Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Reluctant Model

“Is all that pertinent?”

“Sure, it’s pertinent,” Mason said. “If the guy thinks he’s going to sneak up to Oregon and marry Maxine and then come back here and smile at us, we’re going to try to prevent it. We’re going to see if all his previous marriages have been dissolved or whether one may still be in force. If we can find a valid outstanding marriage, we’re going to arrest the guy for bigamy the minute he marries Maxine, and then we’re going to force Maxine to testify on the ground that she isn’t the legal wife of Collin Durant. It seems that the guy is the marrying kind, and if this lawsuit racket is a habit with him, he’s married other witnesses to keep them from testifying.”

“What makes you think they’re having a rendezvous to get married in Oregon?” Della Street asked.

“Well, we’ll look at it this way. Where is Collin Durant? He hasn’t been home, his car is missing, and Maxine was in a hurry. She had to leave last night. She evidently had a meeting place that had been definitely pinpointed somewhere.”

“It begins to add up,” Della Street admitted.

“Come on,” Mason said, “let’s go.”

“Are you going to tell Paul where we’re going?”

“We won’t tell anyone,” Mason said.

After they were in Mason’s car, Della said, “She gave me a key. That makes anything we do legal, doesn’t it?”

“She gave you a key in order to get the canary,” Mason said, “but something seems to tell me you won’t be able to find the feed for the canary and you’ll have to look around some to find out where she kept it.”

“In the kitchen?” Della Street asked.

“Well, of course you can’t tell with a girl like Maxine,” Mason said. “She might have kept it in the bedroom or in one of the closets. Or again, it might have been in a suitcase somewhere, or down in the bottom of a bureau drawer. A package of birdseed could be kept almost anywhere — and then of course there’s cuttlebone. I think you have to use cuttlebone to keep a canary healthy and — oh, I can think of lots of things that might be around there in various places.”

“So we’re going to look in various places.”

“Don’t make any mistake, Della, we’re going to look in all the places.”

They drove in silence, Della Street apparently speculating on the various possibilities.

Mason said, “We don’t need to go blind very much longer, Della. The trail is pretty well blazed. The fact that Warton, Warton, Cosgrove and Hollister are beginning to worry is something to think about. If this is a racket, it’s about time some lawyer shows up stating he represents Durant and wants to start talking settlement.”

“And you think Olney will settle?”

Mason said, “His attorneys are corporation attorneys. They aren’t accustomed to rough-and-tumble fighting. They begin to realize now what a horrible mess their client could be in and naturally they don’t want to have it get around the courthouse that they got Olney out on a limb, any more than I want to have it get around that I got a client out on a limb. The only difference is that when the going gets tough I’ll fight regardless of whether the situation is disagreeable or not. I don’t think those other lawyers will.”

Della Street said, “This is her apartment house. We should be able to find a parking place at this hour of the morning— Here’s one right here.”

Mason said, “That’s rather a long walk. I think we can find one closer.”

He suddenly braked the car to a stop.

“What’s the matter?” Della asked.

“That car,” Mason said, pointing to a large pretentious automobile parked at the curb.

“What about it?”

“It’s the same general description as Collin Durant’s. I got the description from Paul Drake just a short time ago — and I think it’s the same license number. Skip out and take a look at the registration on the steering post, will you, Della?”

Della whipped open the door of the car, jumped to the ground, took a quick look at the registration then hurried back to the car and said, “That’s right, it’s Collin Max Durant’s automobile.”

“The plot thickens all to hell,” Mason said. “Now, what do you suppose Durant is doing here?”

“Trying to see Maxine?” Della Street asked.

“In that event,” Mason said, “he has been here for a long time, or else the guy likes to walk. When he parked his car, there weren’t many parking places available near the apartment house, which means either that the people hadn’t gone to work early in the morning or that he came in at night after people had come home from the offices and had taken up most of the readily available parking spaces.”

“Well, since we know she wasn’t in her apartment all last night,” Della Street said, “that would seem to indicate he had come this morning and—”

“Or has been waiting for her all night,” Mason said, “in which event he probably found some means of letting himself into her apartment.”

“Perhaps he has a key.”

“Could be,” Mason said. “Those things have happened.”

The lawyer eased his car into motion and drove up to one of the vacant parking places near the main entrance to the apartment house.

“What’s her number, Della?” he asked.

“Three-thirty-eight-B.”

“Well,” Mason said, “we’ll go up and see what gives.”

“If he’s waiting in the apartment, what do we do?” she asked.

“Play it by ear,” Mason said. “But I think we get tough. If it’s a fight he wants, we can let him know it’s going to go the limit.”

They went up in the elevator, oriented themselves on numbers, walked to Apartment 338-B, and Della Street silently handed Mason the key.

Mason carefully inserted the key in the lock so as not to make the slightest noise, pressed gently against the key. Nothing happened. “The wrong key?” Della asked.

Mason tried the knob. “No, the door seems to have been left unlocked.” He twisted the knob, pushed open the door.

The apartment was empty and in perfect order.

Mason stood in the doorway, looking the place over. Della Street, standing directly behind him, placed one of her hands on his arm.

“No one’s here,” she said.

“That’s either a kitchenette out there or a bedroom,” Mason said. “Probably a kitchenette.”

The lawyer gently closed the door of the apartment, crossed over to the swinging door, pushed it open to disclose a tidy kitchenette with a pocket-sized refrigerator.

“There must be a wall bed,” Mason said. “Apparently that’s all there is to the place, except there’s a bath.”

Mason walked over, opened the door to the bathroom, then recoiled.

Della Street stifled a scream.

The body of a man was lying face down, the legs sprawled across the tiles, the upper part of the body lying in the shower stall.

Mason bent over the body.

“Is it...?” Della Street’s voice failed.

Mason said, “It’s Collin M. Durant, our obnoxious friend of last night, and he’s dead as a mackerel. Evidently these are bullet holes in the back.”

Mason bent over to touch the still form.

“How long has he been dead?” she asked.

“That,” Mason said, “is going to be the big question. Notice that all the lights are on, Della.”

“Then he must have come up here after he left us last night,” Della Street said. “The lights were on. Maxine would normally have turned them off — and Durant’s bed wasn’t slept in last night.”

“And,” Mason said, “was he up here before Maxine left her apartment or not? Can Maxine prove that she was waiting at a pay station telephone booth? We’ve got to get Homicide on the job right away, Della. Minutes are precious. They’ve got to determine the time of death and let’s not throw any obstacles in the way of an accurate determination— Hello, what’s this?”