"
"Wait a minute," Mason interposed, "didn't Peter Laxter take care of his expenses in that automobile accident?"
"No, but don't jump at conclusions on account of it. Ashton told one of his friends that Laxter would take care of him all right in the long run, but Laxter thought he'd stand a better chance recovering damages if he could show that the money for the doctors and hospital bills had been paid out of his own savings."
"Go ahead," Mason said. "You're leading up to something. What is it?"
"Shortly before the house burned, Laxter started cashing in. I can't find how much, but it was plenty. Three days before the house burned down, Ashton rented two largesize safety deposit boxes. The boxes were rented by Charles Ashton and in his name, but he told the clerk in charge that he had a halfbrother who was to be given access to the boxes at any time. The clerk told him his halfbrother would have to come in and register for signature. Ashton said the halfbrother was sick in bed and couldn't move, but couldn't he take out a card and have the halfbrother sign. He said he'd guarantee the signature, indemnify the bank against any claim, and all that sort of stuff. The bank gave him a card for his halfbrother's signature. Ashton went out and came back in an hour or so with the signature on the card."
"What was the name?"
"Clammert—Watson Clammert."
"Who's Clammert?" Mason asked. "Is it a phony?"
"No," Drake said, "he's probably Ashton's halfbrother. That is, he was; he's dead now. He wasn't registered in the city directory, but I took a chance, inquired at the motor vehicle department and found Clammert had a driving license. I got the address, chased him down and found that Watson Clammert had died within twentyfour hours after affixing his signature to that card."
"Anything fishy about the death?" Mason asked.
"Absolutely nothing. He died of natural causes. He died in a hospital. Nurses were in constant attendance, but—and here's the phony part—he'd been in a coma for days prior to his death. He hadn't regained consciousness."
"Then how the devil," Mason asked, "could he have signed his name on that card?"
Drake said tonelessly, "I'll bite, how could he?"
"What else about him?" Mason asked.
"Apparently he and Ashton are chips off the same block. Ashton went for years without seeing him or speaking to him. It wasn't until Ashton heard that Clammert was dying in the charity ward of a hospital that he came to help him out."
"How did you get this stuff?" Mason asked.
"Ashton talked quite a bit to one of the nurses. She got a kick out of him. He was so bitterly vindictive and yet so bighearted. He'd heard Clammert was sick and broke, so he hobbled around, making a canvass of the hospitals until he found Clammert lying unconscious and near death. He dug down in his pocket and did everything he could, hired specialists, got special nurses and haunted the bedside. He left instructions with the nurse to see that Clammert had everything money could buy. Of course, the nurse knew he was dying and the doctors knew it, but, naturally, they kidded Ashton along, telling him there was perhaps one chance in a million, and Ashton told them to take that chance.
"But just to show you what a cantankerous cuss you've got for a client, he stipulated that when Clammert recovered consciousness, he was never to know who his benefactor had been. Ashton told the nurses they quarreled years ago and hadn't seen each other since—and what do you think they quarreled about?"
Mason said irritably, "I'll bite, Little Peter Rabbit, what did Ruddy the Lame Fox and Goofy the Sleeping Beauty quarrel about?"
The detective grinned and said, "A cat."
"A cat?" Mason exclaimed.
"That's right—a cat by the name of Clinker—it was just a kitten then."
"Oh, hell," Mason said disgustedly.
"As near as I can figure out," Drake went on, "from the time Ashton discovered his halfbrother until Clammert died a couple of days later, Ashton had spent something like five hundred dollars in hospital and doctors' bills. He paid everything out in cash. The nurse said he had a big sheaf of bills he carried in his wallet. Now, then, where the hell did Charles Ashton get that money?"
Mason made a grimace. "Shucks, Paul, I didn't want you to dig up facts that would put my client in a spot; I wanted you to dig up something that would put Sam Laxter in a spot."
"Well," Drake remarked in his dry, expressionless voice, "they're some of the pieces in the puzzle picture. I'm hired to get the pieces; you're hired to put them together. If they're going to make the wrong kind of picture when they're put together, you can always lose some of the pieces so no one else can find them."
Mason chuckled, then said thoughtfully, "Why the devil did Ashton want it so Clammert could go to that safety deposit box?"
"Well, the only thing I could think of," Drake said, "was that if Clammert got well Ashton intended to give him money but didn't intend to have any personal contact, so he arranged to give Clammert a key to a safety deposit box into which he'd put money from time to time and Clammert could take it out."
"That doesn't make sense," Mason said, "because Clammert would have to sign his name to get access to the box and the signature that Ashton turned in as being that of Clammert couldn't have been made by Clammert because Clammert was unconscious."
"Okay," Drake said, "you win. That's what I meant when I said the facts were the pieces in the puzzle. I get them and you put them together."
"Did anyone using Clammert's name ever go to the safety deposit boxes?" Mason asked.
"No, Clammert's never been near the box. Ashton went to it several times. He went to it yesterday, and he went to it today. While the clerks didn't want to talk about it, I gathered the impression they thought Ashton had pulled out a wad of dough from those safety boxes either yesterday or today, or both."
"How do they know what a man takes out?"
"Ordinarily they don't, but one of the clerks saw Ashton stuffing currency into a satchel."
Perry Mason laughed. "In most cases," he said, "we can't find out any facts at all until after we've gone through a lot of preliminary work. In this case they pour into our laps."
"Did your client tell you about the Koltsdorf diamonds?" Drake wanted to know.
"Gosh," Mason remarked, "I feel like the interlocutor at a minstrel show. No, Mr. Drake, Mr. Ashton did not tell me about the Koltsdorf diamonds. What about the Koltsdorf diamonds?… Now, Paul, that's your cue to tell me about the Koltsdorf diamonds."
The detective chuckled. "The Koltsdorf diamonds are about the only jewels Peter Laxter ever fell for. Lord knows how he came by them.