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Other golfers came up.
"Well," Mason said to the operative, "we may as well go to work."
The man plugged earphones in his ears, set the electrical dials so they were in proper balance, then started moving slowly along through the taller grass to the sides of the teeing-off place.
Within a matter of moments, fifty spectators had formed in a ring.
On the tee someone said, "It's your honors."
"To hell with the golf," the man said. "This is a lot more exciting. I'll concede every hole from here on in and pay off at that price. Let's see what's happening."
Word passed like wildfire around the links. Soon the manager of the club came hurrying out to find out what was going on.
At first he was frowningly uncompromising. Then as he saw the interest of the golfers, he became mollified and, after a few moments, hurried toward the clubhouse.
Drake said in an undertone to Perry Mason, "He's suddenly become publicity conscious, Perry. He's headed for a telephone to call the press."
"Well," Mason said in an equally low tone, "I'm certain nothing that we said could have prompted that idea."
"Moreover," Drake added, "he's about thirty minutes too late."
Mason gave the detective a searching look. "Your ethics are showing, Paul."
"It's all right," Drake said. "If my man should find anything, we'd have to tell the police about it, but there's nothing in the code of ethics which says I can't tell the press where I'm searching."
"As a lawyer," Mason said, "I couldn't use publicity in any way. lt would be unethical."
Drake gri
The man with the metal detector moved slowly along, weaving the flat pan back and forth just over the surface of the grass back toward the green on the sixth hole, then down along the edge of a sand trap into the rough; back to the sand trap again, then down into the rough.
Suddenly he said, "Hey, I've got something!"
"Well, let's see what it is," Mason said.
The man held the pan of the device directly over the spot.
Drake, down on his hands and knees, felt with exploring fingertips in the grass. "I've got it," he said, and came up with an empty brass cartridge case.
Mason said jubilantly, "Drive a peg of some sort in the ground at the exact place where that was found, Paul. Let's mark it."
Drake took a small metal surveyor's stake from the place where he had been carrying it in his belt and pushed it into the ground, then tied a bright red ribbon in the loop.
"Camera?" Mason asked.
Della Street handed Mason a camera.
The lawyer circled the place, taking a dozen pictures from all different angles, showing the location with reference to all the fixed landmarks.
Then the lawyer carefully dropped the cartridge case into a pocket formed in a pocket handkerchief. Drake scratched the case. Mason examined it with a pocket magnifier.
The crowd of golfers, pushing closer, were almost breathing down the necks of the triumphant searchers.
"Just what does this mean?" one of the golfers asked.
Mason said, "It means that we now have corroboration- Well, I hadn't better discuss it here."
The lawyer looked up with a smile that was all but cherubic in its i
Drake touched Mason's arm. "Let's go where we can talk," he said.
Mason nodded, took Paul Drake's arm and smiled affably at the circle of golfers.
"If you'll pardon us just for a minute," he said, "we have a matter to discuss."
Mason led Drake through the circle which opened for them and over toward the rough.
"Well?" Mason asked.
Drake said, "Look, Perry, it's not up to me to tell you how to try a lawsuit, but you're going to get a terrific amount of publicity out of this."
"Well?" Mason asked.
"And it's going to backfire," Drake said. "If we had found a cartridge that had been taken from a revolver and thrown away, we'd have had something; but this is a shell that has been ejected from an automatic-a thirty-two-caliber automatic at that-and the murder gun is a thirty-eight-caliber snub-nosed Smith and Wesson revolver."
"And so?" Mason asked.
"So," Drake said, "no matter how you look at it, the thing can't be evidence."
"What do you mean it can't be evidence?" Mason said. "It was here. It's an expended cartridge."
"But there weren't two guns."
"How do you know there weren't?" Mason asked.
"Well, of course, we don't know, but we can surmise."
"Leave the surmising for the district attorney," Mason said. "You and I have just discovered a most important piece of evidence."
"Well, of course, it could be made to fit into your theory," Drake said, "but it would take a lot of highpressure salesmanship to convince the jury that it meant anything."
"After all," Mason told him, "a lawyer is, or should be, an expert in the field of high-pressure salesmanship. Come on, let's get back to complete the search."
"What do you mean, complete the search?"
"Well," Mason said, "we wouldn't want to call it off when the search was incomplete."
"How much more do you intend to search?"
"Well, quite a bit," Mason said. "We want to be sure there's nothing else here."
"I get you,"Drake said, wearily. "You're going to stall along until the newspapers start covering what we're doing."
Mason's eyes became wide. "Why, Paul Drake, how you talk," he said. "We're doing nothing of the sort. We're simply completing the search."
Drake said suddenly, "Look here, Perry, did you drop that cartridge case so my man could find it?"
"Of course not."
"Did Della?"
"You'll have to ask her."
"The district attorney will claim you planted it either in advance or while we were searching."
"Can he prove it?" Mason asked.
"Good Lord, I hope not!"
"So do I," Mason said. "Come on, Paul, let's get back to work."
The circle of interested spectators opened for the lawyer and the detective. Mason said to the operative, "All right, I think we've found what we were looking for, but let's just make sure there's nothing else here. Let's complete the search."
Slowly, a step at a time, they moved around the golf course until Drake nudged Mason's arm.
The lawyer looked up to see a newspaper reporter and a photographer with a camera and flashgun hurrying toward them.
"Keep right on with your search," Mason told the operative with the metal detector, "although I think we've just about covered the ground here. I think we have everything we need."
The reporter hurried up, pushed his way through the circle of spectators, said to Mason, "What's going on here, Mr. Mason?"
Mason frowned as though the interruption were unwelcome. "We're looking for evidence," he said shortly.
"What sort of evidence?"
Mason thought for a long moment, then grudgingly admitted, "Well, as you can see for yourself, it's metallic evidence."
Someone in the crowd said, "They've already found one empty cartridge case."
"An empty cartridge case?" the reporter asked.
Mason nodded.
"May we see it?"
Mason said, "We're trying to preserve it as intact as possible."
He took a handkerchief from his pocket, carefully unfolded it and showed the reporter the cartridge case nesting in the cloth. "Don't touch it," he warned. "I doubt if anyone can find any fingerprints on it, but we certainly don't want the evidence contaminated."
The reporter pulled out some folded newsprint from his pocket, took a soft, 6-B pencil and started scribbling.
The photographer fed flashbulbs into the gun on his camera. He shot two closeup pictures of the cartridge, then backed away and took two pictures of the group, carefully including Delia Street.