Her smile was expansive. “Don’t let your anger get the best of you, Charles,” she said. “It’s bad for your blood pressure. You know what the doctor told you... You see, Charles, I was in Reno getting my divorce. Court was called at two o’clock, and I had to wait two hours and a half before my case came up. I’m afraid you’ll have to find a pretty big loophole in that alibi to pin the crime on me — or don’t you think so?”
Mason said, “I’m going to tell you something which hasn’t as yet been made public. The authorities at San Molinas will probably discover it shortly. In the meantime, the facts happen to be in my possession. I think you all should know them.”
“I don’t care what facts you have,” Mrs. Sabin said. “You’re not going to bluff me.”
“I’m not bluffing anybody,” Mason told her. “Fremont C. Sabin crossed over into Mexico and went through a marriage ceremony with a librarian from San Molinas. Her name is Helen Monteith. It has generally been supposed that the parrot which was found in the cabin, with the body, was Casanova, the parrot to which Mr. Sabin was very much attached. As a matter of fact, for reasons which I haven’t been able to uncover as yet, Mr. Sabin purchased another parrot in San Molinas and left Casanova with Helen Monteith. Casanova remained with Helen Monteith from Friday, the second, until today.”
Mrs. Sabin got to her feet. “Well,” she said, “I don’t see that this concerns me, and I don’t think we have anything further to gain here. You, Richard Waid, are going to be sorry that you betrayed my interests and violated my instructions. I suppose now I’ve got to go to a lot of trouble making affidavits as to when that divorce decree was actually granted... So my husband has a bigamous wife, has he? Well, well, well! Come, Steve, we’ll go and leave these gentlemen to themselves. As soon as I’ve gone, they’ll try to find evidence which will show that Fremont wasn’t killed until the evening of Tuesday the sixth. In order to do that, it’s quite possible they’ll try to tamper with the evidence. I think, Steve, that it will be wise for us to retain a lawyer. We have our own interests to protect.”
She swept from the room. Steve Watkins, following her, turned to make some fumbling attempt to comply with conventions. “Pleased to have met you, Mr. Mason,” he said, and to Charles Sabin, “You understand how things are with me, Uncle Charles.”
When they had left the room, Charles Sabin said, “I think that woman has the most irritating personality of any woman I have ever encountered. How about it, Mr. Mason? Do I have to sit quietly by and let her accuse me of murdering my father?”
“What would you like to do?” Mason asked.
“I’d like to tell her just what I think of her. I’d like to let her know that she isn’t fooling me for a minute, that she’s simply a shrewd, gold-digging, fortune-hunting...”
“That wouldn’t do you any good,” Mason interrupted. “You’d tell her what you thought of her. She’d tell you what she thought of you. I take it, Mr. Sabin, you haven’t had a great deal of experience in giving people what is colloquially known as a piece of your mind, have you?”
“No, sir,” Sabin admitted.
Mason said, “Well, she evidently has. When it comes to an exchange of personal vituperation, she’d quite probably have you beaten before you started. If you want to fight her, there’s only one way to fight.”
“What’s that?” Sabin asked, his voice showing his interest.
“That is to hit her where she least expects to be hit. There’s only one way to fight, and that’s to win. Never attack where the other man is expecting it, when the other man is expecting it. That’s where he’s prepared his strongest defense.”
“Well,” Sabin demanded, “where can we attack her where she hasn’t her defenses organized?”
“That,” Mason said, “remains to be seen.”
“Why,” Sabin asked, “should my father have gone to all these elaborate preparations to insure secrecy about that divorce? I can understand, of course, that my father didn’t like publicity. He wanted to avoid all publicity as much as possible. Some things are inevitable. When a man gets divorced, it’s necessary for the world to know he’s divorced.”
“I think,” Mason said, “that your father probably had some reasons for wanting to keep his picture out of the newspaper at that particular time, although it’s rather hard to tell.”
Sabin thought for a moment. “You mean that he was already courting this other girl, and didn’t want her to know who he was?”
Richard Waid said, “If you’ll pardon me, I think I can clear that situation up. I happen to know that Fremont C. Sabin was rather... er... gun-shy about women, after his experience with the present Mrs. Sabin... Well, I feel quite certain that if he had wanted to marry again, he would have taken every possible precaution to see that he wasn’t getting a gold-digger.”
Charles Sabin frowned. “The thing,” he said, “gets more and more complicated. Of course, my father had a horror of publicity. I gather that the plans for this divorce were made before he met this young woman in San Molinas, but probably he was just trying to avoid reporters. What’s all this about the parrot, Mr. Mason?”
“You mean Casanova?”
“Yes.”
“Apparently,” Mason said, “for reasons best known to himself, your father decided to put Casanova in a safe place for a while, and take another parrot with him to the mountain cabin.”
“Good heavens, why?” Sabin asked. “The parrot wasn’t in any danger, was he?”
Mason shrugged his shoulders and said, “We haven’t all the facts available as yet.”
“If you’ll permit me to make a suggestion,” Waid said, “it seems that the parrot most decidedly was not in any danger. The person who murdered Mr. Sabin was especially solicitous about the welfare of the parrot.”
Mason said, “Peculiarly solicitous, would be a better word, Waid... Well, I must be going. I have quite a few irons in the fire. You’ll hear from me later on.”
Sabin followed him to the door. “I’m particularly anxious to have this cleared up, Mr. Mason.”
Mason grinned. “So am I,” he said. “I’ll have photostatic copies made of this divorce decree and then we’ll chase down the court records.”
Chapter six
Mason was two blocks from the office building which contained his office and that of the Drake Detective Agency, when his car was suddenly enveloped in the red glare of a police spotlight. A siren screamed him over to the curb.
Mason stopped his car and frowned across at the police automobile being driven by Sergeant Holcomb. “Well,” he asked, “what’s the excitement?”
Holcomb said, “A couple of gentlemen want to talk with you, Mason.”
Sheriff Barnes opened the door in the rear of the car, and was followed by a closely coupled man, some ten years younger, who pushed his way across to Mason’s car, and instantly assumed the conversational lead. “You’re Mason?” he demanded.
Mason nodded.
“I’m Raymond Sprague, the district attorney from San Molinas.”
“Glad to know you,” Mason told him.
“We want to talk with you.”
“What about?” Mason asked.
“About Helen Monteith.”
“What about her?” Mason inquired.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” Mason told him.
Sheriff Barnes said, “We’d better go some place where we can talk it over.”
“My office is within a couple of blocks,” Mason pointed out.
“And the Drake Detective Agency is in the same building, isn’t it?” Sprague inquired.