It was shortly after eleven when Charles W. Sabin and Richard Waid reached Mason’s office. Mason wasted but little time in preliminaries. “I have some news,” he said, “which may be of interest to you. As I told you last night, I had located Casanova. He was in the possession of a Helen Monteith, whom Fremont C. Sabin apparently married under the name of George Wallman. The parrot in her house was killed sometime either last night or early this morning. The theory of the police is that Helen Monteith killed him. The parrot had been saying repeatedly, ‘Put down that gun, Helen... don’t shoot... My God, you’ve shot me.’
“Now then,” Mason went on, glancing from one to the other, “does that mean anything to you?”
“It must mean the parrot was present at the time my father was murdered,” Sabin said. “Then Helen must have... but which Helen?”
“But another parrot was found in the cabin,” Mason pointed out.
“Perhaps the murderer switched parrots,” Waid ventured.
Charles Sabin said, “Before we discuss that, I have something of prime importance to take up with you.”
“Go ahead,” Mason told him, “we’ll let the parrot wait.”
“I’ve found a will,” Sabin announced.
“Where?”
“You remember it was disclosed that C. William Desmond acted as attorney for my father in connection with certain matters pertaining to the divorce settlement. That was news to me; I hadn’t heard of it. It wasn’t until Waid told me that I knew anything about it.
“However, it seems that my father didn’t care to have Cutter, Grayson & Bright represent him in connection with the divorce matter.”
“And he had Desmond draw up a will at the same time he made the property settlement agreement?” Mason asked.
“Yes.”
“What was the will?” Mason wanted to know.
Charles Sabin took a leather-backed notebook from his pocket, and said, “I have made a copy of so much of the provisions as relate to the distribution of his property. It reads as follows:
“ ‘Because I have this day entered into an agreement with my wife, Helen Watkins Sabin, by which it is agreed and understood that she is to receive the sum of one hundred thousand dollars in cash from me, by way of a complete property settlement, and which said sum is to be paid on the completion of divorce proceedings, and the delivery of a certified copy of a final decree of divorce, I direct that, in the event I should die before said sum of one hundred thousand dollars is paid to my said wife, Helen Watkins Sabin, that then, and in such event, my said wife is to receive, from such estate as I may leave, the sum of one hundred thousand dollars in cash. In the event, however, said sum of cash has so been paid to the said Helen Watkins Sabin prior to the time of my death, I then intentionally make no other provision for her in this, my will, because the said sum of one hundred thousand dollars is ample to provide for her, and adequately compensate her for any claims she may have on my bounty, or to my estate. “ ‘All of the rest, residue, and remainder of my estate, real, personal, or mixed, I give, devise, and bequeath, share and share alike, to my beloved son, Charles W. Sabin, who has, for years, maintained a commendable patience toward the vagaries of an eccentric man, who has ceased to regard the dollar as the ultimate goal of human endeavor, and to my beloved brother, Arthur George Sabin, who will probably not care to be made the object of my bounty.’ ”
Sabin glanced up from the notebook. “Suppose Dad died before the divorce was granted, does that,” he asked, “have any effect on his will?”
“No,” Mason said. “The way the will is drawn, Helen Watkins Sabin is completely washed up. Tell me about this brother.”
“I don’t know very much about Uncle Arthur,” Charles Sabin said. “I have never seen him, but I understand, generally, he’s something of an eccentric. I know that after Dad became wealthy, he offered Uncle Arthur an opportunity to come into the business, and Uncle Arthur indignantly refused it. After that, Dad visited him and became very much impressed with Uncle Arthur’s philosophy of life. I think that something of my father’s detachment from active business was due to the influence of Uncle Arthur, and I think that’s what he means in his will... Of course, you understand, Mr. Mason, that I want to make some independent provision for my father’s widow?”
“You mean Helen Watkins Sabin?” Mason asked in surprise.
“No, I mean Helen Monteith, or Helen Wallman, or whatever her legal name is. Somehow, I regard her as being my father’s widow, and much more entitled to recognition, as such, than the fortune hunter who hypnotized Dad into matrimony. Incidentally, Mr. Mason, Wallman is a family name. My own middle name is Wallman. That’s probably why my father used it.”
“Well,” Mason said, “as it happens, Helen Monteith, as we may as well call her, is in custody in San Molinas. The authorities intend to charge her with the murder of your father.”
