Perry Mason’s powerful roadster roared into pulsating speed, as the car swept down the road from Los Angeles to Wilmington.
“Well,” he grinned, looking at his watch, “we can just about make it — with luck. But we’ll be starting out with just the clothes we stand in. We won’t have any baggage aboard. It’s a shame all that new baggage of yours is going to be wasted.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t,” Della Street said. “Our baggage is all aboard.”
“It’s what?” Mason asked. “You mean—”
“Keep your eyes on the road,” she warned.
“What’s the catch?” Mason asked.
“No catch at all,” she told him. “You told me to fill that baggage with bricks, old shoes, or anything else. I saw no reason why I should do that, so, instead, I filled it with all my personal belongings. When I took it out of the apartment house I didn’t tell the transfer man to take it to the Trader’s Transfer Company, but told him to take it directly to the President Monroe. Just so Sergeant Holcomb thought it had gone to Trader’s Transfer Company was all that was necessary. And as for your baggage, I hired a valet to go out to your flat, pack up what you needed and ship it. I thought you’d neglect to do it.”
“Good girl,” Mason said, “I should have known you’d think of all the things I forgot— And so Holcomb thought the baggage was at Trader’s. I’m a little rusty about what happened after that because I was stacking the cards to have the inquest go the way I wanted it. What’s the lowdown?”
“Well,” she reported, “Sergeant Holcomb went tearing down to the Trader’s Transfer Company, hot on the trail of some baggage with the initials ‘D.M.’ on it. He found the baggage all right, and the more Trader tried to tell him it wasn’t mine, the more he thought Trader was in league with you. So he became pretty hostile and smashed open the baggage. He found a lot of property which had been surreptitiously moved from some of the buildings which had been fired by this gang of incendiaries. Of course, he didn’t know what it was at the time, but all of the fur coats and things made him suspicious. So he got in touch with the detective division and they identified the property in short order. So naturally, Sergeant Holcomb arrested me, and Judge Summerwaite signed the writ of habeas corpus and I got out just about the time Trader made some incriminating admissions.”
“Did Trader implicate Weyman?”
“Not by the time I’d left. He did implicate Prescott and this Diana Morgan. Now, suppose you be nice to a poor working girl and satisfy my curiosity as to what happened, and then give your undivided attention to your driving. Personally, I want to catch that ship.”
“Well,” Mason said, “it all started when I got to figuring the thing from the standpoint of psychology. I figured that Walter Prescott had the psychology of a murderer rather than that of a victim, so starting my reasoning in that goofy way, I got to wondering who his victim could possibly have been. And I began to think of Carl Packard’s disappearance. Then, suddenly, I saw a great light. Suppose Walter Prescott, as an insurance adjuster, had been standing in, either with or without Wray’s knowledge, with a gang of incendiaries. It would make a perfect set-up, and it wouldn’t have been the first time such a thing had happened. And if Packard had suspected Prescott, and was getting hot on the trail, Prescott would have been just the type to bump him off.
“But Carl Packard, who was a logical victim, couldn’t have been a victim because he’d shown up at the hospital and made a voluntary statement that the accident had been his fault; that he’d been looking at something he saw in the window — and then the whole thing clicked in my mind.
“Packard was getting close on the trail of the real firebugs. They decided to murder him in such a way it would be virtually impossible to bring home the murder to them. You can see what happened: Weyman, one of the conspirators, let the gang beat him up enough so that he looked as though he’d sustained minor injuries in an automobile accident. Then, when Packard started out for Walter Prescott’s house, Harry Trader, with his big van, followed along behind, and, at the proper moment, smashed Packard into the curb. He promptly unloaded Packard, put him in the covered van — and note that the covered van was an important factor in the conspiracy — and hustled off toward a hospital. The next time we contact the injured man is when he appears in the hospital. But, just as a stage magician frequently substitutes watches when he’s walking from the audience up to the stage, so the victims were substituted during that journey in the covered van.
“The more I thought of it, the more I realized how perfectly plausible such a murder would be. Jason Braun, alias Carl Packard, was put into the van in an unconscious condition. He may have been dying then. For all we know, he was immediately the victim of the brutal assault which smashed in his head in such a way that identification became virtually impossible.
