Erle Gardner - Case of the Silent Partner

“Yes. Shot in the back with a thirty-two caliber revolver.”

“Do they know who did it?”

“No.”

“Who was it?”

“Harvey J. Lynk is the name.”

“Lynk,” Mason said, “means nothing to me. What did he do?”

“Big time stuff. One of the owners of the Golden Horn, a nightclub. There’s an upstairs above that nightclub.”

“Rooms?” Mason asked.

“Roulette, craps, stud poker.”

“What was this place? A love nest?”

“No one knows — yet.”

“You say he was one of the owners. Who’s the other?”

“Clint Magard.”

“Has he been advised?”

The newspaper man laughed. He said, “The police have advised him, and every newspaper in town has sent a man to ask him for a statement.”

“Why all the commotion?” Mason asked.

“Looks like a swell story. There’s a woman in the case somewhere. A woman’s overnight bag and some stuff are in there. Powder spilled on the dresser, a cigarette end with lipstick on it... Tragg has a couple of leads he’s working on. Have an idea we can make it a nice, juicy scandal-killing before we get done. Sweet young thing fighting to save her honor, finally pointing a gun. Lynk grabbed her. There was a struggle. She has no recollection of pulling the trigger. She heard an explosion. Lynk fell backward. Dazed, she dropped the gun and ran, afraid to tell anyone because... Hell, I should go ahead and outline a perfect defense for you. You’ll probably be the attorney representing her and get ten thousand dollars for thinking up the stuff I’m giving you for nothing.”

Mason chuckled. “Well,” he said, “if Tragg is as busy as all this, I won’t bother him. I’ll catch him some other time.”

“Want me to tell him you’re here?”

“No. Don’t tell him anything about my being here. I have something to take up with him and don’t want to tip my hand. I’d prefer to walk in on him without having him know I’m looking for him.”

“Figure on pulling a little surprise?” the reporter asked.

“Not exactly, but there’s no reason why he should waste a lot of time speculating over why I want to see him and what I want to see him about.”

“Something to that. And you can’t give us a story?”

“No.”

“Anything in what you want to see Tragg about?”

“Nothing you’d care to publish.”

“You don’t know whether you’re going to get in on this case?”

Mason laughed. “I didn’t even know there was a case. I’ve never seen Lynk in my life, and had no idea he’d been killed.”

He turned back toward the stairs. “Well, so-long. I...”

A man’s form loomed in the doorway of the house, cast a shadow along the porch. Lieutenant Tragg said, “Well, dust the whole damn thing for fingerprints and — Where’s that photographer? I want a photograph of...”

He stopped midsentence as he saw Perry Mason halfway down the steps. “Hey, you! ” he shouted.

Mason paused and looked back.

“What the devil are you doing out here?”

“Come down to the car,” Mason invited.

“No. I’m too busy. Talk right here...”

Mason jerked his thumb toward the cluster of lighted cigarettes which marked the little group of reporters.

Tragg said, “You may be right at that.”

He followed Mason down the stairs to where the lawyer had the car parked.

“Okay,” Tragg said, “what did you want to see Lynk about?”

Mason smiled ruefully. “To tell you the truth, I thought I’d steal a march on you, but I see you beat me to it.”

“How do you mean steal a march?”

“Well, I wanted to know more about Esther Dilmeyer, who her friends were, wanted to get a line on anyone she’d been going with, wanted to find out whether her folks were living, whether she had much mail.”

“You thought Lynk could tell you?”

“Yes, I had an idea he could.”

“What gave you that idea?”

Mason said evasively, “I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you talk with Magard? He was at the office where the information would be more readily available.”

Mason said, “I was going to talk with them both.”

Tragg regarded him thoughtfully. “Holcomb,” he announced at length, “always claimed you played dirty pool, Mason. I could never see it that way. I figured that you were on one side, Holcomb on the other. It was a fair fight. You moved a little faster than Holcomb could follow. At times, your hands were quicker than the eye — Holcomb’s eye, anyway.”

“Well?” Mason asked.

“Right now, I can appreciate just about how Sergeant Holcomb felt. You aren’t strong on giving out information, are you?”

“I can’t afford to be.”

“Why?”

“I protect my clients.”

“Yeah. I want to talk with you about that client. What do you know about her, and what did she say when she came in?”

“Came in where?” Mason asked.

“Your office. Didn’t you say you had a one o’clock appointment?”

“Oh, that,” Mason said, as though just placing what Tragg was talking about. “That was a minor matter. Well, I don’t suppose she’d object if I told you, Lieutenant, but... Well, as a lawyer, I can’t tell you about her affairs.”

Tragg said, “Your appointment was for one o’clock.”

“That’s right.”

“Let’s say that took twenty or twenty-five minutes...” He looked at his watch thoughtfully. “You hot-footed it out here and didn’t waste a great deal of time doing it. How’d you get this address?”

“How,” Mason asked, “did you know Lynk had been murdered?”

“How,” Tragg countered, “did you?”

“A newspaper man told me.”

“Headquarters told me. I was ordered to get out here.”

“But don’t you know how the murder was discovered?”

“No. Someone rang up headquarters, said to rush a car out here right away.”

“Man or woman?”

“Woman.”

“And they sent the car out?”

“Yes. She pretended to be telephoning from this cabin, said there was a prowler on the outside.”

“Where do you get that pretended stuff?” Mason asked. “That probably was Lynk’s little playmate. There was a prowler.”

“Lynk had been dead quite a while before that call came in,” Tragg said dryly.

“Why are you so sure of that?”

“The doc’s word, not mine. Coagulation of blood, rigor mortis, and a lot of technical stuff. They fix the time of death as right around midnight, and they aren’t going to be a hell of a long way off. It’s a good thing we got here when we did. Tomorrow morning they’d have had to fix the time of death somewhere between ten o’clock and one o’clock. The way it is now, they can split it down almost to a few minutes one way or another. Figure it midnight on the nose, and you won’t miss it far.”

Mason said, “You haven’t anything new on that Dilmeyer case, have you?”

“No. I had to drop that to work on this. I understand she’s going to be all right. You’re sure you didn’t have an idea that perhaps Lynk wasn’t in the best of health?”

“And came out here to discover the corpse?” Mason asked. “No, thanks. I’ve had my share of that.”

Tragg studied the lawyer for a moment, then scratched his hair over his left ear. “You see your client and beat it out here. A guy would almost think Esther Dilmeyer was one of your witnesses, Lynk another, and that it’s open season on the witnesses in that case of yours. Looks like someone doesn’t want you to win that case.”

Mason said, “If you find any angle on this that ties in with the Dilmeyer case, will you let me know?”

“I suppose you’ll let me know what you find.”