Erle Gardner - The Case of the Lame Canary

“Now, let’s analyze that situation a bit: Rosalind was standing in the solarium in front of the desk, which is some eight or ten feet back from the windows. The windows are covered with thin lace curtains. It’s possible to see through those curtains and into the solarium, but not too distinctly. On the other hand, Rosalind, standing there near the center of the room, looking out through those curtains, and across to the Anderson house could very plainly see the angular form of Stella Anderson standing at the window, very apparently an interested observer of what had been taking place.”

“Then,” Della Street said positively, “it was Rosalind Prescott Jimmy made love to and not Rita Swaine.”

Mason said cautiously, “It looks like it.”

“And was Rita in the house at the time?”

“Probably not,” Mason said. “Remember that later on, when Rita appeared at the window with the canary, she was wearing one of Rosalind’s dresses. It was a print dress with a distinctive flower design, striking enough in pattern and vivid enough in color so Stella Anderson could easily recognize it. She was more certain of the identity of the dress than of the person wearing it when she’d seen it earlier.

“Now then, let’s suppose that sometime around noon Rita Swaine was summoned to the telephone, and heard the frantic voice of her sister saying, ‘Listen, Rita, I’m in an awful jam. Jimmy Driscoll was over here and we just couldn’t keep apart. He took me in his arms and I forgot everything and clung to him. Then I looked up, and who should we see watching us but old Mrs. Snoops. Now, you know what that means. Walter’s going to sue me for divorce, and drag Jimmy into it if he can. We just can’t let Mrs. Snoops testify that Jimmy was in the house, making love to me, while Walter was at the office.’

“Then it’s possible Rita said, ‘Well, lie out of it. Pretend that Jimmy’s your brother. After all, she doesn’t know who Jimmy is,’ and Rosalind said, ‘We can’t do that because there was an automobile accident, and when Jimmy went to leave the house, the officers took his name and address from his driving license, so we’re up against it. Now listen, Rita, I was clipping the canary’s claws at the time. The canary got away and is still flying around the solarium. Jimmy has left, and I’m going to Reno. Now suppose you come over and put on that print dress of mine, which is the one I was wearing, catch the canary, go back over and stand in front of the window, as though you’d come back to finish clipping his claws. Make certain Mrs. Snoops sees you. When you see her looking, pull the curtain aside so she can get a good look. Then she’ll see that it’s you instead of me. That’ll make her think it was you all along. Then you can announce to some of your intimate friends that Jimmy’s madly in love with you, but you don’t want me to know it right at present. Do it in such a way it gets back to Mrs. Snoops.’ ”

“Do you mean to say she’d let her sister in for that?” Della Street asked. “With Walter Prescott’s body lying upstairs all the time?”

Mason shook his head and said, “That’s exactly it, Della, I don’t think she’d have done it if she’d known Walter’s body was upstairs in the bedroom.”

“But she must have known it if she went up there to pack her things.”

“She didn’t pack. She left that for Rita to do. And the body was in Walter’s bedroom, not hers.”

“Well, after Rita came to the house, then what happened?”

“That,” Mason said, “is something else. Of course, Rita might or might not have gone into Walter’s bedroom. Rosalind would have left the dress in her bedroom. Rita could have gone there and changed, then gone down and clipped the claws on the canary. Naturally, she was thinking more of registering with Mrs. Snoops than of what she was doing, so she clipped the right foot twice, without noticing that the right foot had been finished, while the left foot hadn’t.”

“One thing, Chief,” Della Street said, as she stared at him through thought-slitted eyes: “Why do you say Rosalind Prescott said, ‘I’m going to Reno’?”

Mason grinned and said, “That’s a break. I went down to talk with Karl Helmold about the canary. Rita Swaine had told him I sent her, but she’d given him the name of Mildred Owens and the address as General Delivery, Reno. You see, Della, she intended to leave the canary there temporarily, but to send for him later on. Perhaps she knew that her name was going to be in the papers. Perhaps she’d already picked the alias of Mildred Owens and wanted to have it so the canary could be sent to her under her alias without any trouble, and whenever she wrote for it.”

Della Street, staring at him, said, “And that means you’re going to Reno?”

He nodded. “We’re going.”

“Going to try to beat the cops to it?”

Again he nodded, “And it may be dangerous, Della. We’re playing with legal dynamite.”

She scooped up a notebook, pencils, and said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

Mason helped her into her coat. “Naturally,” he said, “it’s important as the devil no one knows where we’re going nor why we’re going. We’ll charter a special plane at the airport. Now, there’s just a chance Sergeant Holcomb may start looking for me, find me gone, put two and two together, and take a chance on calling the airport. So you ring up and engage the plane under your name.”

“Why not use an assumed name?”

“Because,” he told her, “I don’t want to do anything which would show a guilty intent. This is plenty warm right now. Before we get done with it, it’s going to be hot. I don’t want you to get your fingers burnt.”

“Never mind my fingers,” she told him, “but you keep in the clear, Chief. Remember, you’re going to take a cruise around the world.”

He nodded and said, “It’ll be fun, Della, but I’ll miss the action of a rough-and-tumble law business, at that.”

“Don’t worry,” she told him, “you’ll have plenty of action — dances on the deck in the moonlight, the beach at Waikiki, Japan in Cherry Blossom Time, across the Yellow Sea, up the Whang Poo to Shanghai, the Paris of the Orient, with—”

“You,” he charged, leveling an accusing forefinger at her, “have been reading steamship literature.”

“And how!” she admitted. “In case you want to know, Chief, I took all the papers out of your top drawer and loaded it up with pamphlets on Bali, the Orient, Honolulu, India, and—”

He circled her waist with his arm, swept her off her feet and around in a circle toward the door. “Come on, baggage,” he told her, “there’s work to be done.”

The motor ceased its monotonous, rhythmic roar. The nose of the plane tilted sharply forward. Della Street, her face pressed against the window, said, “So that’s Reno,eh?”

Mason nodded. Together they watched the lights as the plane banked into a sharp turn and slid downward through the darkness. The sound of the wind through the struts became audible as a high-pitched, whining note. The pilot flattened out, gunned the motor, and throttled down to a perfect three-point landing. Then the motor roared once more into a crescendo of noise as the plane taxied up to the airport.

Della Street’s face was glowing with excitement as she stood in the doorway of the enclosed fuselage, and Mason extended his hand. Wind, thrown back by the idling propeller, whipped her skirts closely about her. She placed her hand in Mason’s and jumped lightly to the ground.

“Any clues, Chief,” she asked, “or do we go it blind?”

“We go it blind. Get a cab,” he told her. And to the pilot, “All right, get your ship fueled and ready to take off at a moment’s notice. Get something to eat and hold yourself available, with everything ready.”