Sally Madison said, “She was coming fast enough when she slewed around that corner.”

  Mason flashed Paul Drake a warning glance.

  The door of the house opened, and Sergeant Dorset stood framed in the illumination of the doorway. He said something to the officer who was guarding the entrance to the house. The officer walked out to the edge of the porch and in the manner of a bailiff calling a witness to the stand, intoned, “Sally Madison.”

  Mason grinned. “That’s you, Sally.”

  “What shall I tell them?” she asked in sudden panic.

  “Anything you want to hold back?” Mason asked.

  “No—I don’t suppose there is.”

  “If you think of anything you want to hold back,” Mason told her, “hold it back, but don’t lie about anything.”

  “But if I held anything back I’d have to lie.”

  “No you wouldn’t, just keep your mouth shut. Now then, the minute the police get done with you, I want you to call this number. That’s Della Street’s apartment. Tell her you’re coming out there. The two of you go to a hotel, register under your own names. Don’t let anyone know where you are. In the morning have Della telephone me, somewhere around eight-thirty. Have breakfast sent up to your room. Don’t go out and don’t talk with anyone until I get there.”

  Mason handed her a slip of paper with Della Street’s number written on it.

  “What’s the idea?” Sally Madison asked.

  Mason said, “I want you to keep away from the reporters. They may try to interview you. I’m going to try to get five thousand bucks for you and Tom Gridley out of Faulkner’s estate.”

  “Oh, Mr. Mason!”

  “Don’t say a word,” Mason warned. “Don’t let the police or anyone else know where you’re going. Don’t even tell Tom Gridley. Keep out of circulation until I have a chance to see how the land lies.”

  “You mean you think there’s a chance . . .”

  “There may be. It will depend.”

  “On what?”

  “On a lot of things.”

  Sergeant Dorset spoke sharply to the officer on the porch and the officer once more intoned in his best courtroom manner, “Salleeeeeee Madisonnnn,” and then, lapsing into a less formal manner, bellowed down at the trio, “cut out that gabbing and get up here. The sergeant wants to see you.”

  Sally Madison walked rapidly up toward the porch, her heels echoing her rapid, nervous step.

  Drake said to Mason, “What gave you the hunch that she was parked around the corner, Perry?”

  Mason said, “ It may not have been around the corner, Paul. I had a hunch the car might have been running on a cold motor, judging from the way the exhaust smelled. And then, of course, the possibility naturally occurred to me that she might have been waiting somewhere around the corner for an auspicious moment to make her appearance.”

  “Well, it’s a possibility, all right,” Drake said, “and you know what it means if it’s true.”

  “I’m not certain that I do,” Mason said thoughtfully. “And I’m not even going to think about it until I find out whether it’s true, but it’s an interesting fact to file away for future reference.”

  “Think Sergeant Dorset will get wise to it?” Drake asked.

  “I doubt it. He ’s too much engrossed in following the routine procedure to think of any new lines. Lieutenant Tragg would have thought of it if he’d been here. He has brains, Paul . . . Dorset is all right but he came up the hard way, and he relies too much on the old browbeating methods. Tragg is smooth as silk and you never know where he’s heading from the direction in which he’s pointed. He . . . ”

  Once more the door of the house opened. Sergeant Dorset didn’t wait this time to relay his message through the guard at the door. He called out, “Hey, you two, come up here. I want to talk with you.”

  Mason said in a low voice to Paul Drake, “If they try to put skids under you, Paul, get in your car, and drive around the corner. Scout the side streets just for luck, then after the newspaper boys show up, grab one with whom you’re friendly, buy him a couple of drinks and see what you can pick up.”

  “I can’t do that until after he’s phoned his story in to his paper,” Drake said.

  “No one wants you to,” Mason told him. “Just. . .”

  “Any old time, any old time,” Sergeant Dorset said sarcastically. “Just take your time, gentlemen, no need to be in a hurry. After all, you know, it’s only a murder.”

