Erle Gardner - The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

She nodded. “Sounds as though Paul Drake were learning to be a cowboy.”

“The hard way,” Mason agreed.

Della said, “I’ll see what I can find out about the others.”

Fifteen minutes later she brought him the information. Salty

Bowers had been questioned and released by the police. His house trailer was being held by the police, so Salty had simply substituted the horse trailer, loaded in the burros, and departed for parts unknown.

Dr. Kenward, suffering from shock, with some slight danger of subsequent infection from the wound, had gone out into the! desert somewhere in search of quiet. Velma Starler was with him.

Mason said, “Get hold of the detective agency. Let’s see if we can pick up Salty Bowers’ trail somewhere.”

Della went down the hall to the office of the Drake Detective Agency, returned to report they had men on the job. “How did you come out with your depositions?” she asked.

“Think I cracked their fraud case, wide open.”

“I’ll bet that made Moffgat furious.”

Mason nodded.

“You’d better watch him. If you best him twice in a row he’ll be trying to get something on you.”

“That’s just it,” Mason admitted. “He’s on the trail of something.”

“What?”

“That stock certificate. He’s not certain of his ground yet, but he’s thinking. You see I signed Clarke’s name to that certificate. I had to. If Clarke had simply traced over the signature it would have authenticated it. If he’d lived, it wouldn’t have made any difference one way or the other because he knew and approved what I had done. But with Clarke dead, I find myself between the devil and the deep sea. They could call that forgery, you see — an attempt on my part to get a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of stock for myself by forging the name of a dead client.”

“And Moffgat suspects?”

“Yes. I think so... Moffgat is only fishing around so far. He made a tentative pass at it by trying to threaten me. I won’t try to hold the stock, of course, yet I don’t dare to surrender the certificate.”

“What did you do?”

“Stopped him in his tracks by calling him cold.”

“Chief, do be careful.”

He grinned. “It’s too late for that — I never liked being careful, anyway.”

It was four o’clock in the afternoon when Drake’s agency reported. Banning Clarke owned some claims up in the Walker Pass country. They were known as the Sky High Group, and were under option to the Come-Back Mining Syndicate. The option would expire at midnight. Apparently Salty Bowers had gone up to these claims. Dr. Kenward and Velma Starler had accompanied him, the physician seeking some place where he could have a change from hospital background, and complete quiet.

Mason made note of the exact location of Banning Clarke’s Sky High claims, then smiled at Della Street. “Della, haven’t we a couple of sleeping bags stored with the janitor?”

She nodded. “Ones we used on that camping trip last fall. I’m not too certain about the air mattresses.”

“We’ll take a chance,” Mason said. “Tell the janitor to drag them out. Go out to your apartment and put on some clothes that will stand the gaff. Take along a portable typewriter, a brief case with some stationery and carbon paper, see that your fountain pen is filled, and be sure to bring a shorthand notebook.”

“Where,” she asked, “are we going?”

Mason’s smile became a broad grin. “Prospecting — for a lost murderer — and dodging a forgery charge.”

For miles now, the dirt road had wound and twisted. The weird Joshua palms standing as silhouetted sentries gave somehow the impression of warning travelers back with outstretched arms. An occasional kangaroo rat scurried across the white ribbon of roadway. Clumps of prickly pear furnished spine-covered sanctuary for frightened rabbits. Cholla cacti, catching the headlights, seemed shrouded with a delicate transparency of silken fringe, the most deceptively deadly cactus on the desert. An occasional barrel cactus, standing straight and chunky, served as a reminder of stories of prospectors who, trapped in the desert without water, had chopped off the top of the big cactus, scooped out the pithy interior, waited for the watery sap to collect, and so assuaged the pangs of thirst.

Della Street sat with the little penciled map she had made spread across her knees. She held her small flashlight shielded by her cupped hand so that it would not interfere with Mason’s driving. Frequently now, she looked at the speedometer.

“Two-tenths of a mile and the road turns off,” she said.

Mason slowed the car, searched the left-hand side of the road for the turnoff, finally found it, little more than two faint ruts in the desert.

Della Street snapped off the flashlight, folded the map and put it back in her purse. “It’s three and six-tenths miles from here. We just stay on this road.”

The road climbed to an elevated plateau which rimmed the lower desert.

“I caught a flicker of light,” Della said.

“Car coming?”

“It was rather reddish. Now, there it is off to the right. It’s a campfire.”

The road twisted around a jutting promontory in an abrupt turn and debouched on a little shelf where a blob of red light resolved itself into a small campfire.

“See anyone?” Mason asked.

“Not a soul,” she said.

Mason slowed the car to a stop at a place where wheel tracks fanned out. The headlights showed a late-model sedan parked near Salty Bowers’ old jalopy, the trailer in which the burros had been carried.

Mason shut off the motor, switched off the headlights.

There was complete silence, save for the little crackling noises which emanated from under the hood of his car as the motor started cooling off — noises which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been inaudible, but in the desert silence sounded like a distant naval bombardment.

Against this background of silence, the deserted campfire seemed utterly incongruous, an attempt at artificial cheer that was as out of place as a wisecrack at an execution.

“Br-r-r-r!” Della Street said. “I feel all creepy.”

Mason opened the door of the car.

A voice from the darkness some fifteen feet away from them said in a slow drawl, “Oh! It’s you!” Then Salty Bowers raised his voice. “All right, folks, it’s the lawyer.”

Almost immediately the camp bustled into activity. But not until Dr. Kenward, hobbling along on crutches, came out of the darkness which rimmed the circle of illumination around the campfire, and Velma Starler’s trim figure silhouetted itself against the orange-red glow, did Salty Bowers emerge from the blackness which marked the location of a clump of desert juniper.

“Can’t be too careful,” he explained, “not with what’s been going on. People around a campfire are the best targets in the world. Saw your car coming and decided we’d just better be on the safe side. What’s the matter, something new happen?”

“Nothing new. We’re hiding out for a while. Have you got room for a couple more campers?”

Salty grinned, swept his arm in a wide sweep. “All the room in the world. Come on over to the fire. I’ll brew a cup of tea.”

“We’ve got the car loaded with camp equipment,” Mason explained.

“Take it out later,” Salty said. “Come on over and sit a while.”

The three of them moved over to the campfire. Mason and Della shook hands with Dr. Kenward and the nurse, then settled down around the little blaze. Salty produced a fire-blackened graniteware coffee pot, poured water in it from a canteen, put it over the flames, said, “I use this one only for tea. Have another one for coffee. — Guess you understand, Mr. Mason, I warn’t running away from anything; but around the city, people just don’t seem to understand the feeling a man’s got for a partner. Banning’s death busted me all up. Folks wanted to talk about it — just talk — talk — talk. All of a sudden I got so I was hungry for the desert just like a man gets when he’s been wanting something and don’t know exactly what it is — and then the smell of frying bacon and coffee happens to hit him and he knows he’s just plain damned hungry.”