Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Crooked Candle

“Sure.”

“You left fingerprints there?”

“Well, what of it? That was in the morning. Man is dead already for all night.”

“But you may have left fingerprints?”

Palermo raised his voice. “Say, what’s the matter? May be you like to make trap for me and take all that five thousand, huh? What you mean maybe fingerprints?”

Mason said, “I’m trying to find out...”

“You try to find out too damn much! Whatsa matter you don’t make a deal with me? Maybe you try get rope around my neck so you get property, huh?”

Palermo turned abruptly and stalked toward his cabin.

Mason said, “I simply wanted to ask you...”

Palermo whirled, his face was dark with rage. “You get the hell off my property,” he shouted. “When I get to cabin, I get shotgun.”

Mason watched the man turn and plunge along toward his cabin.

“I think, Chief,” Della Street said, “you’ve obtained just about all the information you are going to get.”

Mason nodded, said nothing, stood watching the cabin, saw Palermo pull the screen door to one side, enter the cabin, slam the door behind him.

“Better get started before be comes out with that shotgun,” Della urged. “He’s just about half crazy.”

Mason said, “Just as a psychological experiment, Della, I’d like to see whether he does bring out a gun.”

“Chief, I’m nervous.”

“So am I,” Mason admitted, grinning.

“He doesn’t seem to be coming out.”

Mason waited another thirty seconds, then slowly walked along the car, opened the door and slid in behind the steering wheel.

Della Street switched on the ignition.

“Do you want to ring up Paul Drake about that license number?” she asked, glancing apprehensively toward the cabin.

Mason’s lips tightened. “That,” he said, “isn’t going to be necessary I happened to recognize the license number.”

“You did! Whose car is it?”

“The car,” Mason said, “is the one in which I was given such an interesting ride yesterday afternoon. The one in which Carol Burbank took me up to the Surf and Sun Motel and subsequently back to the little ’dobe restaurant.”

It was late afternoon when Della Street and Perry Mason emerged from the elevator and walked down the long corridor. As they went past Paul Drake’s office, Mason opened the door, thrust his head in and said to the girl at the switchboard, “Drake in?”

“Yes. He’s waiting.”

“Ask him to come down to my office. What are you doing at the switchboard? I thought this was your day off.”

“The girl who takes care of the board Saturdays and Sundays is laid up with the flu,” she said, “so I’m having to work right on through,” and she made a little grimace. “However, Mr. Drake says I can get off next week for... Here he is now.”

The door from one of the inner offices opened and Drake, talking in his characteristic drawl, said, “Hi, Perry. Thought I heard your voice. Hello, Della. Want to talk now?”

“Uh huh.”

“Okay, I’ll come on down with you. I’ll be in Mr. Mason’s office if anything turns up, Frances. You have the unlisted number, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Hold everything, except on this stuff I’m doing for Mason; put that on through to me.”

Drake moved over to take Della’s arm. “Why don’t you work for a good outfit?” he asked. “We keep our girls on a five-day week, a seven-hour day.”

“Yes, I notice. Frances was just telling us.”

Drake laughed and said, “You can’t win!”

Mason opened the door of his office.

Drake said, “There’s something new on that murder, Perry. Remember that doorway to the after cabin on the yacht? It was shown in those pictures.”

“Yes, I remember. What about it?”

“The autopsy surgeon thinks that Milfield may have received the fatal injury by being knocked over against the raised brass-covered threshold between the main cabin and a smaller private cabin.”

“In other words, he may have met his death as the result of a fist fight? That would change it from first-degree murder to manslaughter.”

“That, of course, will be up to a jury. Police will go ahead on the first-degree murder theory. You understand this other thing is just a possibility, Perry. It...”

The phone on Mason’s desk rang sharply. Mason said, “Better answer it, Paul. It’s probably Frances relaying some information.”

Drake took the telephone, said, “Hello,” then listened carefully for nearly two minutes, made a couple of notes, said, “Okay Tell him to wait right there at that telephone for five minutes.”

Drake hung up, said, “We’ve located J. C. Lassing, the man who rented that double cabin at the Surf and Sun Motel. My operative says he’s got the guy parked outside the drugstore where he’s calling. He thinks Lassing will give him a written statement.”

Mason showed excitement. “What does he say?”

Drake said, “J. C. Lassing lives at 6842 La Brea Avenue, Colton. It was a little job tracing him because he’d transposed two of the figures on his license number when he registered at the motel. Lots of people do that; even when they’re looking right at a figure, they’ll transpose a couple of the digits in writing it down, and when they’re trying to remember a license number...”

Mason said, “I know.”

“What I’m getting at,” Drake pointed out, “is that it may have been accidental that he gave the wrong figure. Again, it may not. Anyhow, he just about corroborates Burbank’s story. He says he rented two double cabins; that there were four people in his party, and that he ‘believes there were subsequently two more people who arrived.’ He won’t tell the names of any of them.”

“You say your man can get a written statement from him?”

“He thinks he can. He has Lassing waiting outside in his car. There’s one thing that bothers me though, and that’s why he rang up before he tried to get a statement. Lassing mentioned casually that his party checked out right after noon Saturday That wouldn’t fit in with your time theory, would it, Perry?”

Mason said, “No. Burbank apparently didn’t leave until around four or five o’clock in the afternoon. Get your man on the phone, Paul, tell him to ask Lassing more about that time element.”

Drake dialed his office on the telephone, said, “Ring up Al, Frances, tell him that he’s to find out more about that checking out time before he tries to get the written statement out of Lassing. Have him call back as soon as he finds out.”

Drake hung up the telephone and turned to Mason. He had only started to say something when the phone rang again.

Della answered the phone, said, “Yes... Yes, this is Miss Street... Just a moment. Hold the phone.”

She placed her hand over the mouthpiece, said to Mason, “It’s Carol. She’s at the Union Terminal; wants to know if you’ve found out anything.”

Mason made a gesture of impatience. “Tell her we’re waiting for an important call. Tell her to wait right there. Get a number where we can call her back. As soon as we can clear the line, I want to ask her where her father is and what he was doing calling on Frank Palermo Friday afternoon. Don’t tell her that. Just get a number where we can call her and get her off the line.”

Della relayed the message, hung up.

They waited in tense silence for less than a minute, then the phone rang again. Della answered it, said, “Just a minute, Frances,” and passed the phone over to Paul Drake.

Drake said, “Hello... Yes, Frances... The devil!.. Look, can you work the switchboard so as to put him on the line? It’ll save time... All right, do it... Oh, hello, Al... That’s what Frances told me... Tell me exactly what happened.”