Erle Gardner - The Case of the Empty Tin

Drake pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Perhaps I’ve had too much coffee, Perry, or perhaps you have. One of us certainly is cockeyed. Hocksley is a red-headed man with a limp who...”

Mason said, “I’ll put it this way. The one who rented the apartment was Johns Blaine dressed up with a red wig and purposely walking with a limp. In renting the apartment, however, under the name of Hocksley, he was acting as Karr’s agent. Don’t think for a minute that a man of Karr’s shrewdness would establish a hide-out in a two-flat building without controlling the lower as well as the upper flat.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Drake admitted, “but what makes you think Karr’s flat is a hide-out?”

“Karr’s engaged in getting munitions over to China through a leak in the blockade. Naturally, he doesn’t want publicity.”

“Then the safe in the lower flat belongs to Karr?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t he keep that safe in the upper flat?”

“Probably because Johns Blaine keeps an eye on the safe, and sleeps in the lower flat.”

“Then this housekeeper, Sarah Perlin, must have known.”

“Of course.”

“And Opal Sunley.”

“Not necessarily,” Mason said. “She may or may not have known. It doesn’t make a great deal of difference. The housekeeper lived there. Opal Sunley came by the day.”

“But you say Hocksley was wounded. Then if Hocksley is Karr, Karr must have a bullet hole...”

“In his leg,” Mason interpolated. “That’s why he’s keeping his legs covered, so the bandage won’t show.”

“He doesn’t have arthritis?”

“Probably, but not as bad as he wants us to believe now.”

“Wait a minute, Perry,” Drake said. “A doctor wouldn’t treat a bullet wound unless he reported it to the police.”

“That’s right,” Mason agreed, smiling.

“I don’t get you.”

“Karr,” Mason said, “is a man of varied activities. He’s very resourceful. Evidently, he carries on most of his activities under other roofs and under other names. Here in Hollywood, he’s Robindale E. Hocksley when it comes to transacting business. Up in San Francisco, he’s Carr Luceman, residing at thirteen-o-nine Delington Avenue.”

“I don’t give a damn how many names he’s got, Perry. He still can’t get a gunshot wound treated without...”

“Without making some explanation which would satisfy the doctor and the police,” Mason said. “As Elston Karr who had the flat above a flat where a murder had been committed, he naturally couldn’t have made any explanation in Los Angeles; but as Carr Luceman, living in San Francisco in a neighborhood where there hadn’t been any murders, he had no difficulty in thinking up a story which would hold water with the police.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Make him admit the whole business. I’m hardly in a position to put the screws on him. You are.”

“Where is he now?”

“In a hospital.”

“Didn’t the doctor send him to a hospital the first time he saw him?”

“Apparently not. It was a wound that wasn’t particularly serious unless complications set in. The doctor probably advised him to keep quiet and call him in the event any unusual symptoms developed.”

“Just what do you want me to get?” Drake asked.

“Dig up any information you can, find out his version of what happened the night of the shooting.”

Drake said, “Won’t I get into trouble, keeping this information from the police?”

“You haven’t any information, have you?”

“You’ve told me a lot of stuff.”

Mason grinned. “You don’t think that it’s incumbent on you to run to the police every time some lawyer gives you a goofy theory of a case, do you?”

Drake hesitated for a moment, then said, “Well... well, no.”

Mason winked at him and said, “In all probability, it’s just a crazy theory I have, but here’s a newspaper clipping giving an account of how Carr Luceman happened to shoot himself in San Francisco. I’d like to have you make an investigation of the circumstances.”

Drake said, “When do I leave?”

“Charter a plane. You can grab forty winks on the plane.”

“Oh, not forty winks,” Drake protested sarcastically. “Twenty would be all I could possibly use. I don’t want to start getting too much sleep! Does Wenston know about this?”

“He must.”

“About the bullet wound?”

“Probably. He flew Karr up there this afternoon. Karr was beginning to run a fever when I saw him last. His skin was dry and parched, and his face flushed.”

“Who knows about what happened the night of the shooting?” Drake asked. “Anyone besides Karr?”

“Yes,” Mason said. “One person anyway.”

“Who?”

Mason grinned. “The one who pulled the trigger.”

Drake reached for the telephone, said to the switchboard operator, his voice low-pitched from sheer physical fatigue, “Get me the airport. I want to rent a good cabin plane for a rush trip to San Francisco.”

Mason nodded to Della Street. “Okay, Della, let’s go tackle the other end of this case.”

Driving out to Mrs. Gentrie’s, Mason said, “I should have had Steele spotted a long time ago.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Simple,” Mason said. “Remember when we were talking over the case, I said that the person in the house who was getting the messages must have been someone who had easy access to the dictionary, and who, for some reason, couldn’t very well be called to the telephone. Remember, Mrs. Gentrie told me right at the start that Steele had his room and was treated as one of the family, except that he didn’t have the privilege of using the telephone. There were too many people using it already. She has three children, all of whom are at the age of making dates of one kind or another. Whenever the phone rings, there’s a mad scramble to see which one gets there first. When anyone wants to call out, one of the children is nearly always using the phone. Remember what she said.”

Della nodded.

“Here I was,” Mason said whimsically, “looking for someone who couldn’t use the telephone, and I was thinking in terms of some physical handicap, such as a man who was deaf or crippled. It never occurred to me to consider the simplest possible solution — a man who was living at a place where he didn’t have the privilege of the telephone, yet who couldn’t put in a phone of his own without attracting too much attention.”

“But why was Steele killed, if he was the one for whom the messages were intended?”

Mason said, “We’re evidently dealing with the after-math of an old feud. There’s no other explanation which occurs to me at the moment. Of course, we haven’t all of the facts as yet.”

“Then Karr must have killed him.”

“Karr’s time’s too well accounted for,” Mason said. “And Wenston is out of it. Steele must have been killed at least two hours before we got there. There’s no question but what Karr’s been and still is a very sick man. That bullet hole in his leg, the loss of blood, the shot, and the general strain of events must have taken a lot out of him. He isn’t physically robust. Then, in addition, he’s had that arthritis in his legs. Evidently, he could walk, but it was a slow and painful process. We can leave him out so far as Steele is concerned.”

“You think Karr went downstairs the night of the shooting?”

Mason said, “That’s the only logical deduction. The burglar alarm was placed where he could hear it. He admits that he did hear it. He must have got up and walked slowly downstairs. He surprised someone at the safe, and got shot.”

“Do you suppose Steele got the message you left in the tin before — before he was killed?”