Erle Gardner - The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink

“I know,” Mason said, “but it’s a good way to check on... Oh-oh, here’s Tragg. He looks tickled to death.”

Lieutenant Tragg left the elevator, walked over toward Mason and Drake, said, “I’m sorry we had to inconvenience you fellows, but you know how it is. This is a murder case... Everything’s okay. You can go now.”

“Thanks,” Drake said and started for the door.

Mason held back. “Your friend Sergeant Jaffrey seems to be of the old school.”

“If you had to contend with the things he has to fight, you’d be hard-boiled, too,” Tragg said.

“Got the case all solved, Lieutenant?”

Tragg hesitated a moment, then said, “I’ll tell you one thing, Mason — you’ll read it in the papers anyway, so you may as well know it.”

“Shoot.”

“That number that was penciled in lipstick on the back of the mirror was the license number of George Fayette’s automobile. It was registered under the name of Herbert Sidney Granton. That was his latest alias. And when we found that automobile, which we finally did, we found a nice bullet hole through the right front door. A bullet that had been fired from the inside. Seems safe to assume that was the car that was used in the attempted kidnaping and murder of Dixie Dayton.”

“But Fayette wasn’t driving it,” Mason said.

“Fayette wasn’t driving it,” Tragg said. “We’re having the car processed for fingerprints and before too very long we may know who was driving it.”

Mason frowned thoughtfully.

“And personally I wouldn’t blame Morris Alburg for beating George Fayette to the punch,” Tragg said. “Actually it would have been self-defense. Fayette was dynamite. But Alburg is a red-hot target not because of Fayette, but because he’s teamed up with Dixie Dayton, and until Dixie Dayton produces Tom Sedgwick we’re going to raise merry hell with your clients, Mason. I thought you might as well know it.”

“You didn’t think that was any secret, did you?” Mason said, and headed toward the exit.

Mason said to Drake, “Go on up to your office, Paul. Talk with that girl of yours and find out if she’s really positive about her identification of that photograph.”

Drake paused with one foot on the running board of his car. “You think she’s made a wrong identification?”

“I’m damn near certain of it.”

“She’s pretty efficient, Perry.”

“Look at it this way,” Mason said. “That room was wired. There was a bug in it some place that we didn’t find. That means it was done cleverly and was a professional job.”

“Well?” Drake asked.

“Now, then, Morris Alburg wanted me to meet him in that room... Either Morris wired the room or he didn’t.”

“Well, let’s suppose he didn’t,” Drake said.

Mason shook his head. “Somehow that idea doesn’t appeal to me, Paul. The facts are against that supposition.”

“Why?”

“Morris wanted me to meet him in that room. He had something he wanted, some witness he wanted to interrogate, something that he wanted recorded. He wanted me to do the questioning. He was all hooked up for a big killing. Something happened to him.”

“Well?”

“Figure it out,” Mason told him. “Morris Alburg apparently is playing hand in glove with this Dixie Dayton. Now if that had been the real Dixie Dayton who was talking with me she would have been in touch with Morris Alburg and therefore would have known the room was wired.

“In that event she’d probably have told me, because I’m supposed to be playing ball with them, but even if she hadn’t, she never would have made the statement that Alburg was going to kill George Fayette.”

“That sounds logical,” Drake admitted.

“On the other hand,” Mason said, “if something had happened to the real Dixie Dayton, if Morris Alburg was being detained somewhere against his will, and this woman was sent to stall me along, knowing that I had never met Dixie Dayton, and if she knew that George Fayette had been killed, or was about to be killed, and wanted to lay a perfect trap for my clients, she’d have said exactly what this woman said.”

“Then you don’t think the woman was Dixie Dayton?”

Mason shook his head.

“Sounds reasonable,” Drake said. “I wish you could have got a look at that picture.”

Mason said, “I can’t help but feel that we’re playing for big stakes, Paul. Fayette was just a tool. When Fayette bungled the job of getting Dixie Dayton rounded up he didn’t do himself any good, and then when he made the mistake of coming to my office and trying to get information under the guise of being an insurance agent, and when he realized that the woman who had been trying to follow him the night before was my secretary, he put himself on a spot.

“In addition to that, the automobile that had been used in the kidnaping attempt was his own automobile, registered in his name. Someone had the license number. That made Fayette a cinch for police interrogation.”

“You mean members of his own mob killed him?”

Mason said, “I can’t picture Morris Alburg as getting in that hotel room and killing Fayette in cold blood.”

“You never know what these chaps will do when they get crowded into a corner,” Drake pointed out.

“I know,” Mason told him, “but let’s look at it this way, Paul. Suppose the thing was a beautiful trap. Suppose Alburg and Dixie Dayton were there in room 721 waiting for me, and suppose someone came in and got the drop on them and took them out of the hotel.”

“Sounds rather melodramatic,” Drake said. “I told you before, it sounds like the movies.”

“Well, there may have been more than one man,” Mason said. “There may have been a couple, and you don’t know that they walked across the lobby of the hotel.”

“That’s true, of course.”

“But,” Mason told him, “let’s look at it from the standpoint of a case in court. Suppose some phony is in that room with me and tells me that Morris Alburg, who is working with her in a common cause, is out killing George Fayette so that Fayette won’t kill him. She makes it sound rather reasonable. An attempted self-defense by first launching a counteroffensive.”

“Well?” Drake asked.

“And,” Mason said, “that conversation is recorded on acetate discs, and the police have those discs. Then your secretary and the hotel clerk identify the woman who was talking with me as Dixie Dayton. The corpse is found in her room. How much of a chance would that leave a defense attorney?”

Drake gave a low whistle. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. You’d have about the same chance as the proverbial snowball.”

“That’s exactly it,” Mason said. “Now, I don’t believe that woman was Dixie Dayton, and I sure don’t want to have your girl get off on the wrong track. Get up and talk with her, and then I’m coming up.”

“You’re not driving up with me?”

“You take your car and I’ll take mine. I’ve got places to go and things to do. I want to locate the person who put in that sound equipment. I want to find out how much stuff the police have, and how much they don’t have.”

“The police will beat you to it,” Drake said. “If that room was wired they’ll find out who...”

“They may and they may not,” Mason told him. “We’re working against time and so are the police. Get up to your office, Paul, and I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

Drake nodded, jumped in his car and stepped on the starter.

Mason found his own car, drove down the street until he came to an all-night restaurant with a telephone booth, and stopped to call Morris Alburg’s restaurant.