Erle Gardner - The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink

Mason glanced at Paul Drake. “Our investigations lead us to believe that Sidney Granton is an alias of George Fayette, and that George Fayette may have had something to do with the attempt to kidnap and kill Dixie Dayton. Aside from that, I can’t tell you a thing.”

“Aside from that,” Tragg said grimly, “you don’t have to. If you want to play it the hard way, that’s the way we’ll play. You’ll not be permitted to leave the hotel. Go on down in the lobby and wait until I get ready to question you.”

“You mean you’re holding us as material witnesses?” Mason asked.

Sergeant Jaffrey, a heavy-shouldered individual, moved a belligerent step forward. “Not as witnesses, but as suspects in the murder of Herbert Sidney Gran-ton,” he said. “Now get the hell out of here.”

The lobby of the Keymont Hotel was a scene of activity. Newspaper reporters and photographers came in and snapped flashlight photographs, entered the elevator and rattled up to the upper floors.

A uniformed police officer sat behind the desk. By police orders, no unusual number of automobiles were permitted on the outside. From the street, the Keymont Hotel seemed to present the perfectly normal appearance of a second-rate hotel. It was that dead hour of the night which occurs well before the first streaks of daylight silhouette the city’s buildings against a pale skyline. It was too early for the morning traffic, too late for even the last of the revelers. A few venturesome cab drivers, cruising dispiritedly because there was nothing else to do, would occasionally crawl along the all but deserted street. The city-wise eyes of the drivers noticed an unusual bustle about the lobby of the hotel. There would be a brief slackening of pace, then the cab would cruise on. The Keymont Hotel was the Keymont Hotel — just one of those things.

The elaborate police trap had so far been unproductive. No one except police and newspapermen had entered the hotel. No one had tried to leave.

The night clerk, held in police custody, seated across the lobby from Mason and Paul Drake, glanced from time to time across at the lawyer and private detective. His face held no more expression than a good poker player shows when he picks up his hand.

Newspaper reporters, trying to interview Mason, received merely a shake of the head.

“Why not?” one of them asked.

“I’m co-operating with the police,” Mason said. “They want me to tell my story to them and to no one else.”

“That’s okay. We’ll get it from the police.”

“That’s the way to get it.”

“You talked with them already?”

“Some.”

“That isn’t the way they feel about it.”

“I can’t help how the police feel.”

“Suppose you tell us just what you’ve told them, and...”

Mason smiled, shook his head.

The newspaperman pointed his finger at Paul Drake.

“No comment,” Drake said.

“Hell, you’re co-operative.”

“I have to be,” Drake said.

The switchboard buzzed into noise.

The uniformed officer behind the desk plugged a line in, said, “Hello... Okay, Lieutenant.”

He pulled the line out of the plug, nodded to one of the plain-clothes men in the lobby and exchanged a few words of low-voiced conversation.

The plain-clothes man came over to where Mason and Drake were seated, said, “Okay, boys. The Lieutenant will see you now. This way.”

He led the way past the elevator to the stairs, up a flight of stairs, down a corridor, past a uniformed officer on guard, and opened the door to what was evidently the most pretentious suite of rooms in the house.

Lieutenant Tragg, smoking a cigar, lounged in a comfortable chair at the far end of the room. Slightly to one side, Sergeant Jaffrey was seated in an overstuffed chair smoking a cigarette. On the other side of Lieutenant Tragg, at a table on which a piano light shed illumination, a police shorthand reporter had his notebook in front of him and held a fountain pen poised over the pages.

Mason gave the book a quick glance as he entered the room, and noticed that perhaps twelve or fifteen pages had already been covered with shorthand notes.

“Come on in and sit down,” Tragg invited. “Sorry I had to keep you boys tied up, but that’s the way things are.”

Drake and Mason found chairs.

“Now then,” Tragg said, “let’s have the story.”

Mason said, “A client telephoned me and asked me to meet him in room 721. He told me to walk in without knocking. I went up to 721 and entered the room.”

“Anybody there?” Tragg asked.

“No one.”

Tragg said, “Shortly afterwards you telephoned Paul Drake. The switchboard records show that a call was put through from room 721 to Drake’s office.”

“That’s right.”

Tragg turned to Drake. “And what did you do, Drake?”

“I followed Mason’s instructions.”

Tragg said evenly and suavely, “Mason cuts a lot of corners, Paul. He’s very skillful, very adroit, and he knows every comma and semicolon in the law. He hasn’t been disbarred.

“He drags you along with him. You don’t know periods and semicolons in the law. You have a license as a private detective. You can lose that license pretty damned easy. Now then, let’s hear you talk.”

Drake glanced apprehensively at Mason, looking for some sign. Mason’s face was completely devoid of expression.

Sergeant Jaffrey said, “Now, I’m going to tell you guys something. This case is tied up with the killing of Bob Claremont. Bob was one nice boy. However, that’s neither here nor there. Bob Claremont was a cop. He was killed by a bunch of penny-ante slickers who thought they had the town sewed up, and Bob was on the trail of something big. You can’t tell me that he just got bumped off because he was going to pinch some guy for being a bookie. Now, you guys may think you draw a lot of water, but that isn’t going to cut any ice with me. I don’t give a damn who you are. I’ll take you down to headquarters and work you over if I have to. I want to hear some conversation out of you birds, and I want the answers to be the right answers.”

Lieutenant Tragg, with a warning motion to Jaffrey and a glance at the shorthand reporter, said hastily, “Understand, we aren’t making any threats, but we feel that you gentlemen owe us a voluntary statement. We want it to be truthful. We want it to be accurate. We want it to be complete. And I warn you that if you start holding out on us we are in a position to crack down on you. Now tell us what happened.”

Mason said, “A client telephoned me to come to that room.”

“Who was the client?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“What happened?”

“Someone came to the room.”

“The client?”

“Not the one who telephoned me, no.”

“And then what happened?”

“The person who was in the room left for a few minutes. I wanted Paul Drake to get on the job and shadow this woman. I telephoned him. That’s just about all I know.”

Sergeant Jaffrey got up out of his chair.

“Just a minute, Sergeant,” Tragg said hastily, and this time unmistakably motioned toward the shorthand reporter. “Let’s interview Paul Drake. He doesn’t have the professional immunity and privileges that a lawyer does, and I think under the circumstances he’s going to be more co-operative — a lot more co-operative.”

Lieutenant Tragg turned to Paul Drake. “All right, Drake, this is a murder case. We have every reason to believe that you have evidence dealing with the homicide. I’m not trying to pry into your private relationship with Perry Mason, but I want your story of everything that happened that can have any possible bearing on that homicide. Now get started.”