“That’s true. You’ve said that before. Chief.”
“Well,” Mason said, “who was the person? Who was the one person who could have known that Davenport would be taken sick at that particular place at that particular time?”
“Mabel Norge, the secretary?” Della Street ventured.
Mason laughed. “I’ve given you all the clues I’m going to, Della. You go look for the place where the house trailer was parked over on the east side of this hill. I’ll look over on the west side. But don’t go far. Don’t get out of the sound of my voice. It should be around here within a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards. If you see anyone or if you think you’re being watched, don’t be afraid to let out a whoop. I’ll be listening.”
Della Street hesitated a moment. “I get no more clues?”
“Not unless you find them,” Mason said. “After all, if I pull a rabbit out of the hat I don’t want to have the audience yawn in my face. I’m enjoying myself tremendously, Della.”
“You’re being a prig,” she said and, turning, walked down the hill and into the patch of brush.
Mason waited a few seconds, then went down on the other side, walking slowly in long zigzags, looking for wheel tracks.
Fifteen minutes later Mason was back on the hill, whistling for Della Street.
For a few anxious moments he waited, then was just starting down the hill when he heard her call some distance away.
Mason whistled once more, then hurried through the brush. At length he picked up Della Street’s tracks, and, whistling again, once more heard her call.
Again Mason walked a distance of some fifty yards, again he whistled and again received an answer.
“Heavens, Della,” he said. “I didn’t want you to go so far away. What would have happened if you’d met some—”
“I’m on a hot trail,” she said.
Mason hurried up to her and Della Street pointed to automobile tracks in the soft ground.
“Oh-oh,” Mason said.
“They’re narrow jeep tracks,” Della said. “Does that mean anything?”
“It may.”
“Would that eliminate the necessity of a house trailer?”
“I don’t know,” Mason said. “I think not. Let’s follow the tracks.”
“Which direction?”
“Where did you pick them up, Della?”
“Within—oh, I don’t know—a hundred feet of the hill, I guess.”
“All right, let’s follow them away from the hill then.”
Mason and Della Street followed the tracks for a hundred yards, then suddenly came to a little clearing in the brush where a rather vague but quite passable roadway led out toward the highway. Here there was a cleared space where it was evident that a house trailer had been parked. Not only were the tracks visible but there was a little hole in the ground, washed by drain water from a sink just back of the left wheel.
Della Street made a little bow. “Very well, Mr. Mason,” she said, “you have now pulled the rabbit out of the hat. You have found the location of the house trailer. Now what do we do?”
“Now,” Mason said, “we carefully mark the place. We go back to Fresno. We have Paul Drake get a couple of his most trusted and observant men and we have them come out here and go over this place with a fine-toothed comb, listing every article.”
“Article?” Della Street asked.
Mason pointed to a small pile of empty tin cans.
“Everything,” he said. “Every single article. We want a complete inventory of this spot before anything happens to it.”
“Can’t we take the inventory while we’re here?”
“We have other work to do,” Mason told her. “We’ll be starting for San Bernardino within the next hour.”
“But after you’ve duly dazzled everyone by pulling the rabbit out of the hat, will you tell us how you knew the rabbit was in the hat?” Della Street asked.
Mason said, “You haven’t answered my question yet, Della.”
“What question?”
“Who was the person? Who was the one person who could possibly have known that Edward Davenport was going to leave Fresno at around seven o’clock in the morning, that he was going to be taken violently ill as soon as he started driving, and that by the time he reached Crampton he would be so completely ill that he wouldn’t be able to go on, that he’d have to go to bed and call for a doctor?”
“There just wasn’t any such person,” Della Street said. “There couldn’t have been.”
“Then it couldn’t have been premeditated murder.”
“But it had to be, otherwise—why, Chief, the grave was dug two or three days in advance. It’s the most cold-blooded, diabolical crime you can think of. That is, if that grave was intended all along for Ed Davenport.”
“It was,” Mason told her. “Come on, Della. We’re going back to Fresno. We’re going to charter a plane to take us to San Bernardino. By the time we get there Drake’s men should have located Mabel Norge.”
“And if they haven’t?”
“If they haven’t we’ll try locating her ourselves, but I think they’ll have her spotted. In the meantime we’ll have Drake’s men get busy and cover every inch of the ground out here, looking for clues. For instance, Della, notice these cans. Now here’s a can that held baked beans. It was opened smoothly with one of those can openers that cuts around the rim of the can, leaving the edges nice and smooth and taking the top all the way off. Notice the inside of the can.”
“What about it?”
“The remnants of the beans are dried and hard.”
“Meaning that the can has been there for some time?”
“A week or ten days probably.”
“Very well, Mr. Magician,” she told him. “I know my place. I’m supposed to put on very short skirts and tights and stand bowing and smiling and looking awed while you pull the rabbit out of the hat. I believe that’s the function of the magician’s assistant, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Mason said. “Her games distract the attention of the audience.”
“But not of the magician?” Della Street asked lightly.
“Sometimes even the magician.” Mason conceded.
Chapter 13
The sun was low as Mason’s chartered plane droned over the high plateau country.
Down below the desert stretched interminably. The tall, weird shapes of the Joshua palms cast long, angular shadows. Over on the right snow-capped mountains turned to a rosy glow in the rays of the setting sun. Then the desert gave way to mountains, piling up in jagged, tumbled peaks until the crests became covered with dark green pines. A lake flashed into view, bordered by many sumptuous houses. A paved road ran around the lake. Buildings were scattered through the dense pines.
Abruptly the whole country seemed to drop away and far below in the valley San Bernardino clustered in an orderly array of straight thoroughfares and houses which seemed to have been carved from miniature sugar lumps topped with pink roofs and then viewed through the wrong end of a telescope.
The plane tilted sharply.
“It’ll be a few miles to town from the airport where I want to land,” the pilot explained.