing that gives you more satisfaction than to make a good clean kill. You take one of these twenty-gauge guns with a good heavy load, and when you hit the duck with the center of the string of shot, he never knows what struck him. One minute, he’s flying along, and the next minute, he’s crumpled — absolutely dead.”
“Falls down in the water quite frequently?” Mason asked.
“Yes.”
“And how do you get them off the bottom?” Mason asked. “Do you have some sort of a drag that you drag along the bottom?”
Witherspoon’s smile was exceedingly patronizing. “For a lawyer who is supposed to be so brilliant, Mr. Mason, you certainly are ignorant about things which are more or less common knowledge.”
Mason raised his eyebrows. “Indeed!”
“Ducks don’t sink. When they’re shot, they float on the surface of the water,” Witherspoon said.
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“Then, the fact that this duck was being overcome by gas wouldn’t make him sink,” Mason said. “That drowning condition which the officer referred to must have been something else.”
Witherspoon, realizing the trap into which he had been led, moved forward in his chair as though preparing to get to his feet. His face turned a dark shade of reddish-purple. “Dammit, Mason,” he said, “you...” He checked himself.
“Of course,” Mason went on suavely, “I was merely trying to point out to you the position in which you have placed yourself. Rather an embarrassing position, I should say. You identified a duck to the police. Doubtless, you’ve started the police on the trail of young Adams. Have you?”
“Well, I told them about the duck and told them Adams had had it last. Well, you can draw your own conclusions. Adams went up there, and he’s pretty apt to have been the person for whom Milter was fixing the hot buttered rum.”
Mason shook his head sadly. “Too bad you’ve turned the officers loose on Adams. They’re going to arrest him for murder on no evidence other than that of the duck. The officer has said that the duck was drowning. Poor little chap. He had doubtless become very much attached to Marvin Adams, and when Adams went away and left him in the fish bowl up there at Milter’s place, the duck decided to commit suicide by drowning. I suppose all the excitement incident to the discovery of Milter’s body made him change his mind. He decided that life was, after all, worth living. He...”
“Stop it!” Witherspoon yelled. “I don’t give a damn what my arrangement is with you. I’m not going to have you sit there and treat me as though I were — as though I were—”
Mason took a deep drag at his cigarette and announced, “That is a mere foretaste of what you’ve let yourself in for. A good attorney for the defense will rip you wide open in front of a jury. If there was something in the water to have made the duck drown, he’d have gone ahead and drowned. Evidently the duck changed its mind. The lawyer who tries this case is going to get you in rather a hot spot.”
“We don’t have lawyers like that down here,”Witherspoon said, with an ugly look, “and I have some position in the community. When I say that’s my duck, my word will be taken for it. There won’t be all of this cross-examination.”
“And when the officer says the duck was drowning, the lawyers down here won’t question that statement?”
“Well,” Witherspoon said, and hesitated, then added, “Well, the officer said the duck looked as though it were drowning.”
“But no local attorney will give you a cross-examination such as I have just outlined?”
“Definitely not.”
“Why?”
“In the first place, an attorney wouldn’t think of it, and in the second place, I wouldn’t stand for it.”
“But if young Adams is charged with crime,” Mason said, “he might not be defended by a local lawyer. He might be defended by a Los Angeles lawyer.”
“What Los Angeles lawyer would take the case of a young kid of that sort who has no money, no friends, no...”
Mason took the cigarette from his mouth, locked his eyes with those of Witherspoon, and said, “I would.”
It took three or four seconds for the full effect of Mason’s remark to soak into Witherspoon’s consciousness. “You would! But you are employed by me!”
“To solve the mystery of that old murder case. Nothing was said about any other case. Could I quote you, to your daughter, for instance, as saying you have any objections?”
Witherspoon smoked nervously. “I guess I have no objection, but... well, of course, you’ll understand that I can’t be placed in an undignified position. All this business about the identification of a duck.”
Mason got to this feet. “There’s just one way to avoid that.”
“How?”
“By not identifying the duck.”
“But I already have.”
Mason said, “Call up the police and tell them, now that you’ve thought it over, you realize one duck looks very much like another, that all you can say is this duck is similar in size, color, and appearance to one which you were advised Marvin Adams took with him when he left your ranch this evening.”
Witherspoon rubbed his fingers along the angle of his jaw while he considered that suggestion. “Hang it, Mason, it’s the same duck. You can quibble as much as you want to, but you know as well as I do it’s the same duck.”
Mason smiled down at his host. “Do you want to go over all that again?” he asked.
“Good Lord, no! We don’t get anywhere with that.”
“You’d better get in touch with the police, then, and change your mind about the identification on that duck.”
Witherspoon shook his head obstinately.
Mason regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “They told me you left here shortly after I did.”
“Yes. I chased you all the way into town, but couldn’t catch you.”
“You probably passed me on the road,” Mason said. “I had a flat tire.”
Witherspoon frowned as though trying to recall some event, then said, “I don’t remember having seen any car by the side of the road. I was going pretty fast.”
“A car went past me,” Mason said, “doing about eighty.”
“That must have been where I missed you.”
“Where did you go?” Mason asked.
“To town.”
“Looking for me?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s how you happened to go to Milter’s place?”
“Yes.”
“The only reason?”
“Yes.”
“You must have been in town about thirty minutes before you went there.”
“I doubt if it was that long.”
“You didn’t go there first?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Witherspoon hesitated perceptibly, then said, “I did drive past that address as soon as I got to town. I didn’t see your car parked there, so I cruised around town for a while looking for you. I thought I saw... someone I knew. I tried to find her... I doubt if it was as much as thirty minutes.”