“How about Jimmy Driscoll?” Della asked.
“Driscoll,” he said, “or Rodney Cuff, his lawyer, or both, evidently had some inkling of what was going on. I think Jimmy tried to implicate Rita in order to free himself and Rosalind, so the two of them could work to bring about a solution of the case. Unfortunately, I won’t have time to conduct any postmortems on the clues with Rodney Cuff. However, that young man apparently has considerable on the ball. He figured out just about what had happened all the way along the line.”
“Then,” Della said, “Weyman and Trader must have stolen a car, taken Jason Braun’s body out into the Santa Monica Mountains, wrecked the car, and left the body in such a manner that the features were practically unrecognizable. Is that right?”
“That’s right,” he said, “only I think what happened to Braun’s features took place in the covered van on the road to the hospital. It isn’t a nice thing to think about.”
They drove in silence for a couple of miles. Then Della Street said, “Why did you want Sergeant Holcomb to get into that baggage?”
“Because,” he said, “I figured we needed proof. I didn’t want to start exposing Weyman until I had something definite. Weyman was so clever he acted the part of a surly ox and fooled me. When I realized the truth, I thought he’d dodge the subpoena and it would be necessary for me to make some accusations in open court. You see, Weyman had absolutely nothing to fear from any person in the world except one man. That man was Dr. James Wallace. Knowing that Dr. Wallace would probably be a witness at the inquest on Jason Braun’s body, I couldn’t believe that Weyman would have the audacity to show up. But that’s where Weyman was more clever than I gave him credit for. You see, if he’d refused to obey the subpoena, that would have been an incriminating circumstance in itself. So Weyman outsmarted everyone by claiming that his face had become infected, and bandaging it in such a way that no one could recognize him.
“I thought, of course, that after Holcomb had once got on the trail, he’d shake down Trader and Rosa Hendrix until he got all the dope. But, by that time, our ship would’ve sailed. If Weyman showed up at the autopsy, I wanted to make a spectacular, whirlwind finish. I explained to Scanlon generally what I was working on, and Scanlon agreed to give me a free hand, within reasonable limits.”
“Why didn’t you go to Holcomb and tell him?” she asked.
Mason chuckled and said, “In the first place, Holcomb would have tried to grab all the credit, and, in the second place, he wouldn’t have co-operated. I could never have got Mm to search the luggage of Diana Morgan if it hadn’t been for making him think that baggage contained stuff which would implicate you and me.”
“How did you happen to suspect Weyman as the guilty party, Chief?”