He yawned prodigiously, pulled a notebook from his pocket and said, “I suppose you want me to begin at the beginning.”
“That’s right.”
“Benjamin Addicks,” Paul Drake said in a drawl, “said to be fifty-two years old. He’s supposed to have a younger brother Herman Addicks, forty-six. The two were inseparable. They didn’t have any great amount of formal education, came from a poor family.
“Herman dropped out of sight. Benjamin claimed he didn’t have any idea where Herman was. That may have been true. Rumor is that Herman got in a fight and killed someone, and...”
“Snap out of it, Paul,” Mason interrupted sharply. “You’re a detective. What do you care about all the rumor stuff? I want facts. What do you know?”
Drake said, “Actually, Perry, not a damned thing. Addicks is a millionaire. He goes for mining deals in a big way. He’s been here for sixteen years. Before that no one knows a damn thing about him, where he came from, when or how he got his money.”
Mason said incredulously, “You mean his banks don’t know?”
“I mean no one knows. He always refused to answer any question. He’d say, ‘I am asking for no credit at any time. I buy and I sell in hard cash.’ ”
“But, good heavens, Paul, how about the income tax people?”
“He told them he had amnesia. The first thing he remembered was being here, waking up in a hotel with about two thousand dollars on him.”
“Did they believe any such yarn as that, Paul?”
“Certainly not. They managed to get his fingerprints. Up to that time he’d never been printed. The FBI has no record on him.”
“Can you make an estimate of how much he’s worth?”
“Probably two or three million dollars net. He has an enormous income and he has stuff spread around so that it’s pretty hard to get an accurate estimate. Anyway, he was sufficiently well fixed so that he could do anything he wanted.”
“And what did he want to do?” Mason asked.
“There’s the rub,” Drake said. “You know, Perry, if it came right down to a showdown, there’s a two or three million dollar estate there, and he undoubtedly left a will. That will could probably be attacked on the grounds that Benjamin Addicks was of unsound mind.”
“Because of the experiments with apes and gorillas?” Mason asked.
“I think it goes deeper than that,” Drake said. “I think that Benjamin Addicks was afraid of himself. Personally, I think he wanted to kill somebody, or I think he had killed somebody.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Because he was trying desperately to prove that homicidal impulses are an inherent part of man’s instinctive equipment. He claimed that civilization might cause those impulses to lie dormant, particularly in the case of a child reared in an atmosphere of security. In a keenly competitive existence he claimed that the urge to kill was an inherent part of the natural instincts of man. He also claimed a man could be hypnotized, could commit murder while he was unaware of what he was doing, and, on awakening from the hypnotic trance, have no knowledge of what he had done — perhaps no memory.”
“In other words, he could have been laying an elaborate plan for defending himself against an old murder charge,” Mason said.
“Or a new one,” Drake commented.
“But surely, Paul, such a prominent personality must have had people trying to check — why, with a history like that, a blackmailer would work for years trying to find the man’s secret.”
“Sure,” Drake said. “The government spent some time on it — even a question of citizenship. Everyone got nowhere. It’s surprising what a man can get away with when he says ‘I can’t remember anything about my past life so I have dismissed it from my mind. After all, the present is the thing, and therefore that’s all I’m interested in.’ ”
“So he spent a fortune trying to demonstrate his theories,” Mason said.
“That’s right — trying to build up his defense.”
“Naturally,” Mason went on, “he could hardly start experimenting with men in order to bring out his ideas.”
“That’s it. He acquired apes and gorillas, trying to teach them to kill, trying to get them hypnotized so they’d obey suggestions.”
“How did he go about it?”
“Lots of ways. He had a couple of trainers out there and a psychologist who was willing to ride along with him. I’ve talked with the psychologist, a man by the name of Blevins. Alan Blevins.”
“Where was Blevins last night?” Mason asked.
“Sitting at home.”
“He wasn’t out at Stonehenge?”
“Everyone connected with the monkey and ape experiments was fired about a week ago,” Drake said. “Addicks just cleaned out the whole outfit.”
“Why?”
“He said that his experiments had been proven successful.”
“What was he doing particularly?”
“Well, that’s what I’m getting at. This Blevins can give you quite a picture, Perry. Of course, Blevins wasn’t very co-operative. I had to get in touch with him about three o’clock this morning and tell him it was an emergency and all of that stuff.”
“Well,” Mason said, “if a gorilla didn’t murder Addicks, the district attorney is going to have a devil of a time proving who did — but you must have been able to get something on Addicks, Paul.”
“Sure. I have a fistful of stuff here. I’ve merely been telling you the stuff I didn’t have.
“His lawyer, Sidney Hardwick, knows something about Addicks’ background, how much I can’t tell, and he won’t tell.
“Addicks made a stake in gold mining, turned to oil. He has accounts in a dozen banks, and he does a lot of business on a strictly cash basis.
“The income tax department doesn’t like it. They are after him all the time. His business manager, Mortimer Hershey, can make figures run up the hill or jump over hurdles.
“Nathan Fallon, a lesser light, has been having trouble with Addicks. Evidently Fallon isn’t above a little cut and kickback once in a while.”
“Better check on Fallon’s whereabouts last night Paul,” Mason said.
Paul Drake looked at the lawyer scornfully. “What the hell do you think I was doing all night?” he asked. “I’ve been trying to find out all the police know, which wasn’t much at first. Nathan Fallon was in Las Vegas, Nevada — and I mean he was there, every minute. Hershey was in Santa Barbara. I’m checking him, and so are the police.”
“Anything else that’s important, Paul?”
“Lots of it. Now here’s something I can’t figure. Addicks didn’t trust anyone in the business deals. He had secrets from Fallon and Hershey.”
“Can you blame him?” Mason· asked.
“No.”
“What sort of secrets, Paul?”
“Well, for instance, Addicks would disappear. One of the members of the yacht crew told me that. He was sore at Addicks because Addicks fired him.
“He said lots of times when Addicks was supposed to be cruising, he’d actually get aboard, then get off at the last minute and have the yacht cruise around when he wasn’t aboard.
“The yacht had a ship to shore phone, and Addicks would telephone the yacht’s captain and give him instructions as to where to sail and all that. Then they’d anchor at Catalina, and first thing anyone would know there would be Addicks, pretending he’d been aboard all the time, shut up in his stateroom, working.”
Mason pursed his lips. “Who was in on it, Paul?”
“Just the captain, and the captain’s as close-mouthed as a clam.”
Mason thought that over, then said suddenly, “All right, Paul, he was calling long distance. He must have placed his calls collect.