Sabin said, “That’s one of the things I want to talk with you about, Mr. Mason. I want to ask you, fairly and frankly, if you think she murdered my father.”
Mason said, “I’m virtually certain that she didn’t murder him, but there’s some circumstantial evidence which she’s going to have a hard time explaining away — in fact, she may never be able to do it, unless we uncover the real murderer.”
“What evidence, for instance?” Sabin asked.
“In the first place,” Mason said, “she has motivation. She’d been tricked into a bigamous marriage. Men have been killed for less than that. She had opportunity; and what’s more, she had the weapon.
“That’s the worst of circumstantial evidence. The prosecuting attorney has at his command all the facilities of organized investigation. He uncovers facts. He selects only those which, in his opinion, are significant. Once he’s come to the conclusion the defendant is guilty, the only facts he considers significant are those which point to the guilt of the defendant. That’s why circumstantial evidence is such a liar. Facts themselves are meaningless. It’s only the interpretation we give those facts which counts.”
“We’ve had some significant facts develop out at the house,” Waid said, glancing across at Charles Sabin. “Did you intend to tell Mr. Mason about Mrs. Sabin and Steve?”
Sabin said, “Thank you, Richard, for calling it to my attention. After you left last night, Mr. Mason, Steve Watkins and his mother were in the mother’s room in deep consultation. They left the house about midnight and haven’t returned since. They didn’t leave any word where they were going, and we haven’t been able to locate them. The coroner at San Molinas had called an inquest for eight o’clock this evening, and the funeral is scheduled for tomorrow at two o’clock. Having Mrs. Sabin missing is, of course, embarrassing to the family. I consider her departure evidence of shocking bad taste.”
Mason looked across at Waid. “Did you tell Sheriff Barnes and Sergeant Holcomb anything about this business you were transacting for Mr. Sabin in New York?”
“No, I only told them what I considered entered into the case. On this other matter, I didn’t tell a soul until last night. Mrs. Sabin had browbeaten me into silence.”
“You told the sheriff about receiving a telephone call from Mr. Sabin at ten o’clock at night?”
“Yes, of course. I felt that entered into the case and wasn’t betraying any confidence.”
“Did Mr. Sabin seem in good spirits when you talked with him?”
“In excellent spirits. I don’t think I’ve ever heard his voice sound happier. Looking back on it now, of course, I can understand. He’d just received word that Mrs. Sabin was going to get the divorce decree the next day, and that gave him the chance to remarry Miss Monteith. Mrs. Sabin had evidently telephoned him and told him that the divorce was going through.”
“Did you know that he was spending some time in San Molinas?” Mason asked.
“Yes, I did,” Waid admitted. “I knew he was there quite a bit of the time. He telephoned to me several times from San Molinas.”
“I knew that also,” Charles Sabin interposed. “I didn’t know what he was doing there, but Dad was peculiar that way. You know, he’d go into a community, completely lose his identity, take an assumed name, and just mingle with people.”
“Have you any idea why he did it?” Mason asked. “That is, was he after anything in particular?”
“As to that, I couldn’t say,” Charles Sabin said. “Of course, in considering father’s character, you must take into consideration certain things. He’d been a highly successful business man, as we judge standards of success; that is, he had amassed a comfortable fortune. He had nothing to gain by adding to his material wealth. I think he was, therefore, thoroughly ripe for some new suggestion. It happened to come through Uncle Arthur. Uncle Arthur lived somewhere in Kansas — at least he did two or three years ago, when father visited him; and I know that his philosophies made a profound impression on Dad. After Dad returned, he said that we were all too greedy; that we worshiped the dollar as the goal of our success; that it was a false goal; that man should concentrate more on trying to develop his character.
“You might be interested in his economic philosophy, Mr. Mason. He believed men attached too much importance to money as such. He believed a dollar represented a token of work performed, that men were given these tokens to hold until they needed the product of work performed by some other man, that anyone who tried to get a token without giving his best work in return was an economic counterfeiter. He felt that most of our depression troubles had been caused by a universal desire to get as many tokens as possible in return for as little work as possible — that too many men were trying to get lots of tokens without doing any work. He said men should cease to think in terms of tokens and think, instead, only in terms of work performed as conscientiously as possible.”
