“Without making some explanation which would satisfy the doctor and the police,” Mason said. “As Elston Karr who had the flat above a flat where a murder had been committed, he naturally couldn’t have made any explanation in Los Angeles; but as Carr Luceman, living in San Francisco in a neighborhood where there hadn’t been any murders, he had no difficulty in thinking up a story which would hold water with the police.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Make him admit the whole business. I’m hardly in a position to put the screws on him. You are.”
“Where is he now?”
“In a hospital.”
“Didn’t the doctor send him to a hospital the first time he saw him?”
“Apparently not. It was a wound that wasn’t particularly serious unless complications set in. The doctor probably advised him to keep quiet and call him in the event any unusual symptoms developed.”
“Just what do you want me to get?” Drake asked.
“Dig up any information you can, find out his version of what happened the night of the shooting.”
Drake said, “Won’t I get into trouble, keeping this information from the police?”
“You haven’t any information, have you?”
“You’ve told me a lot of stuff.”
Mason grinned. “You don’t think that it’s incumbent on you to run to the police every time some lawyer gives you a goofy theory of a case, do you?”
Drake hesitated for a moment, then said, “Well... well, no.”
Mason winked at him and said, “In all probability, it’s just a crazy theory I have, but here’s a newspaper clipping giving an account of how Carr Luceman happened to shoot himself in San Francisco. I’d like to have you make an investigation of the circumstances.”
Drake said, “When do I leave?”
“Charter a plane. You can grab forty winks on the plane.”
“Oh, not forty winks,” Drake protested sarcastically. “Twenty would be all I could possibly use. I don’t want to start getting too much sleep! Does Wenston know about this?”
“He must.”
“About the bullet wound?”
“Probably. He flew Karr up there this afternoon. Karr was beginning to run a fever when I saw him last. His skin was dry and parched, and his face flushed.”
“Who knows about what happened the night of the shooting?” Drake asked. “Anyone besides Karr?”
“Yes,” Mason said. “One person anyway.”
“Who?”
Mason grinned. “The one who pulled the trigger.”
Drake reached for the telephone, said to the switchboard operator, his voice low-pitched from sheer physical fatigue, “Get me the airport. I want to rent a good cabin plane for a rush trip to San Francisco.”
Mason nodded to Della Street. “Okay, Della, let’s go tackle the other end of this case.”
Driving out to Mrs. Gentrie’s, Mason said, “I should have had Steele spotted a long time ago.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Simple,” Mason said. “Remember when we were talking over the case, I said that the person in the house who was getting the messages must have been someone who had easy access to the dictionary, and who, for some reason, couldn’t very well be called to the telephone. Remember, Mrs. Gentrie told me right at the start that Steele had his room and was treated as one of the family, except that he didn’t have the privilege of using the telephone. There were too many people using it already. She has three children, all of whom are at the age of making dates of one kind or another. Whenever the phone rings, there’s a mad scramble to see which one gets there first. When anyone wants to call out, one of the children is nearly always using the phone. Remember what she said.”
Della nodded.
“Here I was,” Mason said whimsically, “looking for someone who couldn’t use the telephone, and I was thinking in terms of some physical handicap, such as a man who was deaf or crippled. It never occurred to me to consider the simplest possible solution — a man who was living at a place where he didn’t have the privilege of the telephone, yet who couldn’t put in a phone of his own without attracting too much attention.”
“But why was Steele killed, if he was the one for whom the messages were intended?”
Mason said, “We’re evidently dealing with the after-math of an old feud. There’s no other explanation which occurs to me at the moment. Of course, we haven’t all of the facts as yet.”
“Then Karr must have killed him.”
“Karr’s time’s too well accounted for,” Mason said. “And Wenston is out of it. Steele must have been killed at least two hours before we got there. There’s no question but what Karr’s been and still is a very sick man. That bullet hole in his leg, the loss of blood, the shot, and the general strain of events must have taken a lot out of him. He isn’t physically robust. Then, in addition, he’s had that arthritis in his legs. Evidently, he could walk, but it was a slow and painful process. We can leave him out so far as Steele is concerned.”
“You think Karr went downstairs the night of the shooting?”
Mason said, “That’s the only logical deduction. The burglar alarm was placed where he could hear it. He admits that he did hear it. He must have got up and walked slowly downstairs. He surprised someone at the safe, and got shot.”
“Do you suppose Steele got the message you left in the tin before — before he was killed?”
Mason said, “I don’t know. His death is going to complicate things somewhat.”
“How do you mean?”
“There are two persons involved. One of them is the person who sent the message, and the other the person who received it. Now, if we assume that Steele is the person who was receiving the messages, the question arises, Who was sending them? Let’s suppose, for the sake of the argument, that it was Sarah Perlin. Steele sees a can placed on the shelf after Sarah Perlin’s death. Therefore, he knows it must be a trap. For that reason, he won’t touch the can. On the other hand, if Sarah Perlin wasn’t the one who was sending the messages, Steele — conceding that he’s the person who was receiving them — would undoubtedly have grabbed that decoy can the first chance he had.”
Della said, “I’m getting all topsy-turvy. I thought the person who had sent the message, and the person for whom it had been intended were the murderers. It looks now as though they were the victims. Now, what are we going to do?”
Mason said, “While we’re at the Gentrie residence, I’ll make some excuse to get down in the cellar. If the can’s still there, it will be significant.”
Della Street’s voice was filled with conviction as she declared, “The can will still be there. It’s dead open and shut. Mrs. Perlin must have been the one who was sending the messages, and Steele the one who was receiving them. They’ve both been killed. Even if we didn’t have an iron-clad case against those two, their deaths would prove it. You can see what happened. Mrs. Perlin was a spy. She was reporting to Steele. That was the reason Karr’s attempt to trap the real Hocksley failed.
“Karr took the bullet in his leg, but that was all he needed to show him what was going on. With truly Oriental cunning, he tracked down the two persons who were responsible, and killed them.”
Mason said, “There’s another angle that puzzles me. What became of the real Hocksley?”
“The one who was in China?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you suppose he’s dead?”
“There’s nothing to indicate it. Karr must have had some reason for taking that lower apartment under the name of Hocksley. He could have used any one of a thousand fictitious names, but instead of doing so, he has Johns Blaine make himself up so he looks like Hocksley, and then takes the name of Hocksley. That must be significant.”