Tragg stood silent for several seconds, his forehead creased in a portentous scowl. Suddenly he raised his eyes to Mason and said, “All right, Mason, you win.”
“What?”
“I’m going to play ball with you. Dammit, that Bob Lawley doesn’t ring true to me. I don’t fall for him for a minute. I think he’s a liar and a crook. I’d ten times rather figure he was guilty than his wife.
“He’s a clever liar, and he’s got Loring Churchill completely sold. I told Churchill I thought we should put some pressure on this guy, and Loring wouldn’t hear of it. He thinks Mrs. Lawley is the one he wants. Right now he’s so busy trying to build up a case against her he won’t listen to anything that doesn’t have a tendency to prove her guilty. I don’t like it.”
Mason said, “Want to take a ride?”
“Yes.”
“You?” Mason asked Mildreth Faulkner.
She nodded.
Mason said to Della Street, “You’d better come along, Della.”
“Where are you going?” Tragg asked.
Mason said, “I had a theory about this case that requires a little thought, and a few questions.”
“You’ve asked the questions?”
“Yes.”
“How were the answers?”
Mason said, “I’m pretty damn sure I’m right.”
“Why not tell me first?”
Mason shook his head.
“Why?”
“Because the case isn’t ripe. It isn’t ready to pick. We haven’t any evidence against the guilty person. All we have are certain things we can use to support a very logical theory.
“Now then, I know you. You hate to go off half cocked. You’ll listen to what I have to say, think it over, and say, ‘Gosh, Mason, that certainly sounds like something, but let’s not tip our hand until we have more than we’ve got now. Let’s go to work on it and build up a perfect case.’ ”
“Well,” Tragg said, “what’s wrong with that? You don’t want to flush the quarry too soon — not in this business.”
Mason said, “The thing that’s wrong with that way of playing it is that you’ll keep Mrs. Lawley in confinement. You’ll let her know that a charge is pending over her. You’ll let Loring Churchill trot back and forth in and out of her room until she’s worn to a shadow. She’ll take a deep breath, and her heart will pop. Nix on it. We’re going to get her out tonight. We’re going to get that load taken off her mind.”
“Suppose you upset the apple cart?”
“Then it’s upset. Do you want to come, or don’t you?”
“I don’t approve of it.”
“I knew you wouldn’t.”
Tragg said moodily, “Well, if you put it up to me that way, I’ll have to come.”
“Come on, then,” Mason said.
Chapter 14
Tragg parked his car in front of the Molay Arms Apartments. “Ring her bell?” he asked Mason.
Mason opened the rear door and assisted Mildreth Faulkner and Della Street from the car. “Better to ring the manager.”
Tragg said, “Perhaps I can beat that. This passkey should do the work.”
He took a key ring from his pocket, selected a key, tried it tentatively, shook his head, tried another key, and the lock clicked back.
“Locks on those outer doors are mostly ornamental, anyway,” Tragg explained as they walked across the lobby. “Just what do you want with Esther Dilmeyer, Mason?”
“Ask her some questions.”
“Look here, if you’re getting anything hot, Loring Churchill should be here.”
Mason said, “This may be only lukewarm.”
“You’re leading up to something.”
“Uh huh.”
Tragg said, “Okay, I’ll ride along for a while, and see where you’re going.”
They walked down the thin carpet of the third corridor. There was a light coming from the transom over Esther Dilmeyer’s door.
Mason said, in a low tone to Mildreth Faulkner, “Tap on the door. She’ll ask who it is. Tell her.”
“Then what?”
“I think that’s all she’ll want to know. If she should ask what you want, tell her you want to talk with her for a minute about something that happened today.”
Tragg made one last attempt. “Listen, Mason, if you’d put your cards on the table, and tell us what you know, the department would...”
“Stall around until it got proof,” Mason said, “and, by that time, my client would be dead.”
Mildreth tapped gently on the door.
“Who is it?” Esther Dilmeyer called.
“Mildreth Faulkner.”
“Oh, it’s you...” Noises from the apartment, the sound of slippered feet on the floor, the noise made by a bolt turning, and Esther Dilmeyer, attired only in underthings, opened the door to say, “I wanted to see you. I hoped you’d understand...”
She broke off as she saw the group in the corridor, then laughed, and said, “Well, excuse me! Why didn’t you tell me there were men in the party?”
She said, “Just a minute,” stepped back into the apartment, and picked up a robe which hung over the back of a chair. She slipped it on and said, “Come on in. You should have told me you weren’t alone, Miss Faulkner.”
Mason stepped forward. He asked, “You know Lieutenant Tragg?”
“Oh, yes. I saw him before I left the hospital. They wouldn’t let me leave until I had permission of the police.”
There was an awkward pause. Tragg looked at Mason, and Mason said abruptly, “Miss Dilmeyer, I think you’re in some danger.”
“I — danger?”
“Yes. Murder — so you won’t get on the stand tomorrow.”
“What makes you think so?”
He said, “Don’t forget an attempt has already been made to murder you. Whoever tried then is just as anxious to get you out of the way now as he was a couple of days ago.”
She laughed. “To tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought much of anything about it.”
“If some person had a desire to kill you forty-eight hours ago, I know of nothing which has happened in the meantime that would cause him to change his mind,” Mason said.
Esther tapped a cigarette on the arm of the chair, and said, “You’re probably more concerned about that than I am.”
“Perhaps so. That’s because I think that the person who sent you the candy is the same person who murdered Harvey Lynk.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Well, isn’t that a bright idea!”
Mason said, “We have several clues to work on. I don’t know whether Lieutenant Tragg told you all of them.”
“I didn’t,” Tragg said.
“To begin with,” Mason observed as Esther Dilmeyer struck a match and held it to the end of her cigarette, “the address on the wrapper was typed on the typewriter in Mr. Lynk’s office at the Golden Horn.”
She shook out the match with a quick, nervous gesture. Her eyes showed that the statement came as something of a shock. “How in the world do you know that,” she asked, “—unless someone saw the thing being typed?”
“Many people don’t know that typewriters are more highly individualized than a person’s handwriting,” Mason said. “Any typewriter which has been in use for even a short time has a distinct individuality. The type gets out of line. An expert can compare samples of typing and tell absolutely whether they were done on the same machine.”
Esther Dilmeyer said, “I didn’t know that.”
“That’s one thing,” Mason went on. “The other is that the paper was taken from Lynk’s office.”
“How do you know that?”
“Papers vary as to rag-content, weight, chemical composition, and trade-mark. Trade-mark is usually water-marked directly into the paper.”
“Anything else?” she asked.