Erle Gardner - The Case of the Substitute Face

Mason nodded. “Belle Newberry’s coming up,” he said. “They let her out, eh?”

“Yes. It was a bonehead move, holding her, in the first place. They wanted to shake information out of her about that money. They’re more interested in the eighteen thousand than they are in anything else.”

Mason started pacing the floor. “The thing gets me, Paul,” he said. “I should have come back here earlier in the day. To think that while we were chasing around, running down clues, Della may have been lying in a hospital somewhere, seriously hurt.”

“She had her purse with her, didn’t she?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“How about calling your Los Angeles office, Perry? If anything had happened to her, they’d have found her Los Angeles address, and—”

“Good idea,” Mason said. He jerked the receiver from the hook and told the operator to rush through a call to his Los Angeles office. Once more, he resumed pacing the floor.

The phone rang. Drake picked it up, said, “Hello,” listened for several seconds, said, “All right, throw out a dragnet. Cover everything.”

He hung up the telephone and said, “No ambulance report on her, Perry. Nothing in the emergency hospital. No report at the police desk.”

“What else could have happened,” Mason asked, “if it wasn’t an automobile accident?”

“She might have been rushed to a private hospital somewhere,” Drake said. “We’ll know on that within half an hour.”

“Let’s see,” Mason reflected. “It was raining when she left here. That means the roads were pretty slippery. Someone might have skidded into her, and rushed her to a hospital... But he’d have reported the accident to the police by this time.”

“He would unless he’d have been injured himself,” Drake said.

“Even then, the police would have known of the accident.”

Drake nodded.

“What else could have happened to her?” Mason asked.

“I don’t know,” Drake said. “She might have... Say, wait a minute, Perry.

“Go on,” Mason said, as the detective hesitated, “spill it.”

“She went out under her own power,” Drake said. “Now, as I understand it, she wouldn’t ordinarily have done that without leaving a message for you or giving you a buzz to see if you had anything you wanted her to do. Is that right?”

“That’s right,” Mason said.

“Well, then let’s suppose she went out on something fast, something which couldn’t wait.”

“What are you getting at, Paul?”

“Just this,” Drake said. “We weren’t where we were immediately available. Remember, we were going over to Marian Whiting’s. Della wouldn’t have called you there unless it had been a major emergency, because she knew you were going to try to shake Marian down for some information.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said. “Get to the answer. Never mind the preliminaries.”

“Remember,” Drake said, “just before we went over there, this table steward of yours had brought in a piece of blue silk. We’d cut it up into three pieces and—”

Mason nodded, fished the segment of blue silk out of his vest pocket and said, “Yes, you mentioned that before. Do you think she may have located that blue silk dress?”

Drake said, “Suppose she had? She’d have gone out to make sure, if she’d been in doubt. All right, now suppose while she was making sure, she tipped her hand, and someone did something about it.”

“That wouldn’t have happened,” Mason said. “It’s too unlikely.”

“Don’t kid yourself it’s unlikely,” Drake told him. “Let’s figure about that dress, Perry. That dress was on a cleat on the outside of the rail.” Mason nodded.

“And with the sea that was running, no one would have been climbing around on the outside of the rail.”

“What are you getting at?” Mason asked.

“Just this,” Drake said. “Suppose that someone gave Moar the works. Suppose the Fell woman is telling the truth, and a woman hoisted him up to the rail and pushed him over. Just as he went, he made a grab at her and ripped a chunk of cloth out of her dress. As he fell, that cloth caught on the cleat and ripped from his fingers.”

“That’s just a theory, Paul.”

“All right,” Drake said, give me some other theory which will hold water, and account for that dress being on the outside of the ship.”

Mason squinted his eyes in thought and stared moodily at the carpet. The telephone rang. He picked it up and learned that his Los Angeles office was on the line. Jackson told him they had had no word from or about Della Street.

As Mason was ready to hang up, the hotel operator cut in on the line and said, “Mr. Mason, a Miss Newberry is down here.”

“Send her up,” Mason said.

He was idly twisting the piece of blue silk in his fingers when Belle Newberry rapped at the door.

Mason let her in, shook hands and said, “How was it, Belle, pretty bad?”

“It was tough,” she told him, “but not too tough. Poor Moms, I’m afraid she’s having a harder time on it.”

“I’m going down to see her tonight,” Mason said. “I have her preliminary set for tomorrow morning. I wanted to get down this afternoon but I’ve been busy. I’ve uncovered a witness who will smash the case wide open. Tomorrow night she’ll be a free woman.”

Belle’s eyes widened with glad surprise. “You’re certain, Mr. Mason?” she asked.

Mason nodded. “This witness,” he said, “will show that Carl was trapped. He knew the game was up and he’d decided to end it all to save you disgrace.”

“You mean he committed suicide?” she asked.

Mason nodded.

“I hate to think of Carl doing that,” she said.

“He did it because he cared so much for you, Belle.”

“But why did he do it? ”

“I think the money he had was hot money.”

“What do you mean by hot money?”

“Money which had been illegally obtained, and he thought the law was catching up with him.”

She shook her head slowly and said, “That doesn’t sound like Carl. He was pretty conservative, you know, Mr. Mason. He wasn’t given much to taking chances.”

“Well,” Mason said, “the facts all point to it and this witness will swear to it.”

“What’s the cloth?” she asked, noticing the piece of silk Mason was twisting in his fingers.

“Recognize it?” Mason asked, handing it out to her.

She looked at it and frowned. “I’ve seen it before somewhere.”

“You saw it somewhere on the ship,” Mason told her. “A woman had a dress made of it, probably an evening gown. It was—”

“Oh, I have it,” Belle Newberry said. “I remember it now, I remember the pattern in it.”

“Good girl,” Mason told her. “Whose was it?”

“That nurse wore it.”

Mason glanced at the detective. “Evelyn Whiting?” he asked.

“Yes, the one who was nursing the man with the broken neck.”

“You’re sure?” Mason asked.

“Absolutely positive,” she said.

Mason said to Drake, “All right, Paul, there’s your answer. Della spotted this material. She went out to check up on it. Remember, Evelyn Whiting had been out in that mountain cabin since yesterday afternoon. Eves had been away all night. Eves is a known crook. He’d stop at nothing. Now, if Della were pinning something on Evelyn Whiting—”

Drake reached for the telephone. “What do we do, Perry?” he asked.

Mason said, “Round up a bunch of hard-boiled dicks with plenty of guns and ammunition. We’re going back to that cabin, Paul. Thinking back on it, Eves was altogether too much on the prod when he came in, then he was too anxious to make a play for my gratitude. Get going!”