Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Spurious Spinster

“Good work,” Tragg said. He turned to Mason. “All right, Mason, we’ll furnish you with an escort back to your car. Don’t leave until I question you.”

“I’m going down as far as the service station,” Mason said. “You can reach me there.”

“Why the service station?”

“Della Street’s there.”

“All right. Go that far, no farther. Stay there.”

Tragg said to the officer, “Take him back to the car. See he gets in the car and drives down to the service station. Keep him out in the brush, to one side of the road so he doesn’t leave any tracks.”

One of the men bending over the body said, “Lieutenant, this man hasn’t been dead any time at all.”

“But he’s dead?” Tragg asked.

“He’s dead.”

“Okay,” Tragg said. “Set up your photographic outfit and start getting some pictures. All right, Mason, this is where you came in.”

The officer, holding Mason’s arm, led the way through the brush, keeping well to one side of the road. When the lawyer had returned to his car the officer said, “Now, you’re driving down to the service station.”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll follow you that far,” the officer said.

“Okay,” Mason told him.

The lawyer started his car, swung out on to Mulholland Drive, drove back to the service station. The police car followed behind him. After Mason had swung in at the service station, the police car made a U-turn and went back.

Della Street smiled at Mason, opened her purse and took out some ragged bits of cloth.

“What’s that?” Mason asked.

“One beautiful pair of nylon stockings cut all to pieces by brush. Is that a legitimate expense?”

“That’s a legitimate expense for you and deductible for me,” Mason said.

“It’ll look nice on the expense account,” she said. “One pair of nylon hose for secretary.”

Mason grinned. “It won’t appear on the expense account in exactly those words, Della. Let’s get Paul Drake.”

The service station attendant came crowding forward eagerly. “Say, what’s this all about?” he asked.

“A murder down the road,” Mason said.

“Gosh, how did it all happen?”

“No one knows exactly,” Mason said. “There’s a gasoline can down there. You didn’t sell anybody a gallon can of gasoline recently, did you?”

“Say, I sure did,” the man said, “about an hour and a half ago, and I’ve been wondering what the heck happened.”

“To whom did you sell it?”

“A young woman who was wearing a man’s hat with a long raincoat. She kept the hat pulled down over her eyes.”

“Blonde?” Mason asked, glancing significantly at Della Street.

“I don’t know.”

“A blonde, blue eyes, about five feet two and a half, about twenty-seven years old?”

“I thought she was younger.”

“How much younger?”

“Well, I don’t know. She may have been twenty-seven.”

“Blue eyes,” Mason said positively.

The attendant frowned. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not entirely certain as to that.”

“Then you didn’t get a very good look at her?”

“No, I didn’t get a very good look at her. She came in and wanted a gallon of gas. I remember wondering why she was wearing a man’s hat and... well, I wondered just what was going on down there. A girl being out alone that way, running out of gasoline — I wanted to drive her back down to her car, but I was here all alone.”

“Rather a brassy individual?” Mason asked. “The kind who would be wandering around at night dressed in men’s clothes?”

“I’m not so certain she was dressed in men’s clothes. She had this raincoat and the hat.”

“It was a man’s hat.”

“It was a man’s hat, all right.”

“Rather wide brim?”

“Wide-brimmed and she kept the brim sort of pulled down.”

“But you could see her eyes were blue?”

“Now wait a minute. I’m not so certain about her eyes.”

“You can’t swear they were blue?”

The attendant hesitated and said, “No, I can’t swear they were blue.”

“Then you can’t swear what color they were?”

“I... no, I guess I couldn’t.”

“Okay,” Mason said. “Della, you talk with him, will you, and make notes on what he says? Try and get a description of this young woman.”

Mason lowered his right eye in a swift wink. “I’m going to use the phone,” he said to the attendant.

The attendant seemed only too willing to talk with Della Street.

Mason went over to the telephone, called Paul Drake’s office. When he had the detective on the line, he said, “What’s new with Endicott Campbell, Paul?”

“I think you’re locking the stable after the horse has been stolen,” Drake said. “We haven’t been able to pick up his trail. He isn’t at home and we can’t find him.”

“Keep trying,” Mason said. “When you do find him, don’t let him out of your sight — that’s important. Now, here’s something else, Paul.”

“What?”

“We’ve simply got to find Carleton Campbell — that’s the seven-year-old boy who’s in the custody of this English governess, Elizabeth Dow.”

“Have a heart,” Drake said. “We’re doing all we can on that, Perry.”

“Do even better than that,” Mason said. “There’s been a murder. Ken Lowry, the manager of the Mojave Monarch, has been killed. I was talking with him this afternoon. He must have got to thinking things over after we left and decided perhaps he’d told me too much, or else he put two and two together from things I had told him.

“Now, he may have started for Los Angeles to see Endicott Campbell or he may have started for Los Angeles to see Amelia Corning at the Arthenium Hotel. My best guess is that he went to see Miss Corning. He could have found out she was in town in some way; she might have telephoned him for all we know.

“Miss Corning has disappeared. She had an appointment with me at seven-thirty and didn’t keep it. She’s a stickler for keeping appointments right on the dot. I want you to find out everything you can and I want to find it out fast.”

“Where are you sitting in this thing?” Drake asked.

“More or less in the middle,” Mason said. “I seem to have been playing tag with a murderer somewhere and I’m not sure who the murderer is.”

“But you have a suspicion?”

“I have a suspicion,” Mason said. “I’m going to need proof.

“Now, Amelia Corning’s sister and her South American business agent have moved in at the Arthenium Hotel. Apparently the sister, Sophia Elliott, wears the pants in the family, or tries to. I don’t think that goes too well with Amelia Corning.

“Now, here’s something else that bothers me, Paul. I don’t think that Amelia Corning was too anxious to have her sister and Alfredo Gomez, the business agent, show up. I think they showed up on their own initiative and there may be some friction, some adverse interest somewhere. It’s just a hunch I have.

“I’ve given the police a tip to try and locate Amelia Corning. I told them that she was in danger of being murdered. That will spur them along.”

“Do you think she is in danger?”

“I don’t know,” Mason said. “I just don’t like the way these other people showed up, and I have a hunch Amelia Corning didn’t either. When I talked with her over the phone and she told me that she’d received a wire from them saying they were corning, she didn’t seem too happy about it.”

“If you have the police working on the thing,” Drake said, “there’s not much I can do. The police will run circles around me.”

“That’s right,” Mason said. “But you just might happen to stumble on something. I’ll tell you one thing, Paul, that you can do.”