  “Not a suicide?” Mason asked, climbing up the porch steps.

  “What do you think he did with the gun, swallow it?” Dorset inquired.

  “I didn’t even know how he was killed.”

  “Too bad about you. What’s Drake doing here?”

  “Looking around.”

  “How’d you get here?” Dorset asked Drake suspiciously.

  “I told Sally Madison to call him at the same time she called you.”

  “What’s that?” Dorset demanded sharply. “Who called me?”

  “Sally Madison.”

  “I thought it was the wife.”

  “No, the wife was getting ready to have hysterics. Sally Madison put through the call.”

  “What did you want Drake for?”

  “Just to look around.”

  “What for?”

  “To see what he could find out.”

  “Why? You’re not representing anyone, are you?”

  Mason said, “If you want to get technical, I wasn’t paying Faulkner a social call at this hour of the night.”

  “What’s this about a man named Staunton having those stolen goldfish?”

  “He claims Faulkner gave them to him to keep.”

  “Faulkner reported to the police that they’d been stolen.”

  “I know he did.”

  “They say you were here when the radio officers got here the night the fish were stolen.”

  “That’s right. Drake was here too.”

  “Well, what’s your idea? Were they stolen or weren’t they?”

  Mason said, “I’ve never handled any goldfish, Sergeant.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Nothing perhaps. Again, perhaps a lot.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “Ever stand on a chair and dip a soup ladle down into a four-foot goldfish tank, try to pick up a fish and then, sliding your hands along a four-foot extension handle, raise that fish to the surface, lift him out of a tank and put him into a bucket?”

  Sergeant Dorset asked suspiciously, “What’s that got to do with it?”

  Mason said, “Perhaps nothing. Perhaps a lot. My own idea is, Sergeant, that the ceiling of the room in that real-estate office is about nine and one half feet from the floor, and I would say that the bottom of the fish tank was about three feet six inches from the floor. The tank itself is four feet deep.”

  “What the devil are you talking about?” Dorset asked.

  “Measurements,” Mason said.

  “I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

  “You asked me if I thought the fish had been stolen.”

  “Well.”

  Mason said, “The evidence that indicates they were stolen consists of a silver soup ladle, to the handle of which was tied a four-foot extension pole.”

  “Well, what’s wrong with that? If you were going to reach to the bottom of a four-foot fish tank you’d need a four-foot pole, wouldn’t you? Or does your master mind have some new angle on that?”

  “Only,” Mason said, “that if you were lifting a goldfish out of water which was within a half inch of the top of a four-foot tank and that tank was already three and a half feet from the floor, the surface of your water would then be seven feet five inches above the floor.”

  “So what?” Dorset asked, his voice showing that he was interested, despite his elaborate attempt to maintain a mask of skeptical sarcasm.

  “So,” Mason said, “you would lower your four-foot ladle into the tank, all right, because you could slip it in on an angle, but when you started lifting it out you’d have to keep it straight up and down in order to keep from spilling your fish. Now let’s suppose your ceiling is nine and a half feet from the floor and the surface of the water is seven and a half feet from the floor, then when you’ve raised the ladle, with its four-foot extension handle, some two feet from the bottom of the tank, the top of your extension handle knocks against the ceiling. Then what are you going to do? If you tilt your pole on an angle so you can get the ladle out of the tank, your fish slips out of the ladle.”

  Dorset got the idea. He stood frowning portentously, said at length, “Then you don’t think the fish were stolen.”

  Mason said, “I don’t think they were lifted out of that tank with any soup ladle and I don’t think that soup ladle with its four-foot extension was used in fish stealing.”

  Dorset said somewhat dubiously, “I don’t get it,” and then added rather quickly, as though trying to cover his confession, “shucks, there’s nothing to it. You’d have held the soup ladle with one hand straight up and down. The end of the pole would have been up against the ceiling, all right, but you’d have reached down into the water with your other hand and pulled out the fish.”

  “Two feet of water?” Mason asked.

  “Why not?”

