Mason asked, “Where can I get in touch with you, in case I need any more information?”
Adams took a card case from his pocket, withdrew a card, scribbled a number on it, and handed it to the lawyer.
“All right,” Mason said. “I’ll call you if I need you. I have to see about some baggage, so don’t wait for me. Go right ahead.”
Mason watched Marvin Adams walk rapidly down the runway which led to the underground crossing below the tracks.
The boy had gone but twenty or thirty steps when a quiet, unobtrusive individual who had been standing with his back against the wall, looking the passengers over, stepped out so as to block the way.
“Your name Adams?” he asked.
Marvin Adams, looking somewhat surprised, nodded.
The man flipped back the lapel of his coat far enough to show a badge. “The boys down at headquarters want to ask you a few questions,” he said. “It won’t take long.”
Mason marched on past with no sign of recognition as Adams, his eyes wide and startled, stared in astonishment at the detective from headquarters.
“You mean... they want to ask questions... of me?”
Mason didn’t hear the man’s answer.
Chapter 13
Della Street was waiting in Mason’s car outside the depot. The lawyer slid in behind the wheel.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Talk with the girl on the train?”
“Uh huh.”
“Get anything out of her?”
“More than she wanted to give — not as much as I wanted to get.”
“Was Marvin Adams on the train?”
“Uh huh.”
“I looked around to see if I could spot any plain-clothes men hanging around,” Della Street said.
Mason deftly spun the steering wheel, guiding the car out of the parking place. He flashed her an amused, sidelong glance. “Did you?” he asked.
“No.”
“What made you think you could?”
“Spot a plain-clothes man?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t they — well, aren’t they sort of typical?”
“Only in fiction,” Mason said. “Your real high-class detective is altogether too intelligent to look like a detective.”
“Was one of them there?”
“Uh huh.”
“Did he arrest the blonde from the detective agency?”
“No,” Mason said. “He arrested Marvin Adams.”
She looked at him as though she might be seeing his face for the first time. “They arrested Marvin Adams!”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t...”
“Didn’t what?” Mason asked as she paused, groping for words.
“Didn’t stay to help him out?”
“How could I help him out?”
“By telling him not to talk.”
Mason shook his head.
“I thought that was one of the reasons you were so anxious to get on the train.”
“It was.”
“Come on, loosen up, stingy,” she chided. “Don’t be like that!”
Mason said, “As it happens, the best thing he can do is to go ahead and tell his story in his own way. Just so he leaves out one particular thing, and I’ve already arranged for that.”
“What’s that thing?” Della Street asked.
Mason took the letter from his pocket, and handed it to her. She read it while Mason was guiding the car through the early morning city traffic.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“Nine hundred and ninety-nine chances out of a thousand, it means Gridley P. Lahey is a purely fictitious individual. The telephone number will probably be that of some large department store or some factory which employs several hundred or more workers.”
“Then it means that...”
“That the murder was premeditated,” Mason said, “that it was worked out to a split second in its timing. Whoever did it planned things deliberately so that Marvin Adams would take the rap.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Lots of things. Among others, it means that the search for the murderer can be narrowed into a very small circle.”
“How?”
“In the first place,” Mason said, “Marvin Adams was picked for a particular reason. That reason is that the person who picked him knew something Marvin doesn’t know himself.”
“You mean about his past?”
“That’s right. That person must have known about Marvin’s father, must have known that Milter had been working on the case.”
“Anything else?” she asked.
“Yes. It means the person knew about the experiment of the drowning duck.”
“What else?”
Mason said, “This is something that puzzles me. He knew somehow that the duck that was left in Milter’s apartment was going to be identified. Now, how did he know that?”
“He must have known that Witherspoon was going in to El Templo.”
“Witherspoon himself apparently didn’t know that until after I’d started. It was something he did on impulse unless...”
“Unless what?” she asked.
Mason’s lips tightened. “Unless the whole thing was deliberately planned in just that way by the one man who knew that the duck could and would be identified.”
“You mean — that it was—”
“John L. Witherspoon,” Mason finished for her.
“But, Chief, that’s preposterous.”
Mason said, “It might not be preposterous. He might have laid his plans to get Adams in a spot. He may have wanted to make Adams think he’d committed a murder.”
“But not an actual murder?”
“Perhaps not.”
“Then something must have miscarried about this man’s plans.”
“That’s right.”
“Where would that leave this man — in case he had made a mistake?”
“Right on the spot,” Mason said. “Legally, he might be able to show it wasn’t first-degree murder. It might be manslaughter. But he might have a hard time proving his point to a jury.”
Della Street’s voice was vibrant with feeling. “Well, why keep beating around the bush? Why not call a spade a Witherspoon?”
“Because of the laws about slander and libel. We won’t say anything until we can prove it.”
“When will that be?”
He said, “I don’t know. Perhaps we’ll sit tight, and let the district attorney at El Templo say it.”
They were silent for the rest of the trip to the office. Mason swung the car into the parking lot across the street from his office building. They crossed over, and Mason asked the elevator starter, “Is Paul Drake in his office?”
“Yes, he came in half an hour ago.”
They rode up in the elevator. Mason paused to poke his head into Drake’s office, said to the girl at the switchboard, “Tell Paul I’m on the job. Ask him to drop in and see me as soon as he gets a chance.”
Mason and Della Street walked down to the lawyer’s private office. Della Street was still opening mail when Drake’s steps sounded outside the door. His knuckles tapped a distinctive code knock.
Mason let him in.
Drake walked across to the big overstuffed leather chair and squirmed around in it so that he was sitting sideways, his legs drooped over the arm of the chair.
“Well, Perry, you called the turn on that one.”
“On what?”
“On the fact that after a case gets just so old, people begin to get careless and certain things come out in the open.”
“What have you uncovered?”
“Miss X is a Corine Hassen.”
“Where is she now?”
“Darned if I know, but we’re on her trail and it’s almost a cinch that we’ll be able to find her.”
“Is it a warm trail?”
“No. It’s cold as a frog’s belly, Perry. I can’t find anyone who saw her after the time of the trial. That’s a long time.”