Mason guided his car in close to the curb and glanced across the street at the lighted house. “Certainly is big enough,” he said to Della Street. “No wonder the old man got lonely living there.”
He had slid out from behind the wheel and was standing at the curb, locking the car door, when Della Street said, “I think this is one of Paul Drake’s men coming.”
Mason looked up to see a man emerge from the shadows, glance at the license plate on the automobile, then cut across the beam of illumination from the headlights.
“Shall I put the lights out, Chief?” Della Street asked.
“Please,” he told her.
The light switch clicked the surroundings into darkness. The man approached Mason and said, “You’re Mason, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Mason told him. “What is it?”
“I’m from the Drake agency. The old woman and her son got in on the plane this afternoon. They came directly here. Another operative is tailing them. They’re inside now, and there’s a hell of a row going on.”
Mason looked across at the huge house silhouetted against the night sky, its windows glowing in subdued brilliance through the drapes.
“Well,” he said, grinning, “I may as well go on in and join the fight.”
The operative said, “The boss telephoned for us to be on the lookout for a car with license number 1V-1302. I saw you drive up and thought maybe that was the bus I was looking for.”
Mason said, “No, that’s probably Helen Monteith’s car. She lives in San Molinas, and she may come to the house here. I want to see her just as soon as we can...”
He broke off as a car swung around the corner, and headlights cast moving shadows along the street.
“I’ll see who this is,” the detective said. “Probably some more relatives coming in to join the family row.”
He walked around the rear of Mason’s machine, then came running back and said, “That’s the license number the boss told us to be on the lookout for. Do you want it?”
Mason’s answer was to start running for the place where the car was being backed into a vacant space at the curb. By the time the young woman who was driving it had switched off her headlights and stepped from the car, Mason was abreast of her.
“I want to talk with you, Miss Monteith,” he said.
“Who are you?” she asked sharply.
“Mason is the name,” he said. “I’m a lawyer, representing Charles Sabin.”
“What do you want with me?”
“I want to talk with you.”
“What about?”
“About Fremont C. Sabin.”
“I don’t think I have anything to say.”
“Don’t be silly,” Mason told her. “The thing has gone so far now it’s entirely out of your hands.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the newspaper men are on the job. It isn’t going to take them long to find out that you claim to have gone through a marriage ceremony with Fremont C. Sabin, who was going under the name of George Wallman. After they’ve gone that far, they’ll find out that Sabin’s parrot, Casanova, is on the screen porch of your house in San Molinas, and that since the murder he’s been saying, ‘Drop that gun, Helen... Don’t shoot... My God, you’ve shot me.’ ”
She was tall enough so that she needed to raise her eyes only slightly to meet the lawyer’s. She was slender enough to be easy and graceful in her motions, and her posture indicated a self-reliance and ability to reach decisions quickly, and put them into rapid execution.
“How,” she asked, apparently without batting an eyelash, “did you find out all this?”
“By using the same methods the police and the newspapermen will use,” Mason said.
“Very well,” she told him quietly, “I’ll talk. What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” he said.
“Do you,” she asked, “want to talk in my car, or in the house?”
“In my car,” Mason told her, “if you don’t mind.”
He cupped his hand under her elbow, escorted her back to his automobile, introduced Della Street, and placed Helen Monteith beside him in the front seat.
“I want you to understand,” Helen Monteith said, “that I’ve done nothing wrong — nothing of which I am ashamed.”
“I understand,” Mason told her.
He could see her profile outlined against the illumination which filtered in through the car windows. Her manner was quick, alert, intelligent; her voice was well controlled. She evidently had ample speaking range to make her voice expressive when she chose, yet she resorted to no tricks of emphasis or expression to win sympathy. She spoke rapidly, and managed to convey the impression that, regardless of what her personal feelings in the matter might be, she was keeping her emotions entirely divorced from those events which she considered it necessary to report.
“I’m a librarian,” she said, “employed in the San Molinas library. For various reasons, I have never married. My position gives me at once an opportunity to cultivate a taste for the best in literature, and to learn something of character. I have nothing in common with the younger set who find alcoholic stimulation the necessary prerequisite to any attempt at conversation or enjoyment.
“I first met the man whom I now know as Fremont C. Sabin about two months ago. He entered the library, asked for books dealing with certain economic subjects. He told me he never read newspapers because they were merely a recital of crimes and political propaganda. He read news magazines for his general information, was interested in history, economics, science and biographies. He read some of the best fiction. His questions and comments were unusually intelligent, and the man impressed me. I realized, of course, that he was much older than I, and, quite apparently, was out of work. His clothes were well-kept, but had seen far better days. I’m dwelling on this because I want you to understand the situation.”
