Mason sucked in a prodigious yawn. “You are very annoying at times, Paul.”
Drake looked at him with humorless eyes. “Do you find me that way?”
Mason knocked ashes off the end of his cigarette, snuggled back down under the covers.
“Matilda is out of the hospital and back at the house. Seems as though she’s made a will in which she’s tried to exert some pressure on Helen Kendal to make her marry young Alber. Alber apparently gets a very, very nice chunk of the Shore fortune one way or another. Either he gets it by marrying Helen, or, if Helen doesn’t marry him, he is taken care of very handsomely... Oh, yes, your friend Lieutenant Tragg is having the last few checks that went through Franklin Shore’s account carefully experted. A ten-thousand-dollar check to a man by the name of Rodney French seems to be the one he’s particularly interested in. Rodney French is being looked for by the police. He seems to have taken a little vacation for himself, commencing yesterday evening. He neglected to tell anyone just where he was going.”
Mason said, “Franklin Shore telephoned his bookkeeper he was putting that ten-thousand-dollar check through.”
“That’s right,” Drake said, grinning, “he did.”
“Well?” Mason asked.
“Tragg’s working on a theory that perhaps Franklin intended to put that check through, but pulled his disappearing act before he’d made out the check... That would make an interesting situation, wouldn’t it, Perry? Put yourself in the position of a man who is depending on a ten-thousand-dollar check from a chap whose name on the bottom of a check would have made it as good as a certificate of the United States Mint. Then the chap disappears and can’t be found, and you’ve already committed yourself to the things you’re going to do, on the assumption that check is going through.”
“Anything else?” Mason asked.
“Oh, yes. Tragg’s really working on that disappearance. It’s a shame he wasn’t in on it when it happened, but that was during the regime of our old friend, Sergeant Holcomb. Tragg’s going over all the unidentified bodies that were found around that time — getting the records out for an airing. He’s found one body. The description doesn’t check, however. He’s also checking up on all the suicides around Florida in 1932, and he’s checking up on some mining property Leech was interested in, also making a very close check on the finances of Gerald Shore as of January, 1932. A very, very resourceful chap, Tragg.”
Mason said, “Phooey! Tragg’s just a damned misanthrope.”
“Of course, he covers a lot of territory,” Drake went on. “Seems to think that kitten is rather an important factor in the entire situation.”
“The kitten, eh?” Mason observed.
“Uh huh. Interesting chap, Tragg. When he goes after something, he really gets it.”
“The kitten for instance?” Mason asked, very casually.
“Oh, of course, the kitten. He has that kitten up at the district attorney’s office.”
Mason sat bolt upright in bed.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“Has the kitten up at the district attorney’s office. Don’t know just what he’s doing with it, but...”
“Where did he get it?”
“I don’t know. I pick up a lot of stuff from the newspaper boys, things that leak out through the police. He’s asking questions of the chap who does the gardening out there, man by the name of Lunk. He...”
Mason became a moving mass of arms and legs, pinching out the cigarette, kicking the covers off, grabbing the telephone. The dial whirred through a number.
Mason said, “Hello... Hello. That you, Gertie?... Where’s Della this morning?”
“No word from her, eh?... Let me talk with Jackson... Hello, Jackson. This is an emergency. Give it a right of way over everything in the office. Make out an application for a writ of habeas corpus for Della Street. Make it wide enough, big enough and broad enough to cover everything from rape to arson. She’s being detained against her will. She’s being examined concerning privileged communications, she’s held without any charge being placed against her. She’s abundantly able to furnish bail in any reasonable amount. Ask for a writ of habeas corpus and ask that she be admitted to bail pending the return and hearing on the writ. I’ll sign and verify it. Get going on the thing!”
Mason slammed up the telephone, peeled off his pajamas, splashed hurriedly into the shower, came out drying his body, jerking clean underwear out of a bureau drawer.
Drake sat curled up in the chair watching with a puzzled expression of growing concern while Mason hurried into his clothes.
“I have a six-volt electric razor in the glove compartment of my car,” Drake said. “If you wanted to drive uptown with me, you could shave in the car.”
Mason jerked open the door of a coat closet, struggled into his overcoat, grabbed his hat, pulled gloves out of his overcoat pocket, said, “Come on, Paul. What’s holding us back?”
“Nothing,” Drake said, uncoiling his double-jointed frame in a series of convolutions that would have done credit to a contortionist. “We’re on our way. Your office or the D.A.’s?”
“My office first,” Mason said. “When I talk with a D.A. I always like to be able to slap him in the face with a writ of habeas corpus in case he gets rough.”
“This bird getting rough?” Drake asked.
“Uh huh. Where’s that razor?”
Chapter 20
Hamilton Burger, the district attorney, was a man with a huge chest, a thick neck and heavy shoulders. There was about him a suggestion of the massive strength of a bear. He was given to making unpredictable moves with the swiftness of a man who concludes his deliberations before taking action. Once he started to act, he threw himself into that action with a concentrated force that eliminated any possibility of re-examining the situation. Lawyers who had come to know him well said that once Hamilton Burger started charging, it took a brick wall to stop him. As one attorney had expressed it, “Once Burger starts moving, he keeps moving until he’s stopped, and it takes a hell of a lot to stop him.”
Mason knew that a reception had been prepared for him as soon as he entered the outer office of the district attorney. No assistant or trial deputy was assigned to interview him; but with the clocklike precision of a carefully-thought-out bit of campaign strategy. Mason was whisked down the corridor and into the district attorney’s office almost as soon as he had announced himself at the reception desk.
Hamilton Burger surveyed Mason with glittering, steady eyes.
“Sit down,” he said.
Mason took the chair across from Burger’s desk.
“Do you want to talk to me or am I going to talk to you?” Mason asked.
“I’m talking to you,” Burger said.
“Go ahead,” Mason told him, “do your talking first. I’ll say what I have to say when you’ve finished.”
Hamilton Burger said, “You’re unorthodox. Your methods are spectacular, dramatic, and bizarre.”
“You might add one additional word,” Mason said.
For a moment, there was a flicker in the district attorney’s eyes. “Effective?” he asked.
Mason nodded.
“That is the thing which bothers me,” Burger said.
“I’m glad to hear you admit it.”
“It doesn’t bother me in the way that you think, however,” Burger went on. “It simply means that if your spectacular, dramatic, swashbuckling methods continue to be effective, we’ll have every attorney at the bar trying to cut corners, playing legal sleight of hand to outwit the police. And heaven knows, one of you in this county is plenty.”