He frowned and said, “You know as well as I do, Della, we can’t leave on that ship until we have Rita Swaine out of her difficulties.”
“Suppose she’s guilty?”
“Do you think she’s guilty?”
“To tell you the truth, Chief, I don’t know. I don’t think I pay as much attention to the sob-sister stories women hand out as you do. But, just the same, it’s hard to figure how she could have gone in the house, killed Walter Prescott, and then tried to plan things so it would look as though her sister had done the job.”
“How about Rosalind Prescott?”
“I’m not so sure about her. Rosalind’s in love. A woman will do anything to protect the man she loves.”
“Even to the extent of getting her sister convicted of murder!”
“Her sister isn’t convicted of murder yet,” Della Street pointed out. “And if she is, it’ll be the first client you’ve defended who has been convicted. Rosalind may have passed the buck to you.”
Mason resumed his pacing of the floor and said, “Yes, that’s so.”
“Chief, will you please take the time out tonight to pack your trunks?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t promise. If I can’t clear this case up, there’s no use packing any trunks. You know as well as I do I won’t sail unless it’s finished.”
“That isn’t what’s bothering me,” she said. “I don’t doubt your ability to work out a solution of this case before tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock. But, what I’m afraid of is, you’ll get interested in some other case and stay over to handle that.”
“No,” he told her, “when we get this thing cleaned up we’re going around the world.”
“Will you promise you won’t take on any other case?”
Mason said, with a grin, “Well, now, a promise is definite and final.”
“So you really don’t mean it.”
“Well,” he offered, “I’ll make you a conditional promise.”
“What do you mean by a conditional promise?”
“I won’t take any ordinary case,” he said. “Of course, if something should come in which fairly reeked of mystery— Well, you wouldn’t want me to go around the world putting in every waking minute wondering what I’d left behind me, would you?”
“Yes,” she said, “I would.”
“I wouldn’t enjoy the trip.”
“You think you wouldn’t. If you once got started you’d get a kick out of it. You’d see so much beneath the surface that you’d get a lot of fun sizing up your fellow travelers, going ashore in the different ports, and—”
She broke off, to lift the receiver from the telephone on her desk as the bell shrilled into noise. Listening a moment, she looked up and said, “Frederick Carpenter, the Vice-President of the Second Fidelity Savings & Loan.”
Mason grinned and said, “That may be good. Better listen in.”
He strode to his desk, jerked up his telephone, said, “Hello. Mason speaking.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Mason. This is Mr. Frederick Carpenter of the Second Fidelity Savings & Loan. You’ll remember talking with me about the account of Walter Prescott, deceased.”
“I remember it perfectly,” Mason said, winking across at Della Street.
“At the time you talked with me,” Carpenter went on, in the slow, deliberate voice of one who has trained himself not to do things in a hurry, “I felt that it would be far better to wait until your client had been appointed by the court before making any accounting. However, after taking the matter up with our legal department, we have concluded that perhaps it might be better to co-operate with you and not force you to take steps to ascertain the exact amount which—”
Mason impatiently interrupted the smooth cadences of the banker’s voice. “Never mind explaining,” he said. “How much is his balance?”
Carpenter cleared his throat. “Sixty-nine thousand, seven hundred and sixty-five dollars and thirty cents,” he said.
“Can you tell me how that’s been deposited?”
“The deposits,” Carpenter said, “were rather unusual.For the most part, they represented sums ranging from five to fifteen thousand dollars, deposited in cash.”
“By Walter Prescott personally?”
“As far as I am able to ascertain from our records and the recollection of the persons who handled the account, by Walter Prescott personally.”
“Thanks,” Mason said.
“And if we can be of any assistance to you in the future,” Carpenter said, “please ask for me personally, Mr. Mason.”
Mason said, “Okay,” dropped the receiver into place, and stared across at Della Street. “That,” he said, “doesn’t look very much as though we were sailing tomorrow.”
“Why not, Chief?”
“It means there’s another complicating circumstance which we haven’t considered; something which has to be ironed out before we can reach a solution.”
“Why does it have to be ironed out?”
“Because,” he told her, “a solution of any crime which doesn’t account for all of the various factors involved is no solution at all. Now, I’ve paid too much attention to the people the district attorney’s office suspect, and not enough to the victim. In the long run, Della, the essence of all successful detective work lies in reconstructing the life of the victim. That gives motivation, and motivation makes murders.
“Virtually every man has enemies. Sometimes they’re business enemies. More often they’re personal enemies, people who hate him, people who will look down their noses and say it’s too bad when they hear he’s bumped off, but who will be tickled to death just the same; but it takes a peculiar psychological build-up to perpetrate a murder. A man must have a certain innate ferocity, a certain lack of consideration, and, usually, a lack of imagination.”
“Why a lack of imagination?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “except that it’s nearly always true. I think imaginative people sympathize with the sufferings of others because they’re able to visualize those sufferings more keenly in their own minds. An unimaginative person, on the other hand, can’t visualize himself in the shoes of another. Therefore, he sees life only from his own selfish angle. Killers are frequently cunning, but they’re rarely original. They’re selfish, and usually determined. Of course, I’m not talking now about a murder which is the result of some sudden overpowering emotion.”
“Why couldn’t this murder be one of that type?” she asked.
“It could,” he admitted readily enough. “In that event, I’d say that Rita Swaine pulled the trigger. But, whether she was justified, is another question.”
“Would you represent her if she’s guilty?”
“It depends on what you mean by being guilty. I don’t necessarily define murder the same way the district attorney defines it. If there were circumstances of moral provocation, they might be just as compelling as circumstances of physical provocation. In other words, the law says that if a man is in a position to do you great bodily harm, or to kill you, and he comes at you, apparently for the purpose of putting a murderous intent into execution, you have the right to kill him. In other words, that’s a physical provocation. It’s all the law, in its blundering generality, can take into comprehension. But, how about the person who brings a crushing mental or moral pressure upon a more or less helpless victim? I admit circumstances like that aren’t common. But, with certain temperaments, they might be possible.”
“Chief,” she said, “will you please unfocus your mind long enough to get your clothes packed?”