Erle Gardner - The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

Harvey Brady said, “Unless my nose is mistaken, the pies are just about ready to come out of the oven.”

Mason slowly turned.

Brady regarded him with the casual interest a man bestows upon a total stranger.

Paul Drake lurched forward, peered up at Mason with the intense scrutiny of someone who is having some difficulty focusing his eyes. “Hello, stranger,” he said. “Let me introduce myself. My name’s Drake. I’m half owner in the richest bonanza ever discovered in the whole mining history of the West. I’m happy. You, my boy, look hungry. You look thirsty. You look dissatisfied. You look unhappy. In short, my lad, you look like a Republican on an appropriations committee. There’s nothing I can do here in the form of liquid refreshment to alleviate your deplorable condition, but I can show you the true hospitality of the West by buying you a piece of pie.”

“His pie is already spoken for,” Nell Sims said.

Drake nodded owlishly. “How many pieces of pie?” he asked.

“One,” Mrs. Sims said.

“That’s fine. I’ll buy him the second piece. The first piece he has on himself. The second piece he has on me.”

Drake turned to Harvey Brady. “Come on, partner. Sit up to the counter. Let’s have pie. What do we care for the various vicis-s-s... Whoa! Guess I’d better back up and take another try at that one.” He took in a deep breath. “What do we care for the various vicis — viciss — ssitudes of life when we have pie? Madam, we shall have pie, or as you would doubtless express it, eat — drink — and be merry, for tomorrow we pie.”

Nell Sims said, “That isn’t the right quotation.”

“What is?” Drake asked belligerently.

“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow roll on their dreary course.”

Drake put his head in his hands and thought that over.

“You’re right,” he agreed at length.

Mrs. Sims said, “I’ve just taken the pies out of the oven. Just a minute and I’ll bring them in.”

She retired to the kitchen.

Paul Drake leaned forward and said in a confidential voice that was almost a whisper, “Look, Perry, let’s make some dough on the side. I’ve met a real prospector who’s working some property he thinks doesn’t amount to much. There are some black pebbles that constantly get in his sluices. Perry, those pebbles are gold nuggets once you scrape off the black. The poor chap doesn’t realize this. I wouldn’t outsmart him on the whole claim, but I can get a half interest in it.”

Mason drew back from the detective’s breath. “Paul, you’ve been drinking.”

“Of course I’ve been drinking,” Drake said truculently. “Why the hell shouldn’t I be drinking? How can I act the part of a drunk without drinking — at least in this town where people watch every move you make. Hell’s bells! I’m famous!”

Nell Sims appeared with the pie, served Della Street and Mason, then cut off smaller pieces for Brady and Drake.

The cattleman gave Mason’s arm a surreptitious reassuring squeeze, then settled down at the table next to Drake.

Drake turned once more to Mason, regarded him with the alcoholic persistence of a drunk who has been rebuffed and has made up his mind he isn’t going to take it. “Another thing,” Drake said, “is that... Say, how’s it happen he gets ice cream on his pie, and we don’t get ice cream on our pie?”

“That’s government regulations,” Nell Sims said; “leastwise I think it is. That’s what they told me when I took over the restaurant.”

“How about him?” Drake demanded, pointing his finger at Perry Mason.

Nell Sims never batted an eyelash. “He has an A-i-A priority rating from the local war board.”

Drake regarded Mason with widened eyes. “I’ll be a son-of-a-gun!” he exclaimed.

Mason, watching his opportunity, said in a low voice, “Want to see you alone as soon as we can get out of here, Paul.”

Brady, keeping his voice equally low, said, “So does all the rest of Mojave, Perry. Stick your head out of the door and you’ll see ten or fifteen people sort of casually hanging around the sidewalk. The point is that wherever we go those same ten or fifteen people—”

He broke off as the screen door banged open. A frightened little whisper of a man scuttled through the doorway and made for the kitchen.

“Hey, Pete!” Paul Drake yelled, jumping to his feet, his manner enthusiastically cordial. “Come on over here. Right over here, Pete old boy!”

Pete Sims either didn’t hear him or paid no attention. “Nell!” he half screamed. “Nell, you’ve got to see me through this! You—!”

Once more the door banged open. Sheriff Greggory’s form bulked large against the eye-dazzling glare which beat down on the town’s single main street.

“Hey, you!” he yelled. “Come back here. What the hell did you run for? You’re under arrest.”

Drake gave Mason a woebegone look. “Oh, my gosh,” he said dolefully. “ That’s the guy who was going to sell me a half interest in the mining claim.”

Sheriff Greggory pushed his way toward the counter, his face hard lines of determination.

Pete skidded around the counter to stand beside his wife. His frightened little eyes regarded the sheriff apprehensively.

Nell Sims said, “Pete, what have you been up to now?”

Behind the officer, venturing somewhat tentatively through the doorway, appeared Mrs. Bradisson and her son.

Pete Sims caught sight of Mason and, his voice chattering with fright, said, “There’s my lawyer. I demand an opportunity to talk with my lawyer. You can’t do anything to me until I’ve seen a lawyer.”

“Pete,” Nell Sims said sternly, “you tell me what you’ve been up to. Come on now, make a clean breast of it.”

Greggory said, “Ask him to tell you what he was doing with twelve ounces of arsenic.”

“ Arsenic!” Nell exclaimed.

“That’s right. What were you doing with it, Pete?”

“I didn’t have it, I tell you.”

“Don’t be silly. We’ve found where you bought it. The druggist identifies your photograph.”

“It’s all a mistake, I tell you.”

“It’s a mistake as far as you’re concerned all right.”

“I’m going to talk with a lawyer.”

“Pete Sims, did you put poison in that sugar? Why, if I thought you’d done that, I’d — I’d — I’d kill you with my bare hands.”

“I didn’t, Nell. Honest I didn’t. I got this poison for something else.”

“What did you want with it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Where is that poison?” Nell demanded.

“You’ve got it.”

“ I have?”

“Yes.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Don’t you remember that paper bag I gave to you and told you to save?”

“You mean that stuff that — Good Heavens! I thought it was some stuff for mining. That’s what you said it was. You didn’t tell me it was poison.”

“I told you to keep it where no one could possibly touch it,” Sims said.

“Why you... you...”

“Come on,” Sheriff Greggory said; “what did you buy it for?”

“I— I don’t know.”

Mason turned to Nell Sims. “Where did you put it?” he asked.

Her face told its own story of agonized dismay.

“Near the sugar?” Mason asked.

She nodded, too overcome for words.

“And,” Mason went on gently, “could you, by mistake, have reached into this bag instead of the sugar bag, and—”

“I couldn’t,” she said, “but Dorina could have. You see, with the rationing of sugar, the way things are nowadays — well, I told Dorina to use her stamps and get a bag of sugar. She handed it to me. After she’d gone, I opened the bag and dumped it into the big sack with the other sugar; but this bag Pete had given me was in there on the shelf, and she might have seen it and thought it was the bag of sugar she’d bought. And then, if she thought the sugar bowl needed filling... Pete, why didn’t you tell me that was poison?”