Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom

“They are not what you call conspeecuous, but they are there — no? You come weeth me. I weel show you.”

Mason closed the door of his room, followed her into the lobby and saw two doors which might well have opened into rooms, except that each had painted on it a small picture of a telephone.

“Unfortunately there ees no telephones in the rooms,” she said, “but perhaps the guests down here prefer to sleep anyway. Thees is Mexico, señor. We do not work all during the day and all during the night the way you people do. When we come home from work in Mexico we are done — no?”

Mason, preoccupied with his thoughts, merely nodded.

He entered the phone booth, found a conventional pay station, closed the door, and put through a station-to-station call to Paul Drake’s office. He had to wait in the close confines of the booth for some ten minutes before he had Drake’s office on the line.

“Drake there?” he asked. “This is Mason calling.”

“Yes he is, Mr. Mason. Just a moment.”

A moment later there was a click and Drake’s voice said, “Hello, Perry, where are you?”

Mason said, “I’m staying at a new hotel in Tijuana. A nice little place called the Vista de la Mesa.”

“Can I call you there?”

“Not very well. It’s a pay station here and they close up the joint. I guess they roll up the sidewalks in this end of town. I’m going to bed and get some sleep. This is a pay station. Just a minute and I’ll give you the number.”

Mason read the number from the disk on the telephone and Drake said, “Okay, I have it. Now wait a minute, Perry, I’ve got something for you.”

“What?” Mason asked.

“You wanted us to find out all we could about Ethel Garvin. Well, we’ve struck a lead that may prove promising.”

“What?”

“She had a mine in New Mexico. She played around with that for a while and...”

“I know all about that,” Mason said.

“Then she went to Reno. She took up a residence there, apparently intending to get a divorce. Something made her change her mind. I haven’t found out yet what it was, but while she was in Reno she became more or less involved with a man by the name of Alman B. Hackley. Does that name mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing,” Mason said.

“Well, he has a cattle ranch up there. Apparently he’s a pretty rich chap and quite a playboy. Women went gaga over him and Ethel Garvin seems to have fallen in line.”

“She was ‘taking the cure,’ as they call it in that country, and was living at a dude ranch. She did quite a bit of riding and this chap, Hackley, had the adjoining cattle ranch. All of the dude girls who were living at the guest ranch and getting local color along with their six weeks’ change of husbands were nuts over him. Ethel somehow got the inside track. He and Ethel Garvin were together a lot.”

“Anything serious?” Mason asked.

“Depends on what you mean by serious,” Drake said, “but something happened. She didn’t go ahead and get her divorce. She stayed there six weeks and didn’t file. She stayed seven weeks, eight weeks, ten weeks, still didn’t file, and then all of a sudden Hackley up and left.”

“Sell his ranch?” Mason asked.

“No, he still has this big ranch there, but he came to California. Now here’s a funny one, Mason.”

“Okay, what is it?”

“He bought property near Oceanside, about fifty miles north of San Diego. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Not a damn thing so far,” Mason said, “except that I want to find out something about this Hackley. What’s his full name, Paul?”

“Alman, A-l-m-a-n, Bell, B-e-l-l, Hackley, H-a-c-k-l-e-y. I’ve got men searching the records in San Diego and making arrangements to get one of the deputy assessors to go up to the office and open up the assessment rolls. We’ll have him located within an hour or two.”

“For heaven’s sake, Paul, how did you locate him in California?”

“I thought he might be here so I traced the new car registrations. It’s something we do all the time.”

“Well, Hackley will keep until morning,” Mason said, “I’m going to get hold of Garvin first thing in the morning and we’re going to get some of the big stockholders of his company to attend the meeting in person. That will supersede all proxies.”

“You located him in La Jolla all right?” Drake asked.

“That’s right. Your man had a good hunch there. I was just about to cover all the hotels when I happened to see them getting out of their car in front of a restaurant right in the center of town. Tell Della where I am and remember to call me here in case anything of prime importance turns up — but you can’t get me until sometime in the morning. I don’t know just when. They close this place up tight at night.”

“Okay,” Drake said, “I was just about to turn in, myself, Perry. I’ve got things running along smoothly and my investigators are right on the job. You don’t want me to make any approach to any of the parties, do you?”

“No, just keep digging up information.”

“Well, I... hold everything, Perry, here’s something just coming in.”

“Okay, what is it?” Mason asked.

“A bulletin on this Hackley, and where his ranch is located — you got a pencil there, Perry?”

“I’ll have one in just a second,” Mason said.

He took a notebook from his vest pocket and a small automatic pencil, opened the book, and placed it on the shelf under the coin slot of the telephone. He said, “Okay, Paul, go ahead. What is it?”

Drake said, “You go to Oceanside and right in the center of town there’s a road that turns to the east, with a sign giving the distance to Fallbrook. You turn on that road for about two miles until you come to a mailbox right on the side of the road — the north side. It has the name Rolando, R-o-l-a-n-d-o, C. as in Charles, Lomax, L-o-m-a-x, stenciled on it in black letters. There’s a driveway about three hundred feet beyond that mailbox. You follow it for about a quarter of a mile and it brings you up to Hackley’s house. He purchased it recently, bought it already furnished.”

“Okay,” Mason said. “Now you have a shadow on Ethel Garvin?”

“That’s right. I have a man sitting in an automobile and watching the place.”

“Okay,” Mason said. “I guess that’ll do the job all right. I’ll call you in the morning, Paul.”

Mason hung up the telephone, left the booth, and said to Señora Miguerinio, who was back at the desk, “Can you tell me the number of my friend’s room? I want to give him a last word before he goes to sleep.”

“But certainly. It ees down that corridor to the left. It ees right across the patio from your room. The two rooms on the corner, numbaire five and numbaire seex. No?”

Mason said, “I’ll just run down and tap on the door. Too bad there isn’t a phone.”

“No, no phone. You see we close at night so we can’t have service at a sweetchboard — no?”

Mason nodded, went down the corridor, and tapped on the door of number six.

There was no answer.

Mason raised his voice, said, “Garvin, just a minute,” and knocked again.

Garvin opened the door a crack. “What is it, Mason?” he asked, trying in vain to keep his irritation from registering in his voice.

Mason said, “I’ve just had a telephone message from Paul Drake, my detective.”

Garvin opened the door a little wider. “Yes, what is it?”

“I think we’ve found out the reason your former wife didn’t bother you for a while. His name is Alman Bell Hackley. At present he’s living on a ranch about two miles east of Oceanside. He owns a big cattle ranch in Nevada and apparently is quite a Romeo. The girls at the dude ranch which adjoins his property were all ga-ga over him.”