Perry Mason Mysteries - 25

The Case of the Black-Eyed Blond

By

Erle Stanley Gardner

Chapter 1

PERRY MASON drew his secretary to one side. "A blonde with a black eye, Della, is intriguing to say the least-unless she's the type who would have been in a brawl. Is she?"

"Definitely not but she's frightened to death about something. I can't quite make her out. Her voice is unusual- almost as though it had been trained."

"And you've put her in the law library?"

"Yes. She's waiting there."

"How's she dressed?"

"Black shoes, no stockings, a fur coat, and I caught a glimpse of something under the fur coat that I think may be a black house coat, or a robe of some sort, and I wouldn't be too surprised if that was all she had on."

"And a black eye?"

"A beauty."

"Right or left?"

"Right. She has very light blonde hair, rather large eyes that are bluish green, and long lashes. She could be very beautiful with the proper make-up and without the shiner. I'd place her at around twenty-six. You'd guess her age as twenty- one."

"What's her name?"

"Diana Regis."

"Sounds phony."

"She insists it's her real name. She's terribly excited and nervous. Altogether, I'd say she was pretty much unstrung."

"Been crying?"

"I don't think she has. She seems nervous and frightened, but isn't doing any weeping. She's a girl who would use her head in an emergency and not give way to tears."

"That," Mason said, "settles it. We're going to see her, at least long enough to find out what it's all about. Bring her in, Della."

He opened the door of the law library.

The blonde young woman who jumped to her feet was some five feet three inches tall and weighed about one

hundred and twelve pounds. Her left hand clasped her coat, holding it tightly around her. The discoloration of her right eye contrasted oddly with her light blonde hair which swept down in waves to her shoulders. She wore no hat.

"Miss Regis?" Mason asked, his voice showing his interest. "Won't you be seated? Della, you can sit over there. I'll sit here. My secretary keeps notes on what my clients have to say, Miss Regis I trust you won't mind. What was it you wished to see me about?"

Mason's visitor began talking almost before Della Street had opened her shorthand notebook. Her words were rapid, her voice vibrant with emotion. But there was that in the manner of her articulation which indicated a type of young woman with whom one would hardly associate black-eyes.

"Mr. Mason, I'm in a mess, and I'm fighting mad. I've been thinking things over for hours—ever since midnight in fact, and I've decided to do something about-well, about this," and she gently touched her discolored eye.

"Then why didn't you come sooner?" Mason asked curiously.

"I didn't have any clothes."

Mason raised his eyebrows.

Her nervous laugh was merely a mannerism, not any indication of mirth. "If you'll listen to me," she said, "I'd like to begin at the beginning and tell you about it."

"I take it," Mason said, his voice showing no more interest than courtesy demanded, "your husband is holding your clothes and there's been the usual family fight. He accused you falsely of infidelity, and "

"No, Mr. Mason. It isn't that at all. I'm divorced—have been single for more than three years."

"Done some radio work?" Mason asked.

"Yes. How did you know?"

"Your voice."

"Oh, I see."

"Who has your clothes?"

"The person for whom I was working."

"Indeed. Isn't that rather unusual?"

"The whole thing is unusual."

"In that case," Mason said, flashing a quick glance at Della Street to make certain she was ready to take notes, "I want to hear the story from the beginning. Tell me something about yourself first."

"I'll hit the high spots," Diana Regis said. "I never knew my father. My mother died when I was twelve. I decided that an orphan without money could get ahead in the world if she had the determination to improve herself. I did everything I could to improve myself. I only had a grammar school education, but I studied whenever I had a chance—night school, correspondence courses, week ends in a public library. I learned shorthand, typing became a secretary, then an actress on the radio. Then I had some trouble with a director and was about to be out of a job.

"Then a fan letter came in. A man by the name of Jason Bartsler liked my voice, wanted to know if I would be interested in a position that would pay me very good money with very easy work."

"What did you do?" Mason asked.

She made a little grimace and said, "We get lots of those letters, not always couched in the same language, but always with the same idea back of them. I didn't pay any attention to it."

"Then what?"

"Then I got another letter. Then Mr. Bartsler called me on the telephone at the studio. He had a very nice voice. He told me he was having trouble with his eyes that he had always been an omnivorous reader that now he needed someone to read to him that he'd been listening to the way I handled my scripts and not only liked my voice, but was satisfied I had a great deal of intelligence. Well, to make a long story short, I went to work for him and found him a very suave, very polished gentleman."

"What," Mason asked, "is his business?"

"Mining. He's about fifty-five or fifty-six, a man who likes the good things of life, but there's nothing heavy and nothing gross about him. He's ... well, definitely interesting."

Mason merely nodded.

"He claims that the great American trouble is that we are too credulous. He says our national trait is to believe everything that's dished out to us and then, when the gilt paint wears off the gold brick, to blame everyone except ourselves. His reading is the most peculiar I have ever encountered."

"What is it?" Mason asked, interested.

"He carefully selects articles by the best writers in the best periodicals and has me read them to him." "What's peculiar about that?" Mason asked.

"He selects articles from four to twenty years old."

"I don't get it."

"You wouldn't, unless you'd read the articles. For instance, before the war there were articles on just how we could take care of the Jap Navy any Thursday morning before breakfast. And when prohibition came in, there were articles about how, no matter what happened, it would never be possible to get the prohibition amendment repealed—and articles about economics and finances, people who claimed a national debt of thirty billion dollars would bankrupt the nation that fifty billion would bring national chaos. All of them marvelously well written articles, supported by logic that seemed absolutely irrefutable at the time. They were written by some of the best writers in the country."

Mason's eyes were quizzical as he glanced at Della Street, then back at Diana Regis.

"What's the idea? Why should a man waste his time reading outdated, outmoded stuff. After all, an article writer isn't a prophet. He merely marshals evidence and makes a logical interpretation."

Diana Regis laughed nervously. "I'm afraid I'm not explaining it very well, but that is the way Mr. Bartsler keeps his mind in what he calls proper perspective. He claims that the only way you can keep from swallowing the stuff that is handed out to you today, couched in the semblance of irrefutable logic, is to read the fallacies of yesterday, couched in the same irrefutable Ionic."

"Well," Mason admitted, smiling, "he's got something there—if a person wants to go to that extent to cultivate skepticism."

"He does," she said. "He claims that, as a nation, we're like little children with greedy ears. Someone comes along and says, 'You want this or that Utopian condition, don't you? Well, the only way to get it is to do such and so,' and no one stops to ask questions they simply start dancing along behind the Pied Piper."

Mason's face showed growing interest. I think I'll have to talk with this man, Bartsler," he said. "Now let's find out what your particular trouble is."

"It starts with Carl Fretch and..."

"Wait a minute," Mason interrupted. "Let's get this in proper order. Who's Carl Fretch?"

"Mrs. Bartsler's son by a former marriage, a spoiled brat if there ever was one, but you don't realize it until he takes off the mask He thinks he's going to be a great actor and has been studying acting, thinking acting, and talking acting. He's had all of the advantages, and they've given him such a beautiful veneer that at first all you can see is the polish and poise that he seems to have. Actually, he's a spoiled, nasty, selfish, scheming, ruthless devil."

"Mrs. Bartsler?" Mason asked.

"Bitch!" Diana Regis spat the word out expressively.

Mason laughed.

"Oh, I know. I'm bitter," Diana said, "but when you stop to figure what they did to me, they

"Let's get all the rest of the 'theys' classified. Who else lives in the house?"

"Frank Glenmore, Carl Fretch, Mr. and Mrs. Bartsler, and the housekeeper, an old family servitor whom they've had for years. They work her to death. She's deaf and .

"Who is Glenmore?"

"I gather he's an operator who runs mines for people at so much a ton for ore that's removed and sent to the mill. Since Mr. Bartsler's eyes went bad Mr. Glenmore has been there sort of helping out. I think he owns a half interest in some of the properties. He's a man you have to like, very fair-always wants to hear the other person's viewpoint. I like him."

"How old?"

"Thirty-eight."

"Did you live there in the house, or did you come in by the day?"

"I had to live there because Mr. Bartsler wanted me to read to him just before bedtime. I kept my own apartment in town, of course. I share it with another girl and we're very congenial. I didn't want to give it up-at least until I knew more whether this job was to be permanent."

"Where's your apartment?"

"The Palm Vista Apartments."

"All right, let's hear about Carl Fretch and the eye."

"Well, Carl had been after me every time I had a night off, suggesting we go to a movie or something, and I'd always stalled him off, telling him that I had a slight headache, or that I wanted to do my fingernails that night, or that I had some letters to write, always being nice to him but a little distant."

"And then what happened last night to change your attitude?"

"Well, I saw that his mother was definitely annoyed. She thought that I was being a little high hat or something. Well, after all, I was rather lonely and I couldn't see any harm in going out to dinner and a movie, so I told him I'd go."

"Then what?"

"Once that boy got out of the house," she said, "he was a different individual. At first I was definitely amused. He quite evidently was acting a part-living up to some sort of a pattern he'd established for himself, very much a man of the world.

"We went to a cafe, and Carl ordered vintage wines, and bossed the waiter around, and had the ingredients brought in and mixed his own salad dressing, and did everything with such an air..."

"How old did you say he was?" Mason asked.

"Going on twenty-two."

"Classification?"

"Four F, and no one knows why. I guess one is not supposed to ask questions. I think a friendly doctor looked at him with a magnifying glass and found a mental quirk that exempted him."

"And after dinner?" Mason asked.

"The usual thing—in an unusual manner."

"What happened?"

"I tried to be nice to him and set him straight, but all of a sudden the mask slipped and 1 saw the little brat for what he was."

"What did you do?"

"I slapped his face hard, and got out of the car and started -walking."

"What did he do?"

"Damn him, he let me walk."

"How far?"

"Miles and miles it seemed. Then I finally picked up a ride and got to where I could get a taxi and drove out to the house, and then I realized that when I'd jumped out of Carl's car I'd left my purse in the car and I didn't have a cent with me. I usually carry a five dollar bill in my stocking for mad money.

"I told the cab driver that if he'd come up to the house with me I'd get the money so I could pay him. Another cab was just pulling away from the curb at the time, and when I started up the stairs to the porch, I saw the passenger—a matronly woman in the fifties with a slight limp and motherly eyes. She had heard our conversation and she insisted on advancing the money for my cab fare. Then she rang the bell before I could get her name and Frank Glenmore opened the door. She said she'd telephoned, and Mr. Glenmore said, 'Oh yes, about that mining deal,' and invited her in. I never did get her name.

"I'm ashamed of myself for not stepping to thank her, but I was somewhat upset. I asked Mr. Glenmore if he'd please refund the money the woman had paid the cab driver, and ran right upstairs to my room, turned the knob. And there was Carl Fretch standing in my room, big as life.

"Well, then was when I became fighting mad. I told him to get out. He just smiled at me with that cold, superior smile and said, 'No, I think I'll stay. If I can't work it one way I will another. I want to say something, and you'd better listen."

"Then what?" asked Perry.

"Then," she said, "I made my big mistake. I grabbed him by the coat and started to push him."

"What did he do?".

She said, "He tore himself loose, whirled and faced me. I'll

never forget the look I saw in his eyes—cold, deliberate, calculating. I had no idea what he was going to do, but there was something in his look that frightened me, a cold cruelty, a carefully thought out meanness. He said, 'AH right, if you want it the hard way, here it is.' He struck me then, very deliberately, very efficiently."

"Knock you down?"

"Sat me down," she said, "hard. I saw shooting stars and my knees gave way, and then I was sitting there on the floor and the room was going round and round, and Carl Fretch, standing in the doorway, bowed with a mocking, sardonic smile and said, 'Next time don't be so damned upstage,' and then he closed the door and walked out."

"What did You do?"