Mason nodded.
“He told me his name was George Wallman; that he had been employed as a grocery clerk, had saved a little money, and purchased a store of his own; that, after making a living out of it for several years, he found himself forced out of business by a combination of unfortunate circumstances. His original capital was gone. He had tried to get work and was unable to find any because, as he had been so frequently told, not only were there no jobs, but in the event there had been, employers would prefer to fill them with younger men.”
“You had no inkling of his real identity?” Mason asked.
“None whatever.”
“Do you know why he chose to assume this fictitious personality?” Mason asked.
“Yes,” she said shortly.
“Why?”
“I realize now,” she said, “that, in the first place, the man was married; in the second place, he was wealthy. He was trying to protect himself from an unpleasant wife on the one hand, and avaricious gold-diggers or blackmailers on the other.”
“And apparently, somewhere in the process, he messed up your life pretty well,” Mason said sympathetically.
She turned on him, not in anger, but with quick resentment. “That,” she said, “shows that you didn’t know George... Mr. Sabin.”
“It’s a fact, isn’t it?” Mason asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know what the complete explanation is,” she said, “but you can rest assured that when all the facts are uncovered, his reasons will have been good ones.”
“And you feel no bitterness?” the lawyer inquired.
“None whatever,” she said, and for a moment there was a wistful note in her voice. “The happiest two months of my life were in the period following my meeting with Mr. Sabin. All of this tragedy has hit me a terrific blow... However, you’re not interested in my grief.”
“I’m trying to understand,” he said gently.
“That’s virtually all there is to it,” she said; “I had some money which I’d saved from my salary. I recognized, of course, that it was hopeless for a man in the late fifties, who had no particular skill in any profession, and no regular trade, to get employment. I told him that I would back him in starting a grocery store in San Molinas. He looked the town over, but finally came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be possible to make a go of things there. So then I told him to pick his place.”
“Then what?” Mason asked.
“Then,” she said, “he went out to look the territory over.”
“You heard from him?” Mason asked.
“Letters, yes.”
“What did he say in his letters?”
“He was rather vague about matters pertaining to business,” she said; “his letters were — mostly personal. We had been married less than a week when he left.” She turned suddenly to face Mason and said, “And regardless of what else may transpire, he loved me.”
She said it simply, without dramatic emphasis, without allowing her personal grief to intrude upon the statement. It was merely a statement of facts made as a calm assertion by one who knows whereof she speaks.
Mason nodded silent acquiescence.
“The first intimation I had,” she said, “was... was... this afternoon, when I picked up the afternoon paper and saw his picture as Fremont C. Sabin, the man who had been murdered.”
“You recognized him at once?”
“Yes. There had been certain things which hadn’t been exactly... consistent with the character he had assumed. Since our marriage, I had found myself watching him with a vague uneasiness, because the man simply didn’t fit into the character of a failure. He was a man who couldn’t have failed at anything in life; he had too much quiet force of character, too much intelligence, too much native shrewdness; and he seemed too reluctant to touch any of my money. He kept putting that off, saying that he had a little money of his own saved up, and that we’d use that to live on until it was gone, and then he’d take mine.”
“But you didn’t suspect that he really had great wealth?” Mason asked.
“No,” she said, “I hadn’t crystallized any of the doubts in my mind into even being doubts. They were simply little things which remained lodged in my memory, and then, when I saw his picture in the paper, and read the account of his death, those things all clicked into place. I’d been prepared for it in a way when I read in the morning paper about the mountain cabin... and saw the photographs of that cabin.”
“Of course,” Mason said, “you’d been without letters for the past week?”
“On the contrary,” she said, “I had received a letter from him only this Saturday, the tenth. It had been mailed from Santa Delbarra. He said he was negotiating for a lease on what seemed to be an ideal storeroom. He seemed to be very enthusiastic, and said he hoped to be back within a few days.”
“I presume,” Mason said, “you aren’t entirely familiar with his handwriting, and...”
“I feel quite certain,” she said, “that the writing is that of Mr. Sabin... or George Wallman, as I knew him.”
“But,” Mason said, “the evidence shows that the body was lying in that cabin — you’ll forgive me for being brutally frank, Miss Monteith, but it’s necessary — the evidence shows that he was murdered on September sixth.”
