“Uh-huh. Think I will telephone and see if headquarters has any news.”
“Cocktail?” Mason asked.
Tragg hesitated.
“You are not on duty,” Mason told him.
“Well, all right, make it a martini.”
“Think we will probably have four customers on that,” Mason said as Tragg threaded his way through the dancers toward the telephone booth.
A waiter approached Mason. “Four dry martinis, four de luxe steak dinners. Make the steaks medium rare except for the gentleman sitting over there, who wants his well-done, and I wish you would keep that dinner moving right along. Will you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Mason settled back in his chair, watching the dancers. Tragg returned from the telephone booth, and Mason flashed a quick glance at the officer’s face. Tragg’s smile indicated that as yet he had received no news of the crumpled figure which lay balanced precariously over the edge of the bathtub in the Adirondack Hotel.
“News?” Mason asked.
“I shall say. It was a cinch to pick up our man in the tuxedo at Fresno. He got off the plane, made inquiries about renting a car which he could drive himself. He couldn’t get a car until about eight-thirty in the morning when one of the places opened up. He rented a car, gave the name of L. C. Spinney, drove the car one hundred and sixty-five miles, and brought it back about two o’clock. He walked out, and evaporated into thin air. We lose him from then on. The description is Greeley.”
The dance music stopped. Paul Drake and Della Street came toward the table.
Mason said abruptly, “Cover the garages that rent cars with drivers.”
“What is the angle?” Tragg asked.
“Don’t you see?” Mason asked.
“No, hanged if I do.”
Mason said, “Bet you the dinners that you will find he appeared at a garage which rented cars with drivers before three o’clock in the afternoon and hired a driver to take him exactly eighty-two miles up into the mountains. He got out there.”
Paul Drake and Della Street were now at the table, Drake holding Della Street’s chair.
Tragg said, “I am not going to bet you the price of the dinners because I am a poor working man. I can’t pass expenses on to a rich client the way you can. I can’t make the compensation for my services sufficiently elastic to cover all the traffic will stand. And furthermore, I think you are bluffing.”
“Go ahead and call me,” Mason said.
Tragg said, “Well, I will call headquarters and have them check with the Fresno police on it. If it is right, will you tell me how you reason it out?”
“Uh-huh.”
Tragg threaded his way once more among the tables and belated dancers who were coming off the dance floor. Della Street asked, “What is it, Chief?”
Mason said, “I think we are on the home stretch.”
“Don’t clean the case up too soon,” Drake jokingly remarked. “I am getting paid by the day, and I never do get these delightful dinners and a chance to dance with Della except when you are on a case and have an expense account.”
Mason jerked his head toward Della. “Is she still Hollywood, Paul?”
“Oh, definitely,” Della said.
“Come on, brat,” Mason said. “Tell us what you found out.”
“Here is Tragg coming back.”
“It’s all right. He is one of the family,” Mason said, raising his voice just enough so that Tragg could hear as he approached the table.
“What now?” Tragg asked.
“Della is about to relay us the dirt from Hollywood.”
The waiter appeared with their cocktails.
“Here is to crime,” Mason said, looking at Tragg across the rim of the glass.
“And the catching of criminals,” Tragg amended before he drank.
“By fair means or foul,” Della Street volunteered.
They took the first long sip from their cocktails, then, as they lowered their glasses, Tragg said, “I see you have got Miss Street educated to your outlook.”
“Why not?” Mason asked. “A criminal doesn’t play cricket. He accomplishes the results he wants by any means that are handy. Why shouldn’t he be tripped up by the same means?”
“Because it isn’t legal.”
“Oh, bunk,” Mason said impatiently. “You folks are either fools or hypocrites when you say that.”
“No, we are not,” Tragg said earnestly. “The whole structure of the law has to be a dignified, imposing edifice and built on firm foundations, if it is going to stand. Whenever you violate the law, you are tearing down a part of that structure, regardless of what goal you may want to achieve.”
“All right,” Mason said, grinning, “why not tear parts of it down?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Mason said, “suppose you are on the roof and a murderer is sneaking out through the basement. You can’t stop him by yelling at him, but if you take a loose brick out of the chimney, drop it, and hit him on the head, it stops him, and why isn’t it perfectly justifiable? After all, you have only taken a loose brick from that dignified structure you have been talking about and...”
“Well,” Tragg said, “it is not exactly that way. It...”
“The hell it isn’t,” Mason interrupted. “A man has a joint where he sells liquor illegally, but he gives you all the low-down on the people that come into that joint. It is in the interests of the police to keep the place going. They know the man is selling liquor, and that the sale is unlawful, and after regular closing hours, but they wink at it.”
“Well, in that case you have to admit that you are getting something which is very important in return for a very minor infraction of the law.”
“Sure,” Mason said, “you are taking the loose brick out of the chimney of your imposing structure and dropping it on the head of the murderer.”
Tragg threw up his hands. “I should have known better than to argue with a lawyer. And, remember, Miss Street, the next dance is mine.”
“Okay.”
“And in the meantime, what about Homan?” Mason asked.
“My dear,” she said to Perry, pitching her voice in the high, rapid key of a woman who is a natural-born gossip, and talking at a high rate of speed, “you have absolutely no idea about how that man has come to the front! It has been terrific. I mean really. He started in as a writer on an obscure assignment and on a play that was stinko. Then out of a clear sky he shot up into a big job, and I mean gravy.”
“What is back of it?” Mason asked. “And can that Hollywood chatter before I crown you.”
“A woman.”
“What woman?”
“No one knows.”
“How do they know it is a woman?”
“Because Homan never plays around. He lives what my informant naïvely describes as a monastic life. I wouldn’t know what she meant.”
“Careful,” Drake warned. “That remark might be twisted.”
“Yes, and you have some of the best little remark-twisters in the world gathered right around this table,” Tragg interposed.
She laughed. “Well, anyway, Homan is something of a unique character around Hollywood, but doesn’t always stay around Hollywood. Occasionally he vanishes, and when he vanishes — tra la tra la!”
“Where does he go?” Mason asked.
“He goes to some place where he can be all alone with his work,” Della Street said with a demure manner which was purposely exaggerated. Her eyes were large and round, gazing above the heads of the diners on the far ceiling. She pursed her lips and said mincingly, “He is always trying to get away somewhere where he can work. He is a man who simply can’t be disturbed. He breaks from the studio to go home and shut himself in his study where he will be free to concentrate, and then his nerves get so frayed by the environment of civilization that he has to jump in his car and go alone into the solitude.”