Tragg, however, sat there, stiff in hostile silence, while Mason held out his hand to take her arm. The deputy sheriff took the other arm.
“You’re going to regret this, Mason!” Tragg said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Incidentally, I have some questions to ask you.”
“Come to my office any time,” Mason said.
“I might have you come here.”
“Not without a warrant, Tragg.”
“I might get a warrant.”
“That’s your privilege.”
The door closed. The deputy sheriff said, “Well, I guess that’s all, Mr. Mason.”
“Just see us out of the building, if you will,” Mason said.
He helped Marilyn Marlow down the stairs.
“You’re trembling,” he said.
“I’m a wreck,” she admitted. “I just want to get somewhere where I can cry. I think I’m going to have hysterics.”
“Was it bad?” Mason asked.
“It was terrible.”
Mason shook hands with the deputy sheriff. “Thanks a lot.”
“Okay, Mr. Mason. I was just doing my duty. You had the papers. I was ordered to serve them, and I served them.”
“Thanks again,” Mason said.
She heard the rustle of paper, caught a glimpse of green currency, then Mason was helping her into his automobile and the car was purring away through the city streets.
“What happened?” Mason asked.
“It was terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible...”
She felt her voice rising higher and higher. The word “terrible” was wedged in her mind. Her tongue kept repeating it without any conscious volition on her part.
Mason suddenly slammed the car to a stop. “Forget it!” he said. “Seconds are precious. They may charge you with murder at that. Go ahead and tell me what happened. Start crying after you’ve told me what happened. And save the hysterics until we’re out in the clear.”
There was something in the granite-hard eyes of the lawyer that brought back a measure of her self-control.
She said, “Lieutenant Tragg asked me to come to his office. He asked me to show him some of the jewelry that my mother had been given by George Endicott. Then Lieutenant Tragg suggested very tactfully that I’d better wear as much of it as possible, because if I left the place alone, it just might be that some sneak thief might get in and...”
“Did they photograph you?” Mason asked.
“The police? No.”
“Anyone take pictures?”
“Yes. The newspaper men came in.”
Mason swore under his breath.
“What’s the matter?”
Mason said angrily, “It’s the way the police play ball with the newspapers.”
“What do you mean?”
“A nice bit of publicity for the police,” Mason said. “They got you all dolled up in the jewelry that your mother had received from Endicott. Then the newspaper men are permitted to photograph you. They’ll have pictures all over the morning papers with the caption, ‘Heiress Being Quizzed at Office of Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide Squad, Wears Fortune in Jewelry Mother Received from Dead Benefactor.’ ”
“Oh!” Marilyn said, and the word was an exclamation of dismay.
“Go ahead,” Mason said. “What happened after that?”
“Lieutenant Tragg, it seems, was delayed, and I was sent up to meet Sergeant Holcomb and three or four other officers.”
Mason said, “And then, I suppose Sergeant Holcomb started questioning you.”
“Yes.”
“And,” Mason went on, “they put you in a chair with a bright light beating on your face. They formed a circle around you and a lot of other people came in, and they started yelling at you and throwing questions at you before you had a chance to answer, making all kinds of nasty insinuations and accusations and...”
“Yes,” she said.
“And then Lieutenant Tragg suddenly showed up and was very fatherly and gentlemanly and apologetic and took you into his office, and the relief was so great that you felt he was the most wonderful gentleman.”
“Why, yes! How did you know what happened?”
Mason said, “It’s police routine, just part of the psychological third-degree. One man pounds a witness until she’s almost crazy, gets everything he can out of her, and then when she gets to the point where she won’t talk, a signal is flashed and another man comes in and takes the part of a perfect gentleman and...”
“You mean that was all an act?”
“All an act.”
“Why, I don’t believe that Lieutenant Tragg is that sort.”
“Lieutenant Tragg,” Mason said, “has a job to do. He’s given instructions as to the methods he has to employ. He doesn’t have a thing to say about what he does and what he doesn’t do. He’s a cog in a machine. The police have to get results. They have to make people talk. They use all sorts of methods. Some of them are damned ingenious. Don’t make the mistake of thinking the police are dumb.”
“Well, those first people certainly were dumb. They...”
“I’ll bet they got a lot out of you, at that.”
“They didn’t until that witness identified me.”
“What witness?”
“The woman who saw us all going in and going out of Rose Keeling’s flat.”
Mason said wearily, “Nine chances out of ten that was another police frameup. The witness was just a stooge. You didn’t see her clearly?”
“No.”
“Did she definitely state what time you came in? And what time you went out?”
Marilyn Marlow thought for a moment, then said, “No, she didn’t. She just said that I was the woman she had seen leaving at the time she had previously told the police.”
Mason sighed. “That’s an old gag. She hasn’t seen anyone. She was probably a stenographer in one of the police departments, working nights, or else she was a deputy clerk from the bail-bond office. She didn’t even know where Rose lived. She’d never seen you before in her life.”
Marilyn Marlow sucked in her breath.
“And what did you tell them?” Mason asked.
She said, “I guess — I guess that did it! I thought she had seen us all going in and coming out, and I–I was trying to save you and I told them that I had been the one who had telephoned you to come and...”
“And admitted you were there and left the place?”
“Yes.”
“That clinches things,” Mason said. “They’ll charge you with murder.”
“And when that happens, what will it do to you?”
Mason said grimly, “Plenty!”
Chapter 14
Della Street was waiting up when Mason unlocked the door to the private office.
She jumped up out of the chair and ran to him.
“Della, what are you doing here?” Mason said. “It’s midnight.”
“I know, but I couldn’t have slept if I’d gone home. What happened?”
“They made her talk.”
“How bad was it?”
Mason hung his hat on a hook in the coat closet and said, “It’s a mess.”
“Was the habeas corpus in time to do any good?”
“Just in time to salvage some of it. But a lot of it had gone by the board.”
“How much?”
Mason said, “They worked the old gag on her. First, Sergeant Holcomb batted her around and then Tragg came in and was the perfect gentleman. He’s good at that. People feel his heart’s in the right place and sob out their souls to him.”
“What did she tell him?”
“Told him about the letter, about telephoning me, and, by implication, told them that I had either wiped fingerprints off the receiver of the telephone or had given her a chance to do so. That’s the part that’s going to hurt. Tragg will really go to town on that.”