Erle Gardner - The Case of the Lame Canary

“Is it the coroner?” Drake repeated, still standing against the tree.

“It’s Jimmy Driscoll and Rodney Cuff, his lawyer,” Mason said. “Get going.”

The three walked over to the tow car. The pair coming up the road walked with quick, jerky steps. Mason said, “Sort of circle around the hood, boys. Try to make everything you do seem casual. Don’t look over toward them. Keep your eyes on the cable. Act as though we’re part of the salvage crew.”

Someone shouted from below. The man standing by the drums pushed on a lever, and the winches started slowly revolving.

Cuff and Driscoll walked to the edge of the road, peered down the taut line of the wire rope, then stepped back and walked directly to the canvas-covered figure.

Mason said, “Leave this to me, Paul. You fellows stay here.”

He waited some thirty seconds, until Cuff had inserted his fingers in the pockets of the dead man’s coat, then he casually walked forward and said, “I think the coroner likes to be the one to do that, Cuff.”

Rodney Cuff jumped to his feet. Driscoll stared at Mason with the agonized expression of the landlubber who is about to be seasick.

Cuff’s face was completely without expression, but, for a moment, there was a widening of the blue eyes. Then he grinned, stretched out his hand, “Well, well,” he said, “fancy meeting you here!”

Mason took the outstretched hand, said, “You’re interested in this case, Counselor?”

Cuff met his stare steadily. “All right,” he said, “let’s quit beating around the bush. Was this man Carl Packard, or wasn’t he?”

“I never saw Carl Packard,” Mason told him.

“There’s ink on the fingers of his left hand,” Cuff observed.

“What brought you out here?” Mason countered.

“I fancy,” Cuff said, “that our mental processes were somewhat identical. Tell me, is it Packard?”

Mason met the younger man’s eyes and said, “Yes, Cuff, it’s Packard.”

Cuff glanced over toward Jimmy Driscoll, then shifted his eyes quickly back to Mason. “Then,” he said slowly, “we’ll never know just what it was Packard saw in the window.”

Mason turned to face Driscoll. “Don’t be too sure about that, Cuff.”

So far as he could ascertain, Driscoll’s face didn’t change expression by so much as the faintest flicker.

Mason gave his card to a sallow-faced woman in the late forties, who said, without even attempting a smile, “If you haven’t an appointment with Mr. Dimmick I doubt if he’ll see you. But be seated and I’ll inquire.”

Mason said, “Thanks,” and remained standing.

She vanished through a door marked, “ABNER DIMMICK, Private ” and was gone for some thirty seconds. When she returned, she stood on the threshold, an angular figure, attired in a heavy woolen suit, deep-set, black eyes staring in lackluster scrutiny from behind horn-rimmed spectacles.

“Mr. Dimmick will see you,” she said, and stood to one side for Mason to pass.

Mason closed the door behind him. Dimmick, seated back of a desk piled high with leather-backed law books, said, “How d’ye do, Counselor. Excuse me for not getting up. My rheumatism, you know. Sit down. What can I do for you — no, wait a minute.”

He flipped up a lever on an inter-office loud-speaker and said to some person whose identity was not disclosed, “Tell Rodney Cuff to come in here right away.”

Without waiting for any comment, he snapped the lever back into position, turned to Mason and said, “I want young Cuff to be here when we talk. He’s handling this case.”

Mason nodded, dropped into a chair, crossed his long legs in front of him and lit a cigarette. Dimmick regarded him through the haze of blue smoke and said, “How’s your case coming?”

“So-so.”

“I understand the police are holding back some evidence.”

“That so?” Mason asked, raising his eyebrows.

Dimmick raised his bushy eyebrows, then lowered them into level lines of shrewd scrutiny, as he stared at Mason. “Damnedest thing I ever heard of,” he said, “Dimmick, Gray & Peabody getting mixed up in a murder case! Can’t seem to get accustomed to it. Wake up in the mornings with a start, feeling a sense of impending disaster, then realize it’s just that damn murder case. I suppose you get accustomed to them.”

“I do,” Mason said.

“Going to have a fight on your hands to save Rita Swaine,” Dimmick said. “Personally, I think it’s a shame. Walter Prescott needed killing.”

A door burst explosively open. Rodney Cuff, hurrying into the room, saw Mason, nodded, smiled, slowly closed the door behind him, and then, with every appearance of casual indifference, crossed over to the desk and said to Abner Dimmick, “You wanted me, Mr. Dimmick?”

“Yes. Sit down. Mr. Mason wants to say something. I thought he’d better talk with you, since you’re handling the case.”

“What I have to say,” Mason said, taking the cigarette from his mouth and staring at the smoke which spiraled upward, “has to do with the Second Fidelity Savings & Loan.”

“Indeed!” Dimmick said, raising his bushy eyebrows.

“You’re attorneys for that institution,” Mason said. “Walter Prescott kept an account there. I can’t find out what’s in that account, when the deposits were made, nor in what form they were made. In fact, I can’t get a damn bit of information out of the bank.”

Dimmick made clucking noises with his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I asked you if you wanted to cooperate,” he said at length. “You told me you didn’t.”

Cuff said, “Most embarrassing.”

“It’s going to be embarrassing for someone,” Mason warned.

“Let’s see,” Cuff inquired, “has Mrs. Prescott been appointed administratrix?”

“She’s filed a petition.”

“Evidently she won’t be charged with being an accessory,” Cuff observed.

Mason said, “You’re advising the bank. I want to know the facts about that account. I’m satisfied they’re being withheld from me on the advice of counsel.”

Dimmick started to get to his feet, fell back in his chair with a groan, said, “Now, Rodney, remember what the doctor said about my getting excited. Don’t let me get excited!”

Cuff said, “Aren’t you jumping to conclusions, Mr. Mason?”

“I think not,” Mason told him, without taking his eyes from Dimmick.

“Well, after all,” Dimmick said, “I haven’t taken the time to look it up, but as I remember the law, until some person is actually appointed as executor or administrator, the bank doesn’t have to answer questions.”

“I’m not talking about what the law says right now,” Mason said, “I’m telling you what I want.”

“Of course,” Dimmick pointed out, “we have to take the law into consideration in advising the bank.”

Mason got to his feet. “You know my position,” he said. “I’ll expect to hear from the bank within an hour.”

Dimmick pounded the floor with his cane. “You can’t get anything from us until Mrs. Prescott has been vindicated or until she’s been appointed by the court as administratrix—”

Mason crossed the room to stand by the comer of the older man’s desk, looking down at him. “Dimmick,” he said slowly, “you live in an academic atmosphere of legal abstraction. Your idea of rights and liabilities come from reading the statutes. Now then, you’ve been dealt cards in another sort of game entirely. You’re not playing auction bridge now, you’re playing no-limit poker. Now, you can co-operate with me, or not, just as you damn please. If you don’t co-operate with me on this matter, I’m going to raise hell. I’ll expect to hear from you within an hour.”