Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Fenced-In Woman

“What time was it that Loring Carson came to the office?”

“I’ll find out by consulting my daybook,” Della Street said, “and can tell you exactly.”

She crossed over to her secretarial desk, took out her daybook, said, “He was here a little after nine thirty-five. I’ve got a plus mark by the time. And he left here shortly before nine forty-five.”

“Paul Drake was in the corridor and got a good look at him,” Mason said. “Now then — and by the way, what about Paul? Has he made any report on that job I phoned in about?”

“He just told me he was working on it and told me that Loring Carson had been murdered.”

Mason said, “See if you can get Paul on the line. Now let me see, I finished dictating that complaint in the fraud case about nine o’clock, didn’t I?”

“A little before that, I think. You put the complaint on the dictating machine and I know that I had the typists come early this morning and they started typing a little before eight-thirty. The complaint was all typed before you went out, which was at about five minutes to ten... Did you get your hair trimmed?”

“I got the works,” Mason said. “I got my hair trimmed, had a shave, a massage, a manicure and a shine. You told me that I needed to look my best for newspaper photographers and I thought it was a good idea.”

“Or did you think that you needed to look your best for this Nadine Palmer?”

“Nadine Palmer,” Mason said, “had something on her mind. Della, suppose you were going swimming with nothing but your underthings on. What would happen?”

“Me?” she asked.

“You.”

She said, “ My underthings are in the mode and somewhat negligible. They are nylon and not designed for concealment when wet. I trust the question is scientific and impersonal.”

Mason frowned. “It’s scientific and impersonal and puzzling.”

Della Street, whose fingers had been dialing the telephone as she talked, said, “Is Paul there?... Mr. Mason is in his office and he’d like very much to see him if he could step down for a minute.

“Okay, thanks,” she said into the telephone, hung up and said, “Paul will be down here right away.”

Mason took the cigarette from his side coat pocket.

“What’s that?” Della asked.

“That,” Mason said, “ was a very damp cigarette. Now then, Della, let us suppose that a young woman went swimming in panties and bra and then divested herself of her wet garments but didn’t want to leave them where they would subsequently be found. She’d naturally put them in her purse, wouldn’t she?”

“Unless she decided to wear them and let them dry while they were on her,”

“I’m inclined to think Nadine Palmer squeezed the surplus water out of her undergarments and pushed them into her purse,” Mason said.

“And why the swim in the near nude?” Della Street inquired.

“That,” Mason said, “is something that may concern us very deeply. She—”

He broke off as Paul Drake’s code knock sounded on the door. Della opened the door.

“Anything on Nadine Palmer?” Mason asked as Drake stepped inside the office.

“Not a thing,” Drake said.

Della Street said demurely, “There seems to have been very little on Nadine Palmer.”

“How come?” Drake asked.

“It’s just a theory I had,” Mason said. “What did you do about the taxicab, Paul?”

“Oh, I found the taxi all right,” Drake said. “She had the driver take her to the airport; but what happened when she got to the airport is anybody’s guess. She may have taken a plane or she may have simply switched taxicabs and taken another cab back to town.

“If she took a plane, she didn’t take it under her own name. My office has been telephoning every major airline trying to find a booking for Nadine Palmer and getting no place.

“I can tell you something else about your girl, and that is the police are looking for her.”

“They are?”

“That’s right. They have been making inquiries and told the landlady at the apartment house not to let anyone in the apartment until they could get a search warrant. They sealed up the apartment tight as a drum.”

“Now that’s something,” Mason said. “Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know, but they’re working on a lead. The only thing is that they didn’t know, or at least didn’t seem to know, where she took the taxicab so we’re one jump ahead of them on that.”

Mason’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I said something to her,” he said, “that touched off a whole chain reaction. I wonder what it was.”

“What’s this about her having nothing on?” Drake asked.

Mason said, “It was just a theory I had from a damp cigarette. Here’s the cigarette, Paul.”

“And how did you think the cigarette got wet?” Paul asked. “Being dunked in a swimming pool?”

“No,” Mason said, “I had an idea Nadine slipped off her outer garments and went swimming in her undies. Then she took off the undies and squeezed what water she could from them, put them in her purse, got into her dress, and went home. And something I said to her rang a bell somewhere in her mind. I remember I was talking about Loring Carson and... Hey, wait a minute, I asked her...

“Della, start playing tunes on the telephone. Get me on the first available flight to Las Vegas. I’ll call you when I get to the airport to find what one. I’ll grab a taxicab and get out there just as fast as I can so I won’t have any problem with parking. I should call you by the time you’ve got a confirmed reservation.

“Paul, stay on the job. Find out everything you can about Nadine Palmer. See if you can consult the records and find out what sort of an affidavit the police made in order to get a search warrant for her apartment.

“Della, the police are holding Morley Eden for questioning and they also have Vivian Carson. I don’t think they’ll hold either of them very long. As soon as they’re released, Eden will probably call the office. Get him to come in. Tell him I’m concerned about the time element in the case. Get him to talk about everything connected with the time element; where he went; what he did.

“Make notes in shorthand, but don’t be too obvious about it. I don’t want him to get the idea we’re putting him on the grid and applying pressure. The police have probably been all over it with him and his recollection should be fairly fresh at the moment.

“I’m on my way.”

“I could drive you out,” Drake said, “and—”

“I’ll grab a cab,” Mason told him. “You keep on the job here.”

Mason jerked the door open, dashed out into the hall and sprinted for the elevator.

The Las Vegas bellboy regarded the three one-dollar bills which Mason dropped into the palm of his hand and said, “Genevieve... sure, Genevieve is one of the hostesses.”

“How about pointing her out?” Mason asked.

“Right this way.”

The boy led the way down past a bar into a huge casino, where roulette wheels, wheels of fortune and rolling dice furnished a background of sound. Jacketed young women in tight-fitting slacks sat behind tables dealing twenty-one. At the far end of the room a bank of slot machines, whirring away busily, kept a continual monotone of sound interspersed occasionally by a voice over the loudspeaker announcing, “A jackpot on machine number twenty-one... jackpot on machine twenty-one... Machine fourteen hits the double jackpot. Machine fourteen hits the double jackpot.”

The bellboy said, “There she is over there.”

“Which one?” Mason asked.

“The snaky one.”

“They all look snaky to me,” Mason said.