“After her husband’s death, she realized that I was working on the Warfield angle, and checking up pretty closely on Homan. She and Homan were both in a panic for fear I would bring out the evidence of their little affair. The best way to head all that off was to get Stephane Claire acquitted. One way to do that was to prove that Greeley had been driving the car. So she went to his laundry bag, grabbed the first stiff shirt she came to, smeared lipstick on it, and brought it to my office. Poor girl, it was a last desperate attempt. By that time her mind must have been going around in circles, or she would have remembered Homan’s shirt.”
“Why did you come here, Mason?” Tragg asked.
“To check on the identity of the woman who had registered immediately after Greeley.”
“But evidently you knew that already.”
“I surmised it.”
“Any idea where Mrs. Warfield is?”
“She might be on Homan’s yacht. Remember, his brother Horace wanted to use it, but Jules suddenly refused to let him.
Tragg studied him thoughtfully. “What is that stuff on the bed?”
“Some papers Mrs. Greeley brought — correspondence between her husband and Mrs. Warfield, stuff she found after his death.”
“Well, I guess... hello, what’s this?”
Tragg’s eyes had come to rest on the gun lying on the floor.
“Mrs. Greeley dropped it.”
“Dropped it?”
“Yes. She is hysterical and has an idea that someone is trying to kill her. I made her promise she would go to her doctor and get him to give her some sleeping stuff.”
Tragg picked up the gun. “A small caliber automatic.”
“Yes. It fits nicely in her bag. Do you want it?”
Tragg studied it for a moment, then dropped it into his hip pocket. “Mason, I congratulate you.”
“I haven’t done anything,” Mason said, “except put the evidence together.”
“That’s enough, isn’t it? It is a triumph for you.”
“I don’t want any of it, Tragg. You take the credit. All I want is to have Stephane Claire acquitted of that negligent homicide.”
Tragg’s face flushed. “Gosh, Mason, that is damned white.”
Mason said, “I am an amateur. You are the professional. You turn up the murderer. I shall get my client off.”
Tragg turned toward the telephone. “I will get headquarters and...”
“Wait a minute.”
“What’s the idea?” Tragg asked.
“There is no hurry.”
“The devil there isn’t! We have really got something on Mrs. Warfield now — if she is on Homan’s yacht...”
Mason broke in, “There are a couple of angles I want to check, and I have been hoping something would turn up here in the hotel. Let us go have a drink, Tragg, and check the evidence over carefully.”
Tragg’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the idea?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Mason said, “only before you talk to the...”
Tragg suddenly snatched up the telephone. “Get me through to headquarters,” he said. “Yes, police headquarters. This is Lieutenant Tragg. Rush that call!”
Mason said, “Don’t do that, Tragg.”
Tragg looked at him over the top of the telephone. “Damn you, Mason! You had me sold. The only thing that tipped me off was the way you tried to keep me from sticking my neck out just now... Hello, headquarters. This is Tragg. Get the dispatcher to throw out a dragnet for Mrs. Adler Greeley. We have her description and photograph... Yes, first-degree murder... Her husband and Ernest Tanner. And cover all drugstores in the vicinity of the Gateview Hotel, and see if a woman answering her description has tried to buy poison. Get that started at once. I will call back later with details.”
Tragg dropped the receiver into place. “You could have fooled me,” he said to Mason, “if you hadn’t been such a softie. You knew that if I called headquarters and gave them that line on Mrs. Warfield, it would sound like a logical solution. The newspaper boys would make me out a regular Sherlock Holmes and tomorrow morning when they found Mrs. Greeley’s body and her confession, I would be the laughing-stock of the town. I presume you told her to commit suicide.”
Mason sighed. “I only told her to see her doctor, Tragg.”
Chapter 21
Della Street came through the door from the outer office. Mason, tilted back in his swivel chair, his feet crossed on the corner of the desk, was staring in frowning concentration at the tips of his shoes.
“What is it, Della?”
She didn’t answer at once but walked around the desk to place a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “Lieutenant Tragg just telephoned, Chief.”
Mason looked up with a quick glance, then at what he saw in Della Street’s face, turned away once more.
“They have found her.”
“Where?” Mason asked.
“In the place no one would ever have thought of looking.”
“The Gateview Hotel?” Mason asked.
Her eyes were wide. “How did you know?”
Mason said, “My guess would be she never checked out of that room she took. She didn’t want to attract any attention to herself, so it is very possible she paid a week’s rent on the room when she registered.”
“Then she must have intended to kill him at that time.”
Mason nodded.
“Why?”
“To protect the reputation of the man she loved.”
“Homan?”
“Yes.”
“And your idea was to throw Tragg off the scent just long enough to give her an opportunity to... you are a softie.”
Mason said, “She is intensely emotional Della. She is a woman. She loved Homan, madly, passionately. She did what she did in order to save Homan’s reputation. And then Tanner started blackmailing her. And when she knew Tanner knew, she had to silence his lips in the same way she had silenced her husband’s. And the tragic part of it was, if she had only waited, it wouldn’t have been necessary. If she had only talked with Mrs. Warfield before she went down to her husband’s room...
“Oh, well,” Mason said with a sigh, “You can’t reverse the hands of the clock.”
“Chief, what did actually happen?”
“A great deal of it was just the way I outlined it to Tragg,” Mason said, a note of weariness creeping into his voice. “But there were one or two important variations. When Mrs. Greeley learned her husband was corresponding with a detective agency over a Mrs. Warfield, she probably thought Mrs. Warfield was a witness in the case Greeley was planning to file for alienation of affections against Homan.
“She followed her husband to the hotel. Of course, she didn’t go to Mrs. Warfield’s room first. She went to his room — and killed him. We can only surmise what happened next, but under the evidence, it is not taking much of a chance. Greeley probably had some of Mrs. Warfield’s correspondence to Spinney in his pocket when he was murdered, and it wouldn’t have taken Mrs. Greeley long to realize that here was a marvelous opportunity for framing Greeley’s murder on Mrs. Warfield. She goes to Mrs. Warfield’s room, gets Mrs. Warfield down to her room, and worms the whole story out of her. Mrs. Warfield is afraid of the law, believing her husband to be a convict, and she is already suspicious of Drake and me, so it is easy to persuade her to ditch us and disappear so Drake and I can’t find her. Mrs. Greeley has to put her some place where she won’t see the newspapers. The answer is Homan’s yacht.”