“When the covered van arrived at the hospital, Weyman, feigning unconsciousness, took Jason Braun’s place and was carried out on the stretcher.
“Now then comes the masterly touch. Jason Braun was to disappear permanently. The conspirators wanted to make it seem that there was nothing suspicious about his disappearance. Therefore, they pulled that traumatic amnesia business, and Dr. Wallace fell for it, hook, line and sinker. He patched up Weyman’s face, and Weyman came back to his house, having poured a little whiskey on his garments, taken a few drinks, and put on the act of having been drunk and fighting again.
“Now, when he arrived at the house, his wife told him of the latest gossip of the neighborhood; of what Mrs. Snoops had seen in Walter Prescott’s house.
“Weyman immediately realized what a wonderful opportunity it would be to murder Prescott and get away with it. And Prescott was a thorn in the flesh of the incendiaries. For the one person who we absolutely know Jason Braun suspected in connection with this gang of firegugs was Walter Prescott. The conspirators were afraid that if Braun knew Walter was tied up with them, other people might know it. And they also knew that if Walter were arrested, he’d implicate them.
“As a sheer coincidence, and part of the act which the conspirators had put on at the hospital, Weyman, posing as Packard, had stated that the accident was his fault because his attention had been distracted by something he saw in the window of the house.
“So Weyman dropped over to call on Walter Prescott,who had gone to his house following the accident, after the departure of his wife, and prior to the arrival of Rita Swaine. Weyman put on gloves, took the gun from its hiding place, approached Walter Prescott casually, under the guise of friendship, and fired three shots into him before Prescott knew what was happening, then returned the gun to its hiding place, and left the house.
“You see, the crime must have been committed after Jimmy Driscoll gave that gun to Rosalind Prescott. That is, if we’re to believe Wray’s testimony. And there’s no reason why we shouldn’t. In other words, Prescott was alive at eleven fifty-five. Virtually every minute of Driscoll’s time is accounted for after that. Of course, he might have left the telephone and killed Prescott. But I couldn’t figure him as Prescott’s murderer because of things entirely foreign to the time element.
“Notice the manner in which Prescott was killed: He was killed in his bedroom. He was killed with no evidence of struggle. He was killed by someone, who, under the guise of friendship, was able to walk quite close to him, produce a gun and fire three times before Prescott realized he was in any danger.
“Prescott had previously mentioned to the police that someone had been prowling around the house, and, he thought, intended to kill him. It’s quite possible that he had seen Braun while that individual was making some preliminary investigations. In any event, Driscoll, who was his sworn enemy, could not have approached him in the limited time which Driscoll had within which to act, and fired the fatal shot — not in the bedroom of his own house. Prescott would have been too much on his guard, too hostile. No, Prescott was killed by a friend, someone he trusted.
“Rita Swaine could have done it. Stella Anderson might have done it. Mrs. Weyman could have done it. None of those three really would have done it. Rita wouldn’t have taken the gun from its hiding place after she had gone to so many pains to let Mrs. Snoops see her in the solarium. Mrs. Snoops and Mrs. Weyman could have had no possible motive for the murder. None of the three could have approached Walter in his bedroom without arousing Walter’s suspicions.
“There was only one other person who knew that the gun was hidden in that place, and that was Weyman. His wife must have told him, and asked him what to do, whether to call the police, and so forth. Thinking the thing over, it all became perfectly clear.
“Having reasoned that far, and assuming that Prescott was in a conspiracy to get places of business heavily insured, remove the most valuable goods from the buildings fire them, and subsequently, as an adjuster, hold up the insurance company for a splendid settlement, I realized that the gang must have some way of disposing of the goods.
“The redhead in Prescott’s office looked like a phony to me. In other words, she didn’t look the part of a legitimate stenographer, secretary and receptionist. As soon as an investigation disclosed that she was leading a double life, I knew I was right. As Diana Morgan, a rich divorcee who traveled about the country, she was in a position to have boxes and bags brought to her apartment, taken out by Trader, and eventually dispose of the merchandise. Her apartment in the Bellefontaine made an excellent place in which to hide and sort over the loot. Later on, when the conspirators were ready to dispose of it, they could move it out, all packed in trunks, bags and boxes.”
