“Furthermore, and this is the important thing, no one knows the nature of the confidential work that she was supposed to be doing for Benjamin Addicks. Addicks said that he left her typing the pages in her stateroom. Later on he was asked if he had received the typewritten documents, and he said, of course not, that the last time he had seen her was when she was transcribing the notes — now, get that straight. If she had been committing suicide she wouldn’t have taken the typewritten notes with her when she jumped overboard. If she had been intending to commit suicide she wouldn’t have typed out her notes. She’d simply have jumped and left the notes without being transcribed in her shorthand book. From the minute I started investigating this case I became very much interested in finding out just what had happened to the dictation Addicks had given her on the night she disappeared.
“There were photographs of the stateroom which she was supposed to have occupied on that last night out of port. Now you fellows study the photographs of that stateroom and you’ll notice two or three peculiar things.
“A typewriter has been set up on a table all right, and some paper has been spread around, but I’ve yet to hear that anyone found a shorthand notebook with any notes in it that hand’t been transcribed, and I’ve yet to find anyone who would admit that there was any typewritten document found in the stateroom.
“But the thing that interests me is what you can see in this picture. It’s a photograph taken after the yacht arrived in Catalina, and shows the stateroom occupied by Helen Cadmus. The door of the connecting bathroom is open, and you can see a portion of the interior of the stateroom occupied by Josephine Kempton on the other side. Now do you fellows notice anything peculiar?”
The newspaper reporters studied the photograph carefully.
Mason said, “The towels on one rack have been used. Those are the towels nearest the door of the stateroom occupied by Josephine Kempton. The towels by the door of the stateroom occupied by Helen Cadmus haven’t been used. Do you think she’d have boarded the yacht, have taken dictation, have done a lot of typing, and never so much as washed her hands, never so much as unfolded a towel?”
One of the men gave a low whistle, then said to Perry Mason, “Say, you’re a pretty good detective yourself.”
Mason grinned. “All right, you fellows have a head start on the police. It would be nice if you boys could find Helen Cadmus yourselves. And if you find that what I think is true, well — you’ll have something that’s a damn sight more valuable than the empty accusation of an interested party.
“I don’t know just how badly your city editors would like to have an exclusive interview with Helen Cadmus, and the true story of her supposed suicide, but I presume the fellow who turned it in could write his own ticket for a while, particularly if he signed her up for an exclusive.
“That’s why I’m giving all of you an even break. Here are the names of two motels where they registered as Mr. and Mrs. B. F. Barnwell, and here are some photographs so you won’t waste time digging into your morgues.”
“Barnwell,” one of the men said meditatively. “Say, the fellow Hardwick had a cablegram from Herman Barnwell. He...”
The reporter abruptly ceased talking. For a moment the reporters stood there, then one of them lunged for the door.
That started a four-man stampede, everyone making a dash down the corridor.
Mason grinned at Della Street. “Tomorrow morning we can send Mr. Sidney Hardwick copies of the papers, and tell him we’re fast workers ourselves.”
Chapter number 14
“Well,” Della Street said when the last sounds of running feet had died down. “You certainly took a button and sewed a vest on it!”
Mason grinned.
“Chief, are you safe in doing that?”
“What do you mean, safe?”
“My gosh, you’ve got the girl having a baby and being the common-law wife of Benjamin Addicks. Good heavens, suppose she should be alive?”
“Well?”
“Couldn’t she take action against you?”
“In that event,” Mason said, “the heat would be off of Josephine Kempton. We’re never going to get anywhere by denials and evasions, and being on the defensive. This is a case where we’re going to have to carry the fight to the other man.”
“But you do have an obligation to be limited by the real facts in the case.”
“That’s right,” Mason said. “Now let’s look at the facts for a minute. Quite evidently they were living together. I think they were in love.
“From the time I first began to check through the Helen Cadmus diaries I have been impressed by two things. One of them is that no member of the crew specifically mentioned seeing Helen Cadmus aboard the yacht after they got down to the outer harbor. The other one is that you can’t explain what became of the papers she had been typing. Either she took them to Benjamin Addicks, in which event Benjamin Addicks’ story to the police was false; or else they were left in the stateroom, in which event someone surreptitiously removed them.
“A professional stenographer doesn’t like to type well enough to type an important document, then clutch it in her hand and jump overboard.”
“Suppose she was accidentally washed overboard?”
“Waves weren’t coming over the ship that bad, Della. It was a rough, choppy night, and there was water being shipped now and then, and quite a bit of spray, but it wasn’t one of those all-out storms where solid water comes crashing over the desk every so often and might sweep a girl off her feet.”
“Well, you certainly started something.”
“I aimed to,” Mason said.
“Now what do we do?”
Mason said, “You go home and I settle down for another spell of good, hard work.”
“What kind of work?”
“I’m going to study those diaries particularly with reference to the two known dates when she was staying in the motels. I’m certain there must be between-the-line references that will enable me to get some sort of a clue, and when I get that clue I’m going to study the rest of the dates.”
Della Street said, “Move over. I’m with you all the way.”
“No, you go on home and get some rest.”
“Fiddlesticks! I’m going to see this thing through.”
“Well, if you insist, go get something to eat.”
“What are you going to do about food?”
“Oh, I’ll have some coffee and a cheeseburger sent up from the lunch counter downstairs.”
“Make it two,” she said. “Let’s start.”
Mason happily surrendered. “All right. Della, do you suppose a girl could write diaries the way Helen Cadmus did, be in love with her boss and not have something that would show that love creep into the diary?”
“A lot depends on the nature of the romance. I think a woman who was really in love would naturally be cautious about putting anything in writing that her lover didn’t want. On the other hand, there is always a tendency for a woman in love to confide in her diary.”
Mason said, “What I want to do is look for a code. She had some sort of a code word or expression that she would use to show that she had been with the man she loved.”
“Provided she really loved him,” Della Street said.
“I like Helen Cadmus from what I’ve learned to know about her from her diaries,” Mason said. “She was a frank, wholesome, square shooting sort of a girl, and a very loyal one, I believe. We have a couple of dates, Della. Let’s look up those and study the entries carefully.”