“You didn’t find out any more than that?”
“No, I didn’t, Perry. I was just about that far in the interview when the trouble started, and I figured it was a good plan to get out.”
“Well,” Mason told him, “let’s drive to a phone, put in a call for the office and see what’s new. There’s nothing we can do here while the homicide squad are making nuisances of themselves.”
“Take both cars?” Drake asked.
Perry Mason nodded. “Let’s clear out of the neighborhood,” he said, reaching for the car door. “I’ll meet you in the drug store on the boulevard.”
By the time the lawyer arrived at the drug store, Drake was at the telephone. He scribbled something in his notebook and said, “Okay, hold the line a minute.”
“I have a report on that accident stuff. Do you want it?” he asked Mason.
“Go ahead. Shoot,” the lawyer told him.
“The Trader’s Transfer Company, which owns the van, is a one-man concern. Harry Trader’s the big shot. He was driving the van himself, delivering some stuff to Walter Prescott’s garage. Prescott had given him a key. Trader says he was coming down the Alsace Avenue and was just getting ready to turn into Fourteenth Street when this chap, Packard, driving a light coupe, tried to pass him on the right without sounding the horn. Trader says he had to swing fairly wide to get the big van around the comer, and when he made the turn, the coupe was between the van and the curb, and it was just too bad for the coupe. Packard was unconscious, and Trader delivered him to the Good Samaritan Hospital. He stuck around there until the doctor told him Packard was okay, and could leave under his own power. He had a sock on the side of his head which had put him out. He was punch-groggy for a while after he came to. Trader says it was all Packard’s fault, but he’s fully covered by insurance and isn’t going to worry about it very much. He said he was frightened at first because he thought the man was seriously injured, but that any damn fool who tries to pass a big moving van on the right, without using the horn and without watching the road, is a candidate for the boobyhatch. Trader says that after Packard recovered consciousness at the hospital, he admitted it was all his fault, said he wasn’t watching the street, but was staring at something he’d seen in a window. First thing he knew, he saw this big van on his left, and then he struck it, just as Trader was making a right turn.”
“Something he saw in a window?” Mason asked.