Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Reluctant Model

“No, I... I prefer it this way. I’m expecting some money at the telegraph office but if I don’t get it I might not be able to pay.”

The attendant looked at her sympathetically and said, “I’ll park it right over here, ma’am. I’m sure you’ll have the money waiting for you.”

“Oh, I hope so,” Maxine told him, giving him a wan smile, and then leaving the car started walking wearily down the sidewalk.

She was so thoroughly tired that she hardly noticed when Mason fell into step beside her.

At length sensing the presence of someone keeping pace with her she glanced up with annoyance. “I beg your pardon, if you—” She gasped, faltered, came to a dead stop.

“I’m sorry I had to do it this way, Maxine,” Mason said, “but we have to talk.”

“I... You... How in the world did you get here?”

“By making good connections at Sacramento with a Pacific Airlines plane,” Mason said. “Are you tired, Maxine?”

“I’m bushed.”

“Hungry?”

“I had something to eat in Chico. I couldn’t go any longer. I’d been living on coffee. It took my last dime.”

“All right,” Mason said, “there’s twenty-five dollars waiting for you at the telegraph office. Shall we go and get that?”

“How... how in the world do you know all these things?”

“It’s my business,” Mason said. “Twenty-five dollars sent to you by Phoebe Stigler from Eugene, Oregon.”

“All right,” Maxine said, “if you know that much I presume you know the rest of it.”

Mason smiled enigmatically. “Let’s go get the money, Maxine, and then we’ll sit down over a cup of coffee and talk.”

“I haven’t got time,” she said. “I’ve got to get on. I’ve just got to keep slogging along that damned road and I’m so tired.”

“Come on,” Mason said, “let’s get the money and then we’ll talk it over. Perhaps you won’t have to keep on hurrying.”

The lawyer walked into the telegraph office, smiled and nodded at the clerk, pushed Maxine forward.

“Do you have a wire for me, Maxine Lindsay?” she asked.

“Yes, we do, Miss Lindsay. Will you sign here, please? You were expecting some money?”

“That’s right.”

“How much?”

“Twenty-five dollars.”

“Who from?”

“Phoebe Stigler of Eugene, Oregon.”

“Just sign here, please.”

Maxine signed her name, the clerk handed her two tens and a five and exchanged smiles with Mason.

Mason placed his hand on Maxine’s elbow and said, “Come on, we’ll go get that car filled up and then get a cup of coffee.”

They walked back to the filling station where Maxine left instructions about the car, then went across to a restaurant. Maxine slumped into a seat in a booth and rested her chin on her hand.

“You’ve had quite a drive,” Mason said. “You shouldn’t be going on until you’ve had some sleep.”

“I’ve got to get there. I’ve simply got to get there.”

Mason told the waitress, “Fill up two coffee cups and bring a pitcher with coffee in it.

“Cream, sugar?” he asked Maxine.

She shook her head and said, “No more. It puts on too many inches.”

The waitress looked at Mason inquiringly.

“Just black for me,” Mason said.

The waitress left and in a short time returned with two cups of coffee, then brought two small metal pots.

“We use these for hot water, mostly,” she said, “but I’ve filled them up with coffee.”

“That’s fine,” Mason told her and handed her a five-dollar bill. “Please take care of the check for us,” he said, “and put the rest in your pocket. We don’t want to be disturbed.”

The face of the waitress lit up. She said, “Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. Is there anything else I can do?”

“Not a thing.”

“If there’s anything you want, just hold up your hand. I’ll be watching.”

Maxine put a spoon in the coffee, stirred it, raised the spoon to her lips, sipped the coffee tentatively to determine the temperature, then again settled back into a dejected attitude.

“Now, you wanted us to look after the canary,” Mason said.

She looked up and barely nodded.

“But,” Mason said, “there wasn’t any canary.”

She had started to raise the coffee cup to her lips, looking at Mason with tired eyes. Suddenly she became alert, holding the coffee cup arrested halfway to her lips.

“There wasn’t what ?”

“There wasn’t any canary,” Mason said.

“What are you talking about? Of course there’s a canary! Dickey was there in his cage... He’s the one I was worrying about.”

“There wasn’t any canary,” Mason said.

“But, Mr. Mason... I don’t understand... There had to be. Dickey was there. Dickey, the canary.”

“No canary,” Mason said, “but there was something else.”

“What do you mean, something else?”

“A corpse,” Mason said, “in your shower.”

The coffee cup wobbled as she started to put it back on the saucer.

“The corpse of Collin Durant, sprawled in your shower, shot in the back, very, very dead. He...”

The coffee cup dropped from her nerveless fingers. Hot coffee spilled over the table. Not until some of it trickled to her lap and the hot liquid had burned through her dress did Maxine scream.

Mason held up his hand.

The attentive waitress was instantly on the job.

“We’ve had an accident,” Mason said.

The waitress gave Mason a shrewd, searching look. Then, with her face a mask, said, “I’ll get a towel. Would you like to move over to another booth?”

Maxine moved out into the aisle, shook her skirt, took a napkin and sponged at the coffee stain. Her face seemed as white as the plaster on the wall.

“Right in here and sit down,” Mason said.

The waitress appeared with a towel, mopped up the spilled coffee, hurried away to get another cup of coffee and brought it back to them in the next booth.

Mason said, “Now, get hold of yourself. Are you trying to tell me that you didn’t know Durant’s body was in your apartment when you gave Della Street the key and told her to go up?”

“Honest, Mr. Mason, I didn’t... You aren’t lying to me, are you?”

“ I’m telling you the truth.”

“That,” she said, after a moment, “changes things a lot.”

“I thought it would,” Mason said. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me how.”

“You’re not — you’re not trying to trap me, are you, Mr. Mason?”

“What do you mean?”

“Collin Durant is— He’s really dead?”

“He’s dead,” Mason said. “He was evidently shot in the back, perhaps two or three times. His body fell forward in your bathroom. I wouldn’t want to make anything more than a guess right now but as a guess I’d say that he was searching the apartment when he was killed, that he stepped into the bathroom, parted the shower curtains, and that, as he did so, someone put a small-caliber revolver right up against the back of his coat and pulled the trigger two or three times. Now, does that mean anything to you?”

She said, “I didn’t do it, if that’s what you want to know.”

“Suppose,” Mason said, “you tell me a little bit about Durant.”

“Durant was a... a devil.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

She said, “Durant had the most horrible pair of ears in the world. He heard everything and he forgot nothing. He would encourage people to talk, getting them to tell about their own affairs, about their own background. He’d be the most attentive, sympathetic listener in the world, and he’d be remembering everything he heard. Sometimes I think he must have gone home and put everything on a tape recorder or something and kept notebooks.