Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Long-Legged Models

“Well, well,” he said. “So you’ve been out early birding this morning. Catch any worms?”

“Oh, we don’t call this early,” Mason said.

“It isn’t... I thought you were in the office, Miss Street.”

“I was,” Della Street said.

“You folks get around. You certainly do,” Tragg told them. “Well, let’s go up where we can talk.”

“About what?” Mason asked.

“Oh, about murder,” Tragg said. “It’s as good a subject as any, and it happens to be a subject in which we’re both interested, you on one side, I on the other.”

They walked silently across to the elevator, rode up to Mason’s floor, walked down the corridor. Mason unlocked the door of his private office, offered Tragg a cigarette, seated himself, held a flame to the tip of the officer’s cigarette, nodded surreptitiously to Della Street, and settled back in his chair.

“Well?” Mason asked.

“George Casselman,” Lt. Tragg said.

“What about him?”

“Dead.”

“How did he die?”

“A contact shot with a .38 caliber revolver.”

“When?”

“Sometime last night.”

“Where?”

“In the apartment where I understand you saw him sometime around eight o’clock.”

“Indeed,” Mason said. “How did you get that information?”

“That,” Tragg told him grinning, “is a professional secret. I’m keeping the extent of my information to myself. In that way you won’t know how much I know or how little I know. It gives me all the advantage in asking questions.”

“Assuming that I would be inclined to depart from the truth in my answers,” Mason said.

“That’s what I’m assuming,” Tragg told him. “Not that you’d lie, Mason, but you have a diabolically clever way of giving answers that don’t answer. Now you saw Casselman last night. What did you see him about?”

“A business deal.”

“What sort of a business deal?”

“One that involved a client’s affairs.”

“There you go again,” Tragg said. “I want to know what you were discussing.”

“My client’s affairs are always kept private,” Mason said. “There’s a code of legal ethics dealing with the matter.”

“Makes it very convenient for you in a murder case, doesn’t it?”

“At times,” Mason admitted.

Tragg studied him thoughtfully. “Now Casselman had some other appointments last night.”

“Did he?”

“Do you know with whom?”

“I know other people were going to see him — that is, Casselman was expecting them.”

“Who were they?”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you there, Lieutenant.”

“What do you mean, you can’t help me?”

“I mean just that. I can’t help you.”

“That could mean a lot of things. Either that you don’t know or that you can’t tell.”

“There’s still a third possibility,” Mason said. “Hearsay evidence is no good in a court of law. When I say that I can’t help you, it might mean that I had only some hearsay evidence, and that would be of no help at all.”

“You see what I mean?” Tragg said turning to Della Street. “What kind of an answer is that?”

Tragg turned back to the lawyer.

“Now I wanted to see you this morning before you’d had a chance to talk with any of your clients,” Tragg said. “I’m sorry that didn’t work out. I think perhaps Miss Street’s efficiency may have had something to do with that. However, Mason, we police aren’t entirely dumb. After I found out that you didn’t arrive at the office at your usual time and that Miss Street had stepped out on a matter of some urgency, I put two and two together and so I waited. When you drove up in the taxicab you were getting just a little careless. You should have paid off the cab a block from the office and walked the rest of the way. As it is now, I have the number of the cab, and as soon as I call the dispatcher the cab driver will be asked to report to us. Then we’ll know just where you went with the cab and gradually we’ll piece that cab trip together and perhaps find some very interesting stuff.”

“Doubtless you will,” Mason said. “I’m glad you called my attention to a mistake in my technique, Tragg.”

“Don’t mention it,” Tragg said. “I knew from the expression on your face, that as soon as you saw me you were mentally kicking yourself for not walking that last block.

“I suppose you’d have done it anyway if it hadn’t been for this cute blonde in the car with you. She’d have thought it a little strange if you’d stopped the cab a block from your office.

“Now then, that brings up the next pertinent question: Who was this blonde and why didn’t she get out when you got out?”

“The blonde,” Mason said, “was named Eva Elliott. She lives in Apartment 317 at the Monadnock Apartments. Her telephone number is Pacific 7-2481. She was formerly employed as a secretary for Homer Horatio Garvin, a client of mine, and was on her way to Hollywood to try out for a bit part. The young woman is more than mildly interested in a theatrical career.”

“Well,” Tragg said, “thanks for the information. I can cross that off.”

“What do you mean, you can cross that off?”

“It doesn’t have very much connection with the murder,” Tragg said, “or you wouldn’t have told me all of that. Now where else did you go with the cab?”

“That,” Mason said, “is a matter I don’t think I’m in a position to discuss at the moment.”

“I see, I see,” Tragg said. “Now this Eva Elliott had been secretary to Homer Garvin?”

“That’s right.”

“And Homer Garvin is a client of yours?”

“Yes.”

“When did he last consult you?”

“I take care of all his legal business, I believe,” Mason said. “Sometimes I will have quite a bit of work for him, and then at other times things will go along for months at a time without my hearing from him.”

Tragg turned again to Della Street. “Just listen to this fellow, Miss Street? Lots of interrogators would get sidetracked and forget what the question was about by the time they’d digested an answer like that. Now, let’s see, didn’t my question have to do with when Garvin had last consulted your employer? I’m afraid you’ll have to help me from getting lost in a maze of words, Miss Street.”

“As it happened,” Mason said, “I was the one who was trying to get in touch with Garvin. I was trying to get in touch with him Monday afternoon and I am still trying to get in touch with him.”

Tragg thought that over, then said, “You were trying to get in touch with him Monday afternoon?”

“That’s right.”

“And you’re still trying to get in touch with him?”

“Right.”

“Now,” Tragg said, “would you go further and say that you had not seen Garvin between the time you first tried to get in touch with him Monday and the present time when you are still trying to get in touch with him?”

Mason grinned.

Tragg shook his head. “A man has to watch you all the time, Mason. It’s not what you say, but what you don’t say. Now for your information, I know that Homer Garvin saw George Casselman last night.”

“That he saw George Casselman last night?” Mason exclaimed.

Tragg nodded. “Now then, let me ask you a personal question.”

“What?”

“Did you go to Casselman’s apartment last night, then wait out by the back stairs, pick up a young woman and take her away in your car?

“A witness thinks you did. The light wasn’t too good, but this witness saw you well enough to recognize you.”

“Indeed.”

“Now then, could it be possible that some young woman pushed a gun up against Casselman’s breadbasket, pulled the trigger, then rang you on the telephone and said, ‘Oh, Mr. Mason, come at once. Something terrible has happened!’ Could it further be possible that you asked her what had happened, and she told you that she and Casselman had had a difference of opinion, that in order to frighten him she had pulled out a gun, that Casselman grabbed her and struggled for the gun, and in the struggle, much to her surprise, she heard the roar of an explosion and then Casselman fell back on the floor?