Erle Gardner - The Case of the Runaway

“You forget that I knew he was dead before I left Paradise.”

“No, you felt that he wasn’t dead.”

“What gives you any grounds for saying that?”

“Come, come,” Mason said. “Now let’s be grownup. Della, I guess Miss Norge doesn’t realize what we know.”

“Well,” Mabel Norge said, “what do you know?”

Mason said, “Now let’s see. You were supposed to make some deposits on Monday. Then you were supposed to draw virtually all of the cash out of the account and you were to be at the office that night, awaiting a telephone call. That telephone call was to tell you where to take the money. It was to someplace here in San Bernardino. In the event you didn’t get the telephone call by a certain hour you were to come to San Bernardino, register at the Antlers Hotel here under the name of Mabel Davenport and await instructions.”

“I don’t know how you know all this,” Mabel Norge said.

“Well,” Mason said, “those are the facts. Why try to deny them?”

“Those aren’t the facts, that is, that’s not exactly the way it happened.”

“It’s close enough to it,” Mason said, “so that I know what to tell the district attorney at Fresno and how the newspapers will write it up. Of course, they’ll adopt the attitude that you were Ed Davenport’s mistress, that he wanted to get a lot of cash together and disappear with you.”

“Why, that’s absurd, that’s utterly ridiculous. That’s absolutely libelous, Mr. Mason. I can never—why—he had a mining deal that he wanted to put across and he had to have a large sum of cash. I don’t have to talk to you.”

“That’s right,” Mason said, “but what are you going to do now? You’re in a very peculiar position. If you take any of that money and use it for yourself you ‘re guilty of embezzlement. If you return to Paradise you’ll be questioned as to where you went and what you did and why. You’ve got to tell your story sooner or later. If you’re picked up here under the name of Mabel Davenport with Ed Davenport’s cash in your possession it looks as though you have been caught in the act of embezzling money.”

“Well, I didn’t embezzle any money,” she said, “and I know exactly what I’m doing. I’ve had the assurance of the district attorney at Oroville that everything I do is all right, and I’m going to call him and tell him I don’t want to be annoyed.”

Mason nodded to Della Street. “This time, Della,” he said, “I’m not bluffing. I’ll call Vandling myself.”

Mason and Della Street left the table. Mason walked down to the cashiers desk, secured some quarters, went to the telephone booth and Mason called Vandling at Fresno.

“Hello,” Mason said when he had Vandling on the line. “This is Mason. How’s your case coming?”

“Our case you mean.”

“Don’t tie me up with it,” Mason said, laughing. “Are you going to dismiss?”

“Well,” Vandling said, “I still haven’t made up my mind as to what I’m going to do, but Los Angeles says it doesn’t want to pull my chestnuts out of the fire for me. I started the thing and I seem to be stuck with it. I can get the defendant bound over for trial all right. I may have to dismiss and start a new preliminary. That’ll give me time to think and perhaps turn up some new evidence.”

“That’s fine,” Mason told him. “Perhaps I can turn up some new evidence. Mabel Norge, the secretary to Edward Davenport, was instructed to make some last-minute deposits and then draw out everything in the Paradise account. She’s here at the Antlers Hotel in San Bernardino registered under the name of Mabel Davenport. She’d have quite a story to tell if you grabbed her as a material witness. She won’t talk voluntarily and she’s getting ready to skip out.

“It may interest you to know that she’s told a part of her story to the district attorney at Oroville and he gave her his official blessing. She thinks she’s sitting pretty. But she didn’t tell him the whole story. If she tells it to you it may help.”

“What are you trying to do? Make a case against your client?” Vandling asked.

“I’m trying to make a case against the murderer,” Mason replied. “Perhaps we can walk into court tomorrow morning and clarify the situation.”

“You slay me,” Vandling said. “In other words, Mason, I fear the Greeks when they’re bearing gifts.”

“No,” Mason said, “it’s an unfortunate trait of human nature. You accept all kinds of phony tips from touts and never win, then some day a quiet, sedate individual comes along with a straight tip on a dark horse in the fifth race and you pass it up because you’re too smart to fall for any more of that stuff. After the fifth race you kick yourself all over the lot.”

Mason abruptly hung up the telephone.

“Mabel Norge left the restaurant hurriedly,” Della Street reported.

“That’s fine,” Mason said, grinning. “If she resorts to flight, it will look like the devil.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Della Street asked.

“If she doesn’t, Vandling will get her,” Mason said. “He’ll think it over for ten or fifteen minutes, then he’ll be afraid not to act. He’ll get hold of the authorities here and tell them to pick up Mabel Norge and question her as a material witness.”

“And what will we be doing?” Della Street asked.

“We,” Mason told her, “will be driving to Los Angeles in order to catch a night plane back to Fresno so we can be on hand in the morning and blow the lid off in case Vandling wants any more action in court.”

Chapter 14

By the time court convened at 10:00 A.M. word had passed around that the case of the People of the State of California versus Mynna Davenport was no ordinary preliminary and the courtroom was jammed.

Talbert Vandling grinned at Mason as Mason, accompanied by Paul Drake and Della Street, entered the courtroom.

“Thanks for the tip on Mabel Norge.”

“Did you get her?”

“We nailed her.”

“What’s her story?” Mason asked.

“She hasn’t any.”

“What do you mean?”

“She came here in company with a San Bernardino deputy sheriff. By the time she arrived here she’d decided she wasn’t going to talk. She’s retained an attorney here who advises her to keep quiet.”

“Serve a subpoena on her?” Mason asked.

“Sure.”

“How about Los Angeles?”

Vandling smiled and shook his head. “They’re being very, very coy. They want us to dispose of the matter up here.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go ahead for a while. I can always dismiss. And then, of course, I may have something up my sleeve that I don’t care to disclose to you at the moment since we’re in adversary positions.”

“Why should we be?” Mason asked.

“Because you’re attorney for the defense and I’m attorney for the prosecution.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to convict the murderer of Ed Davenport.”

“So do I.”

“There may be a difference of opinion. You think your client is innocent.”

“Don’t you?”

“Hell, no.”

Mason said, “Give me a little elbow room and I’ll disclose some facts that will startle you.”

“You can have all the elbow room you want.” Vandling said, “as long as you’re disclosing facts.”

“Thanks.”

“Now wait a minute,” Vandling said. “You wouldn’t try to be slipping one over on me, would you?”

Mason shook his head. “I’m trying to get Myrna Davenport acquitted but I want to apprehend the murderer of Ed Davenport.”

Vandling said, “The district attorney in Los Angeles gave me quite a briefing about you. He told me you were tricky, shrewd, diabolically clever, and while he didn’t say in so many words that you were crooked he intimated that you’d cut your grandmother’s throat in order to obtain an advantage for a client.”