The beam of the searchlight dropped so that its glare was not in their eyes.
“Compounding a felony,” Sergeant Holcomb said.
“Doing what?” Mason asked.
“Planting evidence.”
“We weren’t planting anything,” Mason said. “We found this gun in the pipe.”
“Yeah. I know,” Holcomb said.
Mason said, “I’m telling you. Suit yourself, Sergeant. Don’t say I haven’t warned you.”
“You’re in a hell of a position to give anyone a warning,” Sergeant Holcomb said.
Mason shrugged his shoulders.
“What’s that other gun?” Sergeant Holcomb asked Paul Drake.
“A gun we used for an experiment,” Drake said. “Mason wanted to see how far he could throw it.”
“Give it here,” Sergeant Holcomb ordered.
Drake passed over the gun.
“Thought you were pretty smart, didn’t you, Mason?” Holcomb said.
Mason glanced across to Sergeant Holcomb’s triumphant face. “If the term is relative,” he said, “the answer is ‘yes.’ ”
Holcomb said, “None of your wisecracks, Mason. Save those for the judge.”
“I will,” Mason assured him.
Holcomb said, “Here, boys, put a string around this gun for identification. And keep it separate from the other one until we all get back to headquarters and label them for exhibit.”
Mason, propping himself against the water pipe, casually dried his feet with his pocket handkerchief, put on his socks and shoes.
Sergeant Holcomb said, “We figured you’d be down here just as soon as you thought you’d ditched the shadows. We didn’t miss it far, did we, Mason?”
Mason said nothing.
Drake said, “Look here. All three of us can testify that that gun was in that pipe lying under the water.”
“Sure it was,” Holcomb said. “Who put it there? Perry Mason.”
Mason finished tying his shoelace, stretched and yawned, then said to Drake, “Well, there’s no use sticking around here, Paul.”
Sergeant Holcomb said, “I guess you didn’t hear me say you were under arrest.”
“I heard you,” Mason said, “but the words don’t mean anything. If you’ve been watching this place, you saw what happened. You saw me go down inside that pipe and pull out the gun.”
“A gun you’d planted,” Sergeant Holcomb said.
“Any evidence of that?” Mason asked.
“I don’t need any. You were getting ready to drop the gun back down the pipe when we stopped you.”
“Too bad you stopped me then,” Mason said casually, “if you wanted to make out any sort of a case.” He turned away from Sergeant Holcomb and started toward the road. “Come on, folks, let’s go.”
For a moment Sergeant Holcomb stood undecided, then he said, “I’ll let you go this time, Mason, but you won’t get far.”
Mason flung back over his shoulder, “I haven’t far to go, Sergeant.”
Della Street and Paul Drake exchanged glances, then followed the lawyer. A group of officers around the concrete pipe stood still while Mason, Drake, and Della, lighting their way with flashlights, crossed the slippery field in silence.
“Over the fence she goes,” Mason said to Drake.
They lifted Della over the fence. Mason and Drake climbed over.
Drake said to Mason, “I don’t like this, Perry. I think we should have stuck around. You can’t tell what they’ll do.”
Mason said, “I don’t give a damn what they do. When is your man due to telephone in from Eversel’s place, Paul?”
“About twenty minutes from now.”
“Let’s get to a telephone,” Mason said.
“You want to go toward Eversel’s?” Drake asked.
“Yes,” Mason said, “and when your man telephones, tell him that we want to talk with him. We’ll drive out to the grounds, and he can arrange to meet us.”
They drove silently for several minutes, then Drake said, “Look here, Perry. How much of a spot are we in?”
Mason grinned and said, “We’ll get some newspaper notoriety. You can trust Sergeant Holcomb for that.”
“And then what?”
“That’ll be all,” Mason said.
“You mean they won’t do anything about planting evidence?”
“We didn’t plant any, did we?”
“No, but that isn’t going to keep them from trying to do something about it.”
Mason said, “Forget it.”
Della said to Paul Drake, “Don’t you get the sketch, Paul? He knew that those officers were going to be there.”
Drake took his eyes from the road to stare at the lawyer. “Did you, Perry?”
“Well,” Mason admitted, “when we started out toward the harbour and ditched the follow car, I had an idea Sergeant Holcomb might think we were headed toward that field. I didn’t know just what sort of reception he’d plan for us.”
“But why stick your head into a lion’s mouth?” Drake asked.
“How else would you have gotten the police to consider the possibility that there was more than one gun?”
“Did you know that gun was there, Perry?”
“I didn’t know it was there. I thought it might be there.”
Drake said, “Well, that’s a load off my mind. I thought they’d caught you off first base.”
“They did,” Mason said with a chuckle, “and so we’re going to run to second.”
“And what’ll happen if they throw the ball to second?”
“Then we’ll steal third,” Mason said.
Drake sighed. “An optimist like you has no business playing baseball,” he said, and devoted his attention to driving the car.
Mason consulted his wristwatch from time to time. At length he said, “How about this little roadhouse café, Paul? It looks as though they’d have a telephone.”
Drake slowed the car and swung it from the highway to the graveled driveway beneath the red glare of the neon sign. “Yes,” he said, “they have a public phone. There’s a sign.”
Mason turned to Della in the back seat. “How about a bowl of hot soup, Della?” he asked.
“It would go fine,” she admitted.
Mason said, “Let’s eat. If you get your man on the phone, Paul, hold him on the line, find out who’s home down at the estate.”
“Okay,” Drake said.
They entered the restaurant, seated themselves at a table for four, and ordered hot soup and coffee. Paul Drake had a hamburger in addition.
Mason grinned and said, “Eating our dinner on the progressive installment plan.”
“I’m loading up with grub,” Drake admitted, “on the theory that jail fodder won’t agree with me.”
“They say you get accustomed to it after a while,” Mason observed cheerfully.
“Yes, I know. The first eight or ten years are the hardest.”
When Drake was halfway through his hamburger, Mason, consulting his wristwatch, said, “Well, Paul, just to be safe, you’d better get on the telephone and hold the line to your office.”
Drake nodded, scraped back his chair, entered the telephone booth and remained closeted for some three minutes, then opened the door and beckoned to Mason.
The lawyer crossed over to him.
“My man’s on the line,” Drake said. “The servants are out again. The gardener’s gone to bed. My man says we can drive out and he’ll meet us at the gates.”
“You know the way?” Mason asked.
“Yes.”
Mason said, “Okay, let’s go.”
“It’ll take us about twenty minutes to get out there,” Drake said into the telephone. “You’d better be there waiting.”
He hung up the telephone and turned to Mason. “Of course, Perry,” he said, “if anything happens and our man gets caught, it spoils the perfectly swell connection. There’s not one chance in a thousand I could get another operative planted in time to do us any good.”