Erle Gardner - The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

Mason bowed. “I wasn’t aware I was doing it, but if you feel I am upsetting your mother, I’ll withdraw.”

“No, no!” Bradisson exclaimed. “That isn’t what I meant. I meant she would make her statement later, after the sheriff had finished with you.”

“It may not have been what you meant,” Mason said, “but it’s what I meant. Come, Della.”

“Wait a minute,” Greggory said. “I’m not finished with you, Mason.”

“You’re quite right,” Mason said, “but your most important angle at the moment is to find out about that ipecac before mother and son have a chance to confer, and I refuse to be questioned in the presence of the Bradissons.” He started for the door.

“Wait a minute,” Greggory interposed. “You’re not going to walk out of here until I’ve searched you for that document.”

“Really, Sheriff!” Mason said. “Has it ever occurred to you what county you’re in? Such high-handed procedure will hardly go over now that you’ve left your jurisdiction. And you really should question the Bradissons before they get a chance to patch up a story. Come, Della.”

It was the reference to the fact that Greggory was outside his own county that brought sudden dismay to his face. Mason calmly pushed past him to the door.

Paul Drake, who had been a fascinated spectator, suddenly burst into applause.

The sheriff whirled on him angrily. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

Drake, with alcoholic dignity, said loftily, “If you want to put it that way, who the hell are you?”

Mason didn’t wait to hear Greggory’s answer.

As the door banged shut behind them, Della Street let out her breath. “Whew! That was close. How’s the water now, Chief? Hot enough?”

“Coming to a boil,” Mason said.

“You have to hand it to Mrs. Bradisson for having the courage to stage a counter-offensive,” Della said.

Mason frowned as he slid in behind the steering wheel. “Unless she set a trap, and I walked into it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Suppose she left that door open on purpose so I could see her juggling wills. Naturally I’d promptly jump to the conclusion that the will she was hiding was genuine. If it should turn out to be forged, that, coupled with the phony endorsement on that stock certificate, and the fact that Banning Clarke was poisoned at a meal we shared with him—”

“Chief!” Della Street interrupted in an exclamation of frightened dismay.

“Exactly,” Mason said, and stepped on the foot throttle.

“But, Chief, there’s no way out.”

“Only one possible avenue left open,” Mason said.

“What’s that?”

“We don’t know too much about the drowsy mosquito,” Mason told her. “Velma Starler heard it. She turned on the light. The mosquito ceased flying. She turned out the light, went to the window carrying a flashlight. Someone was standing near the wall — almost directly below her window. He fired two shots. Those shots perforated the upper windowpane above Velma Starler’s head. They were less than three inches apart. Is there anything about that which strikes you as being particularly unusual?”

“You mean about the shots?”

“Yes. That’s partly it. Quite evidently the man didn’t want to hit her. He wanted to frighten her away from the window. If he had enough skill to put those bullets within three inches of each other, he must have been a darn good shot.”

“But why try to frighten her away from the window?”

Mason smiled. “The drowsy mosquito.”

“What do you mean, Chief?”

“Did you notice,” Mason asked, “that when Salty Bowers made his demonstration of black light last night there was some sort of an induction coil in the mechanism by which the current of a dry battery was stepped up to sufficient voltage to work the bulb?”

She nodded.

“And,” Mason went on, “if you had been somewhere in the dark and heard that rather faint buzzing, it would have sounded very much like a mosquito that was in the room.”

Della Street was excited now. “It would, at that,” she said.

“A peculiar, somewhat lazy mosquito — perhaps a drowsy mosquito.”

“Then you think the sound Velma heard was caused by one of those black-light devices?”

“Why not? When she looked out of the window, someone was standing near the wall. Put yourself in the position of Banning Clarke. He had a bad heart. He had very valuable information. He didn’t dare trust that information to anyone. Yet the possibility that he might die and take the secret to the grave with him must have occurred to him. Therefore, he must have tried to leave some message. His reference to the drowsy mosquito becomes very significant in view of the demonstration we saw last night of fluorescent lighting.”

“You mean that he worked out a code message somewhere?”

“Exactly.”

“Then it must be in that rock wall!”

“Exactly. Remember he had all of those different rocks brought in from the desert.”

Della Street’s eyes sparkled. “And I suppose that means we’re going to be the first ones to throw a beam of invisible light on that wall and see what the message is?”

“We’re going to try to be first,” Mason said.

“But the prowler must have been using one of these machines.”

Mason was thoughtful. “The machine may have been one that Salty Bowers or Banning Clarke was using at a place on the wall a short distance from where Velma saw the prowler. The prowler may have been trying to find out what was going on. In any event, I think we’ve found an explanation for the drowsy mosquito.”

It was too early for the distorted moon to lift itself over the horizon. For the moment, the night was dark save for the stars which, in this ocean-misted atmosphere, seemed distant, impersonal pin points.

Della Street held the flashlight. Mason carried the long, boxlike apparatus for generating black light. The house at the north end of the big grounds was silhouetted against the night as a dark rectangle. There was no sign of human occupancy anywhere in the building.

Mason took up a position some ten feet from the wall.

“All right, Della,” he said, “let’s have it dark.”

She snapped out the flashlight.

Mason turned a switch. From the interior of the box came a low, distinctive hum, and a moment later, the darkness of the night seemed to turn slightly luminous and a deep violet.

Mason directed the rays of ultraviolet light against the wall. Almost instantly a series of colored lights winked back at him. In silence the lawyer and Della Street studied them.

“Do you make anything out of it, Chief?” she asked anxiously.

Mason didn’t answer immediately. When he did, there was discouragement in his tone. “Not a darn thing. Of course, it may be in some sort of code... It’s just a succession of isolated dots. There doesn’t seem to be any particular pattern.”

Mason moved on down the wall. “Looks pretty hopeless,” he remarked, and Della’s keen ears could detect the disappointment in his voice, showing to what extent he had banked on his theory.

“Perhaps it’s something else that has to do with this ultraviolet light,” she said, knowing how much it meant to them, and realizing that Mason was in a predicament from which he could extricate himself only by quick, clear thinking and that solving the mystery of the drowsy mosquito was but the first step. Failing in that, they were beaten on everything else.

“I can’t imagine what it could be. The deuce of it is, Della, we’re working against time... Hello, what’s this!”

Mason had been moving down the wall, coming to the lower portion where the wall tapered down until it was hardly four feet high.