Mason nodded. “Belle Newberry’s coming up,” he said. “They let her out, eh?”
“Yes. It was a bonehead move, holding her, in the first place. They wanted to shake information out of her about that money. They’re more interested in the eighteen thousand than they are in anything else.”
Mason started pacing the floor. “The thing gets me, Paul,” he said. “I should have come back here earlier in the day. To think that while we were chasing around, running down clues, Della may have been lying in a hospital somewhere, seriously hurt.”
“She had her purse with her, didn’t she?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“How about calling your Los Angeles office, Perry? If anything had happened to her, they’d have found her Los Angeles address, and—”
“Good idea,” Mason said. He jerked the receiver from the hook and told the operator to rush through a call to his Los Angeles office. Once more, he resumed pacing the floor.
The phone rang. Drake picked it up, said, “Hello,” listened for several seconds, said, “All right, throw out a dragnet. Cover everything.”
He hung up the telephone and said, “No ambulance report on her, Perry. Nothing in the emergency hospital. No report at the police desk.”
“What else could have happened,” Mason asked, “if it wasn’t an automobile accident?”