"Well, 1 was angry and I was jarred. There's something about that little devil that makes cold chills run up and down your spine. And it definitely does something to a woman's morale when a man hits her. I went to the bathroom and put cold compresses on my eye, saw I was getting my clothes all wet, so I went back and locked the door, took off my clothes, got into the bathtub, took a long warm bath to relax me, and take the ache out of my feet, and all the time kept cold compresses on my eye. After a half hour, I felt better. I got up, dried myself off, put on a house coat, and because I'd neglected to take my bedroom slippers into the bathroom with me, put on my shoes. And then I realized that I still didn't have my purse. I was good and mad by that time."

"What did you do?"

She said, "I marched down to Mrs. Bartsler's room and knocked on the door."

"Was she asleep?"

"No. She was sitting up talking with Carl. She came to the door and looked at me as if she were surveying a caterpillar that had somehow crawled up on the dinner table. She said, 'I was just talking with Carl, deciding what to do about you.' I told her, 'Well, I'm doing a little debating myself as to what to do about Carl. I had at least assumed that your son would be something of a gentleman, but beneath the polished veneer that

has been so expensively applied, he's just a rotten little bounder.'"

"How did she take that?"

"She looked down her nose at me and said, 'Just what do you mean?' And 1 told her that he'd made passes at me and then struck me, and she called me a liar right to my face, said that Carl had caught me stealing, and that I'd tried to over¬power him to get the evidence."

"Stealing?" Mason exclaimed.

"That's right. Do you know what he'd done? He'd taken my purse in to his mother and showed her that in it was an article of jewelry she'd been missing all that day. Do you know, I believe that he planned things so that if I didn't do what he wanted he was going to pin that theft on me."

"Seems to be a very nice young man," Mason said.

She laughed bitterly. "Well, I was so utterly dazed I couldn't think of anything to say. And then Carl said, with that studied close-clipped enunciation of his, 'I think. Mother, it might be a good plan to search her room before we let her go."

"Then what happened?"

"Then Carl and his mother walked down the corridor to my bedroom and when I tried to go in Mrs. Bartsler just pushed me out and slammed the door of my own room in my face."

"And then?"

"Then," she said, "I ran downstairs to see Mr. Bartsler, but he was still talking. My fur coat was hanging in the coat closet. I put that on, and was starting for the library where I could wait until Mr. Bartsler was at liberty, when the door abruptly opened and I saw this woman coming out. I didn't want her to see my swollen eye, so I ducked into the coat closet and waited for the coasi to get clear. I guess I waited five or ten minutes, then I opened the door and popped out, and at that exact moment the other door opened and both Mr. Bartsler and Mr. Glenmore were ushering this woman out.

"I had the start on them, so they could only see my back as long as I kept moving toward the front door. So I kept on walking right out the front door, down the steps and down the street. I made up my mind I'd phone Mildred Danville, the girl who shares my apartment, and get her to take my car and drive

out to get me—and, of course, I didn't even have telephone money with me. By that time, I was a little hysterical and my eye had puffed way out. So I decided to walk to my own apartment and get Mildred to let me in-as though I hadn't walked enough already!

"I guess it was over a mile and a half, but I made it finally-and Mildred wasn't home! What a night!"

"Of course, I could have rung for the manager, got her up out of bed, and got her to let me in with a passkey, but she's pretty strict, and the way I was dressed, my eye and-well, I was pretty low. My morale was below zero. So I walked on to the bus depot and sat there the whole blessed night. I mooched a nickel from a sympathetic man and called the apartment every hour for a while. There wasn't any answer. There still isn't any. 1 feel absolutely lost. It seems as though everyone's staring at me.... I'd heard of you. It took hours to screw up my nerve to come to see you in this condition but I felt myself becoming hysterical—so here I am. ... I guess I couldn't have handled the whole thing any worse if I'd tried. I'm supposed to be a thief, and it looks as though I'd run away, and ... and..."

"Della," Mason asked, "think, you can do something about this young Woman?"

"Certainly," Della said, and smiled reassuringly at the girl. "I thmk I can loan you some clothes that will do pretty well until you get yours. And how about some eats?"

Diana Regis said, "You ... you're both very kind. However, I think I'll be able to..." Abruptly she collapsed in the middle of the office floor.

In two quick steps, Mason was at the side of the limp figure. He and Della Street raised her to put her back into the big overstuffed leather chair. Mason caught Della Street's reproachful eyes.

"After all," he said somewhat apologetically, "I don't go in for this kind of practice, Della. I want murder cases and mysteries. But—since you insist."

"I haven't said a word," she said smiling.

"No, you haven't said anything," Mason announced.

Diana Regis stirred in the chair, opened her eyes, said with some consternation, "Oh, I'm sorry... I... I guess I flopped."

"You're all right now," Mason said. "A good cup of coffee will fix you, but in the meantime, you're going to have just one little drink."

Mason crossed over to the bookcase, pulled out a bulky volume, and from behind it took a bottle of brandy. He poured a glass half full of brandy, handed it to Diana Regis.

She thanked him with her eyes, drank the brandy. Mason took the empty glass, rinsed it out under the tap, returned it and the brandy bottle and the book to their place on the shelves.

"Feel better?" he asked.

"I'll say I do. I haven't eaten anything and-well, I'm just unnerved. Being hit like that has rattled my sense of assurance and I haven't the same confidence in my ability to handle any situation. I'm sorry 1 passed out on you, Mr. Mason. If you can only fix things so they will give me my clothes and keep them from branding me as a thief ... But I can't take that charge of being a thief lying down, Mr. Mason, although I realize how things look-now."

Mason said to Della Street, "Get her fixed up with food and clothes, and a good hot bath, Della. Then let her sleep for a couple of hours. I'm going out."

Mason closed his right eye surreptitiously at his secretary.

Chapter 2

THE house that Mason wanted turned out to be a two-story white stucco, tile-roofed residence in an exclusive district.

Mason parked his car, walked up a wide cement walk, climbed curving stairs to a porch landing that was paved with polished red flagstones, inclosed by a wrought iron railing. The lawyer touched a button, and musical chimes sounded from the interior.

A few moments later the door was opened by a thickset

B-E Blonde 2

man of about thirty-eight who had warm, brown eyes that surveyed Mason cautiously.

"I want to see Jason Bartsler," Mason said.

"I'm afraid that's impossible unless you have an appointment, and if you had an appointment, I think I would know of it."

"You are associated with him?"

"In a way, yes."

"Excellent," Mason said. "My name's Mason. I'm a lawyer. I'm representing Diana Regis. Bartsler can see me here and now or he can see me later and in court."

The brown eyes softened to a twinkle. "1 believe Mrs. Bartsler is the one who is making the complaint about..."

Mason interrupted to say, "I don't fight with women."

The man smiled. "Come in."

Mason entered a wide reception hallway where the red tiled floor had been waxed to a dull sheen. Off to the left, a wide flight of curving stairs swept up to the floor above.

"This way, please," the man said, and escorted Mason into a library. "I'll see if Mr. Bartsler will see you."

The man vanished through a door on the other side of the reception hallway. He was back in about two minutes, and his smile was somewhat broadened.

"Are you Perry Mason?"

"Yes."

"My name is Glenmore, Mr. Mason. I'm associated with Mr. Bartsler in some of his mining enterprises."

Mason shook hands.

"Bartsler wants me to bring you in. He's heard quite a bit about you-has followed some of your cases with a great deal of interest. Right this way, please."

Mason followed Glenmore into the big room on the other side of the reception hallway-a room which was a combination library, den, living room and office.

Jason Bartsler sat in a deep tapestry covered chair, his slippered feet stretched out in front of him on a footstool. On the left side of the chair was a massive table which held numerous books, papers, a brief case, a desk pen and some

magazines. On the right-hand side of the chair was a card table which held a glass of water, more books, a pipe rack, a humidor of smoking tobacco, ash tray, matches and a decanter of amber whisky. Light filtering through the amber liquid gave off amber coruscations from the edges of the cut glass decanter.

Jason Bartsler came up out of the chair, a tall suave man with a slightly quizzical expression on his face.

"How are you, Mr. Mason?" he said, shaking hands. "Diana seems to get rather high-powered legal talent. I presume you've met my associate, Frank Glenmore. I told him to introduce himself."

"He did so, yes."

"What's all this stuff about Diana? No one told me anything about it until just now. Frank, why the devil didn't you tell me there was trouble?"

"Mrs. Bartsler didn't think the girl would ever be back, or that we'd ever hear from her again. She thought Diana had just skipped out. 1 was afraid it might disturb you."

"Well, I'm being disturbed now. Diana's a nice girl. Suppose you tell me what happened, Mason."

"As nearly as 1 can get the story," Mason said, "she made the mistake of accepting an invitation to go out with your stepson. That meant she walked home. Then she found the stepson in her room, and subsequently she was accused of theft. She was, I believe, frightened into leaving the house in the middle of the night clad only in a house coat and shoes, and a fur coat she'd picked up from the clothes closet. She was absolutely penniless, without food and without shelter."

Bartsler said irritably, "You make it sound like murder in the first degree. Why the hell can't you be reasonable? Nobody actually shoved her outdoors, did they?"

"She was frightened into leaving."

"Frightened by what?"

"Physical violence, with the threat of more."

"From whom?"

"Carl Fretch, and his mother. They pushed her out of her room."

"What do you want?"

"I want to get the things out of her room. I want to get her pay for two weeks in advance, I want to get an apology, I want to have some assurance she will either get a letter of recommendation from here or that nothing will be said against her character in the event some prospective employer gets in touch with you and, in addition to all of that, I want to get a fair recompense for the mental anguish and suffering she has sustained."

Bartsler said to Glenmore, "Will you ask my wife to come in here, and tell her to bring Carl along with her."

Glenmore got to his feet with an agility that was rather surprising for a man of his weight and cat-footed from the room as noiselessly and swiftly as a gliding shadow. A surreptitiously gleeful smile softened the lines of his mouth.

Mason said, "Primarily, I want to get the clothes and things packed up so that I can take them to her. As far as the other matters are concerned, it might be well for you to consult your attorney. I don't want to take any advantage of you."

"I don't need any attorney to handle this," Bartsler said. "And I don't want her to quit."

"You can hardly expect her to remain on here under the circumstances. It would be impossible."

Bartsler frowned. "I wouldn't have had this happen for a million dollars. Mason. I simply can't understand it. Well, perhaps I can, too. We'll see."

Mason said, "This may be more serious than you think."

"Apparently it is. I like that girl. She took an interest in what she was reading, put some expression into it. So many paid readers simply drone along in a monotone that makes you so damn sleepy you can't break away from the deadly monotony of their voices—like taking a long journey in an airplane and trying to keep the hum of the propellers from putting you to sleep. Here come my wife and stepson now."

Mason arose to greet the woman and the young man.

There was a glacial grace about Mrs. Bartsler. Her skin, hair and figure showed evidence of constant care. She looked like a woman of thirty-five who had the assurance of knowing she would pass for twenty-eight. It seemed hardly possible that the young man at her side was her son.

Carl Fretch was slender, with dark hair, carefully cultivated sideburns which extended about an inch below the earline in the best Hollywood manner. And despite certain evidences of pose, he managed to invest himself with a dignity far beyond his years.

Jason Bartsler introduced Perry Mason. Then when they were once more seated, he launched at once on the reason he had called them.

"Perry Mason," Bartsler said, "has been retained by Diana Regis. She seems to think that she was thrown out insufficiently clad and under humiliating circumstances. You folks know anything about it?"

Mrs. Bartsler said quite coldly and with a perfectly expressionless face, "We know all about it."

"All right, what about it?" Bartsler asked.

"You tell him, Carl."

Carl made a little gesture of disdain. "I'd much prefer not to discuss it."

"You know the facts, Carl."

"But she's a woman. Mother. Don't you think that it would be better for one woman to discuss another?"

"Very well," Mrs. Bartsler said. "The girl should never have accepted employment here. She was, I understand, an actress. That's the field in which she should have confined her activities. She doesn't fit into this sort of family."

"All that's no reason for not giving her two weeks notice and treating her in a civilized manner," Bartsler said quietly.

