“You played a hunch, Perry.”
“What did you find?”
“Choke half way out, motor temperature almost stone cold. Even making allowances for the fact that she’s been here for twenty minutes or even half an hour, the motor wouldn’t have cooled off that fast. It looks as though the car hadn’t been driven more than a quarter of a mile. Perhaps less than that.”
Sally Madison said, “She was coming fast enough when she slewed around that corner.”
Mason flashed Paul Drake a warning glance.
The door of the house opened, and Sergeant Dorset stood framed in the illumination of the doorway. He said something to the officer who was guarding the entrance to the house. The officer walked out to the edge of the porch and in the manner of a bailiff calling a witness to the stand, intoned, “Sally Madison.”
Mason grinned. “That’s you, Sally.”
“What shall I tell them?” she asked in sudden panic.
“Anything you want to hold back?” Mason asked.
“No — I don’t suppose there is.”
“If you think of anything you want to hold back,” Mason told her, “hold it back, but don’t lie about anything.”
“But if I held anything back I’d have to lie.”
“No you wouldn’t, just keep your mouth shut. Now then the minute the police get done with you, I want you to call this number. That’s Della Street’s apartment. Tell her you’re coming out there. The two of you go to a hotel, register under your own names. Don’t let anyone know where you are. In the morning have Della telephone me, somewhere around eight-thirty. Have breakfast sent up to your room. Don’t go out and don’t talk with anyone until I get there.”
Mason handed her a slip of paper with Della Street’s number written on it.
“What’s the idea?” Sally Madison asked.
Mason said, “I want you to keep away from the reporters. They may try to interview you. I’m going to try to get five thousand bucks for you and Tom Gridley out of the Faulkner estate.”
“Oh, Mr. Mason!”
“Don’t say a word,” Mason warned. “Don’t let the police or anyone else know where you’re going. Don’t even tell Tom Gridley. Keep out of circulation until I have a chance to see how the land lies.”
“You mean you think there’s a chance?”
“There may be. It will depend.”
“On what?”
“On a lot of things.”
Sergeant Dorset spoke sharply to the officer on the porch and the officer once more intoned in his best courtroom manner, “Salleeeeeee Madisonnnn,” and then, lapsing into a less formal manner, bellowed down at the trio, “cut out that gabbing and get up here. The sergeant wants to see you.”
Sally Madison walked rapidly up toward the porch, her heels echoing her rapid, nervous step.
Drake said to Mason, “What gave you the hunch that she was parked around the corner, Perry?”
Mason said, “It may not have been around the corner, Paul. I had a hunch the car might have been running on a cold motor, judging from the way the exhaust smelled. And then, of course, the possibility naturally occurred to me that she might have been waiting somewhere around the corner for an auspicious moment to make her appearance.”
“Well, it’s a possibility, all right,” Drake said, “and you know what it means if it’s true.”
“I’m not certain that I do,” Mason said thoughtfully. “And I’m not even going to think about it until I find out whether it’s true, but it’s an interesting fact to file away for future reference.”
“Think Sergeant Dorset will get wise to it?” Drake asked.
“I doubt it. He’s too much engrossed in following the routine procedure to think of any new lines. Lieutenant Tragg would have thought of it if he’d been here. He has brains, Paul... Dorset is all right but he came up the hard way, and he relies too much on the old browbeating methods. Tragg is smooth as silk and you never know where he’s heading from the direction in which he’s pointed. He...”
Once more the door of the house opened. Sergeant Dorset didn’t wait this time to relay his message through the guard at the door. He called out, “Hey, you two, come up here. I want to talk with you.”
Mason said in a low voice to Paul Drake, “If they try to put skids under you, Paul, get in your car, and drive around the corner. Scout the side streets just for luck, then after the newspaper boys show up, grab one with whom you’re friendly, buy him a couple of drinks and see what you can pick up.”
“I can’t do that until after he’s phoned his story in to his paper,” Drake said.
“No one wants you to,” Mason told him. “Just...”
“Any old time, any old time,” Sergeant Dorset said sarcastically. “Just take your time, gentlemen, no need to be in a hurry. After all, you know, it’s only a murder.”
“Not a suicide?” Mason asked, climbing up the porch steps.
“What do you think he did with the gun, swallow it?” Dorset inquired.
“I didn’t even know how he was killed.”
“Too bad about you. What’s Drake doing here?”
“Looking around.”
“How’d you get here?” Dorset asked Drake suspiciously.
“I told Sally Madison to call him at the same time she called you.”
“What’s that?” Dorset demanded sharply. “Who called me?”
“Sally Madison.”
“I thought it was the wife.”
“No, the wife was getting ready to have hysterics. Sally Madison put through the call.”
“What did you want Drake for?”
“Just to look around.”
“What for?”
“To see what he could find out.”
“Why? You’re not representing anyone, are you?”
Mason said, “If you want to get technical, I wasn’t paying Faulkner a social call at this hour of the night.”
“What’s this about a man named Staunton having those stolen goldfish?”
“He claims Faulkner gave them to him to keep.”
“Faulkner reported to the police that they’d been stolen.”
“I know he did.”
“They say you were here when the radio officers got here the night the fish were stolen.”
“That’s right. Drake was here too.”
“Well, what’s your idea? Were they stolen or weren’t they?”
Mason said, “I’ve never handled any goldfish, Sergeant.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Nothing, perhaps. Again, perhaps a lot.”
“I don’t get you.”
“Ever stand on a chair and dip a soup ladle down into a four-foot goldfish tank, try to pick up a fish and then, sliding your hands along a four-foot extension handle, raise that fish to the surface, lift him out of a tank and put him into a bucket?”
Sergeant Dorset asked suspiciously, “What’s that got to do with it?”
Mason said, “Perhaps nothing. Perhaps a lot. My own idea is, Sergeant, that the ceiling of the room in that real estate office is about nine and one-half feet from the floor, and I would say that the bottom of the fish tank was about three feet six inches from the floor. The tank itself is four feet deep.”
“What the devil are you talking about?” Dorset asked.
“Measurements,” Mason said.
“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
“You asked me if I thought the fish had been stolen.”
“Well.”
Mason said, “The evidence that indicates they were stolen consists of a silver soup ladle, to the handle of which was tied a four-foot extension pole.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that? If you were going to reach to the bottom of a four-foot fish tank you’d need a four-foot pole, wouldn’t you? Or does your master mind have some new angle on that?”