“Have they moved the wreck?”
“No. They’re leaving it there, hoping Packard may come back to it or send after it. If he shows up, they’ll grab him.”
Mason frowned thoughtfully at the telephone for several seconds, then said, “Come on in here, Paul. I have an idea I want to talk over with you.”
He hung up the receiver and indicated his desk with a sweeping gesture. “I’m sorry, Della, vacation’s over.”
“You aren’t going to stay in Shanghai?”
“No,” he told her. “We’ll have to let the boat sail without us, and come back on the clipper.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said, picking up the folders one at a time. “Listen, Chief, you aren’t going to back out on this vacation, are you?”
“No,” he told her with a grin, “we sail, as per schedule, if I can clean up this case of the lame canary. And that case begins to look more and more complicated, and our sailing that much more uncertain.”
Paul Drake tapped lightly on the panels of the corridor door, and Della Street let him in. Drake crossed over to slide into the big overstuffed leather chair, and said, “What’s on your mind, Perry?”
“Simply this,” Mason said. “That doctor out at the hospital was a little too self-satisfied, a little too positive, a little too definite in his diagnosis.”
“What do you mean?”
“That traumatic amnesia business,” Mason said. “The man had been in an accident. He had amnesia. Immediately the doctor decided it was traumatic amnesia. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, it would have been. But then the patient wouldn’t have left the hospital and had a return attack. Now then, Paul, suppose that it wasn’t traumatic amnesia, but was a case of chronic amnesia? Suppose it was amnesia which leaves a man on the border-line of normalcy?”
“Is there an amnesia like that?”
“I don’t know. I’m not trying to study medicine, I’m trying to list causes and get results. I want to add figures and get the answer.
“Now I’ve never had amnesia myself, but I’ve forgotten names that I wanted to remember lots of times, and I suppose a man who forgets his own identity has just about the same symptoms as someone who forgets the identity of another person. In other words, he has spells during which he can almost get it. The name does everything but pop into his mind, but vanishes again just as soon as he tries to concentrate on it.”
“I know what you mean,” Drake said. “Go on from there.”
“If that’s the case,” Mason said, “this man Packard leads sort of an intermittent life. He wakes up in the morning, or has a shock of some sort, and can’t remember who he is. He starts groping with the problem. He can almost remember, but not quite. He thinks he’s Carl Packard of Altaville. He goes under that name for a while. Then something happens and he forgets it. A man gently reminds him of Altaville, and the association of ideas brings the name Packard back to his mind. For a moment he thinks he’s Packard, but just as soon as the effect of suggestion is withdrawn, he can’t remember who he is.”
Drake said, “What you mean is that the man’s name may be something like Packard, and he probably does come from Altaville.”
“That’s it,” Mason said. “Now, there aren’t many names which sound like Packard. But Packard is the name of an automobile. Now, suppose you start men at work in Altaville, looking up every person who has disappeared, and particularly seeing if you can’t locate someone by the name of Ford or Lincoln, or Auburn, who is taking an automobile trip somewhere and hasn’t written to any of his friends for several weeks.”
Drake nodded and said, “It’s a good hunch, anyway.”
“Now here’s another one,” Mason said. “Let’s suppose this man has one of these spells, and there isn’t some doctor available to adroitly suggest to him that he really is Carl Packard of Altaville. Then he’d be apt to take some other name. Now, we don’t know how long he’s been here in the city. So, in addition to the Altaville angle, start men working on every disappearance which has been reported within the last two months. In other words, if a man walks out of a hotel or apartment and doesn’t come back, but leaves his things, under circumstances which make it look as though he wasn’t trying to beat a hotel bill, we may have a live lead. I don’t think it’s going to be very difficult to find those cases because the police will have records of all of them. Get in touch with the Missing Persons Bureau at headquarters, and sift through their records. Do it in a rush, because the police may have the same hunch, and I’d like to talk with Packard before the district attorney sews him up. And don’t forget Doctor Wallace said he was headed for San Diego. So do some work on that angle, too.”
Drake nodded and said, “I’ll get at that right away. Now here’s something else, Perry: I’m uncovering a lot of stuff about Prescott. Most of it doesn’t have any particular significance and won’t mean anything until I’ve got enough stuff to be able to put it all together in a complete report. But here’s something you can get a lot easier than I can: Prescott had an account over at the Second Fidelity Savings & Loan. Naturally, they aren’t passing out information to strangers about the accounts of their customers, but I did find this out: There’s something fishy about it. Large deposits were made in the form of cash. And, unless Prescott’s business was a gold mine, he was getting some cash from outside sources.”
“Sure he was,” Mason said grimly. “He got twelve thousand bucks out of his wife, and I only hope his account shows where he deposited that much in cash.”
Drake said significantly, “If my information’s correct, Perry, twelve thousand dollars isn’t a drop in the bucket. He deposited over seventy-five thousand dollars since the first of the year.”
“He did what?” Mason asked.
“Deposited over seventy-five thousand dollars. There’s something over sixty thousand dollars in the account right now in the form of cash. Mind you, Perry, I’m doing a lot of guessing on this business; naturally, the bank isn’t putting out any official information.”
“You’re all wet,” Mason told him. “Whoever gave you the information has been making some bum guesses.”
“Well, that’s the way I figured it at first,” Drake admitted, “but my information isn’t so much a matter of guesswork as you might suppose. Now, here’s my idea: You’re representing his widow. She’s entitled to letters of administration, if there isn’t a will, or to be executrix if there is — unless, of course, the will specifically disinherits her. But, even so, some of this is community property. Now, suppose you go down to the bank, have a talk with them, put your cards on the table, and see if you can’t get the information.”
Mason said slowly, “They probably wouldn’t turn loose with anything until after she’d actually been appointed.”
“Don’t be too sure,” Drake said. “That’s a nice, juicy account. They won’t want to be too technical and antagonize the person who’s going to inherit it, once they’re satisfied that she is going to inherit it.”
“Well,” Mason said, “it’s worth a try, anyway. I—”
The telephone on Della Street’s desk rang. She picked up the receiver, listened for a moment, then turned to Perry Mason and said, “Don’t let me interrupt, Chief, but Karl Helmold’s on the line. He’s so excited he can hardly talk. He wants to see you right away.”
Mason nodded, picked up his desk phone and said, “All right, Karl. What is it?”
“Ja! Ja! Quick!” Helmold said explosively, and hung up the receiver.
Mason dropped his phone back into position, grinned across at the detective, and said, “Most cases hit you an awful wallop right in between the eyes with a mess of complicated circumstances which gradually simplify themselves when you start unraveling them. This case starts out with a lame canary and goes on from there in a big way. Every time we find a new thread, it makes the snarl that much worse.”