Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Buried Clock

“Did I give you the impression that I thought that?”

She met his eyes fairly. “Yes,” she said.

“While we’re on the subject,” he said, smiling, “since we’ve disposed of Rodney Beaton, what can you tell me about Myrna Payson?”

“Not much. She’s a widow. She inherited some money. She’s gone in for cattle ranching.”

“Has a place up here?”

“She has a small ranch up here. She has two other ranches, and — well, she goes around with Rodney, taking care of the cameras quite frequently.”

“Rodney seems to be very popular.”

“He’s a very interesting man, and — I don’t know how I could describe it so you’ll appreciate it, but there’s a terrific wallop in this camera hunting.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You set your camera, put in a flashbulb, string a black silk thread across the trail. If you’re after animals the size of a coyote, you put it at a certain height. If you’re looking for deer, you’ll raise the thread. If you’re after the smaller animals, you put it just an inch or two above the trail. Sometimes you string out three threads. You walk away, making a round of the other cameras, and come back at an interval of perhaps an hour. When you find the thread broken, the shutter tripped, and the flashbulb exploded, you know you’ve got a picture. Then you get down on your hands and knees and study the tracks in the trail to see what animal tripped the shutter... Skunk pictures are usually cute. Deer pictures are hard to get, and quite frequently, deer photographed under those conditions seem angular and ungraceful. Foxes usually make beautiful pictures. Wildcats have a sinister look about them.

“Rod is a very expert photographer. He has infinite patience. He’ll prospect for days to get just the right camera location — a smooth, fairly level stretch where there’s no background to show—”

“Why no background?” Harley interrupted.

“Because Rod only wants the animal against a dead black background. He uses a small flashbulb and a wide-open lens. He says most flashlight pictures give an effect of unreality because they show garish foreground and black — but you must get Rod to show you his collection. It’s wonderful.”

“Does Mr. Beaton develop the films here?”

“Oh yes, he has a little darkroom in the cellar of his cabin. We go down there when we get back from our patrol and develop the films that have been exposed. That’s when it gets exciting, seeing what you’ve got on the film, whether it’s a good picture, whether the animal was facing the camera or facing away from the camera, or just trotting along the trail when it set off the flashbulb.”

“Ever get pictures of human beings?” Raymand asked.

“No, silly, of course not.”

“What’s to prevent someone walking along a trail and blundering into one of those camera traps?”

“Why — nothing, I guess, except that no one ever has done it so far. There’s no reason for people to go prowling around these hills at night.”

“And Myrna Payson takes an interest in night photography?”

Lola Strague became suddenly economical of words. “Yes.”

“And there is a certain element of rivalry?”

“No.”

“But you and Myrna Payson aren’t particularly intimate?”

“I think I can settle that very quickly, Mr. Raymand. It’s absolutely none of your business, but we’re quite friendly. Up here, we all try to get along with one another, be friends, and — mind our own business.”

“Ouch!”

“You asked for it.”

“I did, indeed. What’s more, I’m going to ask for more from time to time.”

“If your questions are frank, you’ll have to pardon me if my answers are also frank.”

“Just so I get the information,” Raymand grinned, “I don’t care what sort of a verbal package it’s wrapped in.”

“I see. And precisely what information are you angling for?”

“I want to know why a good-looking young woman like Myrna Payson should be marooned up here—”

“She came up here a few weeks ago to look over her property. She intended to stay two days. It was just a trip of inspection.”

“And she met Rodney Beaton?”

“Yes.”

“And she has now been here for some several weeks, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Then it took longer for her to investigate—”

“I don’t know,” Lola Strague interrupted irritably. “I’m really utterly incapable of reading Mrs. Payson’s mind. I don’t know what your object is, Mr. Raymand, but if you’re up here trying to play detective, and are starting on the surmise that Myrna and I are engaged in some sort of a struggle for the affections or companionship of Rodney Beaton, you’re... you’re all wet. And now, if you’ll pardon me, I’ll be on my way... Unless there are further questions?” Her manner was one of cold anger.

Harley said, “I’m simply trying to get the picture in focus in my mind. I—” He broke off to listen. “A car coming,” he said.

She had caught the sound almost at the same time he had. They stood there wordlessly, waiting for the car to make its appearance, both yielding to a common curiosity, yet maintaining their dignified hostility.

Harley Raymand was the first to recognize the man who drove the car up out of the shadow-filled canyon to the gentle slope in front of the cabin. “It’s Perry Mason, the lawyer,” he said.

Mason saw them standing there, and swerved the car over to the side of the road, shut off the motor and came walking across to join them.

“Hello,” he said. “You look very serious, as though you were engaged in a council of war.”

“Or an altercation,” Lola Strague said with a smile.

“Tell me, what have they done with Mrs. Hardisty?” Harley Raymand asked.

“I’ve got a writ of habeas corpus for her. They’re going to have to bring her out into the open now. They’ve had her buried in some outlying town... Were you people looking for something?”

“I came out here looking for the clock,” Harley said.

“Find anything?”

“Not a sign. I’ve listened at various places — holding my ear to the ground. Can’t hear a thing.”

“You could hear it ticking fairly plainly when you first discovered it?”

“Yes. The sound seemed to carry well through the ground. It was quite audible.”

Lola Strague regarded Harley Raymand with amused eyes. “Well,” she asked, “are you going to tell him?”

Raymand reached his hand in his pocket. “While I was looking for the clock,” he said, “I found a piece of glass. It looks as though it had been broken from a spectacle.”

Mason took the piece of glass in his fingers, turned it around thoughtfully, said, “Just where was this, Raymand?”

Harley showed him.

Mason started looking along the needle-filled seam in the rock. “We should be able to find the rest of this. This is only about a half of one lens.”

They searched the little fold in the rock carefully. Then Mason gave his attention to the surrounding ground. “That’s mighty peculiar,” he said. “Suppose a pair of spectacles were thrown against that rock and cracked into pieces. You’d naturally expect to find little pieces of glass around here on the ground. There doesn’t seem to be a sign of anything, not even — wait a minute. What’s this?”

He crawled forward on his hands and knees, picked up a wedge-shaped sliver of glass. “Looks as though this is also from a broken spectacle lens,” Mason said. “And that seems to be the only other piece that’s anywhere around here.”

“What should I do with this piece that I’ve found?” Harley Raymand asked him. “Do you think I should report it?”