“Oh, no, we aren’t. She’s just corning in,” Gertie said.
“What!” Mason exclaimed, jumping up out of his chair.
“She’s just corning in.”
Mason dropped the phone into its cradle, crossed the office with rapid strides, and jerked open the door to the private office just as Della Street was about to open it from the other side.
For a long moment they stood there all but in each other’s arms, then Mason said, “Good gosh, Della, I’m glad to see you! Although I suppose it’s bad news.”
“It’s bad news,” Della Street said.
“Come on in and tell me about it. Where have you been?”
“I,” Della Street announced, “have been in the district attorney’s office since six o’clock this morning. We were routed out of bed by deputy sheriffs from Kern County at a very early hour. Our friend, Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide, showed up and started questioning me in great detail.”
“What did you tell him?” Mason asked.
“I told him the truth,” Della Street said.
“All of it?”
“Well, there were some phases of the matter on which I didn’t elaborate, but I have never seen Lieutenant Tragg more insistent and there was a deputy district attorney who was positively insulting.”
“They didn’t have any right to hold you,” Mason said.
“That’s what I told them. But they had an answer for all that. They said I might be a material witness, that I might be aiding and abetting a felony, that I might be trying to conceal evidence... oh, they had lots of answers.”
“Did they give you a rough time?”
“They were rather insistent,” Della Street said, putting her hat in the hat closet and dropping wearily into a chair. “I think the deputy district attorney and one of the deputy sheriffs would have been really rough in an insulting sort of way if it hadn’t been for Lieutenant Tragg. He was probing and insistent, but very much a gentleman of the old school.”
“And what did Susan Fisher have to say?” Mason asked.
“As to that I wouldn’t know,” Della Street said. “They had her in a separate room and they never let us have a word together from the time they took us into custody. They brought her in, in one car, brought me in in another, and they interrogated us in separate rooms.”
“Well,” Mason said, “I guess the fat’s in the fire, the wind is about to start blowing.”
Gertie, in the outer office, gave a series of several short, sharp rings on the telephone and simultaneously the door from the outer office opened and Lt. Tragg stood smiling on the threshold.
“Good morning, Perry,” he said, and turning to Della Street, bowed, said, “I’ve already seen you this morning, Della.”
“You have for a fact,” she said.
Tragg said, “You’ll pardon me for walking right in without waiting to be announced, Perry, but as I’ve explained to you on several occasions, the taxpayers don’t like to have us cooling our heels in the outer office and sometimes after a man knows we’re waiting he takes steps which tend to defeat the purpose of our visit.”
“And the purpose of your visit this morning?” Mason asked.
“Well now,” Tragg said, “I was instructed to ask you to look at certain sections of the Penal Code.”
“Indeed,” Mason said.
“Sections having to do with concealing evidence, being an accessory after the fact, and things of that sort. But I’m not going to say anything about those sections.”
“And why not?” Mason asked.
“Because,” Tragg said, still smiling, “I’m satisfied you’re familiar with them already, Counselor, and quite probably have taken steps to see that they don’t apply.”
“Then what is the purpose of your visit?” Mason asked.
“Right at the moment,” Tragg said, “the purpose of my visit is to advise you that we’re taking into custody a rented car which you picked up late last night from the We Rent M Car Company... and I’m instructed to ask you just why you deemed it necessary to rent that particular car.”
“What particular car?” Mason asked.
“The one you rented.”
Mason smiled. “The reason I rented a car was because Della Street had work to do and you had ordered me to remain at a service station. It therefore became necessary for me to call a taxi to take me back to town from the service station after you finished questioning me. Quite naturally one doesn’t care to keep a taxi and pay taxi rates for ordinary driving. Even a fairly prosperous lawyer could run up too much of an expense account that way.”
“I dare say,” Lt. Tragg said. “I suppose you knew that the car you rented was the same one that your client, Susan Fisher, had rented earlier in the day and driven out to the place where the body of Ken Lowry was discovered?”
“No!” Mason exclaimed in surprise.
“You didn’t know that?”
“How was I to know that?”
“You rented a car from the same agency.”
“Certainly,” Mason said. “I believe it was the nearest car-rental depot to the service station where you ordered me to remain.”
“I see,” Tragg said. “In other words, it was just one of those coincidences.”
“You might call it that,” Mason said.
“And again, I might not,” Tragg said. “I’m quite certain the district attorney won’t.”
“All right,” Mason said. “You want to pick up the car. I take it you’ll give me a receipt, we’ll check the mileage on the speedometer at the present time and I’ll ring up the We Rent M Car Company and you can tell them that the police department is taking over and give them the mileage reading. I’d certainly hate to pay ten cents a mile for a lot of running around being done by the police department.”
“Oh, certainly,” Tragg said. “We’re always glad to cooperate with you, Perry.”
“Thank you.”
“Now then,” Tragg went on, “if we process this car for latent fingerprints and find that all of the fingerprints have been wiped from the car, it will be a very suspicious circumstance, Counselor. I think you can realize just how significant it will be and how suspicious.”
“I wouldn’t say that was a suspicious circumstance,” Mason said, “but I am quite certain that by the time the prosecution gets done with it it will be made to appear highly significant.”
“And it might leave you in a very embarrassing position,” Tragg pointed out.
“It might,” Mason agreed.
“You don’t seem to think it will?”
“I’m hoping it won’t, because I’m hoping that you won’t find that the car has been wiped free of fingerprints.”
“Well,” Tragg said, “we’ve located it down in the parking lot and we have a couple of fingerprint experts going over it. If you don’t mind corning down to the parking lot and checking the speedometer we’ll give you a receipt for the car and then take over.”
Mason sighed. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to. How long have you been working on the car?”
“Ever since you drove it in,” Tragg said, grinning. “You know, Mason, I’m willing to make you a bet.”
“What?”
“That the men report there isn’t a single fingerprint on that car except perhaps one or two of yours by the door... and do you know what’s going to happen if that is the case? I’m going to take you down to Headquarters for questioning, to find out whether you know anything about the fingerprints having been obliterated. I just thought I’d let you know so you could ask your highly competent secretary here to take care of canceling appointments in the event you don’t return to the office.”
Mason sighed and reached for his hat. “I always deplore these high-handed methods on the part of the police,” he said.
“I know, I know,” Tragg told him, “but the district attorney takes a very dim view of lawyers who go around obliterating evidence.”