Erle Gardner - The Case of the Empty Tin

She went back to close the door to the outer office. “What’s the idea?” she asked. “Been up all night?”

“No,” Mason said. “I got a few hours’ sleep. I guess that’s more than Drake did.”

“What happened?”

“A woman telephoned me about one o’clock in the morning, said she was Sarah Perlin, and she wanted to confess to the murder of R. E. Hocksley, wanted me to come at once to six-o-four East Hillgrade Avenue, said if she wasn’t there to wait until I saw a light, then open the back door and walk in. I took the precaution of telling Paul Drake to follow up in an hour if I didn’t telephone him everything was okay.”

“How did she get in touch with you?” Della Street asked.

“She called Paul Drake, and Paul held her on the line while he got in touch with me. I told Paul to give her my private number.”

“This was Mrs. Perlin, Hocksley’s housekeeper?”

“The voice said it was Mrs. Perlin. I don’t think it was.”

“Why not?”

“I think Mrs. Perlin was dead at the time. When I got out to the house on Hillgrade, I found her lying on the floor with a gun in her right hand and a bullet through her heart. It could have been suicide.”

“Did you report to the police?”

“Not directly,” Mason said. “I had other fish to fry. Opal Sunley came wandering in with a story that was just about as wild as mine. I didn’t realize how utterly incredible my story would sound to Lieutenant Tragg until I heard Opal Sunley telling me her version of about the same thing.”

“What did you do?”

Mason grinned. “I let Paul Drake hold the sack,” he said. “The hour was about up. Opal Sunley offered to play square if I wouldn’t notify the police, but give her a chance for a getaway.”

“Isn’t that compounding a felony?”

“It most certainly is — if she was guilty of a felony.”

“And how about not reporting the finding of the body?”

“I can get by with that in a pinch because I knew that Drake was on his way up. It only made a difference of a few minutes. The thing that bothers me is this Sunley woman.”

“What did you do with her?”

“Took her to a night spot and tried to get her tight.”

“Do any good?”

Mason shook his head. “She is a very bright young woman, or else I telegraphed my punch pretty badly. She started taking defensive measures even before I’d ordered the first drink.”

“What were the defensive measures?” Della Street asked. “I might have occasion to use them sometime.”

“Crackers and butter,” Mason said, “and lots of butter. She’d eaten about five squares before I got the first cocktail into her. After that, I knew it wouldn’t be much use.”

“Evidently the young woman knows her way around,” Della Street said.

Mason nodded. “I got her telephone number — Acton one-one-one-one-o.”

“What did she tell you about young Gentrie?”

“Not a great deal. Young Arthur Gentrie is madly in love with her. She’s older than he is and considers it a case of puppy love, but doesn’t want to destroy his illusions. She says that it’s very, very serious when a young man starts putting an older woman on a pedestal and becomes really infatuated for the first time in his life.”

“Is it the first time with Junior Gentrie?” Della Street asked.

Mason said, “He told her it was.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“He said there’d been puppy loves in his life before, but nothing that could approach the devastating effect of this feeling that he has for her.”

“And so she keeps on going out with him and encouraging him?”

“She says she isn’t encouraging him. She’s trying to be an older sister to him, but Junior won’t, as she expresses it, cool off. She said she had been trying to find some younger woman who would be sufficiently attractive to Junior to get his mind into what she calls a more normal state. The hell of it is, Della, she’s got a boy friend — some chap she’s crazy over — and she’s keeping all this about young Gentrie away from her regular boy friend because he’s insanely jealous. Of course, she’s also keeping all news of the boy friend from Gentrie because she doesn’t want to destroy his illusions.”

Della Street said, “It’s nice business if you can get it. How old is she?”

“Around twenty-two or twenty-three according to her looks, but something she said made me place her at about twenty-five.”

“What did Opal Sunley tell you about what happened in Hocksley’s flat?”

“According to her story, she arrived for work at the usual time in the morning, saw bloodstains, went out to look at the automobiles, saw that someone had been riding in the back of Hocksley’s automobile, and spilling blood. She couldn’t find either Hocksley or Mrs. Perlin. So she notified the police.”

“That’s all she told you?”

“Just about. I had to worm it out of her about her boy friend. I think that was the main reason she didn’t want the police to report her as having been in that bungalow at one-forty-five in the morning. Yet she was driving a borrowed car. I got the license number, of course.”

“The boy friend’s car?”

“No. Strangely enough it’s not. It belongs to a girl by the name of Ethel Prentice who is evidently a close friend of Opal’s — lets her take a jalopy in times of need.”

“Anything else?”

“Oh, she told a few things about her job over there. This man Hocksley was very much of a man of mystery, and so is Karr who lives in the flat above him. Somehow, that’s taxing credulity just a little bit too much. Two men of mystery drifting into an apartment house. They arrive within a week of each other, and, before that, the flats have been vacant for five months.”

“You think Karr and Hocksley have some connection?”

Mason shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’s rather a coincidence. Have you seen Karr’s ad in the paper?”

“No. What is it?”

“Opal Sunley told me about it — and said she noticed it because she’d seen Wenston’s name on the door of the other flat. It’s been running two days.”

Mason took the morning paper from the desk, opened it to the classified ad section, turned to the personals, and said, “Listen to this. ‘Personal. Wanted information concerning the daughter of the man who was a partner in a gun-running expedition up the Yangtze River in nineteen-twenty-one. Detailed information is purposely withheld from this advertisement, but the right party will know who I am, who her father was, and will be able to give proof of our association in the expedition in the fall of 1920, and the first part of 1921. I do not wish to be pestered, and, therefore, give warning that any imposter will be prosecuted to the limit of the law. On the other hand, the young woman who is the genuine daughter will be given a considerable sum of partnership assets which I have held for her in trust because I did not know until recently, and by accident, that my partner left any heirs at law. Do not seek to obtain an interview until after first writing Rodney Wenston, 787 East Dorchester Boulevard or telephoning Graybar 8-9351.’ ”

Mason finished reading the ad, pushed the newspaper to one side. Della Street pursed her lips. “Whew! And Opal Sunley told you about the ad?”

Mason nodded.

“I’d say that was rather significant, wouldn’t you?”

“Uh huh. Karr mentioned he started the ball rolling to clean up his partnership, but he didn’t mention this ad.”

“How did Opal happen to tell you about it?”

“Just talking.”

“What did she tell you about Hocksley?”

“Nothing much I didn’t know already. She got all of her work from wax cylinders. Hocksley dictated at night, and spent most of the day in bed.”