Erle Gardner - The Case of the Runaway

Mason and Della Street followed the tracks for a hundred yards, then suddenly came to a little clearing in the brush where a rather vague but quite passable roadway led out toward the highway. Here there was a cleared space where it was evident that a house trailer had been parked. Not only were the tracks visible but there was a little hole in the ground, washed by drain water from a sink just back of the left wheel.

Della Street made a little bow. “Very well, Mr. Mason,” she said, “you have now pulled the rabbit out of the hat. You have found the location of the house trailer. Now what do we do?”

“Now,” Mason said, “we carefully mark the place. We go back to Fresno. We have Paul Drake get a couple of his most trusted and observant men and we have them come out here and go over this place with a fine-toothed comb, listing every article.”

“Article?” Della Street asked.

Mason pointed to a small pile of empty tin cans.

“Everything,” he said. “Every single article. We want a complete inventory of this spot before anything happens to it.”

“Can’t we take the inventory while we’re here?”

“We have other work to do,” Mason told her. “We’ll be starting for San Bernardino within the next hour.”

“But after you’ve duly dazzled everyone by pulling the rabbit out of the hat, will you tell us how you knew the rabbit was in the hat?” Della Street asked.

Mason said, “You haven’t answered my question yet, Della.”

“What question?”

“Who was the person? Who was the one person who could possibly have known that Edward Davenport was going to leave Fresno at around seven o’clock in the morning, that he was going to be taken violently ill as soon as he started driving, and that by the time he reached Crampton he would be so completely ill that he wouldn’t be able to go on, that he’d have to go to bed and call for a doctor?”

“There just wasn’t any such person,” Della Street said. “There couldn’t have been.”

“Then it couldn’t have been premeditated murder.”

“But it had to be, otherwise—why, Chief, the grave was dug two or three days in advance. It’s the most cold-blooded, diabolical crime you can think of. That is, if that grave was intended all along for Ed Davenport.”

“It was,” Mason told her. “Come on, Della. We’re going back to Fresno. We’re going to charter a plane to take us to San Bernardino. By the time we get there Drake’s men should have located Mabel Norge.”

“And if they haven’t?”

“If they haven’t we’ll try locating her ourselves, but I think they’ll have her spotted. In the meantime we’ll have Drake’s men get busy and cover every inch of the ground out here, looking for clues. For instance, Della, notice these cans. Now here’s a can that held baked beans. It was opened smoothly with one of those can openers that cuts around the rim of the can, leaving the edges nice and smooth and taking the top all the way off. Notice the inside of the can.”

“What about it?”

“The remnants of the beans are dried and hard.”

“Meaning that the can has been there for some time?”

“A week or ten days probably.”

“Very well, Mr. Magician,” she told him. “I know my place. I’m supposed to put on very short skirts and tights and stand bowing and smiling and looking awed while you pull the rabbit out of the hat. I believe that’s the function of the magician’s assistant, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Mason said. “Her games distract the attention of the audience.”

“But not of the magician?” Della Street asked lightly.

“Sometimes even the magician.” Mason conceded.

Chapter 13

The sun was low as Mason’s chartered plane droned over the high plateau country.

Down below the desert stretched interminably. The tall, weird shapes of the Joshua palms cast long, angular shadows. Over on the right snow-capped mountains turned to a rosy glow in the rays of the setting sun. Then the desert gave way to mountains, piling up in jagged, tumbled peaks until the crests became covered with dark green pines. A lake flashed into view, bordered by many sumptuous houses. A paved road ran around the lake. Buildings were scattered through the dense pines.

Abruptly the whole country seemed to drop away and far below in the valley San Bernardino clustered in an orderly array of straight thoroughfares and houses which seemed to have been carved from miniature sugar lumps topped with pink roofs and then viewed through the wrong end of a telescope.

The plane tilted sharply.

“It’ll be a few miles to town from the airport where I want to land,” the pilot explained.

“That’s all right,” Mason said. “We’ll rent a car.”

Lights came on in the valley below. The pilot skimmed over orange groves and prosperous ranches, then taxied the plane into a landing.

“I can’t fly you back tonight,” he said. “I’m not licensed for night flights.”

“Never mind,” Mason told him. “We’ll get back, don’t bother about us.”

Mason paid off the aviator, and took a taxicab to a place where he could rent a car, then rang the number Paul Drake had given him and explained who he was.

“You’re in luck,” the operative told him. “We located your party just about twenty minutes ago.”

“Where is she?”

“Staying at the Antlers Hotel, and this is one for the book.”

“What’s that?”

“She’s registered under the name of Mabel Davenport.”

“That’s fine,” Mason said. “You have her under surveillance?”

“Yes. She’s been out most of the afternoon. She came in shortly after we had her located and she’s in her room now.”

“You have a man on duty there?”

“Yes.”

“How will I know him?”

“He’s wearing a gray suit, about thirty-five years old, five feet ten and a half, a hundred and seventy pounds, with a blue and red necktie and a gold horseshoe tiepin.”

“Okay,” Mason said. “He’s expecting us?”

“He’ll be expecting you. He’ll be in touch with me within the next few minutes and I’ll tell him you’re coming.”

“That’s fine,” Mason said, and hung up. “Well, Della, we’ve got our party located. She’s at the Antlers Hotel, registered under the name of Mabel Davenport.”

“And that’s Mabel Norge, the secretary?”

Mason nodded.

“The only person,” Della said, “who could possibly have known that Ed Davenport was going to be taken sick shortly after leaving Fresno.”

“And how would she have known that?” Mason asked.

“Do I have to spell it out for you? She drove down to Fresno with him. She spent the night in the motel. Just before he left in the morning she saw that he took something that would make him violently ill and—”

“But he didn’t register a woman with him,” Mason said. “If a woman had been spending the night he’d have registered as Frank L. Stanton and wife. He was alone when he drove up and he—”

“And he had a visitor,” Della Street said.

“Exactly.”

“And after this visitor left, Mabel Norge joined him. She’d been waiting.”

“And you think she poisoned him?”

“That’s the part I can’t understand. She must have given him something that made him sick.”

“Just as he was leaving?”

“Just as he was leaving in the morning.”

“Under those circumstances,” Mason said, “he would have been as apt to have turned back and called for a doctor from Fresno as to have gone on and become sick in Crampton where the grave was so conveniently waiting.”

She sighed. “I suppose you’ll tell me in your own good time.”

“I’ll tell you as soon as I know, Della, but right now I have a theory—and that’s all.”