“All right,” she said, “I’ll go home.”
“Don’t bother with straightening things up here now. You can do it in the morning. Come on, I’ll go down with you and see that you get in the car. Pull that percolator plug out of the socket, and leave everything until morning.”
“The office looks a wreck.”
“What do we care?”
Mason held Della Street’s coat for her. They switched out lights, and Mason, Della Street, and Paul Drake walked down the corridor.
“You going to call it a day, Paul?” Mason asked.
“Gosh, no!” Drake said. “I’m sitting in the middle of everything up there. I have to be where I can handle the telephones.”
“Can you get any sleep?”
“I don’t think so. I’ll keep right on.”
“You’ll have some stuff to do tomorrow — that is, I mean later on in the day.”
Drake said, “It’s all right, Perry. I work right on through lots of times. That’s what’s wrong with my stomach.”
“Well,” Mason told him, “I think we’ve got this case pretty much under control. We’ll go up there and make an appearance at the D.A.’s office as a matter of form, but— Say, wait a minute, Paul. They should know who the corpse is by this time. Let’s check.”
“All right. Step in my office,” Drake said.
They followed Drake into his office. Drake asked the switchboard operator, “Anything new on that murder case at the Redfern Hotel?”
“Nothing except the calls I relayed down there.”
“They haven’t identified the body?” Drake asked.
“Not as far as we know.”
Drake looked at Mason.
Mason said, “That fellow was pretty well caved in. I sure gave him pretty much of a jolt, but I felt he’d have been in touch with the police long before this time.”
“It could have happened without our knowing it,” Drake said. “I’ve got one of the newspaper reporters on the job. He telephones anything in to his paper first and then he’ll give it to me second. If he got an exclusive scoop, he probably wouldn’t want to trust me with the information until after the paper was on the street. But on anything routine that the other reporters would pick up, he’d call me just as soon as he’d finished talking with the rewrite man at the desk.”
“Well, they probably know by this time, but aren’t announcing it to the press,” Mason said. “They’ve probably sent for the husband to come and make an identification. They’ll sure be looking up the boy friend. Well, I’ll put Della in her car and go on to my apartment. I’ll be seeing you, Paul.”
Mason took Della Street’s arm. They left the office, rode down silently in the elevator.
Mason escorted her over to the parking lot and put her in her automobile. “I don’t like to have you driving around the streets alone at this hour, Della.”
“Phooey! I’ll go home like a streak. No one’s going to bother me. I am out at all hours of the day and night on this job.”
“I know you are,” Mason said. “And I wish you weren’t. You take too many chances driving around a city at this hour of the morning.”
She patted his hand. “Thanks for the thought, Chief, but I’m fine. Don’t worry. I put the windows up, lock the doors, use the mechanical signal and don’t stop until I get to the apartment. I’ll be seeing you.”
“I’ll follow you in my car, Della, see you safely home and—”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort! You need every minute of sleep you can get. Good night!”
Della Street stepped on the starter, switched on the lights and drove out of the parking lot.
Mason got in his own car, gunned the motor to life and raced after her. He caught up with her five blocks down the street.
The brake lights on Della’s car blazed red as she swung in to stop at the curb. Mason drew alongside, rolled down the window on his car.
“Chief, you go home! I’m just as safe as can be. You shouldn’t be—”
Mason rolled up his window, sat waiting with the motor running. At length Della gave up and pulled out from the curb.
Mason followed her to her apartment house. She parked the car, came over to where Mason was waiting.
Again the lawyer rolled down his window.
“Chief,” she said in a low voice.
“Yes?” He leaned out to hear her better.
She said, “Custom decrees that when a man has taken a girl home, he is entitled to a token of thanks.”
Before he caught the full import of her words, she had kissed him full on the lips, then turned and ran up the steps of her apartment house.
“Thank you,” she called to him as she opened the door.
“Thank you!” Mason said.
Chapter Eight
It was five minutes after eight when Mason swung his car into the Gladedell Motel and drove to Unit 21.
Jerry Conway was waiting for him.
“All ready?” Conway asked. “Shall I follow you in my car?”
“Wait a minute,” Mason told him. “We’re, going to have to do some talking. I’ll drive my car down the road for a couple of blocks then pull into the curb. I’ll park my car there and drive in with you.”
“How about having me go in your car?”
“No, the police will want to search your car.”
“I’ve searched it,” Conway said, “and I’ve found something that bothers me.”
“You’ve found something?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“It was under the front seat where a man ordinarily wouldn’t look once in a couple of years. It was a neatly typed list of the stockholders who had sent in their proxies.”
“Let me look at it,” Mason said.
Conway handed him four typewritten sheets of paper neatly stapled together. He said, “It was there under the front seat where it might seem I had tried to conceal it where it wouldn’t be found. It was in a manila envelope.”
“How did it get there?”
“I don’t know. It could have been put there any time.”
“While you were parked near the hotel?”
“While I was parked near the hotel, while I was parked in front of the drugstore where I was telephoning, while I was parked anyplace.”
“You keep your car locked?”
“No, I take the ignition key with me, of course, but the doors and windows are unlocked.”
“What about the list? Have you checked it?”
“As nearly as I can. There’s one peculiar thing about it.”
“What?”
“It’s almost too good.”
“What do you mean, almost too good?”
“Almost too reassuring. The people who have sent in proxies are, for the most part, the very small shareholders, and some of them I know were discontented, anyway. They’d have sent in proxies even if there hadn’t been any advertising campaign.”
“On a percentage basis what does it figure?”
“As nearly as I can figure without having access to the books of the corporation, there’s only about 17 per cent of the outstanding stock represented on this proxy list.”
“Any date on it?”
“Yes, it’s dated only a couple of days ago. It’s supposed to be right up to date.”
“How much have you handled it?”
“Handled it? Quite a bit. Why?”
“Then you’ve probably obliterated any chance of tracing it,” Mason said.
“What do you mean? You can’t get fingerprints from paper, can you?”
“Sometimes you can,” Mason said. “Using iodine fumes, you can quite frequently bring out latent fingerprints.”
“I didn’t handle the envelope much. I’ve gone over the list pretty thoroughly.”
“I’m afraid it’s part of the trap,” Mason said. “Let’s get started and I’ll tell you about my information. You’ve had breakfast?”