Cadiz studied them, nodded, and turned back toward the western sky for a moment.

  Della Street said sympathetically, “It’s romantic, isn’t it, out here on the water in the twilight?”

  Cadiz nodded.

  “We wanted to ask you some questions about that bottle,” Mason said. “The one you found with the letter in it.”

  Cadiz looked at him and said nothing.

  Della Street said impulsively, “I presume you don’t feel much like talking after living with those old memories, and … ”

  Suddenly Cadiz stepped to the rail and shot a stream of tobacco juice down into the water, then he turned back to them and said, “It ain’t that, Ma’am, it’s that damned tobacco juice. What about the bottle?”

  Paul Drake caught Mason’s eye. Della Street, intercepting the glance, smiled, and Mason said, “I want to know just exactly what happened. I want to know all about how you happened to find that bottle, where it was, and what you did with it.”

  Pete Cadiz thought for a moment, then spat the quid of tobacco over the side, ran his tongue around his teeth to clear his mouth, spat once more, turned and faced his visitors.

  “I’m independent. I don’t like civilization.”

  “Who does?” Mason asked, grinning.

  “Well,” Cadiz said, “the way I figure things out, a man gets to playing around too much with civilization and he gets taxed one way and another so much he has to keep working harder to make more money to get taxed more.”

  “Income tax bothering you?” Mason asked.

  “Not the income tax, just the tax that civilization puts on a person. You have a poor job, you make a little money. You get a better job and you have to start wearing good clothes. Then you have cleaning bills and laundry bills. Then you have to work harder in order to get a better job to pay for that, and by the time you’ve done that you have to start entertaining, and that means you need a house and have to have a car. Then you work harder and you get a better job … ”

  “Don’t,” Paul Drake grinned. “You’re killing me.”

  Pete Cadiz ran an eye up and down Paul Drake’s well-dressed figure and said, “The hell I am. You’re killing yourself.”

  “Go on,” Mason said, his voice showing his interest. “What do you do, Pete?”

  Cadiz said, “I do as I damn please.”

  “You might give us the formula,” Drake said.

  “I’m telling you,” Cadiz said, “I’ve been through the mill. I started out in the packing department of a big plant, moving boxes around. Then I studied salesmanship in my spare time and got to be a salesman. Then I got to be assistant sales manager. Then I got to be sales manager. Then I had ulcers and then I fell in love and … oh, hell, what’s the use.”

  He turned back toward the ocean, stood at the rail looking down into the dark, swirling waters. Then he swung back once more to face his visitors. “Okay, I said to hell with the whole business. I didn’t have anything left by the time I got my debts paid except a few five-dollar ties, some silk shirts, a collection of pajamas, five tailor-made suits and … well, you can draw the picture yourself.”

  “Well, now the letter,” Drake said, “was … ”

  Mason nudged him with his elbow and Drake became abruptly quiet.

  “Well,” Cadiz said, “I found a boat that was for sale. I had a few commissions coming to me and I managed to finance the boat out of the commissions. I didn’t have much left to live on. People talked to me about going into the commercial fishing business. Then I needed a crew, I needed gasoline, I needed ice—and I asked then? what I did with the fish after I caught them, and they told me I sold them, of course; so then I asked them what I did with the money, and they explained to me that I used the money to buy food, get more gasoline, pay off the crew and catch more fish.”

  “So what did you do?” Mason asked.

  “So 1 just started out by myself, and because I was my own crew I didn’t have to pay me. Then when I caught fish, instead of selling them to the public to eat and taking the money for the fish to buy food, I bought the fish from myself, but since I owed the money to me I didn’t have to pay anything. And then I ate the fish.”

  “Sounds simple,” Mason said.

  “The hell of it is,” Cadiz observed, “it is simple.”

  “How long have you been doing this?” Mason asked.

  “Long enough to get rid of the ulcers and get happy and healthy. Now the point that I’m getting at is that since I have what you might call a close-coupled economy with myself, working for myself, employing myself, getting wages from myself, selling fish to myself, and … ”

  “Don’t you need any money?” Paul Drake asked.

  “Well,” Pete Cadiz pointed out, “there isn’t a great deal of outside money comes in, so I aim to be pretty self-sufficient. I make a few lobster traps and when I get ready to make them I don’t have money to go buy lumber. I find my lumber in the form of driftwood. I get around and catch abalones, sell some abalone shell ornaments, I pick up odd bits of driftwood, sell a few knickknacks here and there to yachtsmen. I drift around wherever I happen to want to be. Sometimes I have to pour some gasoline into the engine but for the most part I use the wind. The wind is free and it’ll get you there. Not always on schedule, but what the hell is a schedule? Living the sort of life I live you don’t have to worry about clocks and calendars.”

  Mason nodded.

  “Well,” Cadiz went on, “there’s a little half-moon bay below here that’s sandy and shaped just right to catch a lot of drift. I don’t know exactly why it is, except that the currents, the wind and the way the tide sets keep that little cove piled full of drift stuff. If there’s anything drifting around it’ll come into this cove.