His wife went on with cold dignity. "I was afraid that she might be feeling lonely. I suggested to Carl that it might be well to show her some attention. Carl invited her out to dinner. She became rather intoxicated, and in one of the bars, permitted a very common young man to make advances to her, and seemed to be enjoying herself so much that she refused to return home with Carl. It wasn't until after Carl arrived home that he realized that her purse was in the automobile. He took it to her room to leave it where she would discover it and then discovered in the purse a diamond pendant for which I had been searching all afternoon. Carl came to me then, and I decided to make a personal investigation. Other things had been missing since Miss

Regis came here, but I hadn't attached any particular suspicion to her, feeling that perhaps I had mislaid them. Miss Regis had a guilty conscience and fled as soon as I entered her room. I was somewhat disturbed that she didn't return, but inasmuch as I didn't intend to summon the police to deal with the theft, I felt that there was nothmg I could do about it except wait for her to return. Doubtless she had many acquaintances of both sexes with whom she felt perfectly free to spend the night."

Bartsler looked at Mason. "That answer your question. Mason?"

Mason ventured somewhat diffidently, "She had a discolored eye when she came to my office. Either of you know anything about that?"

Mrs. Bartsler glanced at Carl.

Carl said, "She had it when she came in. I assume that the party with whom she was hobnobbing when I left the bar could say something about that."

"Doubtless it isn't the first black eye she's had," Mrs. Bartsler said, and then added somewhat contemptuously, "—a woman of that type."

For a moment there was silence, then Mrs. Bartsler turned once more to Carl, "Why didn't you insist upon bringing her home, Carl?"

The gesture of Carl Fretch's hand was that of brushing aside something that was disagreeable, and the gesture was made with a well-timed grace that would have delighted a director. "She was coarse," Carl said, as though that completely and finally disposed of the matter.

Bartsler turned to Mason. "Satisfied?" he asked.

"No."

Bartsler sighed. "You want to cross-examine or shall I?"

"I would like to ask one or two questions," Mason said.

"Go ahead."

Mason turned to Carl Fretch. "You took her out to dinner?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"The Coral Lagoon."

"Drink?"

"Yes."

"Both of you, or just the girl?"

Carl Fretch hesitated a minute. "Just the girl. I only had

two."

"Who ordered the drinks." "She did."

"At the table or at the bar?" "At the bar." "You had dinner?" "Yes."

"Then what?" "More drinks." "Where?" "At the bar." "Who ordered them?" "She did."

"What did you do while she was drinking?" "Well, I ... I nursed mine along and then this other man joined us in response to certain advances she made and after that, he started buying drinks." "Ignoring you?" "Well, in a way." "What time did you go out?" "Eight o'clock."

"What time did you get back?" "I don't know exactly—around ten." "Did you dance?" "Yes."

"More than once?" "Yes."

"After she made advances to this other party or before?" "Really, Mr. Mason, I see no reason for being subjected to any such course of questioning. I have told my story. My mother believes it. Mr. Bartsler believes it. I see no particular reason for justifying myself to you."

Mason said, "During this very brief two-hour period then, you left here, went to tire Coral Lagoon, had dinner, danced,

had two separate sessions at the bar, watched the girl get drunk aid came, home,"

"What is wrong with that?"

"Rather a crowded itinerary," Mason said. "I just wanted to. get it straight."

"Well, it's straight," Carl said with growing anger.

"And she arrived home almost immediately after you did?"

"1 didn't say that. She certainly did not."

"But she found you in her room putting the purse away, didn't she?"

"She did not. I didn't see her again until Mother and I entered her room."

"You went to her room with the purse for the purpose of returning it?"

"Yes."

"Why did you open it?"

"To see how much money there was in it. I didn't intend to have her claim she was short of rnoney-that I'd stolen some."

"You found the purse as soon as you put the car away after getting home?"

"Yes."

"And took it to her room immediately?"

"Yes."

"And found the diamond pendant?"

"That's right."

"Then went at once to your mother?"

"Yes."

Mason turned to Mrs. Bartsler. "How long after your son brought you the diamond pendant did you go down to the girl's room?"

"Almost immediately."

Mason said, "Let's get this time element straight, then. Would you say that you were in Diana Regis' room within five minutes after your son first showed you the diamond—?"

"It certainly wasn't more than that," Mrs. Bartsler said coldly.

Carl Fretch frowned slightly.

"And you stated, I believe," Mason said to him abruptly, that you went to your mother's room just as soon as you found the diamond pendant in the purse?"

"Well, I can't remember about that exactly," Fretch said impatiently. "I hardly expected to be submitted to this indignity at the time."

"But," Mason said, "you stated that you found the purse as soon as you put the car away that you took the purse to Diana Regis' room as soon as you found it that you discovered the diamond pendant and that you went at once to your mother. Then she returned with you at once to the room, and Diana Regis was in there clad only in a house coat. That would mean that she must have left the Coral Lagoon before you did in order to get home and accomplish all that..."

"I may have been slightly mistaken about the time element," Mrs. Bartsler interrupted with cold dignity. "In fact, I think I was. I remember now that I was so loath to believe that any person in the house would have stooped so low as to have stolen from me, that I interrogated Carl at some length about the type of girl she was, and what he had discovered about her during the evening. What he told me was not at all flattering to the girl."

"So it might have been some little time?" Mason asked.

"Yes. It might have been some little time, come to think of it."

"As much as fifteen minutes?"

"I really can't put a definite limit on it, Mr. Mason."

"It might have been as much as half an hour?"

"Possibly."

Mason turned to Jason Bartsler and said, "There you are."

"How much do you want, Mason?"

"First I want all of Miss Regis' clothes. I want her pay up to date, and I want two weeks additional pay, and as for the rest of it, I'll have to discuss matters with her, and you'd better discuss it with your lawyer."

"If you pay her a cent," Mrs. Bartsler stormed at her husband, "I'll never forgive you! Why, this man practically sits here and doubts Carl's word."

Bartsler started to say something then checked himself.

Mason said, "Of course if you want to go to court and have the witnesses tell their stories under oath, that's all right with me."

Mrs. Bartsler said, "Handle it any way you want to, Jason. Perhaps it would be better to pay the blackmail and get rid of the little strumpet. That undoubtedly was what she was angling for from the moment she entered the house."

Mrs. Bartsler swept out of the room.

Carl started to follow her.

"Just a moment, Carl," Jason Bartsler said. "Look here a moment, will you?"

The young man's hesitation was perceptible. Then with a slight shrug of resignation, he turned and walked gracefully back to stand by his stepfather's chair.

"Now then, you little son-of-a-bitch,' Bartsler said in a low conversational voice, "that technique of planting the diamond pendant is something you used about three years ago on that maid your mother had. I guess it worked that time, because your mother was talking about the missing diamond pendant in the afternoon, you went out with the maid that evening, and the next morning the diamond pendant was back in its accustomed place. I did a little thinking about that. I've got to pay out some money on this. There's no need of telling your mother all about it, but I want you to know that I know what a dirty little four-flusher you are. Now get out of here!"

Carl Fretch bowed from the waist just far enough to give the impression of dignified acquiescence to superior authority, an innate reluctance to engage in a verbal brawl, and the willingness of a gentleman to be placed in an embarrassing and humiliating position rather than forget himself for a moment.

The door closed.

Jason Bartsler said to Mason, "How much?"

"I really can't fix a figure, Mr. Bartsler. I came to get the girl's things, fix the responsibility..."

Bartsler got up, crossed over to a safe, spun the dial.

Frank Glenmore said, "I let her in when she came home, Jason. She asked me to repay the woman who had advanced her cab fare."

"Drunk?" Bartsler asked over his shoulder.

"No."

"Black eye?"

"No."

Bartsler swung open the safe door, unlocked another door, opened a locked drawer, pulled out a sheaf of new crisp hundred-dollar bills. He counted out ten, hesitated, said, "Diana is a good kid," and counted out five more. He paused thoughtfully, said to Mason, "You'll have to be paid," and counted five more bills into a second pile.

"There it is," he said, "two thousand dollars. Fifteen hundred for her, five hundred for you, and I want a release that includes rape, mayhem, slander, assault, and anything else I can think of."

"I'm not in a position to accept any settlement at this time," Mason said.

"There's a telephone," Bartsler told him, "Get in touch with your client. Let's get the thing cleaned up and disposed of."

Mason hesitated a moment, then picked up the telephone, dialed the number of Della Street's apartment.

A moment later Della's voice came over the wire.

"Hello, Della, How's the patient?"

"Feeling a lot better."

"How are the clothes? Do they fit?"

"Pretty well. I'm taller than she is, but aside from that we're getting along all right."

"Della, I'm at Jason Bartsler's house. He's made an offer of two thousand dollars for a settlement. My fee will have to come out of that. Ask Miss Regis how that sounds to her."

"Just a moment," Della said, and Mason could hear the low hum of her voice as she talked rapidly to Diana Regis. Then

Della Street was back on the wire. "No one listening, is there, Chief?"

"No."

"She says it's wonderful."

"Okay, I'll give him a receipt," Mason said. "I'll have Mr. Bartsler get the housekeeper to pack our client's bags, and bring them along with me, Good-by."

Mason hung up the telephone.

Bartsler said to Glenmore, "Frank, write out a receipt for Mason to sign as attorney for Diana Regis. You know Carl, his manner is smooth, but his methods are crude. Make that receipt cover everything in the Penal Code."

Glenmore smiled made no comment as he stepped into the next room.

"Well, I guess that covers everything," Bartsler said.

Mason merely smiled.

"Doesn't it?" Bartsler demanded.

"I don't know."

"What don't you know, Mr. Mason?"

"Quite a few things-why you employed Miss Regis in the first place, why you still want her back. I warn you, Bartsler, that when I stumble across some mystery in the practice of my profession, I usually get to the bottom of it. If you would prefer to let me have the information at first hand, I'll be at my office tomorrow morning at ten."

Bartsler stroked his chin, said abruptly. Til be there at ten fifteen. I think I'd like to tell you the whole story—if you'd care to listen."

Chapter 3

LOW clouds were being borne sluggishly along by a warm southerly wind. Below those clouds, the ground, parched by a six months dry season during which there had been no rain at all, awaited the rain with hushed expectancy.

Perry Mason paused to buy a paper, noted that the time was ten a.m. on the dot. He glanced up at the heavy clouds, said to the man at the cigar counter, "Looks as though we might have rain."

"We sure need it."

Mason, folding the newspaper under his arm, nodded.

"Can't get used to this country where they have six months dry season and six months wet season," the man went on. "I'm from back east where you have green grass all summer. Here it bakes up so brown it looks like toast."

"What do you have back east in the winter?" Mason asked.

The man grinned. "That's why I'm here, Mr. Mason."

The lawyer walked on to the elevator, and two minutes later, latchkeyed the door of his private office.

"Hello, Della. What's new?"

"Jason Bartsler."

"He's early."

"Seems worried."

Mason tossed the newspaper to the desk, hung up his hat, said, "Let's see him, Della."

Jason Bartsler followed Della into the office. "I'm a little early," he announced.

"So I noticed."

"Mason, I couldn't sleep. How the devil did you know there was some reason back of my employment of Diana Regis?"

Mason smiled. "A successful businessman calls up a radio actress he is supposed never to have seen and employs her to come to his house and read to him. Tut, tut, Bartsler, and you supposed to be a skeptic!"

Bartsler grinned sheepishly. "Well, when you put it that way ...

"Go on," Mason said as Bartsler stopped.

Bartsler shifted his position. "My present wife is my second wife. My first wife died. There was one child, a son, Robert. He died on December seventh, nineteen hundred and forty-one at the age of twenty-six-at Pearl Harbor. They never even identified his body."

Mason's eyes showed sympathy.

After a moment Bartsler went on. "Life is so much more complicated than we realize, that it's only when we look back on it from the vantage point of experience we can even glimpse what it's all about, and by that time, it's too late. And make no mistake about it. Mr. Mason, all that we get is a glimpse."