“Just how did he figure the depression was caused, in terms of tokens?” Mason asked, interested.
“By greed,” Sabin said. “Everyone was gambling, trying to get tokens without work. Then afterward, when tokens ceased to represent honest work, men hated to part with them. A man who had performed slipshod work in return for a token hated to part with that token in exchange for the products of slipshod labor on the part of another laborer. In other words, the token itself came to mean more than what it could be exchanged for — or people thought it did, because too many people had become economic counterfeiters.”
“That’s interesting,” Mason said. “By the way, how many people lived in the house?”
“Only two of us, Mr. Waid and I.”
“Servants?”
“One housekeeper is all. After Mrs. Sabin left for her world tour, we closed up virtually all the house, and let the servants go. I didn’t realize why that was done at the time, but, of course, I understand now that Dad knew Helen Watkins Sabin wouldn’t return, and was intending to close up the house.”
“And the parrot?” Mason asked. “Did your father take the parrot with him on his trips?”
“Most of the time the parrot was with Dad. There were times when he left it home — with Mrs. Sabin, mostly. Incidentally, Mrs. Sabin was very much attached to the parrot.”
Mason turned to Waid. “Did Steve have any motive for murder, any hatred of Mr. Sabin?”
“Steve himself couldn’t have murdered Mr. Sabin,” Waid said positively. “I know that Mr. Sabin was alive at ten o’clock Monday night, the fifth of September. Steve and I left for New York right after I’d received that telephone call. We didn’t arrive in New York until late Tuesday afternoon. You see, there’s a four-hour time difference, what with the difference in sun time and the additional hour of daylight saving time.”
Mason said, “The certified decree of divorce, which Mrs. Sabin handed you in New York, was a forgery.”
“Was what?” Waid exclaimed, startled.
“A forgery,” Mason repeated.
“Look here, Mr. Mason, that decree was passed on by Mr. Sabin’s New York attorneys.”
“It was perfectly legal in form,” Mason admitted. “In fact, it was all worked out to the last detail, even the name of the clerk and the deputy. A very clever forgery — but nevertheless the document was forged.”
“How did you find that out?” Sabin asked, highly excited.
Mason said, “I made it my business to investigate the court records. I gave a photostatic copy of the decree to a detective who flew to Reno. The case was purportedly a default matter, and handled in a routine manner. Much to my surprise, when I investigated, I found that there were no court records of any divorce.”
“Good heavens,” Charles Sabin said, “what did she expect to gain by that? She must have known she’d be discovered.”
“On the other hand,” Mason said, “under ordinary circumstances, no one would ever look back at a certified copy of a divorce decree. It would have been rather a safe forgery.”
“But why did she want to rely on a forged document?” Sabin asked.
“I don’t know,” Mason told him. “There are several guesses. One of them is that there’s some question as to the validity of her marriage to your father.”
“But why should that have kept her from filing suit for divorce?” Waid asked.
“Because,” Mason said, “regardless of the optimistic ideas of Fremont C. Sabin, there was bound to have been publicity. Newspapers keep highly trained investigators stationed at Reno for the purpose of scrutinizing divorce actions. They’re particularly anxious to find out if any of the movie celebrities slip over to Reno for the purpose of getting a divorce under their true names, and without disclosing their Hollywood identities. Now if, perhaps, Helen Watkins Sabin had another husband living, from whom she’d never been divorced... well, she wouldn’t have dared to risk the publicity. There was a hundred thousand dollars at stake — and that’s a considerable stake.”
Sabin said, “If there’s anything illegal about that first marriage, then how about the marriage ceremony my father went through with Helen Monteith in Mexico?”
“Now,” Mason said, with a grin, “you’re getting into the real legal problem.”
“What’s the answer?” Sabin asked.
“That,” Mason told him, “depends very much on what we can find out by examining Helen Watkins Sabin on the witness stand. Suppose, Mr. Sabin, you attend the inquest at San Molinas tonight. I think the sheriff will be broadminded enough to see that a complete investigation is made. Some interesting facts should be uncovered.”
The telephone on Mason’s unlisted private wire buzzed sharply. Mason picked up the receiver to hear Paul Drake’s voice saying, “Are you busy right now, Perry?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone there in connection with this case?”
“Yes.”
