“January of nineteen forty-two, eh?” Mason said musingly.
“That’s right. He—”
A door opened explosively in the upper corridor. Pounding feet came toward the head of the stairs.
“Sounds like our impulsive sheriff,” Drake observed.
Greggory shouted, “Mason, come up here!”
“The summons is a bit peremptory,” Drake observed. “I’m afraid, Perry, you’ve been doing it again.”
Mason nodded to Della Street, then halfway up the stairs said, “You’d better come along, Paul. I may want a witness.”
“Your assignments,” Drake said, “range from the sublime to the ridiculous. How in hell can I climb stairs?”
As Mason entered the room, Greggory indignantly pointed at the typewriter. “What the devil is this?” he demanded.
“Why,” Mason said, “the notes of the investigation you made...”
“But I made no such investigation.”
Mason looked nonplused. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Sheriff. Della Street certainly took down...”
Greggory’s face purpled. “Damn it, don’t try to pull that innocent stuff with me. You’ve interfered in this case too damn much. I’m conducting this investigation, and I’ll conduct it in my own way.”
“Yes, Sheriff. Certainly.”
“The idea of leaving that sheet of paper there in the typewriter. What are you trying to do?”
Mason turned to Della Street reproachfully. “Della, I thought the sheriff told you to get all of those papers cleaned out of this room and then lock it.”
Della’s eyelashes lowered demurely on her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
Topham glanced from Mason to the sheriff. There was quiet reproach in his eyes.
Mason said, “I’m sorry, Sheriff,” as one apologizing for a justifiable oversight.
The sheriff’s anger made him all but inarticulate. “I tell you I didn’t conduct any investigation here. I merely had an informal inquiry before you got here, Topham.”
“Yes, of course,” Mason agreed hastily — too hastily, in fact. “You wouldn’t want to investigate without Mr. Topham.”
Harvey Small’s restless eyes moved from face to face, missing no flicker of expression, taking in every word that was said.
Mason nudged Della Street quite obviously.
Della said hastily, “That’s right, Mr. Topham. There wasn’t any investigation. I’m sorry.”
Mason ripped the page out of the typewriter, said to Small, “It’s a mistake. We’re sorry, Sheriff.”
Greggory glared at Mason. “You’ll pay for this. You’ll...”
“But I told you I was sorry. My secretary shouldn’t have left it here. We’ve apologized. We’ve told Small that there wasn’t any investigation. We’ve told Topham that. We’ve all agreed on it. You say there wasn’t any, and we say there wasn’t any. Now, what more do you want? The more you say now, the more suspicious you make your witness.”
For the moment, Greggory was at a loss for words.
Mason went on smoothly enough, “And, frankly, I don’t see any reason why you should adopt this attitude. Ever since January of nineteen forty-two, Hayward Small has been blackmailing Bradisson. Of course, that gives Bradisson a motive to pin the murder on Small; but if you ask me, Sheriff, I think Bradisson is—”
“No one’s asking you,” the sheriff interrupted.
Mason bowed after the manner of one who is rebuked by a person in authority. Thereafter, he became conspicuously silent.
Greggory turned to Hayward Small. “What I’m trying to find out,” he said, “is about that stock.”
Small moistened his lips with his tongue, merely nodded.
“What about it?” Greggory asked.
“All I know is what Dorina told me.”
“Well, what was that?”
Mason said reproachfully, “Hearsay testimony. I wouldn’t repeat it, Small. You can’t vouch for it, you know.”
“You keep out of this,” Greggory shouted.
“After he gets that out of you, he’ll start giving you a third-degree on the murder charge, you know,” Mason observed. “How about a cigarette — anyone want a cigarette?”
He calmly took his cigarette case from his pocket.
“Thank you, I’ll take one,” Della Street said sweetly.
Greggory said angrily, “Get out of here. Clear out!”
“But I thought you wanted me,” Mason said.
“I wanted an explanation of this...”
“Oh, yes. Do you want to go into that again?”
“No, I don’t.”
Hayward Small, who had been doing more thinking, said suddenly, “Look here, I’m going to come clean on this thing. I had absolutely nothing to do with that poisoning. I did — well, I did bring a little pressure to bear on Jim Bradisson about eighteen months ago.”
“January, nineteen forty-two, wasn’t it?” Mason asked.
“That’s right.”
“Very shortly after Mrs. Banning Clarke passed away, I believe.”
Small said nothing.
“And Moffgat began exerting a little pressure at about the same time,” Mason said.
“I’m not interested in any of this,” Greggory announced.
“I am,” Topham said, his voice packing quiet authority. “Just let Mr. Mason continue, please, Sheriff.”
Greggory said angrily, “He’s stage-managed this whole damn business. He’s trying to cover up the forgery of a stock certificate and save his own neck by—”
“Nevertheless,” Topham interrupted in a quiet tone which cut through the sheriff’s anger with the force of a cold rebuke, “I want Mr. Mason left entirely alone. Go right ahead, Mr. Mason.”
Mason bowed. “Thank you.” He turned to Small. “About the time Mrs. Banning Clarke died, wasn’t it?”
Small’s eyes met Mason’s for a moment, then shifted. “Well... yes.”
“Now,” Mason went on, “we have a very interesting situation. We have Mrs. Bradisson tiptoeing into Banning Clarke’s room and substituting an old will in place of the new one. A very adroit method of validating a spurious document. A will, of course, is revoked by a later will where the testator’s intention to revoke is plainly evidenced by the later will; but unless the earlier will is destroyed, there is nothing on its face to show that it has been superseded — a point which, ordinarily, a layman wouldn’t figure out. Such an ingenious bombproof little scheme would be far more apt to have been hatched in the mind of some clever attorney. I can’t help wondering whether Mrs. Bradisson’s idea of exchanging wills didn’t date back to an earlier episode. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Small?”
Hayward Small raised his hand to the collar of his shirt, twitched it as though the neckband were exerting unusual pressure. “No.”
Sheriff Greggory started to say something. Topham motioned him to silence.
Mason said, almost musingly, “You see, gentlemen, we are confronted with a poisoning and with a shooting — two entirely different crimes. Yet we must not overlook the fact that they may have been actuated by the same motive. Two different murderers, each pursuing his way independent of the other because he didn’t dare to take the other into his confidence — one using poison, the other using lead.
“Because of the peculiar circumstances, we are forced to think back over everything that happened, interpreting each clue, and making pure deduction give us the answer we want.