Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Crooked Candle

There was an interval of silence. Then Drake said, “Just a minute, I’ll pass that on. You hold the phone.”

He turned to Mason. “Al says he left Lassing out in his car while he put through the call to me. You heard me tell him to stick around the telephone for five minutes, so he waited right there. Then when Frances called him back and told him to go ask Lassing about that time element, he went out. Lassing wasn’t there.”

“Skipped out?” Mason rasped.

“No, the cops nabbed him.”

“Is Al sure?”

“Yes. A kid told Al some men came up in a car that had a red spotlight on it and a star on the side door. One of the men got out and went over and started talking with Lassing, and then, all of a sudden, he pulled out a pair of handcuffs, put them on Lassing and...”

“Handcuffs!” Mason interrupted.

“That’s what Al says the kid told him.”

Mason said, “Tell Al to get out of there, fast!”

Drake said into the telephone, “Okay Al, come on back to the office — step on it,” and hung up the phone.

Mason, pacing the floor, quickened the tempo of his stride.

Drake said, “I can’t figure what...”

“Wait a minute,” Mason interrupted, his voice sharp with nervous tension. “Let me think.”

For two or three minutes he paced up and down the office, then he suddenly whirled to Paul Drake, “Got a good woman operative, Paul — one you can trust?”

Drake said, “What for, rough stuff, siren stuff or...”

“No, someone who can stay with a high-class woman every minute of the time, not let her out of her sight day or night.”

“I know a girl like that. It’ll take me a while to get her lined up,” Drake said.

“How long?”

“Oh, four or five hours maybe, perhaps sooner.”

Mason shook his bead. “We’ve got to do something before then, Paul.”

Drake said dubiously, “I have a woman who used to... No, Perry, I don’t think she’ll do.”

Mason said, “Damn it, we haven’t got all night!”

“Can I do it?” Della Street asked.

Mason turned to contemplate her thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said, “you can do it — and I guess you’ll have to do it.”

“What is it?”

Mason said, “When you leave here be damn certain you aren’t followed. Get on and get off streetcars, then grab yourself a taxicab. Tell the driver you have to be absolutely certain you aren’t being tailed. He’ll know what to do.”

Della Street merely nodded.

“When you’re absolutely certain that nobody’s following you,” Mason went on, “beat it down to the Union Terminal. Pick up Carol Burbank. Tell her not to ask any questions and don’t give her any information. Take her to the Woodridge. We know the manager there. I’ll have things all fixed up by the time you arrive. Register under your own name, and register Carol under her name, only use her initials. In other words, if her middle name is Annie, register her as C. A. Burbank. — That will sound like a businessman rather than a woman — get me?”

Again Della Street nodded.

“Get rooms with a connecting bath,” Mason said. “Have twin beds in your room. After you’ve been moved in and the bellboy has left, move Carol’s baggage into your room. Lock the bathroom door so you’ve locked off the adjoining room. Keep Carol in with you.”

“For how long?”

“Until you hear from me. Get her out of circulation and keep her out of circulation.”

Della Street walked over to the hat closet, took out her hat, adjusted it on her head, and pulled her coat off a hanger.

Paul Drake said, “I don’t like this, Perry.”

Mason snapped irritably, “Neither do I, damn it. If you could only get some woman who...”

“Have a heart, Perry. You can’t just pick up women for a job now. I’m lucky to have any female operatives at all...”

Della Street walked to the door, hesitated, “Okay?” she asked Perry Mason.

Mason waved her on her way. “Go to it, Della — and luck.”

The taxi driver said, “Okay, ma’am, you can bet your bottom dollar there’s no one following you now.”

Della Street, seated on the jump-seat where she could look out through the rear window of the taxicab and at the same time keep an eye on the road in front, said, “I guess we’re all right now.”

“Where to?” the cab driver asked.

“Union Terminal.”

The cab swung around the corner. The driver flashed Della Street a glance of unconcealed approval. “What’s the trouble — husband?”

Della nodded.

“A man married to a girl like you,” the cab driver announced with some feeling, “had ought to know how fortunate he is. If he starts acting up mean on you, someone had ought to punch his snozzle.”

Della Street said, “Perhaps it’s partly my fault.”

“ Your fault!” the driver exclaimed. “Where do you get that noise? A man driving hacks gets so he can size people up. Anybody that can’t get along with you is just one of those things.”

“Thank you,” Della said demurely.

The cab driver moved slightly in the seat, squared his shoulders. “You just get right out and go about your business when you get to the station, ma’am. If there’s anybody waiting there that says anything to you, I’ll see that you aren’t annoyed.”

“Oh, it isn’t that,” Della said hastily. “It’s all right now. I know that he won’t be there. He won’t have any idea where I’m going.”

The cabby said, “Well, he didn’t follow us, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s what I mean.”

The driver laughed. “If any guy was trying to tag along behind us, he’s in the hospital by this time. You know how it is, us fellows that are driving traffic all the time, we get so we know what we can do and what we can’t do. And we know just how to go about doing what we can do. Shucks, you take some private guy that gets out in a car maybe once in a week, and maybe don’t drive traffic over ten or fifteen hours a month. Why say, he doesn’t stand a chance.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Della agreed.

The cab rolled smoothly along, the driver silent for a while, then as it rolled up to the Union Terminal, the driver said, “I’m giving you one of my cards, ma’am. If you have any more places to go where you don’t want to be followed, just get in touch with me. You can usually find me around where you picked me up this afternoon. That’s my stand.”

“Thank you.”

“And remember that no one’s going to push you around any when I’m there.”

“You’re very kind.”

Della Street paid him the meter fare, gave him a twenty five cent tip and a smile.

The driver, a look of dreamy abstraction in his eyes, watched her through the entrance of the depot, and only snapped back to the realities of life and the traffic regulations when the horn of a car behind made raucous protest.

Della found Carol Burbank standing near the telephone booth in the section of the terminal reserved for telephone and telegraph service.

“Hello,” Carol said with a quick smile and an impulsively outstretched hand. “Mr. Mason telephoned that you’d be down and meet me here.”

Della Street nodded. “He’s given me some rather definite instructions,” she said.

“So he told me.”

“He thinks that it’s very important that you do exactly what he says.”

“Naturally,” Carol said laughing, “if I paid an attorney to tell me what to do, I’d be foolish to disregard his advice.”

“Where’s your father?” Della asked.

Carol frowned. “I wish I knew. I’ve been trying to get him on the phone.”

“Did he go to Skinner Hills Friday afternoon and talk with Frank Palermo?”