“On some pretext, Argyle got Pitkin to monkey around with the timing on Lucille’s automobile — and it’s just possible he knew that Arthur Colson had been rewiring the car. Remember he’d been collecting data on Pitkin, Hollister and Lucille for some time. It was a very sweet setup for Argyle. He waited until the car was sputtering and backfiring so that the noise of the revolver shot would simply sound like one more backfire and wouldn’t have any significance whatever to any person who might be listening. He simply pulled the trigger, pocketed the gun, stepped into Lucille’s car, drove it across the street, and parked it at the curb. He left the keys in the car, went back to close and lock the garage, then went up to Lucille’s apartment and put the gun back in the desk. After that he got in his own car, drove out to pick up his new chauffeur, and was waiting in front of my office by the time Della arrived. He was careful enough to let the man at the cigar stand see a chauffeur driving the car around, looking for a parking place and eventually finding one. He had luck in that Della Street also noticed the car and chauffeur.
“He waited around for me as long as he dared. Then he rang up the insurance adjuster, who promptly told him not to have anything to do with me.
“The insurance adjuster came out and picked up Argyle. Argyle told him a story which scared the insurance company to death, offered to stand some of the settlement himself, and they went out to see Bob Finchley.”
“How did Argyle know you found the desk locked on that first visit to Lucille’s apartment?”
“He must have been waiting where he could watch the apartment. He saw me go in. Probably he’d just found out Lucille kept the desk locked. When I did nothing about hunting him up he knew I hadn’t got the license number he’d planted in the notebook, so he sent me a key to the desk, special delivery.
“You see Lucille went out as soon as I’d left so Arthur Colson could tell her what to say. She thought I might be setting a trap for her.
“And when Argyle saw her go out, all dolled up like a million dollars, he felt certain she was going to see Colson. Argyle had previously made himself a duplicate key to the desk just in case.
“He dashed off a special delivery letter and sent me the key.
“There was Argyle’s plan and it was a peach. If it hadn’t been for the fact that our ad in the paper actually struck pay dirt in having Carlotta Boone come in and put the finger on Caffee, we never would have suspected anything.
“Now, notice the most suspicious circumstance of all, when you come right down to it. When I talked with Argyle on the afternoon of the fifth, he let it appear that he had been driving the car. He showed all of the evidences of guilt, and the same was true of the time he went to see Finchley. But after he realized we had found the real hit-and-run driver he started blaming it all on his chauffeur.
“You see he realized what a precarious position he was in, so he extricated himself by reporting a purely fictitious conversation with Pitkin.”
“But didn’t that leave him wide open?” Drake asked.
“Sure, but there was nothing else he could do. Of course once he realized Hollister’s housekeeper thought the missing rug had been given Lucille, Argyle felt greatly relieved. If it hadn’t been for a mere fluke, Hollister’s car might not have been found for months. And if the car hadn’t been found the body wouldn’t have been found.
“But the breaks went against Argyle on Hollister’s death just as they were all in his favor on Pitkin’s death.
“You see Lucille didn’t want to call the police until she had made a settlement with Willard Barton. He pried the truth out of her and suggested she plant the gun so it would look like suicide. Arthur Colson very agreeably used a small wheel to grind the numbers off the gun. When Lucille saw the body of her ex-husband in the garage, she must have had at least a suspicion someone had taken her gun to do the job. Perhaps she noticed the desk had been ransacked in her absence. I’d emptied shells from the gun. They reloaded it, fired one shell and planted the gun in the garage.”
“They must have worked fast on the Hollister job,” Drake said.
“Sure. Gates had planned every detail, in case he had to shoot his way out. They arrived at Hollister’s house about twenty minutes to five. Hollister was blunt and angry, Gates cold-blooded and deadly. Hollister was killed and rolled in canvas within a few minutes. After that it wasn’t too great a job to do the rest of it. Argyle was back here by seven o’clock, and took care to have an alibi for the rest of the evening.”
“How did you make Argyle crack?” Drake asked. “That’s something I don’t get.”
“It was when I handed him that list of names,” Mason said. “It was a cinch. During the noon hour I rang up every employment agency in town and asked them the names of all persons who had been hired to act as chauffeurs on the fourth or fifth of the month. I had a list of fifteen names which included men who had been hired as butlers and general handymen. I presented that list to Argyle. He saw on there the name of the man whom he had employed and who was even then on a bus, riding to Detroit. That hit him hard. He knew then that I knew.”
“How did you ever get that Detroit angle?” Drake asked.
“I didn’t have it at the time,” Mason said. “At that time it was only a theory. Tragg checked the list after Argyle was removed from the wreck, taken to the hospital, and made a deathbed confession. He found one man — Orville Nettleton — who had given up his room, telling his landlady he had a job for a man who was going to send him to Detroit to pick up a new car and then drive it to Mexico, where his employer would meet him later on. The man was tickled pink over his job and mentioned the name of his new employer, Argyle.”
“Well,” Della Street said, “it was a nice case, but I don’t see any fee in it.”
“I’m afraid you won’t,” Mason said, grinning. “A lawyer occasionally has a case thrust upon him, and this is one we’re going to have to charge to profit and loss.”
Drake said, “It should teach you not to leave your fingerprints on guns.”
“And to keep out of girls’ apartments,” Della Street added.
“You’ll notice,” Mason told them, grinning, “that I promptly surrendered the key to the apartment to Lieutenant Tragg.”
“Gosh, yes,” Drake said. “I wonder what Tragg’s done with that key.”
“Well,” Della Street said, “you had some compensation, chief. You had a nice tête-à-tête and a breakfast with the much-married Lucille.”
“Much-married, but cautious,” Mason observed.
Drake winked at Della Street. “I wonder if Mason was also cautious?”
“I wonder,” Della Street said.
“Keep wondering, both of you,” Mason told them, grinning, “and remember that while I missed a fee in a murder case, I certainly made a killing on Finchley’s case.”
“Darned if you didn’t,” Drake admitted admiringly. “I certainly had to laugh when I saw Judge Osborn’s face when the real nature of that deal dawned on him. Particularly when Argyle quoted Finchley as saying you were going to teach certain insurance adjusters not to suck eggs.”
Mason said, “By the way, Paul, I saw your secretary as I came down the corridor. She said if you were in here to let you know that the client in the Emery case was anxious for a report.”
Drake came up out of the chair with a sudden bound. “My gosh,” he said, “I’d forgotten about Emery! Well, be good.”
Mason watched the door slowly close.
“You certainly built a fire under him,” Della Street said.
Mason nodded. “I thought,” he said, “we could arrange for a congratulatory dinner, in celebration of squeezing out of a trap through a darn narrow opening, Della.”