Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom

“What a break!” Garvin said, unable to keep the enthusiasm from his voice. “That’s the sort of stuff we want! Is he living there at Oceanside now, Mason?”

“On this ranch,” Mason said. “I have directions how to get there.”

“What are they?”

Mason gave him the information he had received from Paul Drake. Then he added, “I won’t do anything with him tonight, but tomorrow we’ll start looking him up a bit.”

Garvin’s right hand came pushing out through the door. “Mason,” he said, “I knew I could depend on you. You’re doing a fine job. It just illustrates what I say. When a man wants a doctor or a lawyer, he wants a good one!”

From the interior of the bedroom, Lorraine’s voice said, “We’d better not make any offer until we’ve found out about this new evidence. Don’t you think so, Mr. Mason?”

“I think so,” Mason said. “See you in the morning. Good night.”

“Good night,” they both called.

Mason turned away from the door. Garvin closed it and shot the bolt.

Mason, in order to get to his own room, had to retrace his steps through the lobby.

As he entered the lobby, Mason found that the bright lights had already been turned off. A single desk light gave illumination to the counter. The lights on the outside had been switched off. There was no sign of Señora Inocente Miguerinio.

It was at that moment that Mason realized he had left his automatic pencil in the telephone booth.

Feeling his way cautiously in the dim light across the lobby, Mason opened the door of the booth and was just retrieving his pencil when he heard the voice of a woman in the adjoining phone booth coming through the thin partition.

“Yes, dear,” Mason heard her say. “You guessed right... Yes, dear, across the border in Tijuana.”

There were more words Mason couldn’t hear, then the woman’s voice was raised a bit, “Yes, darling... No... I’ll do it... My eyes hurt from watching...”

Mason gently left the booth, making a note for future reference to be careful of the thin walls which separated the two artistic, but acoustically dangerous telephone booths.

Mason found his room, closed the door, and started undressing.

A clock in the patio chimed melodiously, a full set of rich, throaty chimes, then struck the hour — ten o’clock.

Mason switched out the lights, opened the windows on the west which faced out to what the Señora Inocente Miguerinio had so drastically described as nada, and got into bed.

From somewhere outside the west window there came a series of metallic, strident sounds emanating from some semitropical bird Mason could not, for the moment, place.

But, to add to the strangeness of the phenomenon, the bird seemed to have the habits of the woodpecker and kept up a steady tapping against the side of the building.

At length Mason’s irritation triumphed over the forces of slumber. The lawyer threw back the covers, sat up in bed and scowled at the window through which could be seen the dry, barren landscape, the first rays of early morning sun turning the mesa to gold.

At that point the lawyer realized that the steady, persistent tapping was not on the side of his room and was not made by a bird, but was a quiet, persistent tap-tap-tap-tap on his door.

In bare feet he padded across to the door and opened it.

A wooden-faced Mexican boy stood on the threshold. “Señor Mason?”

Mason nodded.

“Telefono,” the boy said, and moved away, sandaled feet sliding along the waxed red tiles of the floor.

“Hey, come back here,” Mason said. “Who is it? What?...”

“Telefono,” the boy called over his shoulder, and kept on walking.

Mason laughed, then he put on trousers and coat over his pajamas, and, without bothering with socks, thrust his bare feet into his shoes, and in a state of unlaced disarray marched down the corridor to the lobby.

The lobby was deserted but the door of one of the telephone booths was standing open, and the receiver was off the hook and on the shelf.

Mason entered the telephone booth, picked up the receiver, and said dubiously, “Hello.”

An impatient voice said, “Is this Mr. Mason?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Perry Mason?”

“Yes.”

“Los Angeles is calling. Hold the line, please.”

Mason reached out and pulled the door shut. A moment later Paul Drake’s voice on the line said, “Hello, Perry?”

“Yes,” Mason said. “Hello, Paul.”

“I’ve had the devil of a time getting you,” Drake said. “I’ve been trying ever since five o’clock this morning. I couldn’t get any answer down there until just a few minutes ago. Then they said they could get you but the talk was in Spanish and had to be relayed, translated and garbled. Why the devil don’t you stay someplace where there’s telephone service?”

“What’s the trouble?” Mason asked.

Drake said, “I am up against something that I thought you should know about. One of my men made a mistake. It’s an understandable mistake, but nevertheless it’s resulted in a botched-up job.”

“What happened?” Mason asked.

“We’ve lost Ethel Garvin.”

“The devil you have.”

“That’s right.”

“How did it happen?”

Drake said, “It’s a long story if you want it the long way and the easy way. If you want it the short way and the hard way we lost her, and that’s that.”

Mason thought for a moment, then said, “Give it to me the long and easy way... No, wait a minute, Paul. The wall between this telephone booth and the next one is thin as paper. Just a moment, let me check. Hold the line.”

Mason put down the receiver, opened the door of the telephone booth, jerked open the door of the adjoining booth, saw that it was empty, then returned to the telephone and said, “Okay, Paul. I was just checking — I overheard snatches of a telephone conversation last night through the wall of the adjoining booth. Now, tell me what happened.”

“After ten o’clock,” Drake said, “I cut down to one man. By that time there wasn’t much doing, and not many people going in and out of the apartment house. I told my man to keep an eye on anyone who looked as though he might be important, simply to check license numbers on the cars, times of arrival and times of departure.

“That’s where I made my mistake, Perry. I tried to have one man do too much work.

“My man, of course, had his car parked in a good spot right across from the front door of the apartment house. There isn’t a garage in the neighborhood and the tenants leave their cars on the street.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said, impatiently.

“You wanted it the long way,” Drake said. “I’m giving it to you. Here’s what happened. A rather well-dressed man, driving a Buick, circled the block, cruising around, evidently looking for a parking place. From the way he acted my man didn’t think he lived in the apartment house. The chap finally found a parking place half a block away, eased the car into the parking place, turned out the lights, and hurried across to the apartment house. For some reason my operative had a hunch he was about the type that might be calling on our party. He was well dressed and seemed in a hurry, as though he might be trying to keep from being late for an appointment. Putting two and two together, my man decided to go get his license number.

“As I have explained, my man didn’t dare to drive around to check up on that license number for fear he’d lose his own parking place, so he jumped out of the car and walked rapidly down the block toward the Buick.

“Well, he’d just got to the Buick when a taxicab swung around the corner and came to a stop in front of the Monolith Apartments. Ethel Garvin must have been in the lobby, waiting. She stepped out of the apartment house door and into the taxi, and they were off — as luck would have it, of course, in the wrong direction.