Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Spurious Spinster

Mason shrugged his shoulders. “I guess quite a few people must have touched the car,” he said. “Perhaps the police were looking it over before I brought it in.”

“Don’t be silly,” Tragg said.

One of the fingerprint men who had been standing nearby said to Tragg, “It looks as though one of the national political parties had been holding a convention in the damn car. It’s nothing but prints.”

Tragg bowed, raised his hat in a gesture which might have been one of farewell to Della Street or might have been a gesture of respect to Perry Mason. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “there is no reason to interfere with your activities of the day, Counselor. Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Mason said, and taking Della Street’s arm, walked over to check the mileage on the speedometer.

“Seventeen thousand, nine hundred and forty-eight and two-tenths. Is that right, Lieutenant?”

“That’s right,” Tragg said.

“Make a note, Della,” Mason told her.

Della Street made a note.

“Goodbye, Lieutenant.”

“Au revoir,” Lt. Tragg said. “I will doubtless see you later on.”

“Oh, doubtless,” Mason told him, and escorted Della Street back to the office building.

As Mason and Della Street entered the elevator and waited for it to get a load, Paul Drake came hurrying in, signaled the elevator starter to hold the cage, and sprinted to get in just as the door closed.

“Hi, Paul,” Mason said.

The detective jerked to startled attention, whirled towards the back of the cage, saw Mason and Della Street, and said, “Gosh, am I glad to see you .”

“Something?” Mason asked.

“Lots of somethings,” Drake said. “I’ll walk down to your office with you and tell you the news in the corridor...” He glanced significantly at the other passengers in the elevator who were watching and listening with the curiosity of people who lead humdrum lives and obtain a vicarious thrill from time to time by eavesdropping.

Mason nodded and as the cage began to empty at intervening floors, moved over to join Drake so that the three of them left the elevator together and started down the corridor.

“They’ve arrested your client,” Drake said.

“I know that,” Mason told him. “They even had Della Street in custody for a while.”

“Okay,” Drake said, “I’m going to tell you something, Perry. They’ve got some sort of an absolute ironclad bit of evidence that I can’t find out about, but I’ll tell you one thing. This is once you’re defending a guilty client.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m not,” Drake said, “but my informant is. I got a straight tip from Headquarters to tell you to get out from under on this case.”

“I can’t get out from under, Paul. I’m in too deep. What about the rest of it?”

Drake said, “I have Endicott Campbell located. He came home about five o’clock this morning. No one knows where he had been. He drove up in his automobile, entered the driveway to the garage, entered the house, and has been there ever since.”

“What else?”

“Police now have a bulletin on Amelia Corning. She wheeled her chair out of the freight elevator last night and that’s the last anyone has seen of her.”

“This man who operated the freight elevator — do the police know about him and his waiting in the alley?”

“Oh, sure,” Drake said. “Just as soon as they started an official search they inquired of all of the elevator operators and this fellow who runs the freight elevator told them his story.”

“And they have no trace of her?”

“Not a trace.”

“That’s strange,” Mason said. “A partially blind woman in a wheelchair could hardly vanish into thin air.”

“Well, she did,” Drake said. “And remember this is the second time within forty-eight hours. The first person, who was impersonating Amelia Corning, vanished; now Amelia Corning has vanished.”

“One person,” Mason said, “was impersonating Amelia Corning. Therefore it was a very simple matter for her to vanish. All she needed to do was to get up out of the wheelchair, take off the dark blue spectacles and be on her way. But with the real Amelia Corning it’s a gray horse of another color.”

The lawyer unlocked the door of his private office, stood aside for Drake and Della Street to enter, said, “All right, Paul. Now we’ve got to go to work. We’ve got a bunch of fingerprints to check.”

“We’re going to have the deuce of a time,” Drake said.

“How so?”

“Police have a lot of power,” Drake pointed out. “They can go to the man who runs the We Rent M Car Company and tell him they want his fingerprints. They can go to Endicott Campbell and ask if he has any objections to giving them his fingerprints. Then they compare those fingerprints with the ones in the car.

“We’re in a different position. We’ve got a flock of lifts of fingerprints and all we can do is to eliminate certain ones gradually and then guess at the other ones. We don’t have the power the police have.”

“What about the man who took the prints? Do you suppose he will turn in the photographs to the police?”

“He will if he knows the police are looking for them.”

“When will he know that?”

“Perhaps not for a day or two,” Drake said. “It depends on how the publicity hits the newspapers. There’s really something weird about this case, Perry, and don’t underestimate Endicott Campbell. There’s one smooth, fast, clever operator.”

Mason said, “I made a mistake there, Paul. I should have had you keep a couple of shadows on him and find out where he went and what he was doing. Of course we had no way of knowing Amelia Corning was going to disappear.”

“Naturally,” Drake said.

“All right,” Mason told him, “you get busy and find out everything you can. Get every possible scrap of information. In the meantime, take these lifts of fingerprints and try to match them up. By this time the police have booked Susan Fisher, so they’ll have her fingerprints. The coroner will have taken the fingerprints of Ken Lowry. Whether we can find fingerprints of Amelia Corning is another question. I think they may have taken them in connection with her passport visa or some other governmental red tape in connection with immigration. They’re probably on file somewhere.”

“Suppose either Amelia Corning or Ken Lowry had been in that rented car,” Drake said. “Suppose fingerprints are identified.”

Mason thought for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “If either of them was in that car,” he said, “we’re licked.”

Drake said, “Somehow I have a peculiar feeling in the pit of my stomach over this one, Perry. I think they’re laying for you.”

“Well,” Mason said, “you won’t have any difficulty getting the fingerprints of Ken Lowry. He’s at the morgue. Get somebody working on that right away.”

“I already have,” Drake said. “Let me have the lifts and I’ll go down to my office. I instructed my office to get fingerprints as soon as the coroner had made them.”

“The coroner would let them go?” Mason asked.

“Sure,” Drake said. “They handle that stuff as a matter of course. They fingerprint every corpse that comes in for autopsy.”

“How was the murder committed, do you know?”

“A jab into the heart; a single stab wound, evidently a stiletto letter opener.”

“Where was the point of entrance, front or back?”

“Side,” Drake said. “It evidently caught Ken Lowry completely by surprise. He was with someone he trusted.”

“All right,” Mason said. “You start working on those fingerprints.”

“I can check on Lowry’s fingerprints within a few minutes,” Drake said. “Let me call my office. I’ll have the prints sent down here.”