Bartsler was silent for several seconds, then went on. "He married about a year before his death, He married a girl I didn't like. 1 didn't approve of her background. I didn't like her associates."

30

"And you disliked her personally'?" Mason asked.

Bartsler said, "Looking back on it, I'm afraid I never gave myself an opportunity to find out. I was so prejudiced against her that I don't think I ever saw the woman as she really was. Every time I looked at her, I saw the mental image which I had created in my own mind before I had even met her."

"What's wrong with her?" Mason asked.

"Nothing, perhaps. She had been a circus performer. She had been raised in the circus, a trapeze acrobat."

"How old?"

"Twenty-four. That is, she's twenty-four now, She was about twenty when she married my son."

"Or when he married her," Mason amended with a slight smile.

"Well yes."

"Go ahead. Let's hear the rest of it."

"She wasn't in the circus when my son met her. She had had a fall from a trapeze and injured her hip, the first serious fall she had ever had, and it crippled her sufficiently to put her out of the business. She had no means of livelihood other than her work on the trapeze, and almost overnight she found that door slammed in her face. Naturally Robert seemed to be an attractive possibility for her to develop.

"I resented my son's marriage, and that resentment created a barrier between us. After my son's death, Helen, his wife, made no effort to conceal her bitterness, and for my part, I certainly made it apparent that I considered any possible connection she might have had with the family by reason of the marriage had terminated."

"I take it," Mason said, "this is leading up to Diana Regis?"

"Very definitely."

"It might be better if you told me just what the connection was."

"Just one more bit of preliminary, Mr. Mason, so you'll understand the entire situation. I didn't even see Helen for- well, until about four weeks ago."

"She looked you up?"

"No, I looked her up."

31

Mason's eyebrows elevated slightly. "Why?"

Bartsler shifted his position uneasily in the chair. "I had reason to believe that there was a posthumous grandson bom in March of nineteen hundred and forty-two. And," Bartsler went on, his voice bitter with feeling, "that she had deliberately concealed that fact from me. A grandchild, a son of Robert. I..."

Bartsler's voice choked with emotion. It was several seconds before he could proceed.

Mason said, "That's hardly the way a fortune hunter would have played it, Bartsler."

"I realize that-now."

"How did you find out about it?"

"A month ago I received an anonymous letter telling me that it might be to my interest to look over the birth records of San Francisco for March Nineteen Forty-two."

"What did you do?"

"Threw the letter away. I thought it was simply the prelude to some blackmailing scheme. Then I started thinking and looked up the records and ... Mr. Mason, here it is in black and white, a birth certificate. I have here a certified copy."

Bartsler passed over a certified copy of a birth certificate to 'Mason. Mason read it carefully, said, "There seems to be no question about it. This is apparently the child of Robert Bartsler and Helen Bartsler, born the fifteenth day of March, Nineteen hundred and Forty-two, a male child. I presume you've talked with the attending physician?"

"Yes."

"And what does he say?"

"It's true."

"So then you went to see Robert's widow?"

"Yes. She's living on a little chicken ranch in the San Fernando Valley."

"And where did you get with her?"

"Precisely nowhere,"

"What did she say?"

"She laughed at me, refused to either deny or confirm the birth, told me I had never been a true father to Robert, that I had treated her as the scum of the earth, that she had lived

for months in the hope that some day she could strike back, that surely I wouldn't want to acknowledge a grandson that was tainted with her blood."

"She seems to have had a field day," Mason said.

"She did."

"So what did you do?"

"Hired detectives.

"Get anywhere?"

"No-at least not directly."

"How about indirectly?"

"A blonde young woman visited Helen. This blonde seemed to know something. One of my detectives managed a minor car accident and got her name from her driving license, the number of her car license, and all that."

"The name?"

"Diana Regis."

"Well?"

"But it wasn't Diana. I didn't find out it wasn't she until after she came to work for me. Who was it? Probably a girl who shares an apartment with her, another blonde named Mildred Danville."

Mason tilted back his head and frowned. "Rather an unusual legal situation," he said. "Usually it's the case of a mother trying to get support for a child. Here we have a mother who calmly goes about her business saving that there never was any child, at any rate, refusing to admit it."

"But there's that birth certificate."

"And have you consulted the Bureau of Vital Statistics to find that there also isn't a death certificate?"

"Of course. What bothers me, Mr. Mason, the thing that drives me crazy, is that Helen may simply have released the child somewhere for adoption. She didn't want to be bothered with it herself, and she wouldn't give me the satisfaction of knowing I had a grandchild. Think of it, Mr. Mason. My own flesh and blood! Robert's son-a boy that probably has all of the charm that Robert had, all of his spontaneity, all of his magnetic personality. My God, Mr. Mason, I can't stand it!

"And," Bartsler went on bitterly, after an interval, "I understand from the lawyer who handles my corporation work

that I have no legal redress that where the father of a child is dead, the mother has the right to release the child for adoption, and that's all there is to it. All of the records in connection with an abandoned child become confidential. In fact, I understand some agencies burn all of the records except the release of the mother-making certain that the chain is broken so that it's absolutely impossible for anyone ever to trace the child."

Mason drummed his long powerful fingers on the edge of the desk. "You have," he said, "an interesting and unusual legal problem."

"My own lawyers advised me that there's no way of handling it, that if the child has been released for adoption, that's all there is to it that Helen would be perfectly within her legal rights to refuse to answer any questions that there simply isn't any method by which I could determine the present whereabouts of the child."

Mason pursed his lips. "When I find that one theory of a case is hopeless, I squirm around and try to find some other theory. After all, it makes a great deal of difference how you look at a case. It's what the lawyers call the legal theory on which it is to be tried."

"What does that have to do with it?"

"Sometimes a great deal. A lawyer needs imagination. When you come to one legal road that's blocked, you back up and try another."

"Well, there isn't any other road in this case. My lawyers have thrown up their hands."

Mason lit a cigarette, smoked thoughtfully. "There might

be."

"Might be what?"

"Another road."

"I'm afraid not. Mason. 1 don't think even your ingenuity could find a way out of this legal impasse."

Mason said patiently, "I think perhaps I can show you what I mean by the legal theory. Technically your son is listed as missing?"

"I believe that's the technical classification, because the

B-E Blonde 3

body with proper identification tags wasn't found. However, there's no question about what happened."

"Exactly," Mason said. "And if you try the case on that legal theory, you're stuck."

"We're stuck anyway."

"But," Mason went on, "suppose we take the theory that you son may be alive."

"There's not a chance of it."

"Officially he's listed as missing."

"What difference does that make?"

"It makes a lot. A person has to be missing for seven years before he can be presumed dead."

"But if he is dead actually, I don't see what is to be gained by waiting seven years."

"Don't you see, under that theory of the case, your son is merely a missing person. It would be necessary to wait for seven years before his death could be presumed. During those seven years it would take the consent of both parents before his child could be released for adoption."

Comprehension dawned in Bartsler's face. "Good Heavens, Mr. Mason! You've solved it! You've done it!"

Bartsler was up out of his chair in his excitement. "We'll crack the case wide open. We'll bring that baby into court. We'll make certain that there are no adoption proceedings. Good Lord, why didn't some of those other lawyers think of that?"

Mason said, "I don't know all the facts Mr. Bartsler, I'm just giving you a legal theory. It might pay you to talk that over with your lawyers."

"Lawyers, hell!" Bartsler exclaimed. "I haven't time to wait for a bunch of lawyers... My God, Mason, you're a legal wizard! Send me a bill. No, to hell with a billl I'll send you a check!"

Bartsler turned toward the door, streaked out of the office. Mason looked at Della Street and grinned.

"Where's he going in such a hurry" she asked.

"Probably out to a chicken ranch in the San Fernando Valley," Mason said.

Chapter 4

AT three-thirty in the afternoon a special delivery letter was received by Mason. The envelope contained a check for one thousand dollars signed by Jason Bartsler, and a scribbled memo in pencil saying, "You win."

At four forty-five p.m. a frantically worried Diana Regis telephoned begging to be connected with Perry Mason upon a matter of great importance. Mason took the call and heard Diana's excited voice. "Mr. Mason! Something terrible has happened. Someone has stolen my purse, and-well, everything was in it. You know, everything!"

"What," Mason asked, "do you mean by everything?"

"The money."

"The money you received as settlement from Jason Bartsler?"

"Yes."

"All of it?"

"Yes."

"Suppose," Mason said, "you tell me exactly what happened. Where did this take place?"

"In my apartment. I was dog tired and it didn't seem as though I could get enough sleep. I got up this morning and had breakfast, went out and bought a few groceries, came back and listened to the radio, felt sleepy, took off my dress, got on the bed and simply went dead to the world. I woke up about half an hour ago and my purse was gone."

"Where had you left it?"

She said apologetically, "I think I left it on the table in the front room."

"You were rather careless with a purse containing fifteen hundred dollars in cash."

"I realize that now. But it happened in a peculiar way. I was carrying in some groceries, and wanted to put them in the little pantry we have here, so I dropped the purse on the table and put away the groceries and did a few chores, and started dozing and became so utterly sleepy I didn't think about the money or anything else."

"Is there any indication that anyone has forced the lock on your door?"

"No, Mr. Mason. I I would have thought that it was my

roommate, Mildred Danville-you know, the girl who shares the apartment with me, only ... only there's the stub of a cigar in an ash tray here on the table by the purse."

"Where's your roommate now?"

"I don't know, Mr. Mason. It's rather strange. There's no word from her. She's a radio actress, too, although she isn't on the air in anything right now, but she usually keeps in touch with the studio, and she hasn't been there for two or three days. I've been trying to locate her ... ."

"How about your automobile?" Mason asked.

"What about it?"

"Where do you keep it?"

"In a private garage."

"Anyone else have a key to that garage?"

"Well, yes ... Mildred does."

Mason said, "Go down. Take a look in the garage. See if your car is there. Don't touch anything on the table, in case you decide to call the police."

"Call the police? Oh, Mr. Mason, I couldn't do that!"

"Why not?"

"Well, there are-ah, complicating factors. I wouldn't want the police at all."

"Then why did you call me?"

"I don't know, Mr. Mason, only you seem so resourceful and..."

Mason said, "Go take a look in the garage where you keep your car. See if it's gone, then come on up here. I'm leaving the office, but Miss Street will be here and she'll take you down the hall to the Drake Detective Agency. I'll ask Paul Drake, the head of the agency, to assign some good operative to go over to your place and make an investigation."

"Oh, that's fine, Mr. Mason. I ... Oh!"

"What's the matter?"

"All of my keys are in my purse. I haven't a key to the garage—and I'll have to leave the apartment unlocked so I can

get back in. There isn't any duplicate key .... Wait a minute! Yes, there is too. I remember now, there's a third key. That will be in the bureau drawer."

"Can you tell whether the car is in the garage if the door's locked?" Mason asked. "Is there any way you can peek through a window, or..."

"Yes, there's a window in back. I never thought of that. How stupid of me! All right, Mr. Mason, I'D be right up just as soon as I get some clothes on."

"Della Street will be here until five-thirty," Mason said. "She'll wait."

Mason hung up the telephone, said, "Della, you'll leave to wait here until five-thirty. Go down to Paul Drake's office and tell him a client of mine has a purse missing. Tell him I'd appreciate it if he'd put a good man on the job. See if he can find anything in the line of a clue. If he can, he'd better check on this Mildred Danville. If Diana is flat broke, stake her to some pocket money."

"How much?"

"Depending upon what she needs, fifty or a hundred. Okay, Della, I'm on my way."

Mason took the elevator, noticed as he emerged on the street that the heavy clouds seemed more ominous than ever. He dropped in at his club for a cocktail, went to his apartment, bathed, changed his clothes and was just starting out for dinner when the phone rang.

Mason picked up the receiver and heard Della Street's voice saying, "Hello, Chief. I'm sorry to bother you. I don't think it's anything you'll want. I told Diana I couldn't do it, but afterward I got to thinking it over and thought I'd better give you a call."

