Erle Gardner - The Case of the Empty Tin

“Sleeping all day?”

“No. He’d be in his room. He’d get up along in the afternoon and read the papers, have coffee and toast, and sometimes do a little dictation.”

“To the machine?”

“Yes. Mrs. Perlin, the housekeeper, was the only one to go in and out of Hocksley’s room. She’d wait on him as soon as he wakened, bringing him the work Opal Sunley had typed, bringing out cylinders for Opal to transcribe, taking him his meals — the newspapers — sometimes sitting in there and talking with him. Opal could hear the hum of low-pitched conversation.”

“Any heart throbs between Hocksley and the housekeeper?” Della Street asked.

“Opal says she doesn’t know.”

“She considers it’s a possibility then?” Della Street asked.

“Apparently a very definite possibility.”

Della Street thought that over for a few seconds, then shook her head and said, “That isn’t right, Chief.”

“What isn’t?”

“That story of hers. No girl on earth would go on working for a man under those conditions without making it a point to learn more about him. In the first place, there’d be legitimate questions she’d have to ask about the work. In the second place, all that attempt to be secretive would simply arouse her curiosity.”

“Then you think she was lying to me?” Mason asked.

“I know darn well she was lying.”

Mason smiled reminiscently. “She did it most convincingly,” he said.

Della’s eyes were twinkling. “The hussy!”

Mason said, “Well, there’s no percentage in sitting around waiting for something to break. Why wouldn’t this be a fine time to communicate with the murderer?”

“Fine — but how are you going about it?”

“You could go down to a hardware store, Della, and buy a sealing machine for cans. Also get a new tin. We’ll scratch a message on the lid, seal it up, make certain there are no fingerprints on it, and plant it on the shelf at the Gentrie residence.”

“Think the murderer would get it?”

“It would be interesting to find out.”

“What sort of a message?”

“Oh, something that would tend to keep things moving,” Mason said. “We don’t want the case to get static. It would give the police too much of a chance to catch up on us.”

Della Street picked up the dictionary from Mason’s desk. “Think up a nice message, and I’ll put it in code for you.”

Mason said, “Well now, let’s see, Della. We want something that will get some action. Suppose we left the murderer a message. Let’s see. It will have to be dictionary words. We can’t use participles or plurals. We want something that will get swift action. Suppose we did this: ‘Lawyer Mason has fingerprint photograph his wallet fatal unless recovered.’ No, let’s see. We couldn’t use recovered. That’s past tense. The word in the dictionary would be recover.”

Della Street, frowning down at her shorthand notebook, said, “We could use recovery, Chief. That would be a noun, and would be listed. We could use the words recovery made instead of recovered.”

“Okay, let’s try putting it in code.”

“I don’t like the idea.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too much risk.”

“It’ll bring me into contact with the murderer.”

“That’s just it. The murderer will choose the time and the place of making the contact. He may even shoot first, and look in your wallet afterwards.”

“There’s always the chance,” Mason admitted, “but he’d be more apt to make a stick-up of it. And I’ll be careful.”

She said, “Yes, I’ve got a picture of you being careful — and when the murderer finds your wallet without a fingerprint in it, what...”

Mason walked across the office to a bookcase. On the top of this bookcase was a choice example of Japanese pigeon-blood cloisonne. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, polished the vase, ran his right hand through his hair several times, then pressed three of his fingertips against the surface. He said to Della, “Take that down to Paul Drake’s office. Have him develop the latent fingerprints on it, and photograph them. Don’t tell him why we want them. I’ll carry a copy of that photograph in my wallet. Then in case anything slips, the murderer won’t get suspicious.”

“Chief, I wish you wouldn’t do it. There’s no need for you to take the risk personally. Why not say that you have them in your office safe?”

“No. We can’t guard the office without letting someone else in on it. I want to handle this myself.”

“Why?”

“Because it won’t look like a trap then. But if I try to decoy the murderer into some office and have that office guarded, it’s going to look very much like a trap. The person with whom we’re dealing is far too intelligent to walk into so obvious a trap.”

Della Street reached for the dictionary. “Well,” she said, “I’ll put it in code. Only I do wish you wouldn’t do it, Chief.”

Mason said, “Here. Give me the dictionary. I’ll help you... ‘Lawyer.’ That’s in column a on page 569, the seventh word.”

Della Street spelled out the code word. “GHKAI.”

Mason turned through the pages again, said, “Isn’t it nice I have a name that’s listed in the dictionary?”

“You might wish it on Paul Drake,” she said. “We could use ‘Detective Drake’ just as well as ‘Lawyer Mason.’ ”

“No,” Mason said with a grin. “Paul isn’t feeling too friendly right now. He might object to being selected as the victim of a hold-up. At that, it’s a tempting thought. Detective Drake has an alliteration which is lacking in Lawyer Mason.”

“Shall we use it?” Della Street asked eagerly.

“No, absolutely not. Get thee behind me, Satan. Let’s get back to our knitting. Here’s Mason on the a part of page 615, the sixth word from the top.”

Della Street said, “Six-fifteen-A-six. That’ll be HCGAH. What’s next?”

Mason said, “I’ll look up ‘has.’ Let’s see. That’s the second word in column b on page 455.”

“That’s FGGBD.”

“Fine,” Mason said. “Now, ‘fingerprint.’ That’s page 377, the seventh word on the page.”

Della Street said, “Three-seven-seven-A-seven. That’ll be EIIAI.” Abruptly, she looked down at what she had written and began to laugh.

“What?” Mason asked.

“I was just wondering what would happen if Lieutenant Tragg got hold of this message,” she said. “Has it occurred to you, Chief, that out of four words, two of them have ended in AI?”

Mason frowned, scratched his head. “That isn’t so good,” he said. “It’ll give Tragg too much of a clue. He’ll know darn well then it isn’t just an ordinary cipher, but some sort of a code.”

“You don’t think he’ll get hold of this, do you?”

“He may.”

“I don’t see just what you’re planning to do. Won’t the man who gets the message know it’s a trap?”

“Not if my idea is correct. The persons who are using this means of communication both have access to that place in the cellar; but for some reason, they don’t dare to be seen talking together. Now if that’s the case, they won’t have any opportunity to clarify an ambiguity in the case. In other words, the person who gets the message can’t pick up a telephone and say, ‘Hello, Bill. I got your message. What do you mean, a fingerprint? Your fingerprint or my fingerprint. Or...’ ” Mason broke off suddenly to stare at Della Street. “Do you realize,” he demanded, “what I have just said?”

“About the telephone?”

“Yes.”

“What about it?”

“Why the devil should anyone resort to the complicated means of putting a code in the top of a can if he could get to a telephone? After all, you know, Della, my idea has been that the code idea was necessary because we had two persons who needed to communicate with each other, couldn’t see each other, and so had to leave messages in a can at a certain place.”