Mason once more turned a corner of the canvas back. The traffic officer continued to stand where he could warn traffic coming around the blind curve from below. The men in charge of raising the wreck from the canyon were completely occupied with the problems which confronted them. Someone shouted from down below. The winches ceased to turn, and the sounds of an ax, chopping away at a bush, could be heard from the thicket.
Drake transferred prints of the dead man’s fingers to a white piece of paper, produced a magnifying glass and another set of prints from his pocket. Sitting on his heels beside the mangled form of the dead man, Drake made his comparison.
“Don’t try to reduce it to a mathematical certainty,” Mason said. “All I want is a working hypothesis.”
“Well, you’ve got it,” Drake told him. “This is the guy.”
“Jason Braun?”
“Yes. Alias Packard.”
There were shouts from the brush-covered slope. One of the men leaned over the edge of the road, steadying himself by holding to the wire cable. Mason said, “Okay, Paul, go through his pockets. I’ll keep watch.”
“It’s highly irregular,” Drake pointed out. “The coroner is the one who’s supposed—”
“Forget it,” Mason told him. “Go through his pockets. There’s a car coming up the road now.”
For a moment there was comparative silence in the canyon. The grinding winches of the big tow car had stopped. There were no more shouts from down below. The ax blows were suspended. In the hot silence could be heard the faint grind of a car coming up the winding road.
Drake nodded to his assistant. Turning back the canvas, they explored the stained, stiff clothes of the corpse.
Drake said, “A knife, some keys, a handkerchief, half-smoked package of cigarettes, card of matches from the Log Cabin Café in Pasadena, a pencil, fountain pen, forty-eight dollars in bills, two dollars and seven cents in small change. And that’s all. No rings, stick pins, wrist watch — in fact, nothing else.”
Mason said, “That car’s about ready to come around the curve. Probably it’s the coroner. Get that stuff back in his pockets. Make an inventory if you can.”
The men pushed the things back in the pockets. Drake said, “Gosh, Perry, this is getting me where I live. I’m going to be sick.”
“Shut up,” Mason ordered. “Get busy and keep busy. I’ll tell you when that car rounds the corner. Then get up and get away— Here it comes. Beat it!”
Drake’s assistant jumped to his feet, pulled a cigarette from his pocket, inserted it in his lips and held the flame of a match cupped in trembling hands. Drake jerked the canvas back into position, took two uncertain steps toward Mason, veered abruptly, and leaned against the trunk of a tree. His face was a greenish-white.
The car slowed to a stop in front of the traffic officer’s upraised palm. Two men got out. They talked for a few moments. Then the officer nodded and stood to one side.
Mason watched the two men.
“Is it the coroner?” Drake asked, without moving his position.
Mason said, “Move down toward that tow car, Paul, I’m joining you. Let’s keep out of sight.”
“Is it the coroner?” Drake repeated, still standing against the tree.
“It’s Jimmy Driscoll and Rodney Cuff, his lawyer,” Mason said. “Get going.”
The three walked over to the tow car. The pair coming up the road walked with quick, jerky steps. Mason said, “Sort of circle around the hood, boys. Try to make everything you do seem casual. Don’t look over toward them. Keep your eyes on the cable. Act as though we’re part of the salvage crew.”
Someone shouted from below. The man standing by the drums pushed on a lever, and the winches started slowly revolving.
Cuff and Driscoll walked to the edge of the road, peered down the taut line of the wire rope, then stepped back and walked directly to the canvas-covered figure.
Mason said, “Leave this to me, Paul. You fellows stay here.”
He waited some thirty seconds, until Cuff had inserted his fingers in the pockets of the dead man’s coat, then he casually walked forward and said, “I think the coroner likes to be the one to do that, Cuff.”
Rodney Cuff jumped to his feet. Driscoll stared at Mason with the agonized expression of the landlubber who is about to be seasick.
Cuff’s face was completely without expression, but, for a moment, there was a widening of the blue eyes. Then he grinned, stretched out his hand, “Well, well,” he said, “fancy meeting you here!”
Mason took the outstretched hand, said, “You’re interested in this case, Counselor?”
Cuff met his stare steadily. “All right,” he said, “let’s quit beating around the bush. Was this man Carl Packard, or wasn’t he?”
“I never saw Carl Packard,” Mason told him.
“There’s ink on the fingers of his left hand,” Cuff observed.
“What brought you out here?” Mason countered.
“I fancy,” Cuff said, “that our mental processes were somewhat identical. Tell me, is it Packard?”
Mason met the younger man’s eyes and said, “Yes, Cuff, it’s Packard.”
Cuff glanced over toward Jimmy Driscoll, then shifted his eyes quickly back to Mason. “Then,” he said slowly, “we’ll never know just what it was Packard saw in the window.”
Mason turned to face Driscoll. “Don’t be too sure about that, Cuff.”
So far as he could ascertain, Driscoll’s face didn’t change expression by so much as the faintest flicker.
Chapter thirteen
Mason gave his card to a sallow-faced woman in the late forties, who said, without even attempting a smile, “If you haven’t an appointment with Mr. Dimmick I doubt if he’ll see you. But be seated and I’ll inquire.”
Mason said, “Thanks,” and remained standing.
She vanished through a door marked, “ABNER DIMMICK, Private” and was gone for some thirty seconds. When she returned, she stood on the threshold, an angular figure, attired in a heavy woolen suit, deep-set, black eyes staring in lackluster scrutiny from behind horn-rimmed spectacles.
“Mr. Dimmick will see you,” she said, and stood to one side for Mason to pass.
Mason closed the door behind him. Dimmick, seated back of a desk piled high with leather-backed law books, said, “How d’ye do, Counselor. Excuse me for not getting up. My rheumatism, you know. Sit down. What can I do for you — no, wait a minute.”
He flipped up a lever on an inter-office loud-speaker and said to some person whose identity was not disclosed, “Tell Rodney Cuff to come in here right away.”
Without waiting for any comment, he snapped the lever back into position, turned to Mason and said, “I want young Cuff to be here when we talk. He’s handling this case.”
Mason nodded, dropped into a chair, crossed his long legs in front of him and lit a cigarette. Dimmick regarded him through the haze of blue smoke and said, “How’s your case coming?”
“So-so.”
“I understand the police are holding back some evidence.”
“That so?” Mason asked, raising his eyebrows.
Dimmick raised his bushy eyebrows, then lowered them into level lines of shrewd scrutiny, as he stared at Mason. “Damnedest thing I ever heard of,” he said, “Dimmick, Gray & Peabody getting mixed up in a murder case! Can’t seem to get accustomed to it. Wake up in the mornings with a start, feeling a sense of impending disaster, then realize it’s just that damn murder case. I suppose you get accustomed to them.”
“I do,” Mason said.
“Going to have a fight on your hands to save Rita Swaine,” Dimmick said. “Personally, I think it’s a shame. Walter Prescott needed killing.”
A door burst explosively open. Rodney Cuff, hurrying into the room, saw Mason, nodded, smiled, slowly closed the door behind him, and then, with every appearance of casual indifference, crossed over to the desk and said to Abner Dimmick, “You wanted me, Mr. Dimmick?”