  Mason said, “Even supposing you’d lift the fish from the bottom of the tank up to within two feet of the surface. Do you think you could have reached down with your other hand, caught the fish in your fingers and lifted him to the surface? I don’t, and, furthermore, Sergeant, if you want to try rolling up your sleeve and picking something out of two feet of water, you’ll find that you’re rolling your sleeve pretty high. Somewhere past the shoulder, I’d say.”

  Dorset thought that over, said, “Well, it’s a nice point you’re making, Mason. I’ll go in there and make some measurements. You may be right.”

  “I’m not trying to sell you anything. You simply asked me what I thought about the fish being stolen, and I told you.”

  “When did that idea occur to you?”

  “Almost as soon as I saw the room with the fish tank pulled out to the edge of the sideboard and the soup ladle with its extension handle lying on the floor.”

  “You didn’t say anything about that to the officers who came out to investigate.”

  “The officers who came out to investigate didn’t ask me anything about that.”

  Dorset thought that over, then abruptly changed the subject. “What’s this about this guy Staunton having the fish?”

  “He’s got them.”

  “The same fish that were taken out of the tank?”

  “Sally Madison thinks they’re the same.”

  “You’ve talked with Staunton?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he said Faulkner gave the fish to him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What would be the idea in that?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “But you heard Staunton state that Faulkner gave him those fish?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did he say when?”

  “Sometime in the evening of the day Faulkner reported them as having been stolen—last Wednesday, I believe it was. He wasn’t too definite about the time.”

  Dorset was thinking that over when a taxicab swung around the corner and came to a stop. A woman jumped out without waiting for the cab driver to open the door. She handed him a bill, then ran up the walk, a small overnight bag clamped under her arm.

  The officer on guard blocked the porch stairway. “You can’t go in here.”

  “I’m Adele Fairbanks, a friend of Jane Faulkner. She telephoned me and told me to come . . .”

  Sergeant Dorset said, “It’s all right, you can go in. But don’t try to get into the bedroom yet and don’t go near the bathroom until we tell you you can. See if you can get Mrs. Faulkner to calm down. If she starts getting hysterical, we’re going to have to call in a doctor.”

  Adele Fairbanks was in the late thirties. Her figure had very definitely filled out. Her hair was dark but not dark enough to be distinctive. She wore thick-lensed glasses and had a nervous mannerism of speech which caused her words to spurt out in groups of four or five at a time. She said, “Oh, it’s simply terrible. . . . I just can’t believe it. Of course, he was a peculiar man. . . . But to think of someone deliberately killing him . . . If it was deliberate, Officer . . . it wasn’t suicide, was it? No, it couldn’t have been. . . . He had no reason to . . . ”

  “Go on inside,” Dorset interrupted hastily. “See what you can do for Mrs. Faulkner.”

  As Adele Fairbanks eagerly popped through the door and into the house, Sergeant Dorset said to Mason, “This Staunton angle looks to be worth investigating. I’m going to take Sally Madison out there. I’d like to have you as witnesses because I want to be damn certain he doesn’t change his story about Faulkner giving him those fish. If he does change it, then you’ll be there to confront him with the admission he made earlier in the evening.”

  Mason shook his head. “I’ve got other things to do, Sergeant. Sally will be all the witness you need. I’m going places.”

  “And that,” Dorset said to Paul Drake, “just about leaves you with no excuse to be sticking around here any more.”

  Drake said, “Okay, Sergeant,” with a docility that was surprising, and immediately walked over to his car, opened the door and started the motor.

  The officer who was guarding the porch said suspiciously, “Hey, Sarge. That ain’t his car. His car is the one parked there in the driveway.”

  “How do you know?” Mason asked.

  “How do I know?” the officer demanded. “How do I know anything? Didn’t the guy go sit in that car and smoke a cigarette? Want me to stop him, Sergeant?”

  Drake turned his car out from the curb toward the center of the road.

  “That’s his car,” Mason said quietly to Dorset.

