Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Shapely Shadow

Della Street glanced inquiringly at Mason, then settled back against the cushions.

The cabdriver turned around inquiringly. “All right for me to ask what business you have at Police Headquarters?”

“I’m a lawyer,” Mason said. “I want to interview a witness.”

“Oh, that’s different. Just wanted to know,” the driver said.

After a few minutes the driver slid the cab in against the curb. “How’s this?” he asked.

“This is okay,” Mason said. “Shut off the motor and wait.”

They waited for twenty minutes before Carlotta Theilman emerged from the police station. An officer looked up and down the street.

“All right,” Mason said to the cabdriver, “put on your lights, slide up to the entrance as though you’re vacant.”

“Then what?”

“Then leave it to me,” Mason said.

The cabdriver started the motor, slid up to the entrance to the police station.

Mrs. Theilman, seeing the cab coming, turned and gave her hand to the officer who had escorted her to the door.

The officer smiled and stepped back inside.

The cab came to a halt. Mrs. Theilman stepped forward.

Mason opened the door and raised his hat. “Permit me, Mrs. Theilman,” he said. “Right inside.”

For a moment she drew back, then laughed and said, “My, you startled me, Mr. Mason. You— Were you waiting here?”

“Just driving by,” Mason said breezily. “Get in.”

The officer who had stepped inside the station looked back just as Mason finished assisting Mrs. Theilman into the cab. The officer opened the door and started for the cab.

Mason slammed the cab door, said to the driver, “Step on it, buddy. Straight down the street.”

A few blocks farther down the street Mason said, “Stop at the first motel that has a vacancy sign.”

The lawyer turned to Mrs. Theilman. “I don’t want to intrude on your feelings at this time, Mrs. Theilman, but there are some things I must know.”

She said, “People have been intruding on my feelings for the last four years, Mr. Mason. Sometimes I don’t think I have any feelings left. I guess tonight is the finish. I’m just numb, that’s all.”

The cabdriver said, “Here’s a motel.”

“Fine,” Mason said, “turn in here.”

The lawyer said to Della Street, “Explain the circumstances at the desk. Give them some money, whatever is necessary.”

The lawyer handed the cabdriver fifteen silver dollars. “Will this cover it this far?” he asked.

The cabdriver grinned and touched his cap.

“All right,” Mason said, “we’re square this far, now just put it on waiting time.”

A few moments later, when they were ensconced in the comfortable parlor room of a suite, Mason said, “Would you mind telling us just what happened, Mrs. Theilman?”

“Beginning when?”

“Quite a ways back,” Mason said.

“Well,” Carlotta said, “I don’t care particularly about talking about the breakup of my marriage. It’s simply that I was such a fool. I don’t know why a woman will let her man go under circumstances of that sort. I guess one’s pride gets hurt first. I know in my case I was hurt because I couldn’t compete.

“After I came to my senses, I decided that I would compete. There isn’t any such thing as a woman being outmoded or outmodeled if she makes up her mind that she isn’t going to be outmoded or outmodeled.

“By that I don’t mean that you can turn back the hands of the clock, but you certainly can use the weapons nature gave you, and you can sharpen those weapons enormously. Any man in your own age bracket will take notice — even some of the younger ones.”

“So you started sharpening weapons?” Mason asked.

“After it was too late, I started sharpening my weapons and then, when Morley wanted to deal with me on a business matter, I made up my mind that I’d let him look over the arsenal.”

“He approached you?” Mason asked.

“A lawyer approached me.”

“In his behalf?”

“He didn’t say so in so many words, but I knew he was representing Morley, although he said his client was someone else.”

“When was this?”

“The latter part of last week. He said that he wanted to get proxies on my stock or wanted to buy the stock. Then he came again early this afternoon.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“I told him the stock wasn’t for sale and that as far as proxies were concerned it made a great deal of difference who wanted the proxies.”

“So then he told you that your former husband wanted them?”

“No, at least not in so many words. He said time was short and that his client had to keep in the background. So I told him that he could give me a hundred dollars to show his good faith and to cover expenses, and that I’d take the train tonight to Las Vegas and his client could meet me there and we’d discuss matters.”

“Then what happened?”

“He gave me the money for expenses and I came up here. I was hoping Morley would be alone.”

“Had other people been trying to get your stock?”

“Plenty of them. During the last three weeks there had been several telephone calls from people who said they were brokers.”

“These were offers for the purchase of the stock?”

“Offers for proxies,” she said. “They didn’t want the stock as much as they wanted the voting power.”

“And in this financial transaction with your husband, did you have any figure in mind?”

She said, “There was only one figure that I ever wanted him to be interested in — mine.”

Peremptory knuckles sounded on the door.

Mason got up and opened it.

A police officer said, “You know, Mr. Mason, you could wear out your welcome in Las Vegas mighty fast.”

“This woman is a witness,” Mason said. “She’s been at Police Headquarters and made her statement. You’re finished with her now.”

“That’s what you think,” the officer told him. “You’re the one who’s finished with her. We have orders to see that you are escorted to the airport, Mr. Mason.”

“And if I don’t go?” Mason asked.

“Oh, you don’t need to go,” the officer said, “but you’d want to be careful — very, very careful that you didn’t violate any of the laws or any city ordinances while you’re here, Mr. Mason. We wouldn’t want to have anything happen to you and we’d be certain to keep a close eye on you. If you violated any ordinance — and we have lots of them — you’d be seriously inconvenienced.”

“That’s okay,” Mason told him. “As a matter of fact, we had finished. We were just leaving anyway.”

“That’s fine,” the officer said. “We’ll drive you folks down to the airport. You don’t need your cab.”

Paul Drake, his skin oily with fatigue, a stubble showing along the angle of his jaw, was still at work in his office when Mason and Della Street came in at three-thirty in the morning.

“What do you know, Paul?” Mason asked.

“Not too much,” Drake said. “The body was found up at a subdivision in the mountains back of Palmdale. It’s a place Theilman had purchased after a subdivider went broke on it. There’s one of those real estate office buildings on it — a sharp-roofed little office affair. The body was found in there, face down on the floor.”

“How was he killed?”

“Gun shot, right through the heart. Thirty-eight caliber.”

“Any weapon found?”

“No weapon.”

“Clues?”

“I wouldn’t know all of them,” Drake said, “but there are plenty. There was a thundershower up there during the night and so it’s possible to put certain things together. Two cars had been driven in there before the thundershower, Theilman’s Cadillac and Janice Wain-Wright’s Ford. The thundershower dampened the ground. There was just one set of tracks going through the damp ground. Those were the tracks of Janice Wainwright’s automobile when she left the place.