"What is it?" Mason asked. "Something about the purse?"

"No, she's got that located."

"Who had it?"

"Mildred Danville. That seems to have been a tempest in a teapot."

"And what's this other about?"

"Mildred wants Diana to meet her at the home of Mrs. Robert Bartsler. It's at sixty-seven fifty San Felipe Boulevard. That's out in the San Fernando Valley, and she wants Diana to

try to get you to come along. It seems there's going to be some legal fireworks."

"Over what?"

"Over the matter that Mr. Bartster outlined to you."

"What does Mildred Danville have to do with that?"

"I don't know."

Mason said, "I don't want to mix in it."

"I didn't think you did."

"Tell me about the purse."

"Oh, Diana came up. I took her into Paul Drake's place, and Drake had an operative there. He went down to Diana's apartment with her, and I guess the phone was ringing about as soon as they stepped in the door. The telephone call was from Mildred Danville, and I guess Drake's operative had quite a time. He sat and waited while they talked some ten or fifteen minutes on the telephone. Diana poured out a list of her troubles, and there was a lot of laughter about the purse, and Diana told all about her job at Bartsler's, and getting a black eye. Drake's operative finally got weary of waiting and broke in on the conversation to tell Diana that since she'd located her purse he was on his way. She told Mildred to can back in ten or fifteen minutes and hung up on her to thank the detective effusively, and promised to pay him as soon as she got her money back.

"Well, apparently when Mildred called Diana back, something had happened. Anyway, Diana showed up here all excited. It seems Diana's black eye has something to do with it, but if you can tell what, it's more than I can. Anyway, Mildred wants Diana to persuade you, if she possibly can, to come and meet her out at Helen Bartsler's place in San Fernando."

"What time?" Mason asked.

"Ten o'clock tonight."

"Where's Diana now?"

"She just left here. She's going to be back here at nine- thirty to see if you'll go. I suppose you noticed it's starting to rain. I can hear the drops on the roof."

Mason said, "I was just going out to dinner. Want to go get a bite?"

"Thanks, Chief, I've eaten."

"Okay. I'm glad Diana found her purse."

Della Street said, "I gave her twenty-five dollars for get- by money. She told me she'd be in tomorrow and pay it back. Sorry 1 bothered you. Chief, but I began to worry about it, thinking perhaps you'd like to know."

"Good girl," Mason said. "Sure you won't come along and have a 'little coffee, or a brandy?"

"No thanks. I'm going to see Diana again at nine-thirty, and..."

"Oh, come along," Mason urged. "I'll have you back at your place at nine-thirty."

Della Street hesitated.

"Come on. Don't bother to change your clothes. Just come as you are, and we'll go to that little place where they make the Hungarian goulash, have some wine and..." "It's a date," Della said laughing. "But I'm still in my office clothes, and the way it's starting to rain, I'm certainly not going to doll up."

"Okay-be there in ten minutes," Mason said and hung up.

As he dropped the receiver into place he heard the heavy patter of raindrops on the roof of the balcony turn into a sullen deep-throated roar.

Chapter 5

RAIN was still whipping against the windshield of the car as Mason and Della Street slid up to the curb opposite Della Street's apartment house. It had been raining hard all the time the couple had been eating and talking in the restaurant.

"What's the time, Della?"

"Nine twenty-six on the dot."

"Four minutes to spare," Mason said. "Tell the kid I'm not in a position to go tagging around the country on blind legal dates. Furthermore, I'm hardly in a position to represent anyone who has an interest adverse to that of Jason Bartsler. I presume, from Bartsler's note, he must have fixed everything up with his daughter-in-law. This certainly is some rain! Listen to it pound

against the roof of the car ... . Reminds me of something. What the heck is it?"

Della Street, her hand on the handle of the car door, asked with some anxiety, "Something in connection with business?"

"No. Something agreeable, something that-oh, I know what it is. It's the effect of rain coming down in torrents on the roof of the cafe that's fixed up as a tropical eating house. Every ten minutes or so, they have this terrific shower. Let's go around there and do a little dancing, Della."

"Okay, but what'll we do about Diana?"

Mason said, "Well, let's wait right here in the car. She'll have to show up within the next four or five minutes."

Mason took out his cigarette case, offered Della a cigarette, took one himself and held a match to both cigarettes. They settled back against the cushions, smoking in silence, listening to the beat of the rain on the steel top of the car, relaxing in the silence of perfect understanding.

Mason's arm circled Della Street's shoulders. She slid over to rest her head on his shoulder.

"Strange case," Mason said. "Usually a woman feels that a child is a tie that binds her to her husband's parents. It makes her one of the family-one of the most important members of the family. Here we have a situation that's the exact opposite."

"Helen Bartsler must hate Jason bitterly," Della said.

Mason's cigarette glowed as he inhaled deeply. "No other explanation. I wonder what he did after he left me. I wonder why he sent that check."

"He must have seen her and used that theory you'd given him to make her tell him where the child was."

"Probably."

Once more there was silence.

Abruptly Della Street looked at her wrist watch. "Good Heavens, Chief! It's quarter to ten."

Mason reached for the ignition switch. "We won't wait any longer, Della."

"Poor kid," Della Street said, "I hope we didn't miss her. Hope she didn't leave before we got here."

Mason said thoughtfully, "I wonder what was so important at Helen Bartsler's house. Tell you what let's do, Della. Let's beat it out there. We can get there a few minutes after ten, see what it's all about, and then go dance."

"1 wish you would," Della Street said. "There's something about Diana that I can't get out of my mind. Somehow I feel that the world has given her a few hard knocks, and she's just getting back up on her feet."

Mason eased the car into gear. "Okay, Della, here we go."

They drove rapidly out through the driving rain which began to lighten somewhat as they swung into the San Fernando Valley.

"A little of this, and we'll be having water all over the road. The ground can't soak it up this fast. I think San Felipe Boulevard turns off right along in here .... Yes, here it is. What was that number again?"

"Sixty-seven fifty."

"Should be within about half a mile," Mason said. "It's a three-acre tract. Seems strange to have house numbers along a- boulevard devoted to one- and five-acre tracts, but that's Southern California for you, and "

"There it is!" Della Street exclaimed. "Over there on the right."

Mason stopped the car.

"Not a light in it," Della said.

"Diana told you that Mildred was going to be here at ten o'clock?"

"Yes."

Mason said somewhat dubiously, "Of course they could have called the thing off. That would account for Diana not showing up. Helen Bartsler evidently has quite a little place here."

"What's that big tank off to the side of the house?" Della asked.

"For rain water," Mason said. "Used to see a lot of them, but as the city water improved, they've gone out of style. This probably came with the place."

"Well," Della said laughing, "you can't beat rain water for

washing your hair—only nowadays farm women out here go to beauty parlors."

Mason said, "I'm going to pound on the door and see if anyone's home. Hand me that flashlight out of the glove compartment, will you, Della?"

Della Street handed him the flashlight, said, "I'm going with you."

They walked up a narrow strip of cement, climbed wooden stairs to a porch and the beam of the flashlight located a bell button.

Mason pressed the button. From the interior of the house could be heard the faint sound of a buzzer.

After that first short ring. Mason paused to contemplate the utter silence of the house, then pressed his thumb against the button again, this time sounding a long, steady summons, punctuated at the end by three short rings.

The silence of the interior of the house was sepulchral. Mason tentatively tried the front door.

"Careful," Della warned.

The door was locked.

"Somehow I feel like we're about to set off a booby trap," Della said abruptly.

Mason said, "Same here. Just the same, I'm going to take a quick look around, Della."

They followed a strip of walk which ran around the house toward the back door, climbed the back stairs, knocked on the door and then tried the knob. The door was locked.

Back of the house the ground sloped into a small swale. The beam of Mason's flashlight showed chicken houses perched on the higher ground around this swale. Then his flashlight dropped down to the low depression in a swift exploration, darted back, paused, then swung once more to the low ground, moved back and forth.

A dark form lay hunched in motionless silence. Cold rain drizzled down on a blonde head.

Mason heard the swift intake of Della Street's breath.

"Easy, Della. This is it."

"Chief, don't go down there."

"Just a little ways, Della. I have to see if she's alive."

"Be careful," Della warned. "Oh do be careful. Chief! It's..."

"Take it easy," Mason said again, and taking her arm, led the way down an inclined wooden walk where crosspieces nailed at intervals furnished a foothold.

Della Street's gloved fingers dug into Mason's arm.

Mason's flashlight moved about in steady appraisal of the surroundings, and Mason's voice, low and tense, commented on the things the flashlight turned up.

"Shot in the back of the head," Mason said. "Probably as she was running .... It was after the rain had started. See that' left hand, Della, it's clawing at the mud. And you can see the long furrows where the fingers slid along the side of the bank- must be a good two feet. Should be some foot-prints back here in the mud. Let's take a look and see .... Yes, apparently only her footprints and one other set of prints—a woman's. There's where she fell ... . She skidded along here for some two feet and ... What's that!"

Mason snapped out the flashlight. "Listen" From the distance, muffled by the increasing wind and drifting rain until it sounded only as a faint wail, came the sound of a siren.

Della Street's exclamation was sharp with apprehension.

Mason's hand clasped Della Street's elbow. "Let's go."

They scrambled up the sloping boardwalk. The wet wood, slippery and treacherous, was an effective bar to rapid progress.

They gained the level cement walk. Mason's flashlight lighted the way.

"Okay, Della, you first. Step on it!"

The siren sounded again. This time so close that after the high pitched scream had died away, they could distinctly hear the low, deep-throated purring sound with which the siren tapered off into silence.

Della Street reached the curb, was stretching out her hand for the car door when headlights danced on the road from a cross street. A car swung around from an intersection with a sharp skidding turn.

Mason grabbed Della Street's wrist, jerked her away from the door, said in a low voice, "Too late. Pretend we're just coming."

A blood red spotlight blazed into brilliance, impaling Mason and Della Street in its sinister, ruddy glow.

The police car swerved in sharply to the curb, came to a stop directly behind Mason's car.

Two men jumped out, their figures as seen through the eye-stabbing brilliance of the spotlight merely an indistinct blur.

"What is the excitement?" Mason called out.

A man's voice said. "Hell, it's Mason, the lawyer."

The spotlight was switched out although the headlights of the automobile still furnished an illumination that was directed to the side and therefore less dazzling in its brilliance.

Lieutenant Tragg's voice said, "Well, well, caught in the act, eh?"

"Were you," Mason asked, "tailing me?"

That question started its inevitable train of thought in the officer's mind.

"How long you been here?" he asked.

"You ought to know."

"What are you looking for?"

"A client."

"Anybody home?"

"Let's find out."

Tragg said, "How did you come?"

"Straight down San Felipe Boulevard.... say, what's idea— and what are you doing here?"

Tragg said, "We had a phone call. You say you were to meet someone here?"

"A client," Mason said. "And if you'll pardon me. Lieutenant, I still want to see that client rather badly."

Mason marched ahead of Tragg up the cement walk, up the wooden steps to the porch.

Tragg and two plain-clothes officers were right at Mason's elbows.

Mason pressed his thumb against the bell button.

Once more the bell sounded a mournful, lonely summons in the dark interior of the otherwise silent house.

Tragg abruptly pushed Mason to one side, pounded on the

door with his knuckles, then kicked it with his foot and tried the knob, almost with one motion.

He turned and said to one of the officers, "Cover the back of the house, will you, Bill?"

"Right," the officer said.

They heard the slosh of his steps around the walk, a few moments later, a sound of knuckles banging on the back door, then the rattle of a door knob.

"Apparently nobody home," Mason said, and then added- "that's strange."

"Whom did you expect to meet here?"

Mason said, "The name's on the mailbox."

"That isn't answering my question."

Say, what's the "I think it is."

"Why are you being so damn secretive?" Tragg asked.

"Why are you being so damn inquisitive?"

