“I know,” Mason said. “What did she say about the forty-one caliber shells? Does she admit buying them?”
“I don’t know,” Drake said. “They hustled her off to jail, and that’s all anyone knows.”
“When did they find out about the parrot?”
“Not so very long ago,” Drake said. “Sergeant Holcomb’s men apparently discovered that when they went through the house...”
“Wait a minute,” Mason interpolated. “Couldn’t the parrot have been killed after Helen Monteith was arrested?”
“Not a chance,” Drake said; “they put the place under guard right after they’d pinched her. That was so no one could get in and remove any evidence. I think your friend, Helen Watkins Sabin, may have been back of that move. I understand they’re going through the house with a magnifying glass, looking for additional evidence. They found out about the parrot, and my man telephoned in a report about fifteen minutes ago... Perry, why the devil do you suppose she killed that parrot?”
“The murder of a parrot,” Mason said, with his eyes twinkling, “is somewhat similar to the murder of a human being; that is, a person must look for a motive. Having found a motive, there must then be opportunity, and...”
“Nix on it, nix on it,” Drake interrupted. “Cut the comedy, Perry. You know damn well why she killed that parrot. Now, I want to know why.”
“What makes you think I know?” Mason asked.
“Phooey!” Drake exclaimed, “don’t take me for such a simp. She wanted the parrot out of the way, and you wanted the parrot preserved as evidence of something or other. You knew she was going to kill that parrot if she had a chance, so you had Della keep Helen Monteith out of the way long enough for us to go down and substitute parrots. I suppose it was because of the cracks the parrot’s making about ‘Drop that gun, Helen’ and ‘My God, you’ve shot me,’ but I still don’t see why she didn’t kill the parrot before, instead of waiting until she had to climb down a fire escape to do the parrot-butchering... I admit that I thought last night you were trying to keep Helen Monteith concealed from the authorities, and I thought so this morning when Della Street rang up. I didn’t realize until just now that what you were really trying to do was to keep her away from that parrot.”
“Well,” Mason said, “now that the parrot’s dead, we might as well...”
“But the parrot isn’t dead,” Drake interrupted. “You have the parrot. I suppose that the parrot is a witness to something or other — probably the murder — but damned if I see how he could have been. Tell me, Perry, could a parrot be used as a witness in a court of justice?”
“I don’t know,” Mason said. “It’s an interesting point, Paul. I’m afraid the oath couldn’t be administered to a parrot. In other words, he might commit perjury.”
Drake glanced sidelong at Mason and said, “Go ahead and joke all you want to, brother. I suppose if you don’t want to tell me, there’s nothing I can do to make you.”
“What else do you know?” Mason asked, abruptly changing the subject.
“Oh, a few things,” Drake said. “I’ve had a bunch of men working all night. I’ve been trying to find out as much as I could about that wire-tapping up there at the cabin. You know, it occurred to me, Perry, that I might find out something about the calls which had been listened in on, by getting a copy of the telephone bill. You see, that cabin line is on a local exchange, but Sabin wouldn’t have been interested in maintaining a telephone to call any of his neighbors. All of his contacts were in the city, and, of course, they’d have to be handled as long distance calls.”
“A good idea,” Mason said. “You deserve credit for that, Paul.”
“Credit, hell,” Drake said lugubriously. “I deserve cash for it. When you get the bill, it’s going to floor you, Perry. I’ve got men working on overlapping nine-hour shifts, and I’ve got ’em scattered all over the country.”
“That’s fine,” Mason said. “How did you get the telephone bill, Paul?”
“One of the men took a chance,” Drake said, “went down to the telephone office, said he was a ‘detective,’ and, because of the murder, wanted service discontinued on the telephone, and wanted to pay the bill. The girl in the local telephone office fell for it, and handed him the bill. He insisted on checking all the long distance charges.”
“What did you find?” Mason asked.
“A few calls to his residence, here in the city,” Drake said. “Those were evidently calls where he’d talked with his secretary. Several of them had been station-to-station calls, and quite a few of them had been for Richard Waid personally. But the interesting things, Perry, are the person-to-person Reno calls.”
“The Reno calls?” Mason asked.
“Yes. Apparently he was in almost daily telephone communication with his wife in Reno.”
“What about?” Mason asked.
“You’ve got me on that,” Drake said. “Probably trying to make certain that the divorce was going through according to schedule, and that she’d be in New York with a certified copy of the decree.”
Della Street, her face freshly powdered, eyes showing but little trace of tears, bustled busily into the office, and appeared surprised to see Paul Drake. “Hi, Paul,” she said.
“Don’t you ‘Hi, Paul’ me, you baggage,” Drake grumbled. “Of all the high-pressure stuff I ever had handed me...”
She came over to where he was sitting on the chair, and put her hand on his arm. “Don’t be such an old grouch-face,” she laughed.
“Grouch-face nothing,” he told her. “You put it up to me cold-turkey that I either had to go in for kidnapping or lose Mason’s business.”
“Well, Paul,” she said, “I was trying to do what the Chief wanted — that is, what I thought he’d want under the circumstances.”
Drake said to Mason, “You’re bad enough. This girl is twice that bad.”
Mason grinned at Della. “Don’t talk with him this morning, Della, he’s suffering from an ingrowing disposition.”
“Did he get Helen Monteith?” she asked.
“No, the officers did,” Mason told her.
“Oh!” she exclaimed in startled dismay.
“It’s all right, Della,” Mason said. “Ring up Sabin’s residence, get Richard Waid or Charles Sabin, whichever one is available; say that I’d like to see both of them at the office at their earliest convenience.”
He turned back to Paul Drake. “Have your men found out anything about where those forty-one caliber shells were bought, Paul?”
“Not where they were bought,” Drake said, “but by this time the police sure have found out who bought ’em.”
Mason dismissed it with a gesture. “Concentrate for a while on the Reno end of things, Paul. Find out as much as you can about what Mrs. Sabin did in Reno, and get me copies of the long distance telephone bill.”
“Okay,” Drake said, sliding from the chair, “and remember this, Perry Mason, the next time you duck out because things are getting too hot for you to handle, I’m going to duck out too. Being a stooge is all right, but being pushed up into the front-line trenches just when the machine guns start rattling, is a gray horse of another color.”
Chapter nine
It was shortly after eleven when Charles W. Sabin and Richard Waid reached Mason’s office. Mason wasted but little time in preliminaries. “I have some news,” he said, “which may be of interest to you. As I told you last night, I had located Casanova. He was in the possession of a Helen Monteith, whom Fremont C. Sabin apparently married under the name of George Wallman. The parrot in her house was killed sometime either last night or early this morning. The theory of the police is that Helen Monteith killed him. The parrot had been saying repeatedly, ‘Put down that gun, Helen... don’t shoot... My God, you’ve shot me.’