"And I believe the car was still in low gear when they pulled it up, wasn't it?" Mason asked.
Drake, wiping his nose with his handkerchief, gave a muffled "Uh huh."
"And it's her gun," Coulter said. "She was carrying it under a permit issued in Salt Lake City."
Drake, sniffling, said, "What's more, they've got her fingerprint on the car window on the left-hand side. You see, Brownley was driving with the window rolled up because it was raining. When Julia came out, he rolled the window down to talk to her, but he didn't roll it all the way down. She stood on the running board, and hooked her fingers over the window and left some perfectly swell fingerprints on the inside of the glass. The cops got the car raised up before the water had eliminated the fingerprints."
Mason frowned. "Any chance she could have left her fingerprints on the car before Brownley started for the beach?"
"Not one chance in ten million," Drake said. "Now that's the gloomy side, Perry. Here's a silver lining to the cloud: There's a darn good chance this granddaughter who's living with Brownley is a phoney."
"Have you got any facts?" Mason asked.
"Of course I've got facts," Drake said irritably. "I don't know what they amount to, but they're facts. After Oscar's death the old man wanted to locate his granddaughter, so he got Jaxon Eaves to find her - or it may have been that Eaves came to old man Brownley and claimed that he could find the girl. I can't find out which is which.
"Now it isn't ethical for me to knock another detective agency, and it isn't nice to say anything against a man who's dead, but the story goes that old man Brownley agreed to pay twenty-five thousand dollars if Eaves could find the granddaughter. Now you figure twenty-five thousand bucks and add to it the possibility of a split on whatever inheritance the girl might get, and subtract that from Eaves' code of professional ethics, and you don't need to turn to the back of the book to find the answer. I will say this much for Eaves. He apparently tried his darnedest to locate the real granddaughter. He got as far as Australia, and then ran up against a brick wall.
"Now Eaves had a twenty-five thousand dollar bonus at stake, and that's a hell of a lot of money for a detective to pass up simply because he can't produce a granddaughter. And remember that about the only way you can prove an impostor ain't the real thing is to produce the real thing. Eaves had gone far enough with his investigation to become pretty well satisfied the real thing couldn't be produced. Now, of course the old man wanted proof before he paid over the money, but he also wanted to believe the girl was genuine. He wanted to be convinced. Eaves and the girl wanted to convince him. There wasn't anyone to take the other end of the argument. That's something like having a lawyer argue his case to the judge without having any witnesses or any lawyer on the other side."
Mason said thoughtfully, "You figure Eaves arranged with the girl to split any inheritance she'd get?"
Drake said impatiently, "Of course he did. Don't think Eaves would overlook a bet like that."
"And he's dead?"
"Uh huh."
Mason said slowly, "He wouldn't have kept this all to himself, Paul. There must have been someone else in on the deal, and now that Eaves is dead, there must be someone trailing along to get Eaves' cut out of the inheritance."
Drake nodded his head and said, "That's logical, but I can't prove anything."
"And then again someone who smells a rat might be trying to cut in, just on general principals," Mason pointed out.
"That's not so likely," Drake said. "It's a good set-up for a blackmailer, if the blackmailer knew what he was doing; but old Brownley wasn't a damned fool, and neither was Jaxon Eaves. They didn't make any splash in the newspapers when the girl moved in. She just slid quietly into the house and started living there, and Brownley casually announced she was his granddaughter, and after a while, the society editors started telling every time she went to Palm Springs and what she had on."
Mason nodded his head slowly. "Is she staying at the house now, Paul?" he asked.
"No, she left the place early this morning and went to the Santa Del Rios Hotel. You know a young kid like that didn't want to be around the house after the tragedy."
"That's what she says?" Mason asked.
"That's what she says," Paul Drake affirmed.
"Of course," Mason said, "she might have gone to the hotel so she could be more available for conferences with anyone who was interested in keeping her out of the murder mix-up."
Drake sneezed, wiped his nose and said, "I'm keeping her shadowed."
Mason started pacing the floor, his forehead puckered into a frown. Once or twice he shook his head dubiously, then paused in his pacing to stand with feet spread far apart and stare moodily at the detective. "That isn't going to get us anywhere, Paul," he said. "That's the sort of net which will catch all the small fish but let all the big ones get away."
"What do you mean?" Drake asked.
"If she's there in the hotel and some man is planning her campaign, that man will either be a detective or will be someone who was associated with Eaves when Eaves was alive. In other words, he'll know all about how detectives work and what to watch out for. He'll know darn well that we're having the girl shadowed, and he'll have some scheme figured out by which that shadowing won't do us any good, at least so far as he's concerned."
"Well," Drake said irritably, "what the hell can I do?"
Mason said slowly, "Nothing. We can't get in touch with the man we want by trying to follow his back trail." He turned to Della Street and said, "Della, could you get a henna pack that would make your hair look nice and red?"
"Yes. Why?"
Mason said moodily, "You could go into the Seaton girl's apartment just as though you owned the joint, finish packing up, take her trunk and suitcase and go to some new apartment."
"Wouldn't that put her in an awful spot?" Drake asked.
Mason, speaking in the moody monotone of one who is thinking out loud, said, "Breaking and entry, grand larceny and a few other things - if they could prove a criminal intent. If they couldn't prove criminal intent, there wouldn't be so much to it."
"But what would be the advantage?" Drake inquired.
"If the chaps who are watching that house," Mason said slowly, "are hired by someone who's interested in getting Eaves' cut out of the estate, they won't know anything about Janice Seaton except what they've been able to pick up from a description, and that'll mostly be a trim figure with red hair. When they see someone who answers that description checking out of the Seaton girl's apartment, they'll act on the assumption that two and two make four and won't ask her to go down to the bank to be identified."
Harry Coulter fidgeted uneasily in his chair and said, "You can't tell just what they're after, Mason. Looking at it one way..." He became silent in mid-sentence and shrugged his shoulders.
Della Street went to the closet, took out her hat and coat. "It'll take me about two hours to get that pack and get my hair dry, Chief," she said.
Mason nodded. The other two men stared at her in apprehensive silence.