"Oh nuts!" Tragg said impatiently, "the same runaround."

"Will you," Mason asked, "kindly tell me what brings you out here? You're attached to Homicide. Do you have a tip that.,..?" Tragg pounded once more on the door, tried the knob, then, with his five-cell flashlight, made an exploration of the front of the house.

"Windows locked, shades drawn," he said. "1..." They heard running steps on the walk, then the officer who had been sent' to the back of the house said, "This way, Lieutenant. It's back here,"

Tragg swung his flashlight down to the steps, walked swiftly at the head of the little procession which moved around to the back of the house.

The powerful flashlight of the officer penetrated down into the soggy darkness to show the motionless figure sprawled face down in the mud at the bottom of a cuplike depression.

Tragg barked sharply to Mason and Della Street. "You two stay here. And I mean stay here."

Tragg and the other officers walked down the slippery boardwalk, taking care to plant their feet firmly on the nailed crosspieces. Then at the point nearest the body, they huddled in low-voiced conference.

Mason slipped his arm around Della Street, held her close to him. "Della, you're trembling. Snap out of it."

"I can't help it. Gosh, it's cold. Chief!"

Mason held her more closely. "Take -it easy."

They stood waiting in the rain. Behind them a peculiar gurgling sound attracted Mason's attention. He turned his head.

"What is it?" Della Street asked, apprehensively.

"Faucet on the cistern is open," Mason said. "The rain water is running 'through the tank, and draining down as fast as it comes in. I..."

The beam of Tragg's flashlight suddenly stabbed Mason's eyes. Tragg's voice said, "I think you two better go back to your car."

"Who is it?" Mason asked.

His question went unanswered.

Tragg said to one of the men, "Get a camera. Let's have some photographs before we touch the body. There are tracks here in the mud."

The burly form of a raincoated officer came scrambling up the boardwalk, the beam of Tragg's flashlight glinting in coruscating reflections from the wet rubber overcoat.

Then Tragg's voice again. "You stay here. Bill. I'll go up and help get that camera out. Don't go near the body until we get the pictures. Stand right there."

Tragg was scrambling up the sloping boardwalk. His voice harsh with command barked an order at Mason and Della Street. "You two come with me."

Tragg led the way around the house to Mason's car, jerked open the car door nearest the curb. "Where are your ignition keys?" he asked.

"In the lock."

Tragg's flashlight probed the interior of the car. He found the ignition keys, turned them, looked at the temperature gauge.

"Humph!" he said when he saw that it was still at driving temperature.

"Whom did you want to see?" he asked after a moment.

"The name's on the mailbox-Mrs. Robert Bartsler."

"Client of yours?"

"No."

"What did you want to see her about?"

"I think she's a witness."

"Rather an unusual time to look for witnesses, isn't it?"

"I understood she'd be home."

"Expecting you?"

"No."

"You didn't try to telephone?"

"No."

"Ever met her?"

"No."

"Talked with her on the telephone at all?"

"No."

"How did you know she was a witness?"

"A little bird told me."

"What's she a witness for? What does she know?"

"I'll have to ask her. That's why I came out here."

Tragg indicated the interior of the car. "You and Miss Street get in there, sit down, stay there. Don't try to ... Wait a minute!"

Tragg's wet raincoat pushed against Mason as he reached his arm across the lawyer's body. His fingers clasped the ignition key, turned the lock and withdrew the key.

"Just by way of assurance," he said.

Mason and Della Street huddled together in the front seat of the automobile. Tragg slammed the door shut.

Mason said, "Della, I think there's a bottle of whisky in that glove compartment."

"If there is," Della said, "I think it's going to save my life."

Again she explored the glove compartment, brought out a small flask of whisky.

"Help yourself," Mason invited.

She tilted the flask to her lips, then passed it to Mason. "Feel better?" Mason asked as he lowered the flask. "That," she announced, "is going to help. And as they say in Hollywood, I mean definitely."

"Isn't there a heater on this car?" she asked.

Mason said, "Sure, but it won't run without the ignition being on. Wait a minute." He took out his wallet, extracted a

spare ignition key, put it in the lock, turned it and switched on the heater. A few moments later welcome warmth wrapped their ankles in a drying current of air.

Warmed by the whisky and the heater, Della Street relaxed against Mason's shoulder. "Poor Diana," she said, and then, after a moment, asked, "How did she get here?"

"That," Mason said, "is the problem that will be occupying Lieutenant Tragg's mind within just a few moments."

"The one who committed the murder must have driven her

out."

"That, of course, is a possibility. But how about Mrs. Bartsler?"

Della said, "Of course, if she ... Good Heavens, Chief! What was that?"

Mason patted her shoulder. "Take it easy, Della. That was just the glare from a flash bulb. Lieutenant Tragg is taking flashlight pictures."

They were silent for several seconds while more flash bulbs made weird artificial lighting.

Abruptly Della Street straightened in the cushions. "Look, Chief."

"What?"

"Over there on the sidewalk. Wait until Tragg shoots off another flash bulb. Over there on the sidewalk, just beyond the house. Just ... There .... See it?"

"Something dark," Mason said.

"Looks like a woman's purse," Della announced, reaching for the door handle.

Mason grabbed her arm. "Don't do it."

"Why?"

Mason said, "If it isn't evidence we don't want it. If it is evidence, we don't dare touch it. Lieutenant Tragg has the embarrassing habit of popping up at the most unexpected moments and ... "

As though to illustrate Mason's point, at that moment Tragg's flashlight coming around the comer of the house sent a vivid beam of light knifing through the darkness, caught the front part of Mason's automobile, held it in a white blaze of

brilliance while Tragg walked toward the car. Then the flashlight was lowered and the door opened.

"Humph," Tragg said. "Warm in here."

"Heater going," Mason said.

"How'd you get the heater on without the key?" Tragg's flashlight shifted to the ignition lock, showed the key in position. "Shucks!" he said, and dropped the key he had taken into Mason's hand.

"Come on in," Mason invited.

"Move over, Della, and I will."

Della moved over closer to Perry Mason. Tragg got in and pulled the door shut.

"What do you know about the corpse. Perry?"

"Nothing."

"Recognize her?"

"I didn't see her face."

"But you think you know who she is?"

"I'm not making any identifications until I've seen the body."

"I'm not asking you to make an identification. I'm asking you who you thought it was."

"I try not to think until I have some basis for my conclusions," Mason said.

Another flash bulb made a lightning flash of illumination.

"What's that?" Tragg asked, pointing.

"What?" Mason asked.

Tragg raised his flashlight, tried to send the beam through the windshield, but the beads of moisture reflected the light back with dazzling brilliance and robbed the beam of its efficiency.

Tragg said, "Something on the sidewalk. I saw it when they took that last picture."

He opened the door, swung out of the car. The beam of his flashlight darted down the sidewalk and came to rest on the woman's purse.

"Humph!" Tragg said, and went sloshing off down the pavement.

"You see?" Mason pointed out. "We'd just about have got

B-E Blonde 4

the purse and started back to the car when Tragg would have shown up and caught us in the act."

They watched Tragg walk over to the purse, bend down to a crouching position, saw the flashlight moving back and forth. Then Tragg started back toward the car but detoured instead toward the porch. Under the shelter of the porch roof, he made an appraisal of the contents of the purse, then came slogging back to the automobile. Once more he opened the door. Once more Della Street moved over, and Tragg slid in beside her. He started to say something, then sniffed the air.

Della Street laughed. "Are you," she asked, "smelling a whisky?"

"How about it?" Mason asked.

"I'm on duty," Tragg said reluctantly, "and I can't trust one of those boys not to shoot off his face unless we had enough for all of them."

"We haven't," Mason said.

"Tough luck. Who's Diana Regis?"

"A client of mine."

"Describe her."

"Around twenty-two or twenty-three, blonde, five feet three or four, weight one hundred and twelve..."

"Okay, that's your corpse. Was she a client of yours?"

"Yes."

"Just settle something for her not too long ago?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"A case."

"Case against Mrs. Robert Bartsler?"

"No."

Tragg said patiently, "Now just to show you how you've stuck your neck in a noose, I'll pull your own receipt on you."

He opened the purse, pulled out a receipt signed, "Perry Mason per Della Street," acknowledging the receipt of a cash fee covering all services in connection with the settlement of the Bartsler claim.

"That your signature?" Tragg asked Della Street.

"Yes."

"So," Tragg said, "she had a claim against Mrs. Bartsler, did she?"

"No."

Tragg said impatiently, "It's here in black and white... Oh, oh! Against the husband, eh?"

"No, the husband's dead."

"Someone else in the family?"

"It could have been."

"You're helpful as hell, aren't you?"

"I don't like the way you went about this."

"How much was the amount of the settlement?"

"I can't remember."

"Fifteen hundred in the purse," Tragg said.

Mason made no comment.

"She's dead now," Tragg said gruffly. "You want to find out who murdered her, don't you?"

"It was murder?"

"Sure, it was murder. Bullet hole right in the back of her neat little blonde head."

"Of course we want to do everything we can," Mason said.

Tragg sighed, said with exasperated impatience, "You two! Okay, beat it. I may call on you later. In the meantime, don't stick around here. Get started!"

Chapter 6

MASON swung the car in a wide turn, started back down San Felipe Boulevard. He was silent and thoughtful, and Della, respecting his mood, refrained from question or comment. The rain was now falling more rapidly, and the all-but-deserted boulevard showed as a glistening wet ribbon of cement in the path of the headlights.

Not until Mason turned into Della Street's block did he speak. Then he said, "Poor kid! Perhaps if we'd gone with her .... A lawyer can't afford to get too big, Della. He always has to remember he's a part of the machinery by which justice is dispensed. When it comes to a matter of justice or injustice

there isn't such a thing as big or little. Injustice is a social malignancy. Gosh, how I wish I'd told the kid I'd go out there with her!"

"Then you might have been where she is, Chief—face down in the rain."

"Okay. That's a chance you have to take. When you get to where you try to play things so safe you're afraid to take a chance you're afraid to live."

"Night, Chief."

"Night. I ..."

From across the street came the frantic blowing of a hom, then a car door swung open and a figure jumped to the street and raced headlong across through the driving rain.

"Better get on your way, Chief," Della Street warned. "This is probably some client who has looked me up and..." "Good idea," Mason said. "So long."

"So long, Chief."

Mason slammed the door shut, started the car away from the curb.

The woman who was running across the street stopped, waved her hands frantically, turned, and the headlights caught her countenance disclosing a discolored right eye.

Mason spun the steering wheel, sent the car back to the curb, switched off headlights and motor and had just opened the car door when Diana Regis came sprinting up.

"Oh, I'm so relieved! I'm so glad to see you. And Mr. Mason, I was so afraid you wouldn't come. I've been waiting for ages and ages and ages. But they told me Miss Street had gone out, and I knew she'd promised to meet me here, and ... Well, you know ... Although, of course, I suppose it is late. I don't know how late. I got water in my wrist watch and it stopped."

Mason flashed Della a warning glance, said, "Just what was it you wanted me to do, Diana?"

"I'd like to have you come along with me if you will."

"Where are you going?"

"Out to sixty-seven fifty San Felipe Boulevard."

"Going alone?"

"I'm to meet Mildred Danville out there."

"What time?"

She laughed and said, "Well, the appointment was made tor ten-thirty, but Mildred is usually late, and "Didn't you tell me ten?" Della Street interrupted.

Diana looked steadily, searchingly at Della Street. "Oh my gosh! Perhaps it was ten!"

"Weren't you to be here around nine-thirty?" Mason asked. "I tried to be but the rain interfered. I went to get my own car, and the streetcars were running by fits and starts. I didn't get here until ... well, I guess it was quarter to ten."

"Then you've been waiting here ever since quarter to ten?" "Yes. At any rate, that's my best guess on the time."

Mason said, "Let's go up to Della's apartment and get out of the rain."

