"In other words, you were pretty well down to the beach?"

"That's right."

"How many people in the car, one or two?"

"One I think. And I think the car was a Cadillac, but I can't be positive."

Mason said slowly, "Check up on the cars out at Brownley's place, Paul. See if anyone has a car that answers this description. Also, while you're about it, see if you can find out from the servants if there was any unusual activity around the house after Brownley left and…"

"Say, wait a minute," Harry interrupted, his forehead creased in a frown, "maybe I know more than I thought I did." Mason raised inquiring eyebrows. "Down by the yacht club," Coulter said, "there were some cars parked. They looked as though they'd been there for ages. You know the way those birds do when they are out on a cruise. They run their cars off to the side of the road in that parking place, lock them up and leave them. There are some garages down there but most of the fellows…"

"Yes, I know," Mason interrupted, "what about it?"

"Well," Coulter said, "when I was running around trying to pick up Brownley's trail down by the place where he keeps the yacht, there were four or five cars parked out in the rain. I was pretty sore at myself for letting Brownley get away from me and I looked 'em over-not with the idea of remembering the cars-just to see if Brownley's car was one of them. When I saw it wasn't, I kept on going. But, come to think of it, one of those cars was a big yellow coupe, a Cadillac, I think. Now that may have been the car that passed me. I couldn't have told, of course, because it was raining cats and dogs when the car went past. I saw headlights in my rear-view mirror, then there was a big wave of water, and a car went past with a rush. Then all I could see was a tail light-you know how it is when a car passes you on a rainy night."

As Mason nodded, Paul Drake sneezed again into his handkerchief and said, "That's the first sneeze I've timed right since I caught this damn cold."

"You couldn't have caught the cold down there this morning," Mason pointed out. "It wouldn't have developed that soon."

"Yeah, I know," Drake said. "Probably I haven't got any cold. You're like the guys who stroll around the decks of steamers, smoking pipes and telling the green-faced passengers there ain't any such thing as seasickness-that it's all in the imagination. Ordinarily I'd hate to do this to you, Perry, but since you've been so damned unsympathetic, it's going to be a pleasure. You can play around with all the yellow coupes you want to, but when you get done, you'll find you're no place. This is one case where the police have got your client sewed up tight, and if you ain't careful they'll have you sewed up, too."

"What do you mean?" Mason asked.

"Just what I say. The police haven't been entirely asleep at the switch, and you left something of a back-trail yourself. The police can prove Brownley told you he was going to make a will which would put your client on the skids. They can trace you to a Western Union office where you sent a wireless to the Monterey and used a pay station telephone. They can prove you called Stella Kenwood's apartment where Julia Branner was staying.

"Now, after you telephoned Julia, she got a cab driver to take a letter to old man Brownley. Brownley read the letter and made some crack about having to go to the beach to get Oscar's watch back. He was excited as the devil."

"Did the cab driver give the letter to Brownley?" Mason asked.

"Not to the old man. He gave it to the grandson, and the grandson took it up. Old Brownley was asleep."

"Philip saw him read the letter?"

"That's right, and he said something to Philip about getting a watch back from Julia. Now the police figure she lured him down to the beach, climbed on the running board and gave him the works with a.32 automatic. She dropped the gun and beat it. An accomplice who was in on the play climbed into the car and drove it down to a pier, near which he had another car parked. He put the car in low gear, stood on the running board, opened the throttle, and jumped off. The car went into the drink."

"And I believe the car was still in low gear when they pulled it up, wasn't it?" Mason asked.

Drake, wiping his nose with his handkerchief, gave a muffled "Uh huh."

"And it's her gun," Coulter said. "She was carrying it under a permit issued in Salt Lake City."

Drake, sniffling, said, "What's more, they've got her fingerprint on the car window on the left-hand side. You see, Brownley was driving with the window rolled up because it was raining. When Julia came out, he rolled the window down to talk to her, but he didn't roll it all the way down. She stood on the running board, and hooked her fingers over the window and left some perfectly swell fingerprints on the inside of the glass. The cops got the car raised up before the water had eliminated the fingerprints."

Mason frowned. "Any chance she could have left her fingerprints on the car before Brownley started for the beach?"

"Not one chance in ten million," Drake said. "Now that's the gloomy side, Perry. Here's a silver lining to the cloud: There's a darn good chance this granddaughter who's living with Brownley is a phoney."

"Have you got any facts?" Mason asked.

"Of course I've got facts," Drake said irritably. "I don't know what they amount to, but they're facts. After Oscar's death the old man wanted to locate his granddaughter, so he got Jaxon Eaves to find her-or it may have been that Eaves came to old man Brownley and claimed that he could find the girl. I can't find out which is which.

"Now it isn't ethical for me to knock another detective agency, and it isn't nice to say anything against a man who's dead, but the story goes that old man Brownley agreed to pay twenty-five thousand dollars if Eaves could find the granddaughter. Now you figure twenty-five thousand bucks and add to it the possibility of a split on whatever inheritance the girl might get, and subtract that from Eaves' code of professional ethics, and you don't need to turn to the back of the book to find the answer. I will say this much for Eaves. He apparently tried his darnedest to locate the real granddaughter. He got as far as Australia, and then ran up against a brick wall.

"Now Eaves had a twenty-five thousand dollar bonus at stake, and that's a hell of a lot of money for a detective to pass up simply because he can't produce a granddaughter. And remember that about the only way you can prove an impostor ain't the real thing is to produce the real thing. Eaves had gone far enough with his investigation to become pretty well satisfied the real thing couldn't be produced. Now, of course the old man wanted proof before he paid over the money, but he also wanted to believe the girl was genuine. He wanted to be convinced. Eaves and the girl wanted to convince him. There wasn't anyone to take the other end of the argument. That's something like having a lawyer argue his case to the judge without having any witnesses or any lawyer on the other side."

Mason said thoughtfully, "You figure Eaves arranged with the girl to split any inheritance she'd get?"

Drake said impatiently, "Of course he did. Don't think Eaves would overlook a bet like that."

"And he's dead?"

"Uh huh."

Mason said slowly, "He wouldn't have kept this all to himself, Paul. There must have been someone else in on the deal, and now that Eaves is dead, there must be someone trailing along to get Eaves' cut out of the inheritance."

Drake nodded his head and said, "That's logical, but I can't prove anything."

"And then again someone who smells a rat might be trying to cut in, just on general principals," Mason pointed out.

"That's not so likely," Drake said. "It's a good set-up for a blackmailer, if the blackmailer knew what he was doing; but old Brownley wasn't a damned fool, and neither was Jaxon Eaves. They didn't make any splash in the newspapers when the girl moved in. She just slid quietly into the house and started living there, and Brownley casually announced she was his granddaughter, and after a while, the society editors started telling every time she went to Palm Springs and what she had on."