The Case of the Caretakers Cat   ::   Гарднер Эрл Стенли

"Well," Mason told her, "we'll think it over andgive you a buzz, if we get any new ideas. In the meantime, you can let us know what your friend advises you to do. If you decide to tell the authorities, let us know."

She nodded slowly. "Where can I reach you?"

Mason took Drake's arm and, by a gentle pressure, pushed him toward the door. "We'll call you back later on tonight. Simply swell of you to have talked with us," he told her.

"It wasn't an ordeal at all," she said, smiling. "I was glad to tell you all I knew."

In the corridor, the detective looked at the lawyer.

"Well," Mason said, chuckling, "the cat stays."

"So I gathered," Drake observed. "But I don't see just how you're going to play your cards."

Mason led the detective to the end of the corridor, lowered his voice almost to a whisper.

"When next I see my esteemed contemporary, Nat Shuster, I'll ask him to read Section 258 of the Probate Code, which provides, in effect, that no person convicted of murdering a decedent shall be entitled to succeed to any portion of the estate, but the portion that he would be entitled to shall go to the other heirs."

"Let's see if we figure the mechanics of this thing the same way," Drake said.

"Sure we do," Mason answered. "It's dead open and shut. The hotair gas furnace had a lot of pipes leading to different rooms in the house. Each of those pipes had a damper, so that heat could be shut off from the rooms which weren't in use. Sam Laxter committed murder by a very simple process. He drove his car into the garage, clamped flexible tubing to his exhaust pipe, tapped a hole in the pipe which sent hot air to Peter Laxter's bedroom, and closed the damper back of the place where he'd brought the tubing into the pipe. Then he sat in his car, running the motor. Deadly monoxide gas from the automobile exhaust went through the flexible tube into the heating pipe, and was carried into Peter Laxter's bedroom.

"Notice the diabolical cleverness of the thing: He had only to let his motor run in order to bring about a painless death in a room many feet removed from the motor behind locked doors. Then he set fire to the house. Carbon monoxide is normally found in the blood of persons who have expired in burning buildings. It was a beautiful case of murder, and apparently the only witness is this redheaded nurse who caught him in the act, and the only reason she's alive today is that Sam Laxter thinks she doesn't realize the significance of what she saw. Or perhaps he doesn't know she saw the tube leading from the exhaust to the pipe.