“You’re stringing me again,” Freel said.
“Think so?” Mason asked. “Well, think again. Get this, your poor dumb dope, and let it sink into that thick skull of yours. Albert Tidings was killed while he was sitting in his automobile sometime after it started to rain Monday night. He didn’t die instantly. He was found unconscious in his machine shortly after eleven o’clock. He was taken to Mrs. Tidings’ house, put into bed, and died almost instantly. There was a thirty-two caliber revolver in his hip pocket. He hadn’t fired that gun. Apparently, he’d made no effort to pull it. There was fresh lipstick on the handkerchief in his overcoat pocket.
“Tidings had learned about Peltham and his wife. If Peltham had approached the automobile in which Tidings was seated, Tidings would have pulled his gun. There wouldn’t have been any lipstick on his handkerchief. If you’ll just get the cobwebs out of your brain and try to concentrate for a minute on that lipstick, you’ll find out a lot. Who kissed him, his wife? She hated him. No, Freel, there was only one woman whom he would have kissed who would have kissed him. He kissed that woman and then got shot. Figure it out for yourself.”
Freel twisted his fingers in an agony of apprehension. His bony knuckles cracked and in the silence of the room the sound seemed distorted, magnified.
Mason stretched his arms above his head and yawned. “Oh, well,” he said, “it’s all in the game. We live our little lives and they seem important to us. Ho-hum… Guess I must be getting sleepy. The state will take your name away and give you a number. Then they’ll present you with a nice suit of clothes, slide you into the lethal gas chamber, and leave you for fifteen minutes. When you come out, you’ll have a tag pinned on the lapel of your coat and be delivered to the undertaker as part of the day’s routine. I suppose it seems important to us, Freel, but it really doesn’t make much difference. We’re just cogs in a machine.”
Freel licked his lips, tried twice to swallow. He said nothing.
“Well,” Mason said, “God knows you’re responsible for what happened, Freel. You know why Tidings didn’t shoot his gun along at the last. He shot the ammunition you’d given him instead. You’re really responsible for what happened and it is only fair you should pay the price.”
Mason looked at his watch, then brought his eyes to hard focus on Freel. “Three minutes from now,” he said, “I’m going to walk out of this room. When I close the door, it’ll be too late for you to do anything to save that neck of yours. I’m your only hope, Freel.”
Freel leaned forward and said, in the manner of one who is unduly anxious to impress his audience, “You can’t pin it on me, Mason, you can’t do it. I tell you I’m in the clear.”
Mason laughed. “In the clear… you… that’s a hot one. You damn fool, you have admitted that you were on the ground when the crime was committed.”