“How did she happen to pick on Dimmick, Gray & Peabody?”

  “They’d been her lawyers for years. They drew up the trust. And, incidentally, picked off a sweet thing for the bank. That’s the way they do. The bank turns them an estate every once in a while, and they turn the hank a nice piece of trust business.”

  “Mrs. Driscoll evidently had a lot of confidence in Abner Dimmick.”

  “She did. He was the one who had the contact with her. It was partnership business, but Dimmick was the one she always asked for. Incidentally,” Drake said, “that young chap, Cuff, did a pretty good job of representing Driscoll, didn’t he?”

  Mason frowned thoughtfully and said, “I wish I knew. He was either practicing law by ear and happened to make a good guess, or else he’s one of those natural courtroom lawyers we hear about but seldom see. He rather forcibly impressed on me that the authorities couldn’t extradite Rosalind Prescott and that it might be a good move on my part to keep her outside of the state.”

  “But,” Drake said, “that would swing public opinion very strongly against her.”

  “I’m not certain but what that’s what he was trying to do,” Mason said. “You see, his manner contrasts very much with my own. I sit in court with an armful of legal monkey-wrenches and toss them into the machinery whenever I see a couple of wheels getting ready to move around. Cuff is one of those chaps who apparently wants to co-operate all the time. He was so nice down there at the inquest that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Yet he managed to squeeze out from under and leave Rita Swaine holding the sack.”

  They rode for a while in silence. Then Drake asked, “What was your hunch on the redhead in Prescott’s office, Perry?”

  “I just thought she’d bear investigation, that’s all. Why, did you find out anything?”

  “She’s leading a double life,” Drake said, grinning. “I know that much.”

  “What’s the double life?”

  “Daytimes she’s Rosa Hendrix. She works at the office under that name, goes home to a thirty-four-dollar-a-month apartment at 1025 Alvord Avenue. She stays there for half an hour or so, then calls a taxi and goes to apartment 5-C in the Bellefontaine, one of the swankiest apartment houses in the city.”

  “And what does she do there?”

  “Spends the night, apparently, then goes to the Alvord Avenue address and then to work.”

  “But what’s the idea?” Mason asked.

  “Darned if I know,” Drake told him. “I haven’t been on the job long enough to know.”

  “Some man paying for the apartment in the Bellefontaine?”

  “Apparently not. She keeps it under the name of Diana Morgan, has a few boy-friends who drop in to see her,but no more than could be expected with a respectable young woman. Everything’s handled very discreetly and aboveboard. But occasionally she announces she’s going to take a trip down to Mexico, up to San Francisco, or over to Reno. She sends a transfer man up, has her trunks taken down to the depot, and doesn’t show up for a week or so. Then she comes back with her procession of trunks, and settles down to routine life.”

  “What does she do while she’s gone?” Mason asked.

  “Apparently just keeps on working at Prescott & Wray’s office for a salary of a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month. Incidentally, the apartment in the Bellefontaine costs her three hundred and ninety-five.”

  Mason puckered his forehead into thought.

  “Does that add up and make sense?” Drake asked. “You know, she could be a phony, but still not have anything to do with this case.”

  Mason nodded thoughtfully. “She could,’’ he said, “but all the way through this case there’s been something screwy, something which just didn’t make sense. So, under the circumstances, we’re going to dig into everything that looks the least big irregular. I hate to pry into Rosa Hendrix’s private love-life, Paul, but I want a complete report on everything she does.”

  “I’m watching her like a hawk,” Drake told him. “It happens that the manager of the Bellefontaine is a client of mine. I did some work for him once, and he’s let me put one of my men on the elevator.”

  The car gained the open road and roared into high speed. Mason sat frowning thoughtfully until he had finished his cigarette. Then he pinched out the stub, dropped it in the ashtray, shook his head and said. “Somewhere along the line, Paul, I’ve overlooked the big bet in this case. It’s just running around in circles.”

  “An inside tip from headquarters,” Drake said, “is that they have enough on Rita Swaine to hang her. I don’t want to discourage you on your case, Perry, but I thought you’d like to know.”

