Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Spurious Spinster

“How much of the corporation’s stock does Miss Corning own?” Mason asked.

“About ninety per cent,” Campbell said.

Mason smiled at him, “ That’s your answer.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Campbell told him belligerently. “ That’s not the answer. You can’t dismiss something like that with a wisecrack.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m responsible for the records.”

“Then I’ll put it another way,” Mason said. “To whom are you responsible?”

“The stockholders.”

“Now then,” Mason said, “I’ll ask you again. How much stock does Amelia Corning own?”

“Oh, the devil!” Campbell said, and turning on his heel walked quickly away.

Mason grinned at the house detective, shook hands, said,“I think we can handle this thing all right so there’ll be no publicity.”

“You do the best you can,” the house detective said. “You know things of that sort don’t look good in the papers. We’re running a very conservative hotel here and—”

“I understand,” Mason said. “We’ll do all we can to cooperate with you and—”

Mason let his voice cease abruptly.

The house detective grinned. “Sure, sure. We’ll cooperate with you, too, Mr. Mason. Anything you want, you just call on me. The name’s Bailey. Colton, C-o-l-t-o-n C. Bailey. You just ask for me and I’ll do anything I can.”

“Thanks a lot,” Mason told him, and turned to the two young women. “Let’s go finish our dinner,” he said, and led the way back towards the Candelabra Café.

“Oh, I beg a thousand pardons,” Susan Fisher said. “I thought you had finished your dinner.”

“We had,” Mason said, “but I didn’t want the house detective to know just where we were going.”

“Where are you going?”

“To my office,” Mason said. “We’re going to get Paul Drake on the trail of Amelia Corning and we’re going to try to reach her before Endicott Campbell does. When Endicott Campbell left I feel certain he was planning to do a little amateur detective work of his own. Unless I miss my guess he’s on his way to the Union Depot right now and when he gets there he’ll start checking with the various redcaps, trying to find out just what happened.”

“Then aren’t you afraid he’s beating you to the punch?” Susan Fisher said.

“Not necessarily,” Mason told her. “There are ways of going about these things. Up in the office we have a timetable. We’ll check what trains were pulling out at about that time. We’ll get Paul Drake to put some professionals on the job and we’ll find out what tickets were sold. Campbell may find out where she went after she got to the Union Depot before we do, but I’ll bet we find out where she is now before Endicott Campbell does. That is, unless he’s shrewd enough to hire professional detectives.”

“And then what?”

“Then,” Mason said, “we’ll wait in my office until we get some definite word. A woman who is nearly blind and confined to a wheelchair can’t simply vanish into thin air.”

The lawyer retrieved his car from the restaurant parking attendant. They drove to Mason’s office. Della Street rang Paul Drake and asked him to come to the office.

A few moments later Paul Drake’s peculiarly spaced knock sounded on the door of Mason’s private office and Della Street let the detective in.

Mason said, “Paul, this is Susan Fisher. She’s an employee of the Corning Mining, Smelting & Investment Company. The company is pretty much a one-man outfit that’s owned by Amelia Corning, a wealthy woman who’s been living in South America.

“Miss Corning is about fifty-five years old, nearly blind, wears very large-lensed dark blue glasses, and apparently because of arthritis has to spend most of her time in a wheel chair. She was at the Arthenium Hotel. She checked out shortly after five o’clock, and took a cab to the Union Depot.”

Drake, his manner indolent to the point of suggesting chronic laziness, listened with a bland expression which masked the professional competence with which he was sizing up Susan Fisher.

“What do you want done?” he asked Mason.

“Find her,” Mason said.

Drake walked quietly towards the outer office. “I’ll use the phone in your reception room, if you don’t mind. It won’t disturb you so much.”

Drake gave Susan Fisher a vaguely reassuring smile, vanished into the outer office.

“He’s good?” Sue Fisher asked.

“The best,” Mason said.

Drake returned to the private office after some ten minutes, said, “I’ve been playing tunes on your telephone, Perry. I’ve got men on the job. I’ve got men covering the taxi companies and broadcasting inquiries over their communications system asking for information. I’ll have three men at the depot within ten minutes, probably less. They’ll be interrogating the cab starter, the redcaps; inquiring at the ticket windows.”

“Good work, Paul,” Mason said.

Della Street handed a neatly typewritten piece of paper to Paul Drake. “These are the scheduled trains on both Southern Pacific and Santa Fé leaving after four PM tonight.”

Paul Drake folded the paper, slipped it in his pocket, said, “Thanks, Della.” And then added, after a moment, “Great minds run in the same channel.”

“Meaning you’ve already checked on the timetables?” Mason asked.

“Meaning the first thing my men will do when they reach the depot after giving it a quick once-over to see if she’s still there in the waiting-room will be to find the outgoing trains. If she’s on a train, Perry, I take it you’d like to know where she is before the train reaches its destination.”

“That’s right,” Mason said.

“Any ideas?” Drake asked.

Mason said, “There’s a train that goes up to Sacramento. It goes through Mojave. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the person we want was a passenger to Mojave.”

“Good heavens!” Sue Fisher exclaimed. “I’ll bet that’s exactly what she did.”

“If she waited for that train,” Della Street said, “she would have been in the waiting-room for some little time.”

Mason nodded.

“Any ideas why she would have checked out of the hotel and gone to the depot in order to put in the time waiting in a public waiting-room when she could have put in the time just as well in a luxurious suite at the Arthenium?”

“Now, wait a minute,” Drake said, “you’re going at this thing all backwards. You’re starting out with a surmise and then trying to fit facts to it. Now, let’s first find out the facts, and then we’ll make our surmises afterwards — okay?”

“Okay,” Mason said, grinning.

“All right,” Drake assured them, “I’m going down to my office and start handling calls from there.”

He left the office and Sue Fisher turned uneasily to Mason. “You haven’t asked me for money yet.”

“That’s right, I haven’t,” Mason told her, smiling.

“I’m a working girl on a salary, Mr. Mason, and— Well, I didn’t want to say anything in front of Mr. Drake, but I simply can’t afford all these detectives and all of this high-priced action.”

“That’s all right,” Mason told her. “Right at the present time this is my party.”

“But even so, Mr. Mason, I just haven’t got enough—”

“Miss Corning has money,” Mason interposed.

She raised puzzled eyebrows.

Mason merely smiled.

After a few moments, Sue Fisher said, “But, Mr. Mason, Miss Corning isn’t going to pay for my legal expenses.”

“Certainly not,” Mason told her. “But I think we may be helping Miss Corning do something that she wants to do very much indeed. This makes for a very interesting situation.”