Mason frowned thoughtfully. "She couldn't be hiding some place in the building, could she, Paul-perhaps in a friend's apartment?"
"I don't think so. Her toothbrush and tooth paste were hanging in a rack by the washbowl. She couldn't have gone out to get a new toothbrush and she'd almost certainly have sneaked back to the apartment to pick up hers even if she'd forgotten it when she went out to her friend's apartment."
"Then where is she?"
Drake shrugged his shoulders, twisted his face into a grimace, and held his handkerchief beneath his nose. He held the pose for several seconds, then his features relaxed while he sighed and said, "That's another complaint I have against the whole scheme of existence. Every time I hold my handkerchief to my nose I can't sneeze. When I put it back in my pocket, I can't ever get it out in time… Here's something funny, Perry: There are two other shadows on the job."
"Where?"
"Covering the Seaton house."
"Police?"
"No, I don't think so. My men figure them for private dicks."
"How do you know it's the Seaton girl they're after?"
"I don't, but it looks like it. One of them went up snooping around on the third floor. He may have even gone into the apartment… What did you want with Harry?"
Mason turned to Harry Coulter. "Did Brownley go directly to the beach last night?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"And you were tagging along behind?"
"Uh huh."
"Did any other cars pass you?"
Coulter thought for a minute, and then said, "Yeah. There was a big yellow coupe went past just before we got to the beach, and it was going like hell. There may have been some other cars that passed me before that, but I don't remember them. I had my hands full tagging old Brownley through the rain. But this yellow coupe was making knots per hour, and it was after we'd passed the main drag that it went past us."
"In other words, you were pretty well down to the beach?"
"That's right."
"How many people in the car, one or two?"
"One I think. And I think the car was a Cadillac, but I can't be positive."
Mason said slowly, "Check up on the cars out at Brownley's place, Paul. See if anyone has a car that answers this description. Also, while you're about it, see if you can find out from the servants if there was any unusual activity around the house after Brownley left and…"
"Say, wait a minute," Harry interrupted, his forehead creased in a frown, "maybe I know more than I thought I did." Mason raised inquiring eyebrows. "Down by the yacht club," Coulter said, "there were some cars parked. They looked as though they'd been there for ages. You know the way those birds do when they are out on a cruise. They run their cars off to the side of the road in that parking place, lock them up and leave them. There are some garages down there but most of the fellows…"
"Yes, I know," Mason interrupted, "what about it?"
"Well," Coulter said, "when I was running around trying to pick up Brownley's trail down by the place where he keeps the yacht, there were four or five cars parked out in the rain. I was pretty sore at myself for letting Brownley get away from me and I looked 'em over-not with the idea of remembering the cars-just to see if Brownley's car was one of them. When I saw it wasn't, I kept on going. But, come to think of it, one of those cars was a big yellow coupe, a Cadillac, I think. Now that may have been the car that passed me. I couldn't have told, of course, because it was raining cats and dogs when the car went past. I saw headlights in my rear-view mirror, then there was a big wave of water, and a car went past with a rush. Then all I could see was a tail light-you know how it is when a car passes you on a rainy night."
As Mason nodded, Paul Drake sneezed again into his handkerchief and said, "That's the first sneeze I've timed right since I caught this damn cold."
"You couldn't have caught the cold down there this morning," Mason pointed out. "It wouldn't have developed that soon."
"Yeah, I know," Drake said. "Probably I haven't got any cold. You're like the guys who stroll around the decks of steamers, smoking pipes and telling the green-faced passengers there ain't any such thing as seasickness-that it's all in the imagination. Ordinarily I'd hate to do this to you, Perry, but since you've been so damned unsympathetic, it's going to be a pleasure. You can play around with all the yellow coupes you want to, but when you get done, you'll find you're no place. This is one case where the police have got your client sewed up tight, and if you ain't careful they'll have you sewed up, too."
"What do you mean?" Mason asked.
"Just what I say. The police haven't been entirely asleep at the switch, and you left something of a back-trail yourself. The police can prove Brownley told you he was going to make a will which would put your client on the skids. They can trace you to a Western Union office where you sent a wireless to the Monterey and used a pay station telephone. They can prove you called Stella Kenwood's apartment where Julia Branner was staying.
"Now, after you telephoned Julia, she got a cab driver to take a letter to old man Brownley. Brownley read the letter and made some crack about having to go to the beach to get Oscar's watch back. He was excited as the devil."
"Did the cab driver give the letter to Brownley?" Mason asked.
"Not to the old man. He gave it to the grandson, and the grandson took it up. Old Brownley was asleep."
"Philip saw him read the letter?"
"That's right, and he said something to Philip about getting a watch back from Julia. Now the police figure she lured him down to the beach, climbed on the running board and gave him the works with a.32 automatic. She dropped the gun and beat it. An accomplice who was in on the play climbed into the car and drove it down to a pier, near which he had another car parked. He put the car in low gear, stood on the running board, opened the throttle, and jumped off. The car went into the drink."
"And I believe the car was still in low gear when they pulled it up, wasn't it?" Mason asked.
Drake, wiping his nose with his handkerchief, gave a muffled "Uh huh."
"And it's her gun," Coulter said. "She was carrying it under a permit issued in Salt Lake City."
Drake, sniffling, said, "What's more, they've got her fingerprint on the car window on the left-hand side. You see, Brownley was driving with the window rolled up because it was raining. When Julia came out, he rolled the window down to talk to her, but he didn't roll it all the way down. She stood on the running board, and hooked her fingers over the window and left some perfectly swell fingerprints on the inside of the glass. The cops got the car raised up before the water had eliminated the fingerprints."
Mason frowned. "Any chance she could have left her fingerprints on the car before Brownley started for the beach?"
"Not one chance in ten million," Drake said. "Now that's the gloomy side, Perry. Here's a silver lining to the cloud: There's a darn good chance this granddaughter who's living with Brownley is a phoney."
"Have you got any facts?" Mason asked.
"Of course I've got facts," Drake said irritably. "I don't know what they amount to, but they're facts. After Oscar's death the old man wanted to locate his granddaughter, so he got Jaxon Eaves to find her-or it may have been that Eaves came to old man Brownley and claimed that he could find the girl. I can't find out which is which.
"Now it isn't ethical for me to knock another detective agency, and it isn't nice to say anything against a man who's dead, but the story goes that old man Brownley agreed to pay twenty-five thousand dollars if Eaves could find the granddaughter. Now you figure twenty-five thousand bucks and add to it the possibility of a split on whatever inheritance the girl might get, and subtract that from Eaves' code of professional ethics, and you don't need to turn to the back of the book to find the answer. I will say this much for Eaves. He apparently tried his darnedest to locate the real granddaughter. He got as far as Australia, and then ran up against a brick wall.