Erle Gardner - The Case of the Empty Tin

Delman Steele said, “I saw the can, Mr. Mason. I went down in the basement last night to ask Mr. Gentrie a question. He was painting around the woodwork of the windows, and the door which leads to the garage. I asked him if he’d seen the tin...”

Rebecca interrupted, “ I’m the one that asked Mr. Steele to go down and dig that tin up. I just couldn’t get it off my mind.”

Steele laughed and said, “And thereby almost got me in bad with this lieutenant who’s investigating the shooting next door.”

“How did that happen?” Mason inquired.

“He was checking up on all of the persons who had been down in the basement last night,” Steele said. “I sometimes go down to chat with Arthur Gentrie or look in on Miss Gentrie when she’s in her darkroom. But I don’t think I’d have gone down last night if it hadn’t been for Miss Gentrie asking me about the can.”

“What’s being in the basement got to do with the murder?” Mason asked.

Steele said, “It’s beyond me. Tragg was down there prowling here and there, then came back and asked a lot of questions.”

Rebecca said, “I’m going to put a lock on my darkroom door. They pulled the door open and flung the dark curtain to one side, let daylight stream in, and fogged half a dozen films for me. Personally, I think the police should be more considerate.”

Mason said, “I find myself getting interested in that can. You say that Mr. Gentrie had used it to mix paint in, Mr. Steele?”

“That’s right. I guess it’s still down there.”

“How did he open it?”

“Oh, there’s a can-opening machine down there in the cellar.”

Rebecca said, “I’m certain you’ll agree with me, Mr. Mason, that it’s something that should be looked into. That tin didn’t grow on the shelf. It was a brand new tin. It hadn’t been there long — and why should anyone hermetically seal up an empty can?”

“I’m certain I don’t know,” Mason said.

“Well, neither do I, but someone did.”

“You mentioned a garage door,” Mason said to Steele. “That’s a door which communicates with the garage where Mr. Hocksley keeps his car?”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Gentrie said. “There’s a double garage with one door leading to the cellar. You see, the house is built on a sloping lot, and the ground is so steep they made the cellar in two levels. I presume the house was built before the days of automobiles — or at least before people appreciated the importance of having a garage in connection with the house. Then, later on, someone remodeled that end of the basement so as to include a two-car garage. We keep our machine in one of them, so we have the other one for rent. The side that has the door to the cellar is a little the more desirable, so we rent that, and, of course, use that door to the cellar to come in and out of our house, particularly when it’s rainy.”

Mason said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a look at the garage.”

“You can come right down the cellar stairs, Mr. Mason, and open the door — or you can walk around the sidewalk and come in through the garage door.”

“I think I’d prefer to go in through the cellar.”

Mrs. Gentrie said, “If you’ll just come this way, Mr. Mason.”

Rebecca firmly pushed the dictionary and the crossword puzzle to one side, got to her feet, and smoothed down her skirts. “If you think you’re going down in that cellar with Mr. Mason and talk about that empty can, and have me sitting up here where I can’t hear what you’re saying, Florence Gentrie, you’re very much mistaken. The more I think of it, the more I think that empty tin may just as well as not be a clue to what happened.”

“How could it be a clue?” Mrs. Gentrie asked, her eyes twinkling.

“I don’t know,” Rebecca said firmly, “but it might just as well be. Don’t you think so, Delman?”

Steele’s laugh was magnetic. “Don’t involve me in a family argument,” he said. “I just room here. They take me in as one of the family — but I’m not a charter member. I am not entitled to take part in the discussions.”

Mrs. Gentrie laughed. “I’ve never drawn the line there, Delman. When you rented that room and asked if you could move in as one of the family, I told you there was only one thing that was absolutely forbidden — and that was the privilege of the telephone.”

She turned to Mr. Mason, smiling, and said, “We should have three lines in here. What with three children all making dates and scrambling for the phone every time it rings, I sometimes think I’ll smash it — and I can never get to it in the morning or evening to place my orders at the grocer’s or call up my own friends.”

Rebecca said, “We were talking about the tin, Florence.”

Junior said, “Your clutch is slipping, Aunt Rebecca. How the heck could an empty tin have anything to do...”

“Junior!” Mrs. Gentrie broke in. “No one asked you for your opinion. Come on, Mr. Mason, down this way.”

They all trooped after the lawyer down to the cellar. Mason looked the place over. Mrs. Gentrie pointed out where she had found the tin. Junior showed him the door leading to the garage. Mason tested the paint with his finger. “This what Mr. Gentrie painted last night?” he asked.

“A quick-drying enamel of some sort,” Steele said by way of explanation. “Mr. Gentrie runs a hardware store, you know. This was a sample of a new brand of paint one of the salesmen for a paint company had given him. He wanted him to try it out. He was telling me about it last night.”

“It’s necessary to mix it?”

“Half and half with some thinner,” Steele explained. “Gentrie seemed to think it was a distinct improvement over any other of the brands he’d been handling. It comes in two cans. One of them has the color; and the other is some sort of a quick-drying thinner. You mix the two together, half and half, and apply. It’s supposed to dry within six hours.”

Mason indicated a spot near the garage door. “Someone evidently didn’t know it had been freshly painted. It looks very much as if someone, groping for the doorknob in the dark, got his hands on the paint.”

“It does for a fact,” Steele said.

“Let me see,” Junior insisted, pushing forward with an eager curiosity.

Steele said, “That’s odd. I hadn’t noticed that before. I was down here with the police, too. It’s just a little smear.”

Mason said, “The paint’s dry now. You say it dries in six hours?”

“Yes, four to six hours. That’s what Mr. Gentrie told me. Of course, that’s the only way I have of knowing.”

“Let’s look for that tin,” Rebecca said, moving along the workbench, sniffing and peering at the assortment of tools. “Here’s a can with paint brushes in it. Could this be it, Delman?”

“That’s it,” Delman said. “You can always tell the way Mr. Gentrie opens a can. He never runs the opener all the way around. He stops just before he cuts the lid entirely free. He always leaves a strip of tin of about a sixteenth of an inch, then twists the lid off.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Gentrie confirmed. “He says that if you go farther than that, the top of the can falls down on the inside. I always hold up the lid and then finish cutting. Arthur twists. You can see where the top of this can was twisted off.”

Mason thoughtfully regarded the tin. “Let’s take a look at the top of the can just to make our investigation complete,” he said.

“At the top of the can!” Mrs. Gentrie asked.

Mason nodded.

“Well, probably we can find it if we look through this box of scraps, but, for the life of me, I can’t see what...”