Della Street took her key from her purse and unlocked the outer door of the apartment. The three of them took the elevator, then went to Della's apartment. Della Street switched on lights, and divesting herself of her wet raincoat, went at once to the kitchenette where she put on the teakettle.

"I'm about to make some hot toddies," she announced.

"Good," Mason announced. "Get the things all ready, and then come in here while you're waiting for the water to heat, will you, Della?"

Diana Regis settled down in a chair, crossed her knees, saw Mason inspecting her sopping wet shoes and stockings, laughed and said, "I'm afraid I wasn't prepared for quite such a deluge."

"How'd you happen to get in touch with Mildred Danville?" Mason asked abruptly.

"She telephoned me when I went back with the detective."

"What did she say over the telephone?"

"She told me she'd been in some trouble, that she'd borrowed my car and had been picked up by an officer for some traffic irregularity. The officer wanted to see her driving license. Mildred doesn't have any. She got in trouble a while ago and isn't supposed to drive a car, but she's my age, build, and complexion, in fact she looks a lot like me and she uses my driving license. She took the cop up to the apartment on the stall she'd forgotten her purse. She opened the door, thinking she'd never get out of the scrape—and there was my purse on

the table! She grabbed it. That's how the cigar butt came in the ash tray. The cop was smoking."

Mason glanced at Della. "And you told her about your experience?"

"Yes, over the phone. I was asleep when she took the purse."

"The black eye?"

"Yes. And then the detective wanted to go home so I told Mildred to call me back and hung up. Well, Mildred didn't call for quite a while. When she did, she was all excited. She asked me to tell her about my black eye again, and then asked me to meet her at this San Felipe address and to bring you along if I possibly could."

Della Street went out to the kitchenette, then after a moment called out, "The toddy's all ready."

Mason arose with alacrity, said to Diana Regis, "Sit still. I'll bring them in."

Mason entered the kitchenette, circled Della Street's waist with his arm, drew her over against the icebox, away from the door. "Back door out of here, Della?"

"Yes. Out through the service porch."

"Okay," Mason said, "get out and work your way around to the front door. Start pounding on the door. Try to make your knock sound like that of a police officer banging away for admission, only don't make so much noise that you attract the attention of the occupants of the adjoining apartment."

"When?" she asked.

"As soon as you've served the toddy. Take a sip or two, then excuse yourself to do some stuff in the kitchen and get out."

"Okay, Chief."

Mason brought in two of the toddies, handed one to Diana Regis. Della Street, a steaming cup in her hand, stood in the door of the kitchenette.

"Here's how!" Mason said.

They sipped the toddies slowly.

"Oh, that's good!" Diana Regis exclaimed. "This is really something like. You have no idea" how I needed this."

"Your hand's trembling," Mason said.

"I'm terribly nervous tonight."

Della Street said casually, "Well, this will fix you up. Meanwhile, I've got a little household stuff to do in the kitchen. I'D be with you presently."

She closed the door.

Mason said to Diana Regis, "Ever hear the name of Bartsler before you went to work for him?"

"No."

"Know who lives at this San Felipe address?"

"No. Some friend of Mildred. Can't we please go out there, Mr. Mason? It's terribly late. She wanted me there at ten o'clock."

"In a minute," Mason said. "If she's waited this long she'll wait a little longer."

"But suppose she hasn't waited this long?"

"Then there's no use going."

Diana bit her lip.

They were silent for a few dragging minutes, then suddenly knuckles banged on the front door.

Mason said in an undertone, "Sounds like a cop. Wonder what the idea is now?"

Diana Regis' cup dropped from her cold, quavering fingers, shattering on the floor, spilling hot buttered rum over the carpet.

"Want out?" Mason asked.

She was too frightened to talk but merely nodded.

Mason grabbed her wrist. "All right," he said, "this way."

The lawyer led the frightened young woman out through the kitchenette to the back porch. "Bend down," he whispered, "so you can't be seen against the lighted windows. Come on, now, keep crouched down."

They moved along a service porch, stooped over so that they clung to the dark shadows, crept down steel stairs clammy and cold with the drizzling rain.

They gained the ground, slipped out through an alley entrance and sought shelter from the rain under the overhang of a shed roof.

"Now," Mason said threateningly, "tell me the truth."

She said in a frightened half whisper, "I left Miss Street's

place and went uptown. Then 1 saw it was late and I didn't think I could get back to her place and get out there to San Felipe in time, and I didn't have any idea that you were coming. She discouraged me."

"So what did you do?" Mason asked.

"I found a taxicab that would take me out there. 1 had to pay him double fare to get him to do it."

"Then what?"

She said, "I saw my car parked out in front so 1 thought that was all there was to it that Mildred must be there all right, and they were having a conference inside the house. So I paid off the cab driver and told him to go on back to town.

"He didn't want to go at first—wanted to wait. 1 told him to go ahead, that everything was all right."

"Then what?"

"Then I went up the stairs to the porch and rang the bell and nothing happened, and that puzzled me a little bit and I walked around the house to the back door and knocked, and the back door was locked. I couldn't understand why Mildred would have left my car there unless she was there."

"And so what did you do?"

"I was pretty wet. It was raining cats and dogs by that time. I went out to my car and sat in the car for quite a while, waiting. Then I got cold and shivery and decided something was wrong. There was a flashlight in my glove compartment. I took it out and walked around the house again, and then I ... then I ... "

"Saw the body?"

"Yes."

"Did you," Mason asked, "walk over toward it?"

She nodded.

"Touch the body?"

"Yes."

"Was it Mildred?"

"Yes."

"Then what?" the lawyer asked.

"Then I got in my car-the keys were in it-and drove away. I didn't know what to do for a while, but then I got the idea of coming back to see Miss Street. I found that she'd gone.

so I thought perhaps—well, you know, perhaps that—well, I fixed up a story and jimmied up my watch and tried to fool You." .

"You're telling the truth now?" Mason asked.

"So help me," she said, "this is the truth."

There was the sound of steps from the vicinity of the apartment house. A shadowy figure glided out to the alley, paused, gave a low whistle.

"Over here, Della," Mason said in a low voice.

"Oh," her voice showed relief.

"What is it," Mason asked.

"I want to talk with you a minute. Chief."

"Excuse me," Mason said to Diana and, taking Della Street's arm, walked over a few feet where they could have a conversation just out of earshot.

"Something happened," Della said. Tm afraid it's going to make a difference."

"What?"

"I knocked on the door just like you told me to, and...."

"And it worked," Mason said. "It frightened her into really telling the truth."

"Well," Della said, "I thought it had worked all right. I waited to give you plenty of time to got away, then I opened the apartment door, went on in and sat down, waiting for you."

"Go ahead," Mason said impatiently. "What happened?"

"I hadn't much more than got myself comfortable and there was a loud imperative knock on the door."

"What did you do?" Mason asked.

"Sat perfectly tight. I didn't know what it was, and I wasn't going to lead with my chin."

"Then what happened?"

"Then the knock was repeated two or three times. And then I heard Lieutenant Tragg7s voice saying, 'Open up in there, or I'll break the door down.'

"What did you do?"

"Continued to sit tight and say nothing."

"What did he do?"

"He went away."

Mason thought that over for a few seconds.

"Does that make a lot of difference?" Della Street asked.

Til tell the world It makes a lot of difference," Mason said. "Thanks to Lieutenant Tragg, the little third-degree that I'd arranged to make Diana Regis tell the truth has become a boomerang."

"You mean that she thinks you helped her escape and..."

"Exactly," Mason said. "If she ever tells the story of what happened, I'll be hooked for being an accessory after the fact. No one will ever believe our story—not now."

"Can they pin that murder on her?"

"I don't see why not. She's left tracks all over the place and has left herself wide open."

"But, Chief, couldn't I take the stand and explain that it was just a third-degree we'd worked out and..."

"Not a chance," Mason said. "We've cut too many comers in the past, Della. They'd simply think it was another fast one we were pulling so I could get out of it. Where's Tragg now?"

"I don't know."

"It's a cinch he's spotted my car out in front, and he's waiting to nab me as soon as I come out. And Diana's car is there, too."

Della Street said somewhat dubiously, "My little car is here in the garage and

"Get it," Mason said.

"Now?"

"Yes. Got your keys?"

"Yes."

"Okay, get it out."

Mason moved back to Diana Regis apd said, "Miss Street is going to get her car out and she'll take you home."

"Home?" Diana asked.

"Well," Mason said, "some place where you'll be safe for the moment."

They heard a lock click back, then a garage door slide open. A motor started and Della Street's light coupe came backing out of the garage.

Mason helped Diana Regis in.

"Which way?" Della Street asked.

Mason glanced up and down the alley. "They may be watching that entrance," he said, indicating the direction of the main boulevard. "Your only chance is to get out the other way."

· "Think they're watching it?"

"They will be in a few minutes," Mason said, "but we may stand a chance right now."

"What happens if we get caught?" Della Street asked.

"We're in bad," Mason said. "I'm going back to your apartment. You drive Diana around. Don't stop anywhere. Don't let her out. Call me at your apartment in twenty minutes if you get clear. Here's something else." Mason whipped a notebook and fountain pen from his pocket, handed them to Della Street. "Write this down, Della 'Chief, I may be a little late. The key's in the mailbox. Go on in and make yourself at home. Della.'"

Della Street wrote the message, handed notebook, and pen to Mason. Mason tore the sheet of paper from the notebook. Della Street handed him the key to her apartment.

"Okay, Della. On your way."

The light coupe shot forward. Mason waited some ten seconds, then returned up the steel stairs to Della Street's apartment. He had barely settled himself with a cigarette and book when heavy knuckles banged on the door.

Mason marked his place in the book with his forefinger, got up and went to the door.

"Well, hello. Lieutenant," Mason said. "I hardly expected to see you again so soon."

Tragg looked past Mason, said shortly, "Hello. I'm looking for your most efficient secretary, Della Street."

"Isn't in". Mason said.

"You living here now?" Tragg asked.

Mason laughed. "We had a date for a midnight supper with some friends. I don't know what happened to Della. I found this note waiting for me when I arrived. So I took the key and let myself in."

Tragg inspected the note which Mason handed him, started to hand it back, then stopped as something caught his eye. He studied the note for a moment then nodded, returned it to Mason, said, "Well, 1 may as well join you in waiting if you have

no objection. In fact, you may be able to give me the information I want."

"What is it?"

"This case that you handled for Diana Regis," Tragg went on. "You were naturally somewhat reticent about that, but I'd like to know more about it."

"Sit down. Lieutenant. Don't tell me that you've stooped so low as to try to get information out of Della Street you felt you couldn't get out of me."

"Not at all. Mason. Don't worry about that. I understood Diana Regis had been with Della Street earlier in the evening. I wanted to check up on the time element. Since I found you here I saw no reason why I shouldn't ask you a few questions."

"Nice of you. Do stretch out and do be comfortable. 1 think Della has some Scotch out in the kitchen. "Should I try to promote a bottle?"

"I'm on duty," Tragg said.

"Are your superiors that strict?"

"It isn't that entirely. But in case anything happens, and I should have to call Miss Street as a witness, I wouldn't like to have it appear I'd consumed her whisky."

"I see the logic of your position. And why would Della be a witness?"

"Several reasons. I knocked on the door a few minutes ago. Mason."

"Oh, was that you? I was telephoning and called out to wait. I guess you didn't hear me."

"I guess I didn't."

"Then, when I did go to the door, no one was there."

"Interesting! I must have been checking up on the cars down front about that time. You think the body was that of Diana Regis?"

"Wasn't it?"

"No."

"Who?"

"A Mildred Danville who shares an apartment with Diana and who looks very much like Diana."

"Oh, oh! And where does that leave Diana, Tragg?"

"In a spot," Tragg said.

"Nice of you to tell me.",

"I'm going to tell you a lot," Tragg said. "I think there are some things you should know. Mason."

"Such as what?"

"As nearly as we can tell, the murder was committed some time around an hour and a half after it started raining. The rain came down pretty hard right at the start."

The lawyer nodded.

