Mason had had dinner served in his room. As waiters cleared away the tables, the lawyer grinned across at Della Street. “Don’t ever do anything like that again, Della,” he said. “I was frantic with worry.”
“I’ll say he was,” Paul Drake chimed in. “He snapped my head off every time I spoke to him.”
“I’m sorry, Chief, but I was afraid the newspaper reporters would exaggerate it and I knew everyone would think that I was holding something back.”
She motioned to the late edition of an evening newspaper and said, “You can see what they’ve done. Notice this headline:
‘LAWYER’S SECRETARY CLAIMS SHE CANNOT IDENTIFY MURDERESS.’
Mason said, “I know. But anything is better than that suspense. Why didn’t you tell me before, Della?”
“I tried to, Chief. I dashed all over the ship, trying to hunt you up. Then, when I found you, you’d already agreed to see Mrs. Newberry through. Honestly, Chief, I don’t know whether she was the one who pushed him overboard or not. I couldn’t tell at the time and I can’t tell now. But I did realize how easy it would be for people to say I was suppressing evidence, so I just made up my mind I’d say nothing about it to anyone.
“Then, when I heard Paul tell you that the district attorney was on the trail of the witness who had telephoned the bridge and that the telephone operator claimed she could recognize the voice... well, I felt certain that sooner or later they’d suspect me, and then the newspapers would make a great fuss over it. So I thought it would be best to lie low for a few days until the preliminary was over.”
Drake said solicitously, “Where does that leave the case, Perry? Aren’t you in a spot?”
Mason said, “I guess so, but I’ve been in spots before. When will you get a report on that postmortem, Paul?”