  Mason said, without taking his eyes from the road, his profile grim and granite-hard, “Don’t ever kid yourself, Paul, circumstantial evidence is sometimes a liar. I think this is one of the times.”

  “You don’t think she did it?”

  “No.”

  “Who did, then?”

  “I’m damned if I know. I’m hoping there’ll be something on the body of Jason Braun which will give us a clue as to whom he’d been talking with, where he’s been hiding during the last day or two. He saw something in one of the windows. He must have told someone what he saw.”

  “Well, we’ll know in a few minutes. We’re eating up the miles now.”

  Again Mason sat back and was silent. Not until the car slued off to the side of the road where a light roadster was parked, with a man standing beside it frantically waving his arms, did the lawyer appear to be conscious of his surroundings. “That your man, Paul?” he asked then.

  The detective nodded. “He’ll lead the way,” he said.

  Mason sat forward on the edge of the seat, watching every curve in the road as it snaked its way up a precipitous canyon.

  “What the devil was Jason Braun doing up here?” the lawyer asked.

  “I can’t figure it myself,” Drake said, “unless he came up here to meet someone. Remember, he was an investigator working on a case, and—”

  “And if he’d wanted complete privacy, he could have secured it just as well about twenty-five miles nearer the city,” Mason interrupted.

  Drake said, “We’ll see.”

  The pilot car labored up the heavy grade, rounded a turn, and the stop light flashed an angry red of warning. Ahead of the car, a motorcycle officer, attired in whipcord, puttees and a leather coat, flagged the car to a stop. A tow car was parked crossways a hundred feet beyond him, a taut wire rope stretched down into the depths of the canyon. The motor of the car was turning slowly and the wire rope gradually reeling in over the revolving drums.

  Mason and Drake jumped to the ground. Drake showed his card to the traffic officer. “I’m making an investigation of this,” he said.

  “What’s the idea?” the officer wanted to know.

  “I’m representing an insurance company,” Drake said. “The big-shot thinks the man’s a policy holder.”

  “What makes him think that?” the traffic officer wanted to know.

  Drake shrugged his shoulders and said, “Probably just a poor hunch, but one of his policy holders has been missing for two or three days, and he’s just playing it safe. Anyway, there’s ten dollars a day and expenses in it for me, eight and expenses for the photographer, and this guy, here, so I should worry.”

  The traffic officer nodded. “I’d like prints of any pictures you take,” he said.

  “Sure,” Drake told him.

  “And don’t mess up anything. The coroner hasn’t arrived yet.”

  “Think he’ll come?”

  “He’ll probably tell us to bring the body in, but we’re awaiting definite instructions to make sure.”

  “Where’s the body?” Mason asked.

  “Over there under that tree, covered with a canvas. But you can’t tell anything by that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Take a look at the head and you’ll see why. Lying out in the sun for a couple of days hasn’t improved things any, either.”

  Drake said, “Okay, thanks, we’ll take a look. Come on, boys, let’s go.”

  They walked up the road to where the tow car, with its back wheels blocked, was straining at the weight on the other end of the steel line.

  The sun beat down from a cloudless sky. The air in the canyon was dry, hot and still. A growth of scrub oak covered the slope which stretched down for a hundred feet below the roadbed to terminate abruptly in a fifty-foot drop. The tow car had raised the wreck above this drop and was now inching it up the slope. From time to time, branches of the scrub oak cracked explosively. Little spurts of powdery dust puffed upward from the trees.

  Mason said to the man in charge of operations, “We’re investigators,” and moved over to the white canvas which had been spread beneath the shade of a big oak tree.

  Picking up a corner of the canvas, he moved it back. Flies buzzed in angry circles. Mason dropped the canvas back into place and said, “Not much help there.”

  Drake dropped to his knees, brought out a small inked pad from his pocket and said, “I can get something from the finger-tips, Perry.”

  Mason once more turned a corner of the canvas back. The traffic officer continued to stand where he could warn traffic coming around the blind curve from below. The men in charge of raising the wreck from the canyon were completely occupied with the problems which confronted them. Someone shouted from down below. The winches ceased to turn, and the sounds of an ax, chopping away at a bush, could be heard from the thicket.

