“That story, gentlemen, is worse than lousy. It stinks. If you think any jury is going to believe that story, you’re crazy as hell. And because that story is so cockeyed, the district attorney’s office and the police aren’t quite ready to crack down on me as an accessory after the fact, but they did have enough information to send you and Holcomb up here to ask me for a statement, the idea being that I might be unwise enough to say something which would furnish something by way of corroboration.”
“We have those shoes for corroboration,” Holcomb said. “That’s all the evidence we need.”
“The most you can claim for the shoes,” Mason said, “is that they prove I was walking around in a field.”
“You found the gun,” Runcifer charged, “and concealed it.”
“Where did I conceal it?”
“We don’t know.”
“In that event,” Mason said, “you’d better get some more evidence before you make any statement of accusation.”
Runcifer stared thoughtfully at Mason for several seconds, then he once more regarded his spread out fingertips. At length he looked up at Sergeant Holcomb. “Any questions, Sergeant?” he asked.
“Questions?” Sergeant Holcomb said in disgust. “You’ve told him everything you know now, and he’s told you nothing he knows. Questions, hell!”
Runcifer said, “I find your attitude insubordinate rather than helpful, Sergeant.”
Sergeant Holcomb made some half strangled, half articulate reply. “Let’s go,” he said.
Runcifer got to his feet.
Sergeant Holcomb angrily threw the shoes into the bag, locked it, and strode toward the exit door.
Runcifer followed him, turned at the door, bowed, and said, very precisely, “Good afternoon, Mr. Mason.”
Mason, his eyes twinkling, said, “So long, Runcifer.”
Chapter 8
Mason rang for Della Street and when she entered the office said to her, “Della, use our regular office forms. Prepare a writ of habeas corpus for Mae Farr. I’m going to make them either file a charge against her or turn her loose.”
She studied the granite hard lines of his countenance with solicitous eyes. “How was it?” she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“What did they do?”
“Not much,” Mason said. “It could have been a lot worse. Evidently, Holcomb was under orders to let the D.A.’s office run the show.”
“And how did they run it?’
“Their timing was bad,” Mason said, “but Runcifer was a gentleman. I don’t think he has had much experience as a trial lawyer. He wanted to be certain he’d covered every single detail about which they wanted to question me.”
“What did Sergeant Holcomb do?”
“Tried to get rough,” Mason said, “found he couldn’t get away with it, and turned sullen.”
She said, “Paul Drake telephoned that he had some important information and wanted to come in as soon as the coast was clear.”
“Okay. Tell him the coast is clear. Get out that application for a writ of habeas corpus and ride herd on that outer office. I don’t want to see any routine clients, don’t want to think about any routine business.”
She nodded. “Follow the same procedure as in that Smith case?” she asked.
“Yes. Use the files in that case for form. You can check them over and get the typists started doing the work. I want it right away.”
With self-effacing efficiency, Della glided through the door to the outer office. A few minutes later Paul Drake knocked on the corridor door and the lawyer let him in.
“How was it, Perry?” Drake asked.
“Not so bad,” Mason said.
“What did they want?”
“The man from the district attorneys office wanted facts,” Mason said. “Sergeant Holcomb wanted me.”
“Didn’t get you, did he?”
“Not yet. What’s new?”
Drake said, “A lot of things. Here’s the latest paper.”
“What’s in it?”
“The usual hooey and statements that by throwing out a dragnet, police were able to apprehend Anders in a northern city where he had fled, that he’s made a partial confession, that as a result of that confession, police are investigating the activities of one of the best known criminal attorneys in the city, that police are searching for the gun with which they feel the murder may have been committed, that Anders admits having a gun which he threw away. Police were rushed to the scene where they found that virtually every inch of the territory had been covered by a man who made a search sometime after the rain started last night.”
“What’s the photograph?”
“Sergeant Holcomb holding up a pair of shoes and showing how they fit the plaster-of-paris casts made of the footprints that were found in the soft soil.”
“Say where he got the shoes?” Mason asked.
“No, that’s one of the things on which the paper reports the officers are working, but are not as yet ready to divulge any information because of the sensational conclusions which may be drawn when the evidence is finally put together... Are those your shoes, Perry?”
“Yes.”
Drake said, “That looks rather bad, doesn’t it?”
Mason brushed the question aside with a quick gesture of his hand. “Never mind the postmortems,” he said. “Give me the facts. What’s that other picture?”
“Photograph of the field where the police think you found the gun.”
“Let me see it,” Mason said.
He took the newspaper, folded it over, and studied the newspaper reproduction of a photograph showing a field alongside the highway.
“Line of high tension poles running along the right of way,” Mason said musingly, “barbed wire fence, concrete pipe lines for irrigation — not much opportunity to conceal a gun there, Paul, just clumps of grass and weeds. Why don’t they cultivate that ground if it’s under irrigation?”
“It’s tied up in litigation,” Drake said.
“What else, Paul?”
“Quite a bit of stuff — a whole mess of dope on the tastes and habits of Wentworth.”
“Yachting his hobby?” Mason asked.
“Yachting, women, and coin collecting,” Drake said.
“Why the coins?”
“You can search me. Coins, boats and horses, wine and women, that represented Wentworth’s life.”
“What did he do for a living?” Mason asked.
Drake grinned and said, “I think that’s going to be a sore subject with the police. Evidently, he was a bookmaker. He had a partner by the name of Marley — Frank Marley.”
Mason said. “I’ve heard of him. Wasn’t he arrested a while back?”
“Two or three times,” Drake said.
“What happened to the charges?”
“Postponed, transferred, continued, and dismissed.”
“A payoff?”
Drake said, “I’m not saying anything. Perhaps you can read my mind.”
“I’m reading it,” Mason said, and grinned. “How about Marley? Can we drag him in?”
“I have an idea we can,” Drake said. “Incidentally, Marley also has a boat. He went in for fast stuff, an express cruiser with powerful motors, twin screws, mahogany finish — nothing you’d want to be out in a heavy sea in, but something that would scoot over to Catalina and back in nothing flat.”