“Someone must have followed you,” Drake said.
Mason shook his head. “Don’t kid yourself, Paul. When I don’t want to be followed, no one follows me.”
“Then who tipped them off? It couldn’t have been the hotel clerk.”
“No,” Mason said. “And you can follow that process of elimination right on through. There’s only one person who could have done it.”
“Who?”
“Lunk.”
Drake looked incredulous. “You mean that he telephoned the police himself?”
“Yes.”
“But that was a goofy, crazy thing to do. Why would he do anything like that?”
Mason said, “That fact gives you the key to the whole business.”
“But why?” Della Street asked.
Mason said, “There’s only one reason I can think of.”
“What’s that?”
“He wanted to be arrested,” Mason said dryly.
“You mean that he felt he was in danger?”
Mason shrugged his shoulders.
The waiter brought the drinks. Drake raised his glass to Della. “Here’s to jail,” he grinned. “Well, Perry, what do you do now?”
Mason said, “Nothing, absolutely nothing. Hamilton Burger is going to have to crack this nut by himself. That jury will never convict Della — not as long as there are two women on it who know something about cats.”
Della Street put her glass down firmly. “If you don’t explain what you mean by that, I will be convicted of a crime, and it will be murder.”
“No prosecutor in this state would charge you with murder for killing Perry Mason,” Drake pointed out. “You’d get a reward! But what did the kitten do that’s so significant?”
Mason grinned. “It was a cold night,” he said. “The kitten jumped into the flour when someone was hiding the gun in the can. Naturally, the kitten got thrown out, probably with a cuff on the ear. Now, that kitten had had a lot of kind treatment and didn’t like the rough stuff. It ran out of the kitchen and into the back bedroom, and jumped up on the bed. It didn’t stay there, though. It jumped off that bed and went to the other bed.”
“Why?” Drake asked.
Della Street gave a sudden, quick gasp. “Oh,” she cried, “I know why! Anyone would, if he stopped to think about it.”
Drake shook his head and got up.
“Where are you going, Paul?” Della demanded.
“I’m going out to buy a cat so I can study him and learn about some of the important facts of life.”
“You would, at that, you know,” Mason told him seriously.
“Good night,” Drake muttered lugubriously.
With Paul Drake gone, Mason turned to Della. “You know, Della, this has been more of a strain on you than I realized. As soon as the jury brings in its verdict tomorrow, what do you say we take a run out to the desert — around Palm Springs or Indio. We’ll do some horseback riding, lie in the sun—”
“Perry, I may be convicted tomorrow.”
Mason grinned. “You forget those two women on the jury who know cats.”
“Aren’t you going to explain any more to the jury?”
“Not a bit.”
“Why?”
“Because if I did, I’d be explaining to Hamilton Burger. I’m going to let him fry in his own grease.”
“What will Lieutenant Tragg do?”
“Eventually,” Mason said, “Lieutenant Tragg will solve the case.”
“But won’t it take the jury a long while to get the whole idea through its head?”
Mason said, “Now that’s something that would be a sporting bet. I’ll bet you five dollars that jury will be out for at least three hours. It’ll come in with a verdict of not guilty, but it’ll be a dazed sort of jury, with two triumphant women smiling at you, and the men scowling. Then we’ll start out for the desert, and Hamilton Burger will start talking with the jurors, trying to find out what it was about the kitten that broke the case. Then he’ll try to get in touch with me, and we’ll be out in the desert somewhere. Let’s forget it and dance.”
Chapter 25
The big car purred smoothly out through the velvety darkness. As only in the desert, the stars, stretching in a vast, arching sweep, were no less brilliant over the clear horizon than they were directly overhead.
Mason said abruptly, “Let’s pull off to the side of the road and soak it up, Della. It’s an incomprehensible spectacle — makes you forget this strange human biped who commits murder.”
They came to a wide place in the road. Mason pulled off, switched off his ignition, cut off the headlights, settled down into the cushions.
“I love the desert,” Mason said after a little while.
Della Street snuggled close. “We supposed to be working on this trip?” she asked.
“Uh huh. I’ve brought that brief along with me. We won’t go back to the office until we’ve finished it.”
She said, “Well, I owe you five dollars. It took that jury three hours and ten minutes to the dot. Chief, I know about the kitten, but what else happened?”
Mason said, “The kitten jumped up on the bed which was supposed to have been occupied by Franklin Shore; then it jumped down and went into the other bedroom and curled up in the middle of the bed which was supposed not to have been occupied by Tom Lunk. The kitten proves Lunk was a liar. The bed in the back bedroom hadn’t been slept in, and was cold. The bed in the front bedroom had been occupied and was warm.
“I don’t know whether you’ve ever thought about it, Della, but if a man has some hiding place which he thinks is safe, he naturally hides everything there. For some time Lunk had been putting the money he’d collected for playing his part in the game into the flour can — a typical hiding place for a crusty old bachelor. Then when he had to hide the gun quickly, he naturally hid it in the same place.”
“Why did he have to hide the gun?”
“Because, dope, after he got to bed, Mrs. Shore telephoned him from the hospital and told him to rush out to the house, crawl in through the window, and get the gun out of the desk. She suddenly realized police were going to search the place. It’s a wonder they hadn’t found it when they made the first search, but at that time Tragg was concentrating on the medicine cabinet and looking for poison.”
“I wish you’d tell me the whole story.”
Mason said, “Somebody poisoned the kitten. It was an inside job. The kitten hadn’t been out of the house. Komo might have done it, but he had no motive. The reason suggested by Lunk that he was trying out the poison was cockeyed because the kitten had been given such a large dose.
“You can figure out what happened. Mrs. Shore had a telephone call in the afternoon. After that call, she decided the time had come to commit the murder she’d planned so long and so carefully. She was tired of paying blackmail. She had to get Helen out of the house for some length of time, so Helen wouldn’t know she was away from home. She knew that if she could poison the cat, Helen would dash madly to a veterinary hospital. Gerald came in unexpectedly, but he went along with Helen, of course. Then she sent Komo out to get some stout. With the coast clear, she took Franklin Shore’s old gun, got into the car, and went up to the reservoir above Hollywood where Leech was waiting by appointment to collect another installment of blackmail. She paid the last installment with a .38 caliber bullet, came back, put the gun in the desk. She realized that suspicion might attach itself to her, so she poisoned the stout in the icebox, pretended she had symptoms of poisoning, and was rushed to a hospital. That helped direct suspicion even more toward Franklin Shore. It didn’t occur to her until after Tragg showed up that police would make a thorough search of the house. She realized then they’d find the gun. Police had her sewed up in the hospital, so she rushed through a telephone call to Lunk, and told him to go out and get the gun.