  “There’ll be a hell of a surf running in there and quite a tide when there’s a storm out at sea, but when it’s quiet you can slide in there in a skiff, if you know how to handle a skiff. You’ll always find stuff in there that you can use in making lobster traps. You’ll get driftage, salvage, firewood, and all that stuff.

  “Well, I was making some lobster traps and I had a spell of calm weather for about a week. I anchored my boat offshore and I’d row in and out with my skiff, just combing the beach, picking up stuff and ferrying it out to my boat.”

  “How big a cove?” Mason asked.

  “Just a tiny little place nestled down in some hills. Not many people know about it. Well, I was prowling along the edge of the tide line, looking pretty sharp because I’d just about combed the place clean, and then I happened to see this bottle. I took a look at it and saw it had been corked up and turned adrift, and there was a letter of some sort in it and I could look through the glass and see that it was on the stationery of the Thayerbelle.

  “Well, I get around where the yachtsmen are quite a bit. They get a kick out of me. Some of them feel sorry for me. Poor devils, if they knew how sorry I felt for them, holding their noses on the grindstone and running like hell in the economic treadmill to keep the grindstone turning faster and faster.

  “Well, anyway, I know most of the yachtsmen. I sell them stuff: bait, and lobsters, and sometimes an interesting bit of driftage, and abalone-shell soap dishes, and things of that sort. I guess I know as many yachtsmen as anyone on the coast, and they know me and like me.

  “Well, I had about combed this little beach out, so I got in my yacht and sailed up to San Diego and went to a telephone and put through a call collect to George

  Alder. I told him I had a bottle with some sort of a letter in it that evidently had been kicked overboard from his yacht. He didn’t seem much interested at first and then he began to get curious and he suggested that I bring the bottle in to him and he’d pay me for my time and trouble.

  “Well … well, I did it.”

  “And what happened?” Mason asked.

  “Well, he took the letter out of the bottle and read it, and then he gave me fifty bucks. Then he asked me if I’d read the letter and I told him it wasn’t my business to read letters but only to pick up bottles, and then he gave me a hundred bucks.”

  Cadiz turned away, and once more looked down at the ocean.

  Mason waited for several seconds, but the man didn’t turn back to face him. The silence became embarrassing.

  “How was that bottle buried?” Mason asked.

  “Sort of on a slant, half in the sand and half out, and the part that was out had all roughened up from sand blowing on the wind—you know, the way glass will when it’s exposed to sand blown by wind, sort of a ground glass effect.”

  “So Alder gave you fifty dollars?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then after a while made it a hundred?”

  “Uh-huh … a hundred more.”

  Mason said, “Alder’s dead now. You could be released of your obligations to him, Pete.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mason said, “I mean this, Pete, that if you had just picked up the bottle the way you said, you’d have put it in your boat someplace and the next time you happened to be over around the yachts and saw the Thayerbelle anchored there you’d have got in your skiff, rowed over to pass the time of day with Alder, and casually mentioned this bottle you’d found. A man who has shaken the shackles of civilization the way you have doesn’t go around telephoning collect because he finds a bottle and … ”

  Cadiz whirled around to face him. “You mean I’m lying?” he demanded belligerently.

  Mason measured the man with his eyes, brushed the belligerency aside with a disarming smile and said good-naturedly, “Pete, you’re not only lying but you’re making an awful job of it. It doesn’t come natural to you.”

  Cadiz took a swift step toward the lawyer, then suddenly the anger left him and his pugnaciousness evaporated, a slow grin twisted his face. “Okay,” he said, “you’re doing the talking.”

  Mason said, “My best guess is, Pete, that you read that letter in order to see what it was, and after you’d read it you knew that Alder would be interested in it so you took it in to him and it was after Alder found out that you had read the letter that he gave you the extra hundred dollars and made you promise that you’d forget all about it.”

  “You’re doing the talking,” Cadiz said.

  “What would you do if you got on the witness stand?” Mason asked.

  Cadiz thought that over for a while, then said, “Well, you’re a pretty smart lawyer. I ain’t saying anything right now. If I’d made any sort of a deal with George Alder, I’d try to live up to it, but nothing was said about getting on the witness stand. If I got on the witness stand and … Hell, I’d tell the truth.”

  Mason pulled a folded paper from his pocket. “Cadiz,” he said, “this is a subpoena which I am serving on you, a subpoena ordering you to appear in court tomorrow morning at ten o’clock to testify on behalf of the defendant in the case of The People of the State of California versus Dorothy Fenner. Now, we won’t be able to use you tomorrow morning, but you’ll have to be in court in accordance with the terms of this subpoena. You’re a witness for the defense, and there isn’t any reason for you to tell anyone about this talk or what you’re supposed to testify to. Now, while I can’t give you any more money than is allowed by law without it appearing that I’m trying to influence you, I can give you mileage which will bring you to court and you’ll be paid an amount which will compensate you for your loss of time.”

  Cadiz took the subpoena, folded it, pushed it down into his pants pocket and said, “That’s the hell of getting mixed up with civilization. I thought that hundred and fifty dollars was a little too easy.”

  “You’ll be there?” Mason asked.

