Mason said, “Uh-huh, I didn’t see it. All right, Paul, call your office. A man by the name of Harry Diggers had an accident out here in front of the house an hour or so ago. He hit a Sarah Breel. He claims she stepped out from the sidewalk right in front of his car. Police held him for a while and then let him go. I want a complete statement from him, and I’d like it before the police pick him up again. Your men can get his address from the records. There’s a gambling club down on East Third Street over a cafe known as The Golden Platter. Have a couple of men find out all they can about that. A gem broker by the name of George Trent is out somewhere on a drunk. Get men on the job to find him. Get the best description you can from people who know him. Pick up a photograph if it’s at all possible. Burgle his office if you have to. He has a string-bean niece, name of Virginia. She lives at his house. It’s listed in the telephone directory. Get a photograph and a description of George, and put enough men to work to find him. He’ll be hanging around a place where he can get liquor and gambling in combination.”
“How about women?” Drake asked.
“Perhaps women too, I don’t know. Never mind that. Get busy. You’ll have to hurry before the officers come.”
Drake, moving with a swiftly silent efficiency which belied the gangling appearance of his arms and legs, melted back into the corridor, and a few moments later, Mason heard the muffled sound of his voice over the telephone. From the street came the sound of tires as a car slid to an abrupt stop. Mason, trying to give Drake more time at the telephone, walked out to meet the radio officers half way up the cement walk leading to the porch.
“Your name Drake?” one of the men asked.
Mason shook his head, said, “No. My name’s Mason. I found the body.”
“Thought your name was Drake.”
“No,” Mason said, “It isn’t. Here, have a card.” He fumbled around in a card case, gaining valuable seconds.
“What’s the dope?” one of the men asked.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Mason said. “I was calling on Austin Cullens, who lives here. I wanted to see him in connection with a certain business matter, about which I’d been consulted earlier in the day. I found the lights off and the door ajar. I stepped inside and found him...”
“The lights are on now,” one of the officers interrupted, indicating the lighted windows on the right-hand corner of the house.
“That’s another circuit,” Mason explained. “Apparently one fuse was blown. The room where the body lies has a fuse blown out. However, it’s only taken one of the circuits. I notice the radio is still on.”
“Who turned on the lights in the other part of the house?” the officer asked.
“That was done,” Mason said, “in order to locate a telephone.”
“Okay, we’ll go take a look. I thought the report came in that your name was Drake.”
Mason decided it was impossible to stall any longer. “Mr. Drake,” he said, “accompanied me at the time.”
“Where is he now?”
“Inside.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say so?”
“Why,” Mason said, with an expression of hurt innocence, “you didn’t ask me. I came out to explain to you what you’d find.”
“What’s Drake doing?”
“Waiting inside.”
One of the officers took Mason’s arm. The other ran ahead up the sidewalk and into the house. Drake came sauntering down the corridor to meet them, a cigarette dangling from his lips. “Hello, boys,” he said. “I see you got my call all right. I’ve notified Homicide.”
“Okay,” one of the officers said, “where do you fit into the picture?” Drake showed them his card and his license as a private detective. “You haven’t touched anything, have you?”
“Nothing except the telephone,” Drake said.
“And why the telephone?”
“I had to call Homicide, some way, didn’t I?”
Mason said, “Drake was careful to avoid using the telephone in the room where the body was found. We haven’t touched anything in there. The man was shot once. It looks as though robbery was the motive.”
A siren screamed in the distance. One of the men said, “Okay, Jim, here comes Homicide. Let’s give it a quick look before they get here... Hell, it’s dark in the corridor.”
“That’s what I told you,” Mason said. “One of the fuses is blown.”
“How did you see the stuff?”
“With a flashlight.”
“Where’s the flashlight?”
Mason took it from his pocket.
“You usually carry a flashlight with you?” the officer asked suspiciously.
“Drake does,” Mason said. “It’s his flashlight.”
One of the officers produced a flashlight from his own pocket, played the beam around the room, brought it to rest on the corpse and said, “Dead all right.”
The sirens screamed at the corner. A car skidded to a stop. Pounding feet came up the cement walk and across the porch. Sergeant Holcomb, of the homicide squad, stared at Mason. “So you’re in on this, are you?”
“I’m in on nothing except the house,” Mason told him.
“What was your lead?”
“I wanted to see Mr. Cullens on a matter of business.”
“What business?”
“Something about which he’d consulted me.”
“Was he a client of yours?”
“Not exactly.”
“All right, then, what was the business?”
Mason said, “I was looking for a man named George Trent, a gem expert. I had reason to believe Cullens knew something.”
“What made you think so?”
“Call it a hunch if you want to,” Mason said.
“I don’t want to,” Holcomb told him, “and it doesn’t sound logical.”
“All right, then,” Mason said, letting anger creep into his voice, “it wasn’t a hunch, and it isn’t logical. So what?”
Holcomb said to one of the officers, “Take these two guys into a separate room. Don’t talk with them and don’t let them talk with you. Don’t let them do any telephoning. Don’t let them touch anything. And, above all, don’t let them do any rubber-necking around... Okay, boys, go through the house. We’ll take the room in here... Make sure the men are posted at the back... Okay, let’s go.”
Mason and the detective were escorted into the dining room by an officer who indicated seats with silent hostility, and continued to watch over them in sullen silence while Mason heard steps on the stairs, the pound of feet in the upper corridors, heard additional cars roar down the boulevard to come to a stop in front of the house, and men pell-mell up the cement walk to the front door.
It was twenty minutes later when Sergeant Holcomb descended on the pair for questioning, and at the end of fifteen minutes’ questioning he knew no more than when he had started. “All right,” he said, “you birds can go. But there’s something about this I don’t like.”
“I don’t know of anything else we could have done to cooperate,” Mason said. “Drake notified the police the minute we arrived and found the body.”
“Where were you just before you came here?” Holcomb asked.
“Immediately before I arrived here,” Mason said, “it happened that I was in a drug store telephoning.”
“To whom?”
“To my secretary, if you want to know.”
“About what?”
“Trying to find out the address of a certain client.”
“This address?”
“No, it was another client.”
“Who?”
“It has nothing to do with this case,” Mason said, “and, as it happens, I didn’t get the address.”
“Then how’d you happen to come here?”
“I wanted to see Cullens.”
“And you decided you wanted to see him right after you found out you couldn’t get that other address?”