“Perhaps not... He could have closed and locked it again.”
“Well, a hundred and fifty dollars is a hundred and fifty dollars,” Mason said.
“Uh huh. But the point is, the man who bought that safe didn’t buy it just for postage stamps and chicken-feed currency.”
“Okay, what about the shooting?”
“The shooting took place in that room where the safe is,” Drake said. “There’s some chance Hocksley surprised someone trying to get in the safe. It may have been the housekeeper.”
“How do they know the safe figured in it?” Mason asked.
“There’s blood on the floor in front of it, quite a little pool. That might indicate that it was a burglar who was shot. But Hocksley is missing, and the housekeeper is missing. There’s a trail of blood drops around through several rooms in the house, and more to the point, there’s blood in Hocksley’s automobile. So you pay your money and take your choice. Either a burglar killed Hocksley and the housekeeper and carted away the bodies, or Hocksley shot a burglar, then put him in the automobile and took him away. The blood in the automobile indicates that the person who had been shot was stretched out on the back seat of the car. That brings us to what seems to be the most logical explanation.”
“What’s that?”
“The housekeeper was the one who was trying to get in the safe. Hocksley shot her, wounded her, put her in the automobile, and took her away. Hocksley was a big, strong man who could have picked up the housekeeper and carried her out to the automobile. She was a slender woman in the fifties. She couldn’t have carried him. There were some burnt matches lying on the floor in the corridor of Hocksley’s flat — about half a dozen of them.”
“How much have you found out about Hocksley?” Mason asked.