  “I’ll be there,” Cadiz said. “I’m going to hate the thing all to hell, but I’ll be there.”

  Chapter 17

  The crowded courtroom was charged with an atmosphere of excitement.

  Claud Gloster, appreciating to the full the dramatic possibilities of the moment, arose as soon as court had convened and said, “Your Honor, we have a witness under subpoena, a Ronald Dixon, whose duties are such that it becomes necessary for him to be excused at as early an hour as possible. I would, therefore, ask permission of Court and counsel to temporarily withdraw the sheriff from the stand and put on Mr. Ronald Dixon out of order.”

  “Any objection?” Judge Garey asked Mason.

  Mason was smiling, confident, as one who is magnanimous in victory.

  “No objection whatever, Your Honor.”

  “Very well, on the strength of the district attorney’s statement that it is necessary for this witness to be called out of order and, since no objection is made by the defense, it will be so ordered.”

  Ronald Dixon, tall, studious, slightly stooped, came toward the witness stand and Mason, catching a quick glimpse of the man’s profile as he walked by, whispered to Della Street, “I’ve seen that man before.”

  He turned to his left and said to Dorothy Fenner, “Do you know this man?”

  “Night clerk at the apartment,” she said.

  Mason grinned. “Here’s where they prove Alder’s visit.”

  Ronald Dixon was sworn, gave his name, age, residence and occupation, settled himself in the witness chair as though he expected to be there for a long time and was making himself as comfortable as possible.

  “You’re acquainted with the defendant, Dorothy Fenner?” Gloster asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have stated that you are one of the night clerks at the Monadnock Hotel Apartments?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What are your hours?”

  “From four in the afternoon until twelve o’clock midnight.”

  “On the third of August of this year were you so employed and working those hours?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And did at that time?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, Mr. Dixon, directing your attention to the late afternoon of the third, will you tell us what happened of your own knowledge with reference to Miss Fenner’s apartment?”

  “Well, I had read in the paper that she’d been … ”

  “Never mind that, never mind that,” Gloster interrupted. “Just what you know of your own knowledge.”

  “Yes, sir. Well, she came in about five-thirty, I guess it was, about an hour or so after I’d come on and started work, and I congratulated her on … ”

  “You had a conversation?” Gloster interrupted quickly.

  “That’s right. I talked with her and she … ”

  “Then what happened?” Gloster interrupted again. “What did she do?”

  “She asked if there was any mail and I told her there had been about a million telephone calls and she took all the notes out of her key box and then went on over to the elevator to go up to her apartment.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then about an hour later a gentleman came in and said he wanted to see her. lie told me she was expecting him so there was no need to announce him. Well, that’s against the rules of the place, but he looked like the sort of man you could trust—reserved, a gentleman—not the sort that would be apt to make any racket, cause any trouble or report a man for violating a rule.”

  “So what did you do?” Gloster asked.

  “Well, I sort of hesitated, and then lie handed me a five-dollar bill.”

  “So then what did you do?”

  Dixon grinned and said, “So I did nothing.”

  “Meaning that you did not announce him?”

  “That’s right. I let him go on up.”

  “Now, did you get a good look at that man?”

  “I had a very good look at him.”

  “Would you know him if you saw him again?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you see him again?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where?”

  “Lying on a slab at the undertaker’s.”

  “In other words, this man was George S. Alder?”

  “I was informed that was his name.”

  “I show you a photograph, Mr. Dixon, and ask you if you recognize this photograph.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who is it?”

  “That’s a photograph of the man who came to see Dorothy Fenner that afternoon and gave me the five dollars.”

  “And what time was this?”

  “Oh, I’d say it was about probably around six-thirty.”

  “How long was this man up there, do you know?”

  Mason said, “He doesn’t know that the man ever went to the defendant’s apartment. All he knows is that the man gave him five dollars and said that he wanted to see the defendant. That conversation isn’t binding on the defendant. Unless you connect it up in some way, I’ll move to strike it all out.”

  “I’ll connect it up,” Gloster said grimly.

  “Very well, proceed,” Judge Garey said.

  “Well,” Dixon observed, grinning slightly, “if the man didn’t go to see Dorothy Fenner, he wasted a five-dollar investment.”

  The courtroom broke into laughter.

  Judge Garey, pounding with his gavel, said, “That will do. The witness will not volunteer any comments.”

  “Go ahead,” Gloster said, a wide smile on his face. “Tell us exactly what the man did that you saw.”

  “Well, he gave me five dollars. He went over to the elevator. He punched the button. He got in the elevator. He closed the doors and the elevator went up, and about forty minutes later the man came down and said, ‘Thank you’ to me and walked out.”

  Mason laced his fingers back of his head, tilted back in the swivel chair and smiled good-naturedly. Now that his case had collapsed in a mass of legal wreckage, he was like a fighter in a corner, trying to measure the strength of his antagonist, to find some way of escape. However, his manner was that of one who is completely certain of himself, confident of the outcome.

  And the fact that Gloster had considered this witness important enough to be put on out of order, yet only to bring out a fact with which Mason was fully familiar, made the lawyer feel that perhaps the district attorney might not hold such high trumps after all.