“Can’t you understand?” she said wearily. “He was testing my love. He wanted to keep in the character of Wallman until he knew I loved him and wasn’t after money. He wasn’t looking for any lease. He planted these letters and left them to be mailed from various places on different dates.”
“You have that last letter?” Mason asked.
“Yes.”
“May I see it?”
She made as though to open her purse, then shook her head and said, “No.”
“Why not?”
“The letter is personal,” she said. “I understand that, to a certain extent, my privacy must of necessity be invaded by authorities making an investigation, but I am not going to surrender his letters, unless it becomes absolutely imperative.”
“It’s going to become imperative,” Mason said. “If he left letters with someone to be mailed at various times and places, that someone may have been the last person to have seen him alive.”
She remained silent.
“When were you married?” Mason asked.
“August twenty-seventh.”
“Where?”
She hesitated a moment, then tilted her chin and said, “We crossed the border into Mexico and were married there.”
“May I ask why?”
“George... Mr. Sabin said that for certain reasons he preferred to be married there... and...”
“Yes?” Mason prompted as she stopped.
“We were to be married again,” she said, “in Santa Delbarra.”
“Why there?”
“He... he intimated that his former wife had secured a divorce, that the interlocutory decree had not yet become final, and there might be some doubt as to the validity of the marriage. He said that it would... After all, Mr. Mason, this is something of a private matter.”
“It is in part,” Mason said, “and in part it isn’t.”
“Well, you can look at it in this way. I knew at the time I married him that the marriage was of doubtful legality. I considered it as a... as a gesture to the conventions. I understood that it would be followed with a second and more legal marriage that was to have taken place very shortly.”
“Then you thought your first marriage was illegal?”
“No,” she said, “I thought that it was legal... Well, when I say it was of doubtful legality, I mean that it was a marriage which would have been illegal if it had been performed in this country... That’s rather difficult to explain... and I don’t know that I care to try.”
“How about the parrot?” Mason asked.
“My hus — Mr. Sabin had always wanted a parrot.”
“I understand that. How long had the parrot been with you?”
“Mr. Sabin brought him home on Friday, the second, I believe it was. It was two days before he left.”
Mason stared in frowning contemplation at the determined profile. “Did you,” he asked, “know that Mr. Sabin purchased this parrot in San Molinas?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the parrot’s name?”
“Casanova.”
“Did you read about the parrot which was found in the mountain cabin?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know anything about that parrot?”
“No.”
Mason frowned and said, “You know, Miss Monteith, this just doesn’t make sense.”
“I understand that,” she admitted readily enough. “That’s why I think it’s a mistake to try and judge Mr. Sabin by what has happened. It means we simply haven’t all the facts.”
“Do you know anything about that mountain cabin?” Mason asked.
“Yes, of course, we spent our honeymoon there. My hus— Mr. Sabin said that he knew the owner of the cabin, and had arranged to borrow it for a few days. Looking back on it now I can realize how absurd it was to think that this man who claimed to be out of a job and... Oh, well, he had his reasons for doing what he did, and I respect those reasons.”
Mason started to say something, then checked himself and frowned thoughtfully for several silent seconds. “How long were you at the cabin?” he asked at length.
“We just stayed there over the weekend. I had to be back on my job Monday night.”
“You were married in Mexico, and then drove to the cabin?”
“Yes.”
“And did your husband seem to know his way around the cabin pretty well — that is, be familiar with it?”
“Oh, yes, he told me that he’d spent a month there once.”
“Did he tell you the name of the man who owned the cabin?”
“No.”
“And you made no attempt to find out?”
“No.”
“You were married on the twenty-seventh of August?”
“Yes.”
“And you arrived at the cabin on the evening of the twenty-seventh?”
“No, the morning of the twenty-eighth. It was too long a drive to make that first night.”
“You left some clothes there?”
“Yes.”
“Did you do that deliberately?”
“Yes, we left rather hurriedly. One of the neighbors came to call, and Mr. Sabin didn’t want to see him. I suppose he didn’t want the neighbor to know about me — or was afraid I’d learn his real identity through the neighbor. Anyway, he didn’t answer the door, and then we hurried into the car and left. Mr. Sabin told me that no one else would be using the cabin, and that we’d return sometime within the next month.”
“During the time you were there in the cabin, did Mr. Sabin use the telephone?”
“He put through two calls.”
“Do you know whom the calls were to? Did you listen to the conversation?”