  Drake transferred prints of the dead man’s fingers to a white piece of paper, produced a magnifying glass and another set of prints from his pocket. Sitting on his heels beside the mangled form of the dead man, Drake made his comparison.

  “Don’t try to reduce it to a mathematical certainty,” Mason said. “All I want is a working hypothesis.”

  “Well, you’ve got it,” Drake told him. “This is the guy·”

  “Jason Braun?”

  “Yes. Alias Packard.”

  There were shouts from the brush-covered slope. One of the men leaned over the edge of the road, steadying himself by holding to the wire cable. Mason said, “Okay, Paul, go through his pockets. I’ll keep watch.”

  “It’s highly irregular,” Drake pointed out. “The coroner is the one who’s supposed—”

  “Forget it,” Mason told him. “Go through his pockets. There’s a car coming up the road now.”

  For a moment there was comparative silence in the canyon. The grinding winches of the big tow car had stopped. There were no more shouts from down below. The ax blows were suspended. In the hot silence could be heard the faint grind of a car coming up the winding road.

  Drake nodded to his assistant. Turning back the canvas, they explored the stained, stiff clothes of the corpse.

  Drake said, “A knife, some keys, a handkerchief, half-smoked package of cigarettes, card of matches from the Log Cabin Café in Pasadena, a pencil, fountain pen, forty-eight dollars in bills, two dollars and seven cents in small change. And that’s all. No rings, stick pins, wrist watch—in fact, nothing else.”

  Mason said, “That car’s about ready to come around the curve. Probably it’s the coroner. Get that stuff back in his pockets. Make an inventory if you can.”

  The men pushed the things back in the pockets. Drake said, “Gosh, Perry, this is getting me where I live. I’m going to be sick.”

  “Shut up,” Mason ordered. “Get busy and keep busy. I’ll tell you when that car rounds the corner. Then get up and get away—Here it comes. Beat it!”

  Drake’s assistant jumped to his feet, pulled a cigarette from his pocket, inserted it in his lips and held the flame of a match cupped in trembling hands. Drake jerked the canvas back into position, took two uncertain steps toward Mason, veered abruptly, and leaned against the trunk of a tree. His face was a greenish-white.

  The car slowed to a stop in front of the traflic officer’s upraised palm. Two men got out. They talked for a few moments. Then the officer nodded and stood to one side.

  Mason watched the two men.

  “Is it the coroner?” Drake asked, without moving his position.

  Mason said, “Move down toward that tow car, Paul, I’m joining you. Let’s keep out of sight.”

  “Is it the coroner?” Drake repeated, still standing against the tree.

  “It’s Jimmy Driscoll and Rodney Cuff, his lawyer,” Mason said. “Get going.”

  The three walked over to the tow car. The pair coming up the road walked with quick, jerky steps. Mason said, “Sort of circle around the hood, boys. Try to make everything you do seem casual. Don’t look over toward them. Keep your eyes on the cable. Act as though we’re part of the salvage crew.”

  Someone shouted from below. The man standing by the drums pushed on a lever, and the winches started slowly revolving.

  Cuff and Driscoll walked to the edge of the road, peered down the taut line of the wire rope, then stepped back and walked directly to the canvas-covered figure.

  Mason said, “Leave this to me, Paul. You fellows stay here.”

  He waited some thirty seconds, until Cuff had inserted his fingers in the pockets of the dead man’s coat, then he casually walked forward and said, “I think the coroner likes to be the one to do that, Cuff.”

  Rodney Cuff jumped to his feet. Driscoll stared at Mason with the agonized expression of the landlubber who is about to be seasick.

  Cuff’s face was completely without expression, but, for a moment, there was a widening of the blue eyes. Then he grinned, stretched out his hand, “Well, well,” he said, “fancy meeting you here!”

  Mason took the outstretched hand, said, “You’re interested in this case, Counselor?”

  Cuff met his stare steadily. “All right,” he said, “let’s quit beating around the bush. Was this man Carl Packard, or wasn’t he?”