“How about Jimmy Driscoll?” Della asked.
“Driscoll,” he said, “or Rodney Cuff, his lawyer, or both, evidently had some inkling of what was going on. I think Jimmy tried to implicate Rita in order to free himself and Rosalind, so the two of them could work to bring about a solution of the case. Unfortunately, I won’t have time to conduct any postmortems on the clues with Rodney Cuff. However, that young man apparently has considerable on the ball. He figured out just about what had happened all the way along the line.”
“Then,” Della said, “Weyman and Trader must have stolen a car, taken Jason Braun’s body out into the Santa Monica Mountains, wrecked the car, and left the body in such a manner that the features were practically unrecognizable. Is that right?”
“That’s right,” he said, “only I think what happened to Braun’s features took place in the covered van on the road to the hospital. It isn’t a nice thing to think about.”
They drove in silence for a couple of miles. Then Della Street said, “Why did you want Sergeant Holcomb to get into that baggage?”
“Because,” he said, “I figured we needed proof. I didn’t want to start exposing Weyman until I had something definite. Weyman was so clever he acted the part of a surly ox and fooled me. When I realized the truth, I thought he’d dodge the subpoena and it would be necessary for me to make some accusations in open court. You see, Weyman had absolutely nothing to fear from any person in the world except one man. That man was Dr. James Wallace. Knowing that Dr. Wallace would probably be a witness at the inquest on Jason Braun’s body, I couldn’t believe that Weyman would have the audacity to show up. But that’s where Weyman was more clever than I gave him credit for. You see, if he’d refused to obey the subpoena, that would have been an incriminating circumstance in itself. So Weyman outsmarted everyone by claiming that his face had become infected, and bandaging it in such a way that no one could recognize him.
“I thought, of course, that after Holcomb had once got on the trail, he’d shake down Trader and Rosa Hendrix until he got all the dope. But, by that time, our ship would’ve sailed. If Weyman showed up at the autopsy, I wanted to make a spectacular, whirlwind finish. I explained to Scanlon generally what I was working on, and Scanlon agreed to give me a free hand, within reasonable limits.”
“Why didn’t you go to Holcomb and tell him?” she asked.
Mason chuckled and said, “In the first place, Holcomb would have tried to grab all the credit, and, in the second place, he wouldn’t have co-operated. I could never have got Mm to search the luggage of Diana Morgan if it hadn’t been for making him think that baggage contained stuff which would implicate you and me.”
“How did you happen to suspect Weyman as the guilty party, Chief?”
“To begin with, he and Prescott both moved into the neighborhood at the same time — six months ago. Knowing that if a switch of victims had been made in that van, the man who went to the hospital must have had medical treatment, and remembering what Dr. Wallace had said about the injuries being facial and superficial, the wonder of it is that I didn’t suspect Weyman before.”
“Was Trader in on Prescott’s murder?” she asked.
“No. He knew nothing about it until later, because he went right ahead and delivered the stuff to Prescott’s garage. Then, learning of the murder, and knowing the police would search the garage, he sneaked the stuff up to Diana Morgan’s apartment, to take it out last night concealed in inexpensive trunks and suitcases which would enable it to be shipped.”
She frowned thoughtfully, then asked, “Why did Weyman support Driscoll by swearing he’d seen him at the telephone?”
Mason laughed. “Because he was clever as hell. He didn’t care about Driscoll, but by swearing, apparently unwillingly, that he’d been standing where he could see Driscoll, he gave himself an alibi for the time of the auto accident, just in case anyone should get to wondering. It was a clever move. You see, he told his wife all about it, knowing she’d tell Mrs. Snoops, and knowing Driscoll’s lawyer would interview Mrs. Snoops. The way he staged it fooled everyone. I might have doubted whether it was Jimmy Driscoll he saw at the phone, but he planted his build-up so smoothly that until I went back to first principles I never doubted that Weyman was there on the street, instead of in the van.”
“All right,” she told him. “I know enough now to figure it all out. If there are any loose ends I can tie them up myself. You pay attention to your driving.”
Mason stole a glance at his wrist watch, frowned, and pushed the accelerator down close to the floorboards. “And how!” he said.