“I think,” Drake said, “you’d better arrange to meet me outside the office.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Mason said. “The clients who are in the office are just finishing up their business. I’ll see you in just a moment or two.”
He hung up the telephone and extended his hand to Sabin. “I’m glad to learn about that will,” he said.
“And you’ll let us know if anything new... well, if you... I mean if you hear anything about Helen Watkins Sabin, let me know what she’s doing, will you?”
“She’s probably keeping under cover,” Mason told him, “until she can find out what’s going to be done about that forged decree of divorce.”
“Not that woman,” Charles Sabin said. “You’ll never get her on the defensive. She’s busy somewhere right now, stirring up a whole mess of trouble for us.”
Mason ushered them out through the exit door. “Well,” he said, with a smile, “at least she’s energetic.”
As his visitors turned the corner in the corridor, Mason stood in the door, waiting for Drake. The detective appeared within a matter of seconds. “Coast clear?” he asked.
“The coast is clear,” Mason told him, ushering him into the room. “I’ve just had a session with Charles Sabin and Richard Waid, the secretary. What do you know, Paul?”
“You wanted the long distance telephone calls which had been put in from the cabin,” Drake said. “Well, I’ve had men breaking down numbers into names. Here’s what we find. The last call of which there’s any record came through on the afternoon of Monday the fifth at about four o’clock. Now as I understand it, the secretary says that when Sabin called him at ten o’clock, he reported the telephone at the cabin was out of order. Is that right?”
Mason nodded.
“Well,” Drake said, “if the telephone was out of order, Sabin couldn’t put in any calls and couldn’t send out any calls. Do you get what I mean?”
“No, I don’t,” Mason told him. “Go on and spill it.”
“Well,” Drake said. “Something happened to cause Sabin to send Waid to New York. We don’t know what that something was. We don’t know where the pay station was that Sabin telephoned from, but in all probability it was the nearest one to the cabin. We can tell more when we check up on calls; but suppose that it was twenty minutes or half an hour away from the cabin.”
“What are you getting at?” Mason asked.
“Simply this,” Drake said. “If the telephone was out of order from four o’clock on, and Sabin telephoned Waid to go to New York, Sabin must have received some information between the hours of four o’clock in the afternoon and probably nine-thirty at night which convinced him that Mrs. Sabin would be in New York on the evening of Wednesday the seventh to surrender a certified copy of the divorce decree and pick up the money.
“Now then how did he get that information? If the telephone was out of order, he couldn’t have received it over the telephone. He evidently didn’t have it at four o’clock. In other words, Perry, that information must have been obtained from someone who came to the cabin.”
“Or sent Sabin a message,” Mason said. “That’s a good point, Paul. Of course, we don’t know that the telephone went out of commission immediately after four o’clock.”
“No,” Drake said. “We don’t, but on the other hand it’s hardly probable that the telephone would have been in commission when Sabin received word that the divorce was going through all right and then gone out of commission as soon as he tried to telephone the news to Waid — which would have been immediately afterwards.”
“You forget,” Mason pointed out, his eyes narrowing into thoughtful slits, “that the telephone line was tapped.”
“By George, I do at that!” Drake exclaimed.
“Anything may happen on a tapped line,” Mason said. “The wire-tappers could have thrown the telephone out of commission at a moment’s notice, and may have done so.”
“What would have been their object?” Drake asked.
“That,” Mason said, “remains to be discovered.”
“Well,” Drake told him, “I thought you might be particularly interested in that four o’clock call because of what had happened.”
“I am,” Mason said. “Whom was it to?”
“To Randolph Bolding, the examiner of questioned documents.”
Mason frowned. “Why the devil did Sabin want to ring up a handwriting expert?” he asked.
“You don’t suppose he’d had a look at that certified decree of divorce and figured it was a forgery?” Drake asked.
“No,” Mason said. “The decree wasn’t dated until the sixth. If he’d seen it on the fifth, he’d have known it was a forgery.”
“That’s right,” Drake admitted.
“Have you talked with Bolding?” Mason asked.
“One of my operatives did,” Drake said, grinning, “and Bolding threw him out on his ear. Said that anything which had transpired between him and Sabin was a professional confidence. So I thought perhaps you’d better go down there, Perry, and talk him into being a good dog.”
Mason reached for his hat. “On my way,” he said.