“You mean he will give her probation?” Della Street asked.
“I think it’s quite possible,” Mason said. “He will, of course, revoke her driving licence for a long period and order her to make a generous settlement on the victim of the hit-and-nun. Remember, she tried to confess to me on several occasions but I headed her off. I had to.”
“Why?” Drake asked.
“Because,” Mason said, “I am an officer of the court. I didn’t want her to confess to the hit-and-run crime until I had secured her release on this murder charge. I didn’t want to have any official confirmation from her own lips of what I suspected to be the case until the murder charge had been disposed of.”
“But why did she take these elaborate precautions to fool us?” Della Street asked. “Why all the business of the blank cartridges at the airport?”
“Because,” Mason said, “she had found the ten thousand dollars in the glove compartment, had learned the car was a stolen one operated by crooks, and so she had to have Dorrie Ambler vanish into thin air in order to get the crooks off her own neck. Therefore, she put the ad in the paper, answered it herself, victimized the firm of detectives, and then called me from the courthouse as soon as the court hearing was over, saying she was at her apartment and that men were keeping her under surveillance and would we please come at once. Then Minerva hung up the telephone.
“You’ll remember Drake’s detective said she went to the phone booth right after the hearing. That’s when she intended to have Dorrie disappear, leaving me very much concerned over the disappearance.
“It was a nice scheme. It might have worked the way she planned it. As it happened, however, at the time she was telephoning me, the crooks who had stolen the car and who had used the apartment on the lower floor as a base of operations were in the apartment searching for the ten thousand dollars. The detective caught them there and was shot by Dunleavey Jasper.”
“Wouldn’t it have been something,” Della Street asked, “if you hadn’t been able to bring things to such a dramatic conclusion that Dunleavey Jasper lost his head and confessed to what really happened? Good heavens, Minerva Minden might have been convicted of her own murder!”
She thought for a moment, then asked, “How could Jasper have known all those facts, Chief?”
Mason grinned. “He didn’t get the facts until later. Tragg’s interview with us in the room that was bugged, and the subsequent story in the newspapers, gave him his chance to put one over on the police and Hamilton Burger. Jasper is smart. He desperately wanted immunity for his crimes — and of course he’d found Minerva’s thirty-eight-calibre gun in the apartment at the Parkhurst. You can also bet that the police questioning gave him enough leads so he could build a pretty convincing story. Naturally the police were anxious to have all the details explained, and Jasper, having rented Apartment 805 and studied the tenant of 907, knew a lot of details he could use to make his story convincing. Because Hamilton Burger was so anxious to get something on me and to convict my client, he was an eager victim.
“Minerva Minden tells me she was out in the parking lot. The attendant thought she had been drinking and asked to see her driving licence. She showed him the only licence she had — the one in the name of Dorrie Ambler. The parking lot attendant remembered the name, Ambler, and told Dunleavey Jasper he thought that was the name of the woman who had stolen his car. But Jasper, of course, didn’t dare tell this to the police because it would ruin the story he was putting across, so he said on the stand he had located the car through underworld connections.”
The phone rang. Della Street answered it, said, “Henrietta Hull wishes to know how much your fee is going to be.”
Mason grinned. “Tell her it’s one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and to make the cheque payable to the Children’s Hospital. After all, I don’t think Minerva should get off too easy.”