“Well,” Drake said, “I figured we’d get on the job, find out all we could, and perhaps take some photographs. I brought a camera along.”
“Where’s the place?”
“Up in the mountains. We go out to Santa Monica, start up the coast boulevard toward Oxnard, and then turn off on one of the side roads. My man will be waiting at the intersection to flag us down.”
Mason lit a cigarette, smoked thoughtfully for a moment while the driver, swinging to the outside lane of traffic, sent the speedometer needle quivering upward.
“Incidentally,” Drake said, “I’ve found out why the police took such prompt steps when the report came in about Stella Anderson having seen the man hiding the gun.”
“Shoot.”
“Prescott had telephoned the police that he had reason to believe someone was going to try to kill him, but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say who that someone was. The police asked him a few questions, and, among other things, wanted to know if he wanted a permit to carry a gun. He said he didn’t, but said there’d been a prowler around the house for a couple of nights, and if he should telephone the police, he wanted quick action. He said he kept a double-barreled shot-gun in the house and said he wasn’t going to take any chances; that if anyone tried to break in he was going to cut loose with his shot-gun.”
“That sounds phony,” Mason said. “It doesn’t ring true.”
“I know it doesn’t,” Drake told him, “but that’s why the police paid attention to the report that came in about Driscoll giving a gun to the girl to hide.”
Mason said thoughtfully, “I wonder if he thought Jimmy Driscoll was going to be hanging around the house, and he could lay a foundation with a complaint to the police, and then spray Driscoll full of lead.”
“If we’re guessing,” Drake said, “it sounds like a good guess.”
Mason smoked in silence for half a dozen blocks, then said meditatively, “Well, we’re guessing... Paul, there’s something phony about Walter Prescott. I can’t put my finger on just what it is, but somehow he doesn’t ring true. This business of taking money from his wife to invest in the business, and salting it away — the large deposits which he apparently made in the bank, notwithstanding the relatively small amounts he took out of his business— By the way, Trader mentioned he was delivering some stuff to Prescott’s garage. I wonder just what that stuff was. Suppose you check into that angle?”
“But he had the accident and went right on to the hospital,” Drake said “—No, you’re right, at that, Perry, he did make the delivery later. I remember now. He said he left the hospital to come back to the garage.”
“Prescott, you’ll remember,” Mason told him, “had given Trader his keys.”
“That’s right.”
“So Trader had a key to the garage door.”
“I wonder what happened to those keys,” Drake remarked. “Trader’s never accounted for them, as far as I can find.”
“Might be a good plan to give him a little more shakedown.”
“Getting information out of Trader,” Drake said, “is like getting blood out of a turnip.”
Mason nodded. “He left the hospital before Packard was discharged. Packard was there about thirty-five minutes. He arrived there about ten minutes past twelve. That means Trader must have delivered the merchandise some time around quarter to one or one o’clock.”
“That would have been before Rita Swaine arrived?” Drake asked.
Mason nodded and said, “The more I think of it, Paul, the more I think I’m interested in knowing just what that merchandise consisted of. Trader didn’t want to give us any information when we talked with him, but now there’s been a murder, the situation will be different.”
Drake pulled out his notebook, braced himself against the swaying of the automobile, tried in vain to write legibly. He looked at the scrawled letters, grinned and said, “When I see something I can’t read, I’ll know that means ‘look up merchandise in the garage.’ ”
Mason settled back against the cushions. “What did you find out about Prescott?” he asked the detective.
“Plenty,” Drake said. “I can tell you all about him from the time he left kindergarten until he was found dead. I could even give you some of his grades in school.”
“How was he, bright?”
“Not particularly during grammar school. He took a spurt in high school, and made a pretty good record in college. He was a chemical engineer. Then he drifted into insurance adjusting.”
“How about his personality?”
“Rotten,” Drake said. “He made very few friends, either in college or outside. George Wray was the business producer in the firm. Prescott was a walking encyclopedia of miscellaneous information. He had a great mind for detail. He was valuable when it came to taking care of the business Wray brought in.”
“What about Driscoll?” the lawyer asked.
“Just a nice rich play-boy. His mother died when he was fifteen. She left an estate of around a couple of million, mostly in the form of cash. It’s all tied up in a complicated trust, administered by the bank. Driscoll can’t touch the principal until he’s thirty-five. The income goes to him in accordance with the terms of the trust, one of which is that he can’t have more than three hundred dollars a month unless he earns more than three hundred dollars a month in some gainful and legitimate occupation. Then he can get more — but that’s at the discretion of the trustees again.”
“Sounds as though the boy had some defect of character,” Mason said. “From the time he’s fifteen until the time he’s thirty-five is a long time.”
“I know,” Drake said, “but apparently it was his mother’s idea that he was going to have to work and learn something of the value of money before he started playing around with the estate. You see, she put it right up to him. He couldn’t be much of a man-about-town on three hundred a month. But if he earned three hundred dollars a month, then the trustees could turn over as much or as little of the income as they thought advisable. I think it was drink she was afraid of, I don’t know. Anyway, she sure put a fence around the kid.”
“How did she happen to pick on Dimmick, Gray & Peabody?”
“They’d been her lawyers for years. They drew up the trust. And, incidentally, picked off a sweet thing for the bank. That’s the way they do. The bank turns them an estate every once in a while, and they turn the hank a nice piece of trust business.”
“Mrs. Driscoll evidently had a lot of confidence in Abner Dimmick.”
“She did. He was the one who had the contact with her. It was partnership business, but Dimmick was the one she always asked for. Incidentally,” Drake said, “that young chap, Cuff, did a pretty good job of representing Driscoll, didn’t he?”
Mason frowned thoughtfully and said, “I wish I knew. He was either practicing law by ear and happened to make a good guess, or else he’s one of those natural courtroom lawyers we hear about but seldom see. He rather forcibly impressed on me that the authorities couldn’t extradite Rosalind Prescott and that it might be a good move on my part to keep her outside of the state.”
“But,” Drake said, “that would swing public opinion very strongly against her.”
“I’m not certain but what that’s what he was trying to do,” Mason said. “You see, his manner contrasts very much with my own. I sit in court with an armful of legal monkey-wrenches and toss them into the machinery whenever I see a couple of wheels getting ready to move around. Cuff is one of those chaps who apparently wants to co-operate all the time. He was so nice down there at the inquest that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Yet he managed to squeeze out from under and leave Rita Swaine holding the sack.”