“Brain haemorrhage,” Drake said.
Mason raised his eyebrows.
“Caused,” Drake continued, “by a bullet that went into the right side of the head, struck some of the blood vessels so that there was profuse bleeding, and apparently caused a slow haemorrhage into the substance of the brain, which was the cause of death.”
“Death instantaneous?” Mason asked.
“Apparently not.”
“Who did it?”
“No one knows.”
“When?”
“Sometime last night. They haven’t established the exact time.”
Mason turned to Della Street so that his face was partially concealed from the detective. “Did you notify our client?” he asked.
“I gave her a ring,” Della said. “She wasn’t available.”
“Where is she?”
“No one knows. She doesn’t answer the telephone at her apartment.”
“Now that,” Mason said slowly, “is something.”
“You don’t know the half of it yet,” Della said significantly, with a slight gesture of her head toward Paul Drake.
“Okay, Paul,” Mason said, “let’s have the other half. You do all the talking for a while, and after I have all the facts I’ll do a little thinking.”
Drake coiled himself up in the big leather chair and fed three sticks of chewing gum into his mouth. His eyes remained veiled and expressionless. The rapid motion of his jaws as he chewed the gum into a wad furnished the only indication of any nervousness.
“Wentworth,” he said, “has a yacht, the Pennwent. It’s around fifty feet, rather an elaborate affair, with lots of gadgets, including an Iron Mike. In case you don’t know about an Iron Mike, Perry, it’s a device by which the skipper of a boat can link the steering mechanism up with the compass. It enables the ship to be placed on a certain compass course and kept on that course with a very small margin of deviation. The manufacturers claim that a boat is steered by that mechanism a lot more accurately than is possible when there’s a man at the wheel.”
“Uh huh,” Mason said. “I know something about them. Go ahead, Paul.”
“About daylight,” Drake said, “somewhere off San Diego, the Coast Guard picked this yacht up.”
“Why the Coast Guard?” Mason asked.
“Well, it’s quite a story,” Drake said. “A tanker, headed up the coast, had to change course to avert a collision. This yacht ignored signals, seemed to have no lookout aboard, and was running full speed. The skipper of the tanker was considerably peeved. He radioed in a report. A Coast Guard cutter that happened to be cruising in the vicinity picked it up. An hour or so later it saw the yacht ploughing along through the water. The cutter signalled it without getting any response, and finally, by a clever piece of navigation, managed to get a man aboard. He found Wentworth’s body in the main cabin. Apparently, Wentworth had tried to stop the flow of blood without success. He’d been able to get to the after cabin and returned to the main cabin. He finally keeled over, became unconscious, and died.”
“Police find the bullet that did the job?” Mason asked, his voice showing only a casual interest.
“I don’t know,” Drake said. “I haven’t a whole lot of details.”
Mason whistled a few bars of a tune, drummed with his fingertips on the edge of his desk. “No one else aboard the yacht, Paul?”
“No.”
“Any evidence that anyone had been aboard the yacht?”
“Apparently not. They will, of course, take fingerprints and then they’ll know a lot more about it — perhaps.”
“Any estimates on how long he’d lived after the shot was fired?” Mason asked.
“Not yet. Anyway, long enough to wander around a little.”
“Find the gun?”
“No.”
“Where did he keep the yacht?” Mason asked. “Do you know?”
“Yes. He had a berth at the Yacht Club. It would have taken him about twenty minutes to have cleared the harbour from that berth.”
Mason continued to drum with the tips of his fingers on the edge of the desk. Della Street avoided his eyes. Paul Drake, chewing gum rapidly, kept his eyes fastened on the lawyer.
At length Drake asked, “What do I do, Perry? Call the whole thing off or stay on the job?”
“Stay on the job,” Mason said.
“Doing what?”
“Getting all the dope you can about that death. Any chance it was suicide?”
“Apparently not,” Drake said. “The police don’t think so.”
“Of course, if he lived long enough to move from cabin to cabin,” Mason pointed out, “he could also have tossed the gun overboard.”
“There were no powder burns,” Drake said, “and the angle of the shot pretty well rules out suicide.”
Mason said, “I want to know a lot about this man, Wentworth, Paul. It may be important. I want to know about his friends and associates, his life, his liberties, and his pursuit of what he probably thought was happiness.”
“I’m getting quite a bit of that stuff lined up,” Drake said. “Part of it was routine that I handled in connection with the job I was on. Some of it is stuff I can get pretty easily, and I figured you’d want it.”
“How much of it do you have available now?” Mason asked.
“Not a great deal. He’d been married, and was having some domestic difficulties.”
“No divorce?” Mason asked.
“No, that was the rub. His wife is part Mexican — beautiful, olive complexion, streamlined figure, snappy black eyes.”
“And a hell of a temper,” Mason said.
“And a hell of a temper,” Drake agreed. “They separated over a year ago. They couldn’t come to terms on a property settlement.”
“Why didn’t she go to court and let the court give her a slice?” Mason asked.
“Wentworth,” Drake interrupted, “was too smart for that racket.”
“Lots smarter men than Wentworth have got hooked,” Mason said.
“But not such fast workers,” Drake said. “Wentworth knew his way around. Apparently, Juanita wanted to marry a man by the name of Eversel, Sidney Eversel. He cuts quite a wide swath. He hangs around with the yachting crowd, has a boat of his own, and takes in all the Catalina cruises and all that jazz. Juanita met him on a club cruise to Catalina. Evidently, it was something of a binge. Juanita became impulsive, and Wentworth objected. After that, Juanita and Wentworth didn’t jibe so well. Two months later they separated.”
“Had she been seeing Eversel in the meantime?” Mason asked.
Drake shrugged his shoulders and said, “Wentworth employed detectives. Juanita didn’t sue for a divorce. You can draw your own conclusions.”
“Where was Juanita when Wentworth was shot?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know,” Drake said. “That’s one of the things I’m working on.”
“What are the other angles?” Mason asked.
Drake said, “Wentworth got around quite a bit. You know, Perry, a man’s home is his castle, but his yacht is his own damn business. Down at the Yacht Club, the party has to get awfully rough before anyone says anything. The only people around are those who have their own boats or their guests. Watchmen of yacht clubs usually go to bed early and don’t have good hearing. They have poor eyesight and poorer memories, if you know what I mean.”
“You mean Wentworth entertained women aboard his yacht?”
“Scads of them,” Drake said. “I have a hunch that there was a party aboard the yacht before it pulled out. Of course, you can’t figure that Wentworth was shot and then started putting out to sea. On the other hand, if someone murdered him at sea, did the murderer just step off the yacht into the drink? It’s goofy no matter how you look at it. Just on general principles, I’m checking pretty carefully to find out who was aboard the yacht last night. I’m already working on a good lead. A young woman who had been aboard the Pennwent several times and was known by sight to some members of the club was down at the Yacht Club last night. One of the members saw her getting out of her car.”