Erle Gardner - The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink

“You gave Dixie the number?”

“Sure Dixie has the number. She was with me. I tell you she remembers numbers like a flash.”

“Go ahead.”

“So Dixie is at the telephone. She just gets the night clerk. She is ready to give the number when the door opens. Two men and a woman walk in and I know the minute I look I am licked. I reach for my gun. Dixie is smart. She says on the telephone, ‘Call the police.’ That’s to the clerk.”

“What happened?” Mason asked.

“Somebody clips Dixie. They put a hand over her mouth.”

“What about your gun?”

“My gun!” Alburg said, and laughed sarcastically. “My gun is on the bed. Two men have guns in their hands. A gun on the bed is no good against a gun in the hand.”

“Why didn’t you give the detective who was listening in the other room some sort of a signal?”

“Because they are too damn smart. They know that room is wired as well as I do. Every time I try to say something a man puts his finger to his lips and jabs the gun in my guts. Then I try to get smart and say something anyway, and a blackjack hits me on the side of the head. I am sick to my stomach with pain. My knees are hinges that don’t work. That’s the story.”

“That isn’t the story,” Mason said. “Go on. Tell me what happened.”

“What the hell? We go to a freight elevator. They take us down the freight elevator. There is a car in the alley. I am put in the back seat and then down on the floor. They hold their feet on me. That is the way the cop got killed. They put him in a car and hold their feet down and they blow his brains out.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“We go to an apartment hotel. We go up a back elevator, but I am smart. I have to go to the bathroom. In the bathroom there is a towel. The name of the apartment hotel is on it.”

“Do you remember it?”

“Of course I remember it. It is the Bonsal. B-o-n-s-a-l. I am in apartment 609-B.”

“Then what?”

“Then, after a long while, I go down the back way again. They are taking me for a ride. We go up a side road out of the city. I am still down on the floor. A man takes out a gun and puts it at my head. I am ready to grab and just then the driver yells, ‘Look out!’ He throws on the brakes.”

“What had happened?”

“I don’t know what had happened. I know what did happen. I am on the floor. The man holding the gun on me is thrown forward against the back of the front seat. I grab the gun. The car comes to a stop. I have that door open so fast you think I am greased, like lightning. I hold the gun. I say, ‘Stick ’em up, you guys,’ and then I am in the brush like a deer.”

“It was brushy?”

“We stop on a steep hill in a park. There is thick brush and the car is right by the edge of the steep bank. I go like a deer, I tell you. How I run!”

“Then what?”

“Then I walk and walk and walk and walk. I get a bus. I wait for a while to make sure you are in your office. I want to call you on the phone, but I am not like Dixie. I don’t remember the number you gave me to call. So I sit in a little greasy spoon restaurant. I wait. Then I get a taxi. I go to your office and they grab me.”

Mason thought the situation over. “Did you talk to the police?”

“Sure I talked to the police. I take them to the very place where I jump from the car. I show them my tracks.”

“Did they see the tracks?”

“Sure they saw the tracks. They see where I am jumping down the hill like a deer, forty feet at a jump. They laugh. They tell me I can leave tracks anywhere.”

“So then what?”

“Then we go to the Bonsai Hotel Apartments.”

“And what happens?”

“I don’t know. The police go up to apartment 609-B. They don’t tell me. I think something is haywire. They act like they have me hooked.”

“And you told this story to the police, just as you are telling it to me now?”

“That’s right. That’s my story.”

“Did the police take down what you said in shorthand?”

“Yes.”

“Then,” Mason said, “it’s not only your story, but you’re stuck with it.”

Mason was checking out of the jail when the man at the desk said, “There’s a telephone call for you, Mr. Mason. Do you want to take it?”

“Probably not,” Mason said.

“It’s from someone here in the jail.”

Mason said, “You have a couple of thousand people here. I suppose about fifteen hundred of them want to see me, hoping that I’ll find some way of getting them out. Can’t you get a name for that call?”

“It’s a woman,” the man said. “She’s over in the women’s ward. She says her name is Dayton.”

Mason frowned for a moment, then said, “Give me that phone.”

“Hello,” Mason said into the phone. “Who is it?”

“Dixie Dayton.”

“Which one?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve already talked with one young woman who said she was Dixie Dayton and who...”

“Oh, Mr. Mason! That was a trap that had been laid for you, after they kidnaped me. I’ve seen you at Morris’s restaurant and you’ve seen me — not to notice me, perhaps, but you’ll remember me when you see me. You and Miss Street walked right past me when — when I tried to run away and got hit by...”

“Where are you now?”

“In the women’s detention ward.”

“How long have you been there?”

“Since about nine o’clock this morning.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to talk with you about — about what happened.”

“Why didn’t you call me earlier?”

“They wouldn’t let me. They were taking me around different places and putting me in a police show box with other prisoners for someone to identify.”

“I’ll be over,” Mason said.

He hung up the telephone, said, “Thank you,” to the man on duty at the desk, took the elevator, walked across to the women’s detention ward, and said, “You know me. I’m an attorney. I want to see Dixie Dayton. Do I need a pass?”

The matron smiled and said, “It’s all fixed up for you, Mr. Mason. I knew she wanted to see you, and when I heard you were in the building I had them send up a pass. It’s all here. You may go right in.”

“My, but you folks are co-operative,” Mason said.

“We try to be.”

Mason started to say something, then changed his mind, and went on in to where a woman, who had been waiting impatiently, jumped up with eager anticipation.

“Oh, Mr. Mason, I’m so glad to see you! So glad!”

Mason sized her up. “It took you long enough to get in touch with me.”

“I did it just as soon as they’d let me.”

“I’m not talking about after you were picked up. What were you doing all last night?”

“Oh, Mr. Mason, it was terrible. Morris and I were kidnaped at the point of a gun there in the Keymont Hotel.”

“Who did it?”

“I don’t know who they were, but George Fayette was back of it.”

“And Fayette is dead,” Mason said, “so he can’t deny it.”

“Don’t you believe me?” she asked, suddenly piqued at his manner.

Mason said, “I never disbelieve a client, but whenever I’m listening to a client’s story, I’m constantly wondering how a jury is going to react to that same story... I just finished talking with Morris Alburg. No one’s going to believe his story.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Everything.”

She said, “Well, you won’t believe mine, either. Your own witness identified me.”

“What witness?” Mason asked sharply.

“The one who works for the Drake Detective Agency, the one you hired to shadow the woman who was in the room with you.”