  “I never saw Carl Packard,” Mason told him.

  “There’s ink on the fingers of his left hand,” Cuff observed.

  “What brought you out here?” Mason countered.

  “I fancy,” Cuff said, “that our mental processes were somewhat identical. Tell me, is it Packard?”

  Mason met the younger man’s eyes and said, “Yes, Cuff, it’s Packard.”

  Cuff glanced over toward .Jimmy Driscoll, then shifted his eyes quickly back to Mason. “Then,” he said slowly, “we’ll never know just what it was Packard saw in the window.”

  Mason turned to face Driscoll. “Don’t be too sure about that, Cuff.”

  So far as he could ascertain, Driscoll’s face didn’t change expression by so much as the faintest flicker.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MASON gave his card to a sallow-faced woman in the late forties, who said, without even attempting a smile, “If you haven’t an appointment with Mr. Dimmick I doubt if he’ll see you. But be seated and I’ll inquire.”

  Mason said, “Thanks,” and remained standing.

  She vanished through a door marked, “ABNER DIMMICK, Private” and was gone for some thirty seconds. When she returned, she stood on the threshold, an angular figure, attired in a heavy woolen suit, deep-set, black eyes staring in lackluster scrutiny from behind horn-rimmed spectacles.

  “Mr. Dimmick will see you,” she said, and stood to one side for Mason to pass.

  Mason closed the door behind him. Dimmick, seated back of a desk piled high with leather-backed law books, said, “How d’ye do, Counselor. Excuse me for not getting up. My rheumatism, you know. Sit down. What can I do for you—no, wait a minute.”

  He flipped up a lever on an inter-office loud-speaker and said to some person whose identity was not disclosed, “Tell Rodney Cuff to come in here right away.”

  Without waiting for any comment, he snapped the lever back into position, turned to Mason and said, “I want young Cuff to be here when we talk. He’s handling this case.”

  Mason nodded, dropped into a chair, crossed his long legs in front of him and lit a cigarette. Dimmick regarded him through the haze of blue smoke and said, “How’s your case coming?”

  “So-so.”

  “I understand the police are holding back some evidence.”

  “That so?” Mason asked, raising his eyebrows.

  Dimmick raised his bushy eyebrows, then lowered them into level lines of shrewd scrutiny, as he stared at Mason. “Damnedest thing I ever heard of,” he said, “Dimmick, Gray & Peabody getting mixed up in a murder case! Can’t seem to get accustomed to it. Wake up in the mornings with a start, feeling a sense of impending disaster, then realize it’s just that damn murder case. I suppose you get accustomed to them.”

  “I do,” Mason said.

  “Going to have a fight on your hands to save Rita Swaine,” Dimmick said. “Personally, I think it’s a shame. Walter Prescott needed killing.”

  A door burst explosively open. Rodney Cuff, hurrying into the room, saw Mason, nodded, smiled, slowly closed the door behind him, and then, with every appearance of casual indifference, crossed over to the desk and said to Abner Dimmick, “You wanted me, Mr. Dimmick?”

  “Yes. Sit down. Mr. Mason wants to say something. I thought he’d better talk with you, since you’re handling the case.”

  “What I have to say,” Mason said, taking the cigarette from his mouth and staring at the smoke which spiraled upward, “has to do with the Second Fidelity Savings & Loan.”

  “Indeed!” Dimmick said, raising his bushy eyebrows.

  “You’re attorneys for that institution,” Mason said. “Walter Prescott kept an account there. I can’t find out what’s in that account, when the deposits were made, nor in what form they were made. In fact, I can’t get a damn bit of information out of the bank.”

  Dimmick made clucking noises with his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I asked you if you wanted to cooperate,” he said at length. “You told me you didn’t.”

  Cuff said, “Most embarrassing.”

  “It’s going to be embarrassing for someone,” Mason warned.

  “Let’s see,” Cuff inquired, “has Mrs. Prescott been appointed administratrix?”

  “She’s filed a petition.”

  “Evidently she won’t be charged with being an accessory,” Cuff observed.