“No.”
“Do you have any idea who might have killed him, any inkling whatever as to...”
“Not the slightest.”
“And I don’t suppose,” Mason went on casually, “that you know anything about the weapon with which the murder was committed?”
“Yes,” she said unexpectedly, “I do.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?” Mason asked.
“That weapon,” she said slowly, “is part of a collection at the San Molinas Public Library.”
“There’s a collection of guns there?”
“Yes, there’s a museum in one room, in connection with the library — that is, it isn’t exactly operated in connection with the library, but it was presented to the city, and, under an arrangement with the library committee, the librarian has charge of the room. The janitor, who takes care of the library, does janitor work, and...”
“Who took this gun from the collection?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“My husband asked me to. He... No, I don’t think I’m going to talk about that, Mr. Mason.”
“To whom did you give this gun?”
“I think we’ll just skip everything about the gun.”
“When did you first know your husband was really Fremont C. Sabin?”
“This morning, when I saw the picture of the cabin in the paper... well, I suspected it then. I didn’t know what to do. I just waited, hoping against hope. Then the afternoon papers published his picture. Then I knew.”
Mason asked abruptly, “Just what do you have to gain in a financial way?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was there any will, any policy of insurance, any...”
“No, of course not,” she interrupted.
Mason stared thoughtfully at her. “What are your plans?” he asked.
“I’m going in and meet Mr. Sabin’s son. I’m going to explain the circumstances to him.”
“His wife is in there now,” Mason said.
“You mean Fremont C. Sabin’s wife?”
“Yes.”
She bit her lip, then sat silently digesting that bit of information.
Mason said gently, “You know, Miss Monteith, the authorities are not going to understand how that gun happened to be one to which you had access... Look here, you didn’t find out, by any chance, who he was, and find out about his wife, and get angry because...”
“You mean and kill him?” she interrupted.
“Yes,” Mason said.
“The very thought is absurd! I loved him. I have never loved any man...” she broke off.
“He was,” Mason pointed out, “considerably older than you.”
“And wiser,” she said, “and gentler, and more considerate, and... You have no idea how grand he was; contrasted with the young men whom I meet around the library — the fresh ones who try to take me out, the stupid ones, the ones who have lost all ambition...” Her voice trailed away into silence.
Mason turned to Della Street. “Della,” he said, “I want you to take Miss Monteith with you. I want you to keep her some place where she won’t be annoyed by newspapermen, do you understand?”
“I think I do,” Della Street said quietly from the back seat, and her voice sounded as though she had been crying.
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” Miss Monteith said. “I understand that I’m in for a disagreeable ordeal. The only thing I can do is face it.”
“Do you want to meet Mrs. Sabin?” Mason asked. “I understand that she’s rather disagreeable.”
“No,” Helen Monteith said shortly.
Mason said, “Miss Monteith, I think the developments of the next few hours may make a great deal of difference. Right at present the police haven’t identified that murder weapon; that is, they haven’t found out where it came from. When they do... well, you’re going to be arrested, that’s all.”
“You mean and charged with murder?”
“You’ll be booked on suspicion of murder.”
“But that’s absurd.”
“It isn’t absurd, looking at it from the police viewpoint,” Mason said. “It isn’t even absurd looking at it from any common-sense reconstruction of the evidence.”
She was silent for a few seconds, thinking over what he had said, then she turned to him and asked, “Just whom do you represent?”
“Charles Sabin.”
“And what are you trying to do?”
Mason said, “Among other things, I’m trying to clear up this murder case. I’m trying to find out what happened.”
“What is your interest in me?”
“You,” Mason told her, “are in a spot. My training has been to sympathize with the underdog and fight for him.”
“But I’m not an underdog.”
“You will be by the time that family gets done with you,” Mason told her grimly.
“You want me to run away?”
“No, that’s exactly what I don’t want. If the situation hasn’t clarified itself by tomorrow, we’ll... well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
She reached her decision. “Very well,” she said, “I’ll go.”
Mason said to Della Street, “You’ll go in her car, Della.”
“Shall I communicate with you, Chief?” she asked.
“No,” Mason said. “There are some things I want to find out, and other things I don’t want to know anything about.”
“I get you, Chief,” she said. “Come on, Miss Monteith. We haven’t any time to waste around here.”
Mason stood on the curb, watching the car, until the tail-light became a red pin-point in the distance. Then he turned toward the huge, gloomy house with its somber atmosphere of massive respectability.