Mason nodded. “The prosecutor managed to keep her out of it by reaching an agreement with the defense, that she could be referred to as Miss X. Under the circumstances, she was almost certain to get out from under and sit tight until it had blown over.”
Drake said, “Where there’s so much smoke, there must have been a little fire.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that Latwell must have been playing around with her a bit. Incidentally, I can produce two witnesses who can give us something on that angle. Latwell knew her.”
“Intimately?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know. I do know that he’d been seen with her several times. Of course, the theory of the prosecution was that Adams knew about this, and therefore had dragged her name into it.”
“How old was she?” Mason asked.
“About twenty-five.”
“She’d be about forty-five now.”
“That’s right.”
“Attractive?”
“My correspondents telephone that her pictures, taken twenty years ago, indicate she was rather good-looking, not a knockout, you understand. As I understand it, her face was a little pinched around the eyes. Her figure was the distinctive thing about her. It was swell — twenty years ago. She was a cashier in a chocolate shop, candies, ice cream, light lunches, and things of that sort.”
“Just how did this Hassen girl disappear?” Mason asked.
“Well, she was living with her aunt. Her father and mother were both dead. She said she had an opportunity to get a job out on the Pacific Coast, that she had a boy friend who was always hounding her to marry him, that he was intensely jealous, and she was tired of the whole business, and intended to skip out and not leave any forwarding address, that she’d get in touch with her aunt after a while — more or less the same old story.”
Mason frowned. “I’m not so certain it is. When did she leave, Paul?”
Drake consulted a memorandum book. “Just about the time of the murder.”
Mason said, “Start on it as a regular disappearance, Paul. Look over everything, hospital records, unidentified bodies, and all that.”
“Around Winterburg City?” Drake asked.
“No,” Mason said. “Around Los Angeles and San Francisco for a start... and try Reno, particularly.”
“I don’t get you,” Drake said, frowning.
Mason said, “Let’s look at this thing logically. The big trouble is we get hypnotized by facts and start placing a false interpretation upon those facts because of the sheer weight of circumstances.
“Now in this case the evidence looked very dark against Horace Adams. Somewhere during the trial, his attorney got panic-stricken and became convinced that his client was guilty. No matter what happens, Paul, a lawyer should never become convinced of the guilt of his client.”
“Why?” Drake asked. “Are lawyers’ consciences that brittle?”
“It isn’t a question of a lawyer’s conscience,” Mason said. “It’s a question of doing justice to a client. Once you become convinced your client is guilty, you interpret all of the evidence in a false light and weigh it by false standards. You can see what happened in this case with the mysterious Miss X. Now, I’m acting on the theory that Horace Adams was innocent. In that case, the story he told about Miss X may well have been the truth. Then it’s quite possible Miss X did go to Reno to join Latwell.”
Drake said, “I can’t figure that, Perry. Adams may have been innocent; but when he felt he was caught in a mesh of circumstantial evidence, he tried to lie out of it. If this gal had gone to Reno, she’d have read of Latwell’s murder in the papers, and...”
“And what?” Mason asked, as Drake hesitated.
“Probably taken a run-out powder,” the detective said, after a moment’s thought.
Mason smiled. “Well, Paul, we need a point of beginning, and we haven’t time to plod along on a cold trail. Have your correspondents see what they can do in Winterburg, but start some men working at Reno. That may make a good short cut. Let’s cover the hospital records and do all of the routine in connection with a disappearance case. Then let’s consider your suggestion. Suppose you were in Reno, wanted to disappear, and were running away from something in the East? Where would you go? Nine times out of ten it would be Los Angeles, or San Francisco, wouldn’t it?”
“Well, yes,” Drake admitted, after thinking the question over.
“All right, while you’re covering Reno, cover Los Angeles and San Francisco. Look for a trace of Corine Hassen, either under her own or an assumed name.”
“An assumed name isn’t going to be easy,” Drake said.
“Oh, I don’t know. She must have used her right name on occasion, at the post office, at banks, on her driving license. See what you can do.”
“Okay, I’ll start men on it right away.”
Mason pushed his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, sunk his chin on his chest, and stared moodily at the pattern in the carpet, “Hang it, Paul, I’m making a mistake somewhere — I’ve already made it.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s just the feeling I have when I get off on a wrong trail. Perhaps it’s my subconscious trying to warn me.”
“Where could you have made a mistake?”
“I don’t know. I have a feeling it has something to do with Leslie Milter.”
“What about him?”
Mason said, “When you once get the correct master pattern, every single event fits into that pattern. It dovetails with every other event which impinges upon it. When you get a master pattern which seems to accommodate all of the events except one, and you can’t make that event fit in, it’s pretty apt to mean that your master pattern is wrong.
“Now take Milter. Milter was undoubtedly trying to get blackmail. Yet he passed the word on to that Hollywood scandal sheet. By the way, have you found out anything about that?”
“I’ve found out that the thing came as a leak. I can’t get Milter’s name in connection with it, but it’s a cinch that’s who it was.”
Mason said, “Yes, even without any information from the scandal sheet, it stands to reason Allgood fired Milter for talking. Therefore, Milter must have talked to someone. To whom? Apparently not to Lois. Not to Marvin Adams. He could have talked to Witherspoon all he wanted. No, he must have talked to that Hollywood scandal sheet.
“Now put yourself in Milter’s position. He was a blackmailer. He was carefully stalking his prey. He was in the position of a submarine that has one torpedo and is lying in wait for a dangerous destroyer. He must be certain to make a hit with that one shot in a vital spot. Under those circumstances, you can’t imagine him frittering away his ammunition. Yet that’s what the tip-off in the scandal sheet amounted to. If he got anything at all for it, it was only pin money and...”
“They never pay for tips,” Drake said. “They sometimes grant favors, but they don’t pay.”
For several seconds, Mason was thoughtfully silent; then he said, “Also note that he must have been the one who sent this special-delivery letter to me. He wouldn’t have done that if he’d been blackmailing Witherspoon or getting ready to blackmail Lois or Marvin or... by George!”
“What?” Drake asked.
Mason regarded him thoughtfully. His brows pulled together in a level line over his eyes. “Hang it, Paul, there’s one solution that would make things hang together. It’s a weird, bizarre solution when you look at it in one way, and when you look at it in another, it’s the only logical solution.”
“What are you holding out on me?” Drake asked.
“Not a thing,” Mason said. “It’s all there right in front of us. Only we haven’t seen it.”