Erle Gardner - The Case of the Haunted Husband

Mason said, “Spinney is an intermediary. He is someone the husband can trust. He goes to San Francisco. Naturally, he gets mail there, and if anything happens, he is supposed to communicate with the husband in Los Angeles.”

“That is reasonable.”

“All right, Spinney is communicating with Homan.”

“Darn it,” Drake said. “When you look at it that way, it is mathematical. Homan has to be Warfield. Of course, there is Homan’s younger brother who is living in the house with him — but he was away the day of the accident and also the day before.”

“We would better check a little more on him,” Mason said. “Tell me about him.”

“His name is Horace. He is seven or eight years younger than Jules. He is an enthusiastic fisherman and golfer. Quite a playboy.”

“How does he work?”

“How does everybody in Hollywood work?” Drake asked. “By fits and starts. Jules gets him jobs here and there as a writer. He is trying to build the brother up. Jules has a small yacht, a saddle horse, a golf club membership, and all the things that go with Hollywood prosperity. Horace works for a while on a job, then puts in his time using his brother’s plaything, going fishing, playing golf, and...”

“Wait a minute,” Mason interrupted. “Horace wasn’t in Hollywood the day of the accident?”

“No. He was out on the yacht on a fishing trip.”

Mason said, “He might be Spinney.”

“He might at that.”

“Or Horace might be the husband, and Jules could be protecting him.”

Drake frowned. “I would never thought of that. But Jules is the one who has the big-time job. The brother is just a hanger-on. He could write her a letter and say, ‘Look, babe, I am out in Hollywood, but I am not doing so good. I am getting by because my brother is standing back of me, but he is going to chuck me out on my ear if he finds out I have a wife. What say we call it off? I will send you a little dough, and you ran get back into circulation.’”

Mason thought over Paul Drake’s observation. “I can’t get over the casual way she acted when I showed her Homan’s picture. You are sure it is his photo, Paul?”

“Yes. I have talked with him. It is his photo all right, and a good one.”

“We will sleep on it,” Mason announced. I am seeing Stephane Claire again tonight. I told her I thought I would have good news for her. I hate to tell her it was a flop.”

“Can’t you stall her off?”

Mason said, “Not that girl. Think I shall have a go at Homan, Paul.”

“He will be hard to see at this time of night.”

“He will be just as hard to see during the daytime, won’t he?” Mason asked.

“I suppose so.”

“Where does he live?”

“A castle out in Beverly Hills.”

“His phone is unlisted?”

“Oh, sure.”

“But you must have had the number when you made the kick to the telephone company.”

Drake nodded, fished in his pocket, pulled out a notebook and passed it across to Mason. The lawyer copied the telephone number.

“It is queer this man Spinney, living in a cheap San Francisco rooming house, would have the unlisted number of a movie magnate,” Mason said.

“He ain’t a magnate, Perry, just a poor three-thousand-a-week wage slave... has to pay social security ‘n’ everything.”

Mason grinned. “Well, I am going to talk with him.”

“You won’t find out much,” Drake warned. “He plays them close to his chest.”

“Unless I am badly mistaken, Paul, he is haunted by the ghost of a former life. That is going to make him jittery — and I am not going to do his nerves any good.”

Street lights illuminated the front of the Spanish-type white stucco house. The red tile of the roof showed up almost black in the indistinct light.

A Filipino boy in a white coat answered Mason’s ring.

“I telephoned Mr. Homan,” Mason said. “I am...”

“Yes, Mr. Mason,” the boy said. This way, please. Your hat and coat, please?”

Mason slipped out of his coat, handed it and the hat to the boy, followed him along a corridor floored with waxed red tiles, across the huge living room, mellow with indirect lighting, to a study which opened on a patio. Homan was seated at a desk, frowning intently over a typewritten script, the pages embellished with penciled alterations. He looked up as Mason came in, held the pencil poised over the page, and said, “Sit down. Don’t speak please.”

Mason stood, amused antagonism in his eyes, staring down at the figure at the desk. After a moment, he sat down in one of the deeply cushioned chairs, watching his man as a big game hunter studies his quarry.

Drapes had been drawn back from the plate-glass windows to disclose the patio with its palms, its fountain illuminated by coloured lights, and behind that its swimming pool. The house fairly oozed prosperity, a house which had been designed not only to be lived in but to be looked at. It had been built and decorated by a showman and for showmen.

Homan bent over the manuscript in what was either a concentration so deep that he was entirely oblivious for the moment of his caller, or in a pose designed to impress that caller with the importance of the man upon whom he was calling.

The man at the desk said, without looking up from the script, “In just a moment I will have this one scene licked, then we shall talk.”

The very lack of expression in his voice made his concentration seem the more genuine.

Homan was evidently a showman. A fringe of close-cropped hair grew around a bald spot on the top of his head. He had made no effort to conceal this bald spot by letting the hair grow and combing it back. A pair of large, tortoise-shell spectacles rested on his nose. The straight brows pressed against his graying temples. He kept his head slightly bowed. His eyes stared in concentration at the script. Abruptly, he snatched up a soft-leaded pencil from the desk, and swooped down upon the manuscript in a frenzied attack, scratching out words, scribbling inserts and marginal notations. There was not the slightest hesitancy. He seemed to be struggling to make his hand keep up with his thoughts. Under the rush of that attack, the lower half of the page became a veritable patchwork of penciled notations. Then he dropped the pencil as abruptly as he had picked it up, pushed back the script, and turned on Mason a pair of reddish-brown eyes.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. Didn’t think you would get here quite this soon. Had to finish with that scene while I was in the mood to take part in it. Your visit is going to throw me all out of gear. That detective was bad enough. You are going to be worse. I hate it, but I will have to do it and get it over with. All right, what do you want?”

Mason sought to draw him out with a few preliminary remarks.

“I didn’t realize you would be working so late.”

“I work all the time, the later the better. A man does his best work when those around him are asleep.” He waved a short, thick arm in a sweeping gesture which included a quarter circle of generalization. “I mean the people in the city. There’s a lot of telepathy, not individual telepathy so much as group telepathy, mind beating on mind, chaining you into a convention of business humdrum. What do you want?”

“And I have thrown you out of the mood for further work?” Mason asked.

“Not out of the mood for work. Out of sympathy with the script. Here are characters facing a dramatic moment in their lives. You can’t put anything like that across on the screen unless the characters are real. You can’t tell whether they are real unless you sympathize with them, unless you open a door and walk right into their lives. That is a subjective thought, intuition, telepathy, auto-hypnotism. Call it whatever you want to. Now you are here. You are objective. I have got to talk with you objectively. You pretend you want information. Probably you are trying to lay a trap. I have got to watch myself.”