“How did Durant find out?” Mason asked.
“Now, there’s something,” she said. “I don’t know how he found out but he certainly made it a point to find out and he did find out. He had that secret and he held it over me. There were times when I could have killed him. He—”
“Now, wait a minute,” Mason interrupted. “Watch your— Oh-oh!”
Maxine looked up quickly. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Permit me to introduce the two gentlemen who are standing behind you,” Mason said. “One of them is Lieutenant Arthur Tragg of Homicide from Los Angeles, and I presume the other one is a member of the Redding police force.”
“Sergeant Cole Arlington of the Shasta County Sheriffs office,” Tragg said cheerfully. “Now, what was it that you were telling Mr. Mason, Miss Lindsay? Something about someone whom you could kill? Were you by any chance referring to Mr. Collin Max Durant?”
“Just a minute, Maxine,” Mason said. “I’m going to telephone Lattimer Rankin and get his permission to represent you. For some reason I believe your story.”
“I’m glad you do,” Tragg said. “I think the young woman probably needs an attorney. We’d like to ask her some questions.”
“Moreover,” Mason said, “I am going to ask you not to answer any questions, not to tell the police anything, until after I have had a chance to do some checking. Then I will make a statement to the police as to your story.” Mason turned to Tragg and said, “And I may tell you, Lieutenant, that Miss Lindsay was on the point of going to an attorney here in Redding and having him call the Los Angeles police and tell them that she had just learned the body of a man had been found in her apartment, and that she would be available for questioning.”
“How very, very nice of her,” Tragg said. “And since she is available for questioning, perhaps she wouldn’t mind coming to Headquarters and making a statement right now.”
“She was on the point of stating that she was available for questioning,” Mason said, “but in view of what she has just told me, she is not going to make any statement to the police. I am going to investigate and make that statement for her.”
“You think she’s that guilty?” Tragg asked.
“I don’t think she’s guilty at all,” Mason said. “I wouldn’t be representing her if I thought she was guilty. I just have the feeling that she’s innocent and that there are other persons involved whose happiness requires that the information she gives to the police be restricted entirely to the matter of what happened with Collin Durant.”
“Well, of course if you adopt that attitude,” Tragg said, “there’s only one thing to do and that’s to charge her with first-degree murder.”
“In which event,” Mason said, “we’ll demand that she be taken at once before the nearest and most accessible magistrate. Now then, if you have a warrant and want to serve it—”
“I don’t have a warrant,” Tragg said. “I want to question her.”
“Go on and question her,” Mason said.
“There’s not much use doing that if she won’t answer.”
“I’ll answer.”
“I don’t want your answers, I want hers.”
“Then go ahead and arrest her and we’ll go to the nearest and most accessible magistrate. Give me just a minute. I want to look up some good fighting trial attorney in Redding who will know the local ropes and who will back my play.”
“Now, wait a minute, wait a minute,” Tragg said, “you’re getting all out of line here. We don’t want to go off half-cocked on this thing. Let’s be reasonable about it.”
“How did you come up?” Mason asked. “Chartered plane?”
“A plane that is available to us on police work of this sort,” Tragg said.
“How big a plane?”
“A twin-motored five-place plane.”
“All right,” Mason said, “I’ll make you this proposition. We’ll agree to get in the plane and return to Los Angeles. I’ll make statements to you on the plane as to what I know about the aspects of the case in which you’re legitimately interested. When you get to Los Angeles, you can do as you see fit. You can have her indicted by the grand jury or do anything you want to, but she’s not going to talk. I’m going to do the talking.”
“What’s she going to do?” Tragg asked.
Mason smiled wryly and said, “All the way back on the airplane this poor kid is going to get some sleep.”
Tragg pursed his lips. “You want to telephone Rankin and get permission to represent her?” he asked.
“That’s right,” Mason said. “I want to be assured there will be no conflicting interests.”
“All right,” Tragg said. “I want to put in a call to Hamilton Burger, the district attorney at Los Angeles, and see how he reacts to this proposition of yours. I don’t think he wants to have an arrest made as yet; that is, I don’t think he wants to have her definitely charged with murder and I’m damned sure he doesn’t want to have her brought before a magistrate in Redding.”
“Okay,” Mason said, “we’ll declare a truce. We’ll leave her with Cole Arlington provided Arlington will agree that he won’t try to question her, and you and I will go put our phone calls through.”
“Let’s go,” Tragg said.
They went to the phone booth. Mason called Lattimer Rankin in Los Angeles. “Rankin,” he said, “I’ve been representing you in regard to that picture of Otto Olney’s. Durant has been murdered. I think they’re going to charge Maxine Lindsay with the murder and I’d like to represent her if you feel there’ll be no conflict of interests. But if I represent her, I’m going to be fighting for her tooth and nail.”
“Go ahead and fight for her,” Rankin said. “She’s a good kid. You say Durant was murdered?”
“That’s right.”
“I hope they find the person that did it,” Rankin said, “because he should have a medal. He—”
“Shut up!” Mason snapped. “Someone may ask you on the witness stand what you said when you heard that Durant had been murdered.”
“Oh, in that case,” Rankin said, “I will testify that I said what a shame it was and how I hoped they got the person who did the killing, and that’s all I’ll say. However, if you want to go ahead and read my mind, Mr. Mason, you’re at perfect liberty to do so. And by all means, represent Maxine.”
Mason hung up, opened the door of the phone booth, grinned at Lt. Tragg and said, “Go ahead and put through your call, Lieutenant, I’ll meet you at the table in the restaurant. I’m going over to see that this deputy sheriff doesn’t start asking too many questions.”
Chapter Nine
It was nearly ten o’clock that night when Perry Mason sat down opposite Lattimer Rankin in the latter’s house.
Rankin, tall, ungainly, seemed somehow ill at ease.
“I wanted to thank you for giving your consent so readily over the telephone this afternoon,” Mason said, “permitting me to represent Maxine Lindsay.”
“I certainly see no reason why I should stand in the way,” Rankin said, “if you want to represent her. It came as rather a surprise to me, and of course I was completely bowled over with the news of Durant’s death.”
“You seemed to be able to bear up under it,” Mason said dryly.
“Well,” Rankin said, “I’ve been thinking that over and I’m a little ashamed of myself, Mason. I suppose a man shouldn’t speak ill of the dead who can’t defend themselves. However, the man was a terrific bounder.”
“I want to find out what you know about him,” Mason said.
“It isn’t very much. He started buying and selling paintings on some kind of a commission basis and gradually pushed himself forward as an expert on art. I’ll say one thing for the man, he certainly was a worker. He’d study and he’d listen, and he never seemed to forget anything he ever heard. He had the most remarkable memory I have ever encountered.”