  “Then what’s that other car out there?” the officer demanded.

  “To the best of my knowledge,” Mason said, “that car belongs to the Faulkners. At least it’s the car in which Mrs. Faulkner drove up to the house.”

  “Then what was that guy doing in it?”

  Mason shrugged his shoulders.

  Dorset said angrily to the officer, “What the hell did you suppose I was leaving you out here for?”

  “Gosh, Sergeant, I thought it was his car all the time. He walked across to it just as though he owned it. Come to think of it, I guess that car was there when we got here, but . . .”

  Dorset said angrily, “Give me your flashlight.”

  He took the flashlight and strode over toward the parked automobile. Mason started to follow him. Dorset turned angrily and said, “You can stay right there. We’ve had enough interference in this case already.”

  The officer on the porch, trying to cover up his previous blunder by a sudden increase in efficiency, announced belligerently, “And when the Sergeant says you stay there, Buddy, it means you stay right there! Don’t take even another step toward that automobile.”

  Mason grinned, waited while Sergeant Dorset’s flashlight made a complete exploration of the interior of the car which Mrs. Faulkner had been driving.

  After several minutes of futile search, Sergeant Dorset rejoined Mason, said, “I don’t see a thing in the car except a burnt match on the floor.”

  “Drake probably lit a cigarette,” Mason said casually.

  “Yes, I remember that. He did for a fact,” the officer on guard admitted readily enough. “He walked over to the car just as though he’d been going to drive off, lit a cigarette and sat there and smoked for awhile.”

  “Probably he just wanted a place to sit down,” Mason observed, yawning, “and thought that was a good place to take a load off his feet.”

  “So you thought he was going to drive off,” Sergeant Dorset said sarcastically to the officer.

  “Well, I sort of thought. . . well, you know . . .”

  “And I suppose if he’d driven that car off you’d have stood there with your hands in your pockets while this guy got away with what may be an important piece of evidence.”

  In the embarrassed silence which followed, Mason said placatingly, “Well, Sergeant, we all make mistakes.”

  Dorset grunted, turned to the officer and said, “Jim, as soon as they get done with those fingerprints in the bedroom and bathroom, tell the boys I said to go over that automobile for fingerprints. Pay particular attention to the steering wheel and the gearshift lever. If they find any fingerprints, lift them and put them with the others.”

  Mason said dryly, “Yes, indeed, Sergeant, we all make mistakes.”

  Once more Sergeant Dorset merely grunted.

  Chapter 8

  Mason had started his car motor and was just pulling away from the curb when he saw headlights behind him. The headlights blinked significantly, once, twice, three times. Then the car slowed almost to a crawl.

  Mason drove rapidly for a block and a half, watching the headlights in his rearview mirror, then he pulled in to the curb and the car behind him promptly swung in to a position just behind Mason’s automobile and stopped. Paul Drake slid out from behind the steering wheel and walked across to Mason’s car, where he stood with one foot on the running board.

  “Think I’ve found something, Perry.”

  “What?”

  “The place where Mrs. Faulkner was parked, waiting for you to show up.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Mason said.

  “Of course,” Drake added apologetically, “I haven’t a lot to go on. When someone parks a car on a paved roadway you don’t leave many distinctive traces, particularly when you take into consideration the fact that hundreds of automobiles are parked every day.”

  “What did you find?” Mason interrupted.

  “Well,” Drake said, “when I gave that car the once-over I did everything I could in the short time I had available. I noticed the choke was out, almost as soon as I got in; and then I lit the match to light my cigarette, turned on the ignition, and that gave me a chance to look at the gasoline gauge and the temperature gauge. The gasoline gauge didn’t tell me anything. The tank was half full of gas and that of course just doesn’t mean a darn thing. The temperature gauge showed the motor was barely warmed up and that was all I could find from the gauges, but I thought I’d better take a look in the ash tray, so I pulled it out and the dam thing was empty. At the time, it didn’t register with me. I just saw the ash tray was empty and let it go at that.”