Mason said, “I don’t know. For all I know you might be trying to pin the murder on my client before you got done.”
Tragg said, “Well, we can go into that right now.”
“What about it?”
“There are a couple of clues which point her way.”
Mason sat rigidly erect in his chair. “For the love of Mike, Tragg! All a person needs to do is to be a client of mine, and the police immediately...”
“Keep your hat on,” Tragg said. “I am giving you a break.”
“Go ahead. Give it to me.”
“Let us talk about your client a while first.”
“All right, what about her?”
“Her rich uncle showed up, plunked down a certified cheque for the bail, and took her out of the hospital where she was being held under detention and rushed her to the Adirondack Hotel. And where is the Adirondack Hotel with reference to the Gateview?”
Mason said, “Let’s see. From Seventh and... it’s four blocks.”
“That’s right. A person could walk those four blocks in less than five minutes.”
“Go ahead. I presume my client had the murder gun in her handbag when you searched it?”
“No, but she had something else.”
“What?”
“Well, you see she went to the hospital. It was a homicide and a county job, but they asked me to check on a couple of angles. I heard her story. She said she had taken a key out of the ignition switch on the automobile. I checked up with the garage to which the car had been towed. The ignition was locked. Naturally, I made an investigation of the girl’s purse.”
“Without her knowledge?”
“Oh, certainly.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, there was a key ring with three keys on it. Now then, Mason, before I go any further, I want to know whether that was a plant.”
“I don’t get you.”
Tragg said, “Naturally, I wanted to know about those keys. One of them looked like the key to an automobile ignition. I thought it would be better to find out first and ask the questions afterward. So while your client was laid up in the hospital, I had an expert locksmith bring an assortment of blanks. The nurse had slipped the keys out of the purse, and the locksmith made duplicates. I took the duplicate keys down and tried them on the car. The automobile key fitted the ignition okay. That left me with two other keys. I didn’t know what they were for. Somehow or other, Mason, I distrusted those keys. It looked like the fine Italian hand of a master dramatist.”
“Go ahead.”
“You started beefing about Homan, so I made a quiet trip out to Homan’s place, and tried the other two keys on his doors just to see if they would fit.”
“What was the big idea of all the secrecy?”
“Oh, I just wanted to see what little surprises you had thought up for the D.A.”
“Well, did the key fit?”
“No, not the door — but one of those keys is to Homan’s yacht.”
“The hell you say!”
“Surprised?”
“Yes. Go on.”
“Well, I didn’t say anything. I just sat back on the sidelines, waiting for the time to come when you would explode your bombshell.”
“I am listening.”
“Well, that time came this afternoon,” Tragg said. “I naturally expected that you would build your case around those keys, which, by the way, the girl had already accounted for and introduced in evidence. I thought, of course, you would say to Homan, ‘Mr. Homan, is this the key to the ignition on your automobile?’ Homan would, of course, admit that it looked as though it might be the key to his car. Then you would ask him casually if he knew anything about the other keys or if they looked at all familiar to him. He would then either say with some surprise that one of them was the key to his yacht, or else he would say they didn’t look at all familiar to him, and then you would ask him to produce his keys so that you could check the...”
Mason pushed back his chair and got to his feet.
“Hell!” he said with disgust in his voice. “And I missed doing just that! I am going to find my client, give her back her fee, and beg her pardon.”
Tragg was watching him narrowly. “Why didn’t you go after Homan on those keys, Mason?”
“Lieutenant, I don’t know. I was thinking about an entirely different angle of approach. I knew, of course, it was an ignition key to his car, but I...”
Tragg studied him for a moment as Mason ceased talking.
“You had something else on your mind, something you are trying to develop, something you haven’t told me about?”
“Well?”
Tragg said, “When you didn’t spring that key business, I began to think that perhaps it wasn’t a plant after all.”
“It wasn’t.”
“You didn’t plant them?”
“Absolutely not. What is the third key?”
“I haven’t found out yet.”
“It isn’t Homan’s?”
“No.”
“How about...”
“About what?” Tragg asked as Mason hesitated.
The lawyer picked up a pencil from his desk, slid his thumb and forefinger up and down the smooth sides of the wood. “This,” he said, “goes a long way toward refuting Homan’s story that the car was stolen.”
“Unless he left his keys in it,” Tragg said.
“They would hardly be his keys,” Mason pointed out. “There are only three keys on the ring. One of them is to the ignition of the automobile. One is to Homan’s yacht. Homan would have had more keys than that, keys to his house, keys to his office in the studio.”
There were several seconds of silence, then Mason made a little bow to the police detective. “All right, Tragg, you win.” He turned to Drake. “Tell him about the Warfield woman, Paul.”
“How much?”
“Everything.”
“And about this man Spinney,” Tragg said. “I am interested in Spinney.”
Mason said, “Shoot the works, Paul. Begin at the beginning, about the telephone bills, and what you have done on Spinney.”
Drake took a notebook from his pocket. Refreshing his recollection from that, he told Tragg the whole story. When he had finished, Tragg scowled. “And you guys were holding this out?” he asked.
“I told you,” Mason said, “that if you didn’t go after Homan, you would have to ask us questions. We answered all your questions.”
“Someday,” Tragg said to Drake, “you are going to cut things just a little too fine.”
Drake glanced at Mason.
Mason said, “When Drake works on a case under me, he follows my instructions. I am responsible.”
Tragg grinned at him. “All right, let us come down to earth. I want to clear up this murder. You want to get Stephane Claire acquitted of driving the car. You haven’t closed your case. That key ring should give you something to work on. Homan told me he was very careful to lock the car up when he left it, that he had his keys with him. The idea being to prove that whoever was operating the car was operating it without his permission. All right, Homan had his keys. The chauffeur must have keys. Now then, how is Homan going to explain the fact that the man who was driving the car had a key to his yacht?”
Mason paced the floor, thumbs pushed up in the armholes of his vest, his head bent slightly forward. He said, “He isn’t going to explain it. He can’t. He’s got to change his story.”
“Well,” Tragg said, “so far as I am concerned, Mason, I am satisfied now your client didn’t steal the car, and I am pretty well satisfied she wasn’t driving it. For the sake of argument, let us say Greeley was. She hadn’t known him before. She hadn’t known Homan. She undoubtedly had left San Francisco that morning.”
Mason said, “All right, Tragg, we will put all the cards right on the table. From the time the chauffeur last saw the car, which was on Tuesday morning, until Wednesday, the car had been driven seven hundred and thirty-two miles. Now then, if Homan is telling the truth, that car was driven seven hundred and thirty-two miles between noon on Wednesday and around eleven o’clock, the time of the accident. Well, suppose it had been operated steadily at sixty miles an hour. That would be six hundred and sixty miles. It is an absolute impossibility.”