Mason said, “Because I figure there are some.”
“Well, I guess you’re the only one who feels that way about it. You want to take a look down those concrete standpipes?”
“Yes.”
“Just how?”
Mason said, “I don’t know. I think our flashlights will penetrate enough to show whether there’s anything like a gun lying at the bottom.”
Drake said, “Well, there are only about three pipes that he could possibly have hit. The road makes a swing fifty yards above here. The pipeline continues to run straight.”
Mason said, “Let’s take a look.”
The detective bent over one of the pipes. Mason walked on to the next one. Della Street turned back down the pipeline.
Mason found the big concrete pipe protruding some four feet above the ground. He leaned over, pushed his flashlight well down into the interior, and switched it on.
The beam of the light, striking the rough, white sides of the pipe, diffused into light spray which made it hard for Mason to focus his eyes on the place where the main pencil of light entered a body of murky water.
After playing the flashlight around for a minute, he suddenly stepped back and called, in a low voice which however penetrated, “Oh, Paul, take a look at this, will you? Bring Della with you.”
Mason stood by the side of the concrete pipe, his lips twisted into a faintly sardonic smile. He could hear the steps of Della Street and the detective approaching through the darkness.
“Here,” he said, “Take a look at this.”
Della had to raise herself on her tiptoes and prop her elbows against the edge of the pipe. Mason and the detective leaned over. Mason switched on his flashlight.
After a moment Paul Drake said, “I see it down there under the water. By George, it is a gun.”
Della Street said nothing. Mason looked up to encounter her eyes, troubled and apprehensive.
Mason said, “Well, it looks as though I’m due to get my feet wet.”
He removed shoes and socks, rolled up his pants, and said, “I can’t get out, Paul, unless you lean over and give me your hand. Let’s make sure you can make it.”
Drake leaned over and down the side of the concrete.
Della said, “I can hold his legs.”
“You may have to at that,” Drake said.
Mason said, “I don’t want to scratch my bare feet. Ease me down as much as you can, Paul.”
He clasped the detective’s right forearm, holding it around the wrist with both of his hands. Drake, with his left arm and leg clinging to the edge of the pipe, lowered Mason down into the murky water.
“Brr-r-r-r-r,” Mason exclaimed. “This water feels almost freezing.”
A moment later he let go his hold, dropped a few inches, then, assuming almost a sitting posture, groped with his hand down in the water.
“Here it is,” he said.
He brought up a gun, his bent, right index finger sticking through the trigger guard. Gently he sloshed it back and forth in the water, getting the mud removed from the metal.
Taking his flashlight from his coat pocket and flashing the beam on the gun, he said, “This is a Colt thirty-eight special on a forty-four frame. Okay, Paul, give me a hand up.”
Drake said, “Unless you planted that gun sometime this afternoon, this is the damnedest coincidence I ever heard of.”
“No coincidence to it,” Mason said, as he put the gun into one pocket of his coat and the flashlight in the other. “These pipes are arranged at just about the distance a good strong man would heave a gun. They’re not very far apart. At least three of them are within a throwing radius. The pipes are about four and a half or five feet in diameter. Reduce that into square feet, and you’ll see that it’s not at all unreasonable to suppose the gun would hit one of these pipes — oh, say, once out of five.”
Drake stretched down his right arm, braced himself with his left. Mason seized the hanging wrist, and, by the joint efforts of Della Street and the detective, was pulled up to a point where he could climb over the edge of the concrete pipe.
“Gosh,” he said, “a guy jumping down there without friends to help him would be up against it.”
Gathered around the outside of the pipe, they inspected the gun.
“What are you going to do with it?” asked Drake.
Mason said, “That’s the problem.” He swung out the cylinder and said, “Six shells, none of them fired.”
“Can’t you notify the police?” Della asked.
“And have them say I’d planted the gun?”
“You think this is Anders’ gun, Perry?” Drake inquired.
“Sure, it’s the sort of gun he’d carry. It’s the one he threw away.”
“Then how did the murder gun get there?”
Mason shrugged his shoulders.
Della started to say something, then checked herself.
Drake said, “Gosh, Perry, there’s nothing you can do. If you turn this gun in, they’ll claim you planted it. If you drop it back in the pipe, you can’t get the police to do any more searching. They’ve found the gun they want, and even if someone did find this gun, they’d claim it had been taken out and planted long after the murder.”
Mason took a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully folded it around the gun to dry it off.
Out on the highway a car swerved violently with the sound of screaming tyres. Mason, looking musingly at the highway, said, “Now what the devil do you suppose scared that driver?”
Della said quietly, “I think there’s a car parked without lights, Chief. I had just a glimpse of it when the headlights of that automobile picked it up.”
“Right on the highway?” Mason asked.
“No, off to the side, but the driver evidently didn’t see it until he was right on top of it, and then got frightened.”
Drake said, “Let’s get out of here, Perry.”
“Just a minute,” Mason said. “I want to get the numbers on this gun.”
Holding the gun in his handkerchief, he held the flashlight on the numbers and read them off to Della Street, who jotted them down.
Drake said, “We could all of us testify to the finding of the gun.”
Mason shook his head. “It wouldn’t do a damn bit of good,” he said. “Holcomb would still think I’d planted it. Anyway, I’m satisfied in my own mind.”
“What are you going to do with the thing, Perry?”
“Drop it back into the pipe,” Mason said.
He extended his hand over the opening of the concrete pipe, holding the gun by the trigger guard.
Suddenly a blinding light bathed them with white brilliance, etching their figures against the black background of the night shadows. A voice from the darkness said, “Hold it. Stay just as you are.”
Mason remained motionless.
The authoritative voice said, “Get that gun, Jim, before he drops it.”
Dim shadowy figures, moving behind the shaft of bright light, converged on the group gathered around the pipe. The beams of individual flashlights crisscrossed to converge upon the motionless figure of Perry Mason. A man ran into the cone shaped shaft of the light, the glare illuminating his set profile, reflecting from the gold shield which was pinned to his coat. “Don’t make a move,” he warned.
He grabbed the gun from Mason’s hand.
Drake said, “What’s the idea?”
Della turned so that her eyes were shielded from the glare. Sergeant Holcomb ran into the area of illumination. “You’re under arrest,” he said.
Mason said, “What’s the charge, Sergeant?”
“Lower that searchlight,” Sergeant Holcomb ordered.