Erle Gardner - The Case of the Empty Tin

They both laughed. Mason switched out the big indirect light, leaving the room illuminated only by the floor lamps. “That was a close squeak,” he announced.

“Are you telling me!” Della Street asked.

Mason got up from the chair, said, “Well, we’ll take a look around.”

“Think it’s safe?”

“Oh, sure. Those officers will go on down the car tracks for three or four blocks, find no trace of the woman they’re looking for, report to headquarters, and by that time have a call to investigate something else. But let’s not stick around here any longer than we have to.”

“Just what are you looking for?”

“I want to find out something about Karr’s San Francisco personality.”

“You think he’s had this place as Carr Luceman?”

“I think so. Notice the fact that Luceman’s first name is pronounced exactly the same as Karr’s last name, although it’s spelled differently. Notice that this place apparently hasn’t been lived in except for short periods of time. Evidently, Karr is a marked man, probably in connection with some of his Chinese arms-smuggling ventures, or it may be because of that old partnership feud which dates back to 1921. When he came to San Francisco, he didn’t want to stay at a hotel. Naturally, a person of his description is rather easy to spot.”

“And that trouble with his legs?” Della Street asked. “The wheelchair?”

Mason said, “Figure it out for yourself. He had a bullet hole through one leg. Naturally, he didn’t dare go to any doctor in Los Angeles, because a gunshot wound has to be satisfactorily explained. If Karr had given them his Los Angeles address and then the disappearance of Hocksley and his housekeeper had been duly noted...”

“I see,” Della Street interrupted. “He had this identity already established in San Francisco. No one was missing from this place, so he could come here and invent that story of the accident. But who shot him?”

Mason grinned. “He shot himself. His cat knocked the gun off the table when he was...”

Della Street made a little grimace. “Save it for your brother the Lieutenant,” she said.

Mason said, “We’ll look this place over before we start speculating. There are better places to talk.”

He started a slow circling survey of the living room, making comments out loud: “Pictures on the wall, regular stock stuff. Furniture the sort that would go with the house. Nothing very much to indicate a man’s individuality. Books in the bookcase. Oh-oh, we’ve got something here. The Struggle for the Pacific, Asia in Transition, The Economic Situation in Japan, The Strategic Effect on Singapore. Here are fifteen or twenty books dealing with the situation in the Orient sandwiched in with books of the type that unquestionably went with the house, old favorites in frayed bindings. Well, that gives us something. Let’s keep looking.”

Della Street, with a woman’s eye to the housekeeping end of things, said, “It looks as though someone comes in about once a week to do cleaning. Notice the ash tray over here.”

“What about it?” Mason asked.

“It has a trap,” she pointed out, “which opens into the bottom. Here’s the stuff that’s in the bottom, cigar bands, cigar butts, cigarette ends, matches, and...”

“Any lipstick on the cigarette ends?” Mason asked.

“Yes.”

Mason said, “I’m going to take a quick look upstairs. I can probably tell more from the bedrooms and the stuff that’s in the bedroom closets than I can down here.”

“Just what are you looking for?”

“I don’t know exactly. I’m trying to get the sketch. Karr’s engaged in some peculiar activity. He’s tied in with the Chinese in some way. He has a lot of money. Probably he’s not a philanthropist. Hocksley was his partner, probably knows a good deal about his methods. Twenty years ago Hocksley betrayed him, and one of his partners met his death. Now Hocksley suddenly crops up again.”

“You suppose he’s trying to avenge the death of his partner and his old betrayal?” Della asked.

“That’s just the point,” Mason said, taking her elbow as he assisted her up the stairs, switching on a light in the hallway. “Twenty years is a long time to make an unsuccessful search for a man. The probabilities are that, following the episode in 1921, Karr didn’t think very much about Hocksley until the present situation in the Orient started a renewal of his activities. Well, we’ll take a look around and see what we can find. Take this bedroom on the left, Della. Switch on the lights, look through the bureau drawers. Find out everything you can about the person or persons who live here. I’ll take this bedroom on the right.”

Mason opened the door, switched on the lights, then suddenly stood stock still.

Della Street, looking back over her shoulder from the other bedroom, sensed the rigidity of his attitude. “What is it, Chief?” she asked.

Mason motioned her back. “Don’t come in.”

But she came to peer over his shoulder, then recoiled with a quick gasping intake of her breath.

A man’s body lay sprawled half on and half off the bed, his head dangling limply downward, his face the greenish livid hue of death. From a bullet hole in his chest, blood had welled out to soak the bedspread and form in a pool on the floor. It was the body of the Gentrie’s roomer, Delman Steele.

Della Street gripped Mason’s arm. In her nervousness, she poured all of her strength into her fingers. “Don’t — don’t—”

Mason pried loose her cold fingers. “Stand there, Della. Don’t come in the room. Don’t touch anything.”

“Chief, keep out of this! Don’t. Please, don’t! I...”

“I have to,” he said. “We’re in it now — all the way. Keep your chin up.”

Mason moved cautiously into the room. He felt the blood on the bedspread, touched his finger to Steele’s wrist, lifted the arm slightly, turned and left the room. With his handkerchief, he scrubbed off the metal plate and button on the light switch, then pushed out the lights with a forefinger padded with his handkerchief.

“Don’t take chances on this,” she said. “Call the police. You’ve got to do it now.”

Mason’s laugh was sardonic. “Yes. We’re in a sweet position to call the police! I’ve told the radio squad that I live here, that my brother was Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide. You’ve taken the part of a young woman soliciting subscriptions for the San Francisco Chronicle. We can tell the police that we hadn’t been in the house long enough to have discovered the body, that we didn’t know the secret of this bedroom, that we stumbled onto the house as the result of some amateur detective work, that, as soon as we found the body, we decided we’d better cooperate and be good children. Then we’d have to tell it to a grand jury, and, perhaps even to a trial jury.”

“But it’s the only thing to do. We have to.”

He shook his head emphatically. “They’d have us exactly where they wanted us. We’d be on the defensive not only for the rest of this case, but for the rest of our lives.”

“It seems to me we will, anyway,” she muttered. “As soon as the body is discovered, police will start an investigation. They’ll ask Lieutenant Tragg about his brother. They’ll give him a complete description of the pair they found in the house, and — well, you know the answer to that.”

“Of course I know the answer to that,” Mason said. “That’s what I’m getting at.”

“I don’t get you.”

“There’s only one way to avoid being kept on the defensive. That’s to attack.”

“But how can we attack? We have no more hope of attacking than a rabbit that’s being chased by a pack of greyhounds.”