“Who gave you the fish?” Mason asked.
“That’s a question I don’t care to answer.”
Mason took the cigarette from his mouth, casually moved his long legs, and walked over to the telephone, picked up the receiver, dialed Operator, and said, “Give me police headquarters, please.”
Staunton said rapidly, “Wait a minute, Mr. Mason! You’re going altogether too fast! If you make any accusation against me to the police you’ll regret it.”
Without looking around, still holding the receiver to his ear, Mason said over his shoulder, “Who gave you the fish, Staunton?”
“If you want to know,” Staunton almost shouted in exasperation, “it was Harrington Faulkner!”
“I thought it might have been,” Mason said, and dropped the receiver back into its cradle.
“So,” Staunton went on defiantly, “the fish belong to Harrington Faulkner. He gave them to me to keep for him. I write a lot of insurance for the Faulkner-Carson Realty Company. I was glad to do Mr. Faulkner a favor. There’s certainly no law against that, and I think you’ll now appreciate the danger of your position in insinuating the fish were stolen and that I am acting in collusion with the thief.”
Mason returned to his chair, crossed his long legs at the knees, grinned at the now indignant Staunton and said, “How were the fish brought to you — in the tank which is on the filing cases at the present time?”
“No. If Miss Madison is from the pet store, she’ll know that’s a treatment tank they furnished. It’s an oblong tank made to accommodate the medicated panels which are slid down into the water.”
“What sort of a tank were they in when you got them?” Mason asked.
Staunton hesitated, then said, “After all, Mr. Mason, I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
“It might be considered significant.”
“I don’t think so.”
Mason said, “I’ll tell you this much. If Harrington Faulkner delivered those fish to you, he did so as part of a fraudulent scheme he was perpetrating, and as a part of that scheme he reported the theft of these fish to the police. Now the police aren’t going to like that. So, if you have any connection with what happened, you had better get in the clear right now.”
“I didn’t have any connection with any fraudulent scheme. All I know is that Mr. Faulkner asked me to take charge of these fish.”
“And brought them to you himself?”
“That’s right.”
“When?”
“Early Wednesday evening.”
“About what time Wednesday?”
“I don’t know exactly what time it was. It was rather early.”
“Before dinner?”
“I think it was.”
“And how were the fish brought to you? In what sort of a container?”
“That’s the thing which I told you before was none of your business.”
Mason once more got up, walked across to the telephone, picked up the receiver and started to dial Operator. There was a grim finality about his manner.
“In a bucket,” Staunton said hastily.
Mason slowly, almost reluctantly, put the receiver back into its cradle. “What sort of a bucket?”
“An ordinary galvanized iron pail.”
“And what did he tell you?”
“Told me to call the David Rawlins Pet Shop, tell them I had a couple of very valuable fish that were suffering from gill disease, for which I understood there was a new treatment furnished by the pet shop. I was to offer to pay them one hundred dollars for treatment of these fish. I did just that. That’s all I know about it, Mr. Mason. My skirts are entirely clean.”
“They aren’t as clean as you claim,” Mason said, still standing by the telephone, “and they don’t cover you as much as you’d like. You forget about what you told the man from the pet shop?”
“What do you mean?”
“About your wife being sick and that she wasn’t to be disturbed.”
“I didn’t want my wife to know anything about it.”
“Why?”
“Because it was a matter of business, and I don’t discuss business with her.”
“But you lied to the man from the pet shop?”
“I don’t like that word.”
“Describe it by any word you like,” Mason said, “but let’s remember that you made a false statement to the man from the pet shop. You did that to keep him from coming in so that he wouldn’t see the fish.”
“I don’t think that’s a fair statement, Mr. Mason.”
Mason grinned and said, “Think it over for awhile, Staunton. Think over how you’re going to feel on the witness stand in front of a jury when I start giving you a cross-examination. You and your clean skirts!”
Mason stepped over to the window, jerked back the heavy drapes which covered the glass and stood with his back turned to the people in the room, his hands pushed down into his trouser pockets.
Staunton cleared his throat as though about to say something, then shifted his position uneasily in the swivel chair. The chair creaked slightly.
Mason didn’t so much as turn around, but stood for some thirty seconds in utter silence, looking out at the section of sidewalk which was visible through the window, waiting while his very silence exerted a pressure.
Abruptly the lawyer turned. “I guess that’s all,” he said to the surprised Sally Madison. “I think we can go now.”
A slightly bewildered Staunton followed them to the outer door. Twice he started to say something but each time the thoughts crystallized themselves into words preparatory to speech, they apparently seemed inadequate, and he choked off the sentence almost at the beginning.
Mason didn’t look around or make any comment.
At the front door, Staunton stood for a few moments watching his departing visitors. “Good night,” he ventured somewhat quaveringly.
“We may see you again,” Mason said ominously, and kept right on walking toward the parked car.
Staunton abruptly slammed the door shut.
Mason clasped his hand on Sally Madison’s arm, pushed her over to the right across a strip of lawn and toward the stretch of sidewalk which had been visible from the window of Staunton’s study.
“Let’s watch him carefully,” Mason said. “I purposely pulled the drapes to one side and left the telephone turned toward the window. We may be able to get some idea of the number that he dials by watching the motion of his hand. At least we can tell if it’s a number similar to that of Harrington Faulkner.”
They stood just outside of the oblong of light cast from the open window. From where they stood, they could clearly see the telephone and the fish in the tank on the top of the filing cases.
A shadow crossed the lighted oblong on the lawn, moved over toward the telephone, then stopped. The watchers saw James Staunton’s profile as he held his face close to the fish tank, watching the peculiar undulating motion of the black veils which hung down from the “Fish of Death.”
For what might have been a matter of five minutes, Staunton regarded the fish as though held with a fascination that was almost hypnotic — then he slowly turned away, his shadow moved back across the oblong, and a moment later the lights were switched off and the room left in darkness.
“Do you suppose he knew we were watching?” Sally Madison asked.
Mason remained there watching and waiting for nearly five minutes, then he circled her with his arm, guided her toward the parked automobile.
“Did he?” she asked.
“What?” the lawyer asked, his voice showing his preoccupation.
“Know that we were watching?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But you thought he was going to telephone?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t he?”
Mason said, “I’ll be damned if I know.”
“So what do we do now?” she asked.
“Now,” Mason said, “we go to see Mr. Harrington Faulkner.”