The Case of the Fenced-In Woman by Erle Stanley Gardner Page B

Mason.
    "Would you mind placing a chair next to the barbed wire on your side, Mrs. Carson? I'll place a chair on this side.. right on the tile border of the pool will be all right… Thank you very much. In that way I can make an inspection without going all the way around."
    Eden brought out a straight – backed chair which he placed on his side of the fence. Mrs. Carson brought out a similar chair.
    Climbing to one chair and then stepping over the taut wire to the other chair, Tragg let himself down on the other side of the fence and completed his inspection of the pool.
    "I don't seem to find a thing," he said, his manner thoughtful.
    Mason pointed to the cement steps leading up from the shallow end of the pool. "Did you feel all around those, Lieutenant?"
    "I felt all around those steps."
    "And in back of the steps? From here it looks to me as though the first cement step isn't right up against the swimming pool."
    "Well, what about it?" Tragg asked.
    "Under ordinary swimming – pool construction," Mason said, "I thought-"
    "Okay, I get it," Tragg said impatiently.
    The police lieutenant got down on his knees again, said, "I'll probably have worn out the knees on these pants by the time I get done with this thing. I… You're right, Mason! There's a crack between the upper step and the back of the swimming pool. I can get my fingers in it. But that doesn't mean anything."
    "No?" Mason asked.
    "Wait a minute. Wait a minute," Tragg said. "There's a ring here."
    "What sort of a ring?"
    "A metal ring and it's on a cord. I'm going to pull it, Mason, and…"
    Tragg braced himself with his left hand, pulled with his right.
    "This thing is moving," Tragg said. "It's on a cable. It… Well, what do you know, what do you know?"
    Some ten feet back from the swimming pool a tile raised on a hinge, disclosing a square receptacle.
    Tragg let go of the ring, jumped to his feet.
    "So that's it," he said, "a concealed strongbox. Let's see what's in it."
    "You stay here," Mason told Eden, then climbed up on the chair and over the wire fence to Mrs. Carson's side of the house. He hurried over to join Tragg. They looked down into a steel – lined recess that was nearly eighteen inches square and some two feet deep.
    "Not a darn thing in it," Tragg said.
    Vivian Carson, standing behind them looking down into the dark interior, asked, "What in the world is all this?"
    Tragg looked up. "Suppose you tell us, Mrs. Carson."
    She shook her head. "It's all news to me."
    Tragg's brows knitted thoughtfully.
    "Carson built this house, Mason?" he asked.
    "That's my understanding."
    "And the swimming pool?"
    "The whole house, swimming pool, patio and everything."
    Vivian Carson said, "So that's it! That's where he was concealing his money."
    "What money?" Tragg asked.
    "He jockeyed things around so that it was impossible to get any kind of a property accounting out of him," she said breathlessly. "Judge Goodwin knew that my ex – husband had been concealing assets and he was trying to force him to disclose them. He examined him at great length about whether he had any savings accounts, any safety deposit boxes, anything that… That's what he was doing when he constructed this house; he made this secret safe and he put cash and securities in here."
    Tragg looked at her thoughtfully. "You're jumping to a lot of conclusions just because there's an empty hole here."
    "All right," she said crisply, "what are your conclusions, Lieutenant?"
    Tragg grinned. "I collect evidence. We arrive at conclusions after we get the evidence. If we jumped to conclusions and then tried to get the evidence to support those conclusions, we'd be in trouble all the time."
    Mason said, "I think Mrs. Carson is making a perfectly obvious inference, Lieutenant."
    "I suppose so," Tragg said, "but I always get suspicious of people who jump to too many conclusions too fast, even if they are logical. Is this the first time you ever saw this receptacle here, Mrs.