"The woman had been running away from her assailant. She was knocked down by the bullet which was fired from some little distance—say over twenty feet. It had been raining long enough so the dust on the ground had turned to mud. She'd got mud in her fingers as she fell with her hand clutching at the ground. You can still see the tracks made by the fingers, and there's mud under the nails."

"Why not fix the time as two hours or later-after it started to rain?"

Tragg said, "General condition of the body. Of course the tests are purely preliminary at present."

"Nice ram," Mason said.

"I understand the farmers like it. How long before Della's going to be back?"

"You know as much about it as I do. You've seen the note."

Tragg said, "Yes—interesting about that note, Mason."

"What about it?"

"Looks as though it had been scrawled rather hastily."

"I suppose it was," Mason said. "She-probably went out and stood in front of the mailbox with a fountain pen in her hand scrawling this note."

"Then she wrote it with your pen and in your notebook," Tragg said. "That page of paper with its perforations matches the sheets m a notebook you carry. And," Tragg went on dryly, "you'll notice that there's an ink smudge where someone moved his finger along the signature at the end of the note while the ink was still damp."

"Yes, I noticed that," Mason admitted.

"And did you, by any chance, notice that there was an ink smear on the inside of your right thumb?"

Mason turned his hand over, said, "No, I hadn't noticed."

"I thought so," Tragg said.

The two men smoked for a while in silence.

Tragg said at length, "It looks as though we have a pretty good case against Diana Regis."

"Gone that far with it?" Mason inquired.

"Yes."

"Just because you found her purse on the sidewalk?"

"Don't be silly," Tragg said. "Mildred Danville managed to get away with Diana's car and with some money belonging to Diana. Diana went after the car and the money."

The telephone rang.

Lieutenant Tragg said, "If you don't mind, Mason, I'll answer it. I think it's for me. I left word that I was to be called here in case of certain developments."

With a quick motion. Mason moved around the table, interposing himself between Tragg and the telephone. "Quite all right, Lieutenant," he said, "but it happens that I am also expecting a call and left word that I could be reached here."

Mason picked up the receiver.

Tragg stood just behind Mason, grimly belligerent.

"Hello," Mason said, and then added, "Be careful what you

say."

A gruff masculine voice said, "I want to talk with Lieutenant Tragg. What the hell have I got to be careful about?"

Mason surrendered the telephone with a smile. "You win, Lieutenant."

Tragg took the receiver, said, "Hello, this is Tragg," then listened for several seconds, said, "All right, get a statement. Stay with it. Good-by."

He hung up the telephone and frowningly regarded the end of his cigarette.

"Something?" Mason asked.

"Taxicab driver," Lieutenant Tragg said, "took a blonde with a black eye who answers the description of Diana Regis out to the San Felipe Boulevard address. There was a car parked in

front. Didn't seem to be anyone home, but that didn't seem to worry the girl any. She told the cab to go back to town. He stuck around thinking that if no one was home, he might take the girl back."

"Fix the time?" Mason asked.

"About an hour after it started to rain."

Mason yawned.

"Thing that interests me," Tragg went on, "is that the cab driver is certain there was a car parked at the curb when he drove up. There wasn't any car except yours when we got there. You wouldn't by any chance have been there earlier in the evening and then gone back .... No, you wouldn't have stuck around that long .... No, it looks as though Diana pulled the trigger and then made a getaway in her automobile—which is now parked in front of this place."

"Rather frank with me, aren't you?" Mason asked.

Tragg met his eyes. "What I'm trying to do, Mason, he said, "is to show you exactly how much of a case we have against your client, so in case Della Street is acting under your instructions and keeping her out of circulation, you won't be able to plead afterward that you didn't know the true facts in the case. If you've whisked her away from right under my nose, you'll have the full responsibility. I want Diana Regis. I want her as a material witness. I want her as a possible suspect for murder. And I've been very careful to see that you know exactly what I have on her and why I want her, Mr. Perry Mason."

"Nice of you. Lieutenant Tragg, I'm certain," Mason said.

The telephone exploded the somewhat intense silence which followed.

Tragg made a dive toward it and found Mason's shoulder in the way. "You already had your call, Lieutenant," Mason pointed out, and then added, "Remember?"

Tragg couldn't think of the answer to that one.

Mason picked up the telephone, said, "Hello. Keep your voice low."

Della Street said, "Okay. What do I do?"

Mason said, "Music."

"Music?" she asked, puzzled.

"Here."

Della Street thought that over for a few seconds, then said,

"Music you don't like. Chief?"

"Yes."

"Can't you tune it out?"

"No."

"Music," Della Street repeated thoughtfully. "You mean that it has to be faced?"

"That's what I'm trying to get across."

"By Diana?"

"All three."

"Am I to bring her up there?"

"Yes."

"Do you want her to talk when she gets there?"

"No."

"Want her to keep absolutely mum?"

"Yes."

"Suppose there's something she can explain? Should she

try?"

"No."

"Okay," Della Street said, "we'll be up."

"Be seeing you," Mason said, and hung up the telephone.

Lieutenant Tragg sighed, reached across Mason's shoulder, picked up the telephone as soon as the lawyer had dropped the receiver in the hook and dialed a number.

"Hello," he said. "Put me on with the Transmitting Department. ... Hello, radio? Lieutenant Tragg. I guess you ran pick up that car now.... Yeh, the one that Diana Regis and Della Street are running around in. ... That's right. Okay, broadcast a message to the radio car to close in and pick them up."

Tragg hung up the telephone, sighed, picked up his hat. "Well, Mason," he said, "better luck next time."

"Trap didn't work?" Mason asked.

Tragg shook his head. "1 thought you'd lead with your chin that time, but you didn't. Perhaps it was intuition. Perhaps I overplayed my hand. Oh well, we have to take the bitter right along with the sweet. But keep cutting corners, Mason, and I'm going to catch you off first base one of these days, and then I'll tag you out."

"Going so soon, Lieutenant?" Mason inquired solicitously.

"Yes. I've got to be up at Headquarters when they bring Diana in and see it I can get anything out of her. I don't suppose I can."

"Going to file a charge against her?"

"That depends. Going to represent her?"

"Can't tell yet," Mason told hirn.

"Well, good night, wise guy."

"Good night," Mason retorted.

The two men grinned at each other, then Tragg turned and walked swiftly down the corridor.

Mason went back to the apartment, found a bottle of Scotch in Della's kitchenette, fixed himself a drink and sat waiting.

In about ten minutes the phone rang. Mason picked it up, heard Della Street's voice say in a swift rush of excitement, "They got her, Chief. I guess they'd been following us. A police car closed in and took her along with them and impounded the car and took it and left me right out on the sidewalk."

"Where you can get a taxi?" Mason asked.

"Not very well at this hour of the night."

"Okay," Mason said, "where are you?"

Della Street gave him the address.

"Wait there," Mason said, "and I'll pick you up. I think we're going to go to the office and make a petition for a writ, of habeas corpus for Diana Regis."

Chapter 7

MASON put on his raincoat and hat, switched out the lights of Della Street's apartment, then paused with his hand on the door knob.

Abruptly he turned back, clicked on the light switch, went to the telephone and dialed the number of Paul Drake's office.

The night operator answered the telephone. "Mason talking," the lawyer said. "Get hold of Paul Drake if he's available. If he isn't, get your best operative who's immediately

B-E Blonde 5

available. Diana Regis and Mildred Danville share an apartment at the Palm Vista Apartments. I don't know the number of the apartment, but your operative can get the information from the directory in the front of the apartment.

"Now this is a job you'll have to handle with kid gloves. It's dynamite. The police will be on the ground, probably within an hour. I want the apartment covered immediately and kept covered until the police get there."

"After that you don't want it covered?" the operator asked.

"After that," Mason said, "it will be useless. But until then, I want to know everything that happens, everyone who enters or leaves that apartment, or who so much as rings the bell. In order to be on the safe side, you'll have to get at least two and probably three good men on the job, each one with a .car. But don't wait until you can get all three. Get someone who's immediately available and ... "

"We have a man right here in the office," the operator said. "He'll start immediately, and I can have two others on the way within ten minutes."

"Okay," Mason said. "I'm going to come up to my office. I'll drop in within an hour or so and see what reports you've had. Be sure to tail anyone who shows any interest in that apartment. And here's something else. Send a couple of good men out to the residence of Jason Bartsler, 2816 Pacific Heights Drive. I want the place covered. There's Jason Bartsler, around fifty-six, Frank Glenmore, about thirty-eight, Mrs. Bartsler, young, good looking and bitchy, and Carl Fretch, twenty-two, her son. See when they come in. If they go out, let me know when."

The operative said, "I can't line up enough men to shadow all those people, Mr. Mason. I can put a man on the job to report, and I can get operatives to tail people who go to the apartment, but the way things are now ... "

"Okay," Mason interrupted. "Cover the apartment and tail the people who show up and get me a report on the Bartsler residence. The apartment is the most important. Handle that first."

Mason hung up, switched out the lights, left the apartment house and crossed through the cold, steady rain to his car. He didn't even bother to try to determine whether he was being

followed, but drove to the drugstore where Della had told him she would be waiting.

Della, watching through the window of the all night drugstore, saw Mason bring his car in to the curb and came out to meet him.

Mason looked at her face as she opened the door and slid into the seat beside him. The lawyer grinned at what he saw in her expression.

Della Street said angrily, "I was never so mad, so completely disgusted m my life."

"Forget it," Mason said.

"You'd think that an ordinary dumbbell would have had sense enough to check up and find whether she was being followed," Della said disgustedly.

"Forget it. It was a trap."

"I don't care what it was. I should have known we were being followed. I've been sitting in there in the drugstore and literally kicking myself."

"There wasn't anything you could have done about it, Della. Tragg knew that Diana Regis had been in the apartment even before he entered the place. Her car was out front. So Tragg planted an extra car somewhere in the block to follow you in case you happened to come out after he went in. There wasn't anything you could have done about it. We were licked before we started. You couldn't possibly have driven your light coupe around the city so you could have ditched the police car, and they'd have closed in on you the minute you tried it."

"Well," Della said somewhat mollified, "at least I might have had sense to know that I was being followed. But I never had the faintest idea anyone was behind me. I suppose, of course, they were driving a good part of the time without lights. The first thing I knew this car came whizzing up from behind as though it intended to pass, then crowded me into the curb. And I looked up and saw that it was a police car and two big cops in there grinning like baboons."

"You told Diana not to talk?"

"Yes."

"Think she will?"

"I don't know, Chief. I told her what you said and

impressed upon her the importance of following instructions to the letter."

"What did the cops say, anything?"

"Asked her if she was Diana Regis."

"What did she say?"

"Said that she was."

"Then what?"

"Asked her if that was her car."

"Then what?"

"She told them they were at liberty to look at the registration slip."

"So what did they do?"

"Told me they'd drive me back to the drugstore from which I'd telephoned before. Then I could get out because they were going to Headquarters, and they were going to take Diana and my car. Of course, as soon as they said that I could go back to the drugstore where I'd telephoned you, I knew that they'd been following."

"That two way radio is a great thing," Mason said.

"And you think that it was a trap?"

"Sure it was a trap," Mason said. "And what is particularly irritating is the fact that I almost walked into it."

"How?"

"Tragg was very careful to tell me some of the things he had against Diana Regis and the reasons he wanted to get in touch with her. Then knowing that they wanted to question her as a witness in connection with a murder, and knowing that there were certain bits of circumstantial evidence that indicated her guilt, I would have put myself in a sweet spot by trying to keep her away from the police. And, of course, it was a temptation to do just that."

"And you think that's why Tragg deliberately told you all that?"

"Of course."

"What did he want?"

"Wanted to either grab me as an accessory after the fact, or at least get something he could take up with the Grievance Committee of the Bar Association."

"And you were too smart to walk into the trap?"

"Nothing particularly smart about it," Mason said thoughtfully. "1 haven't been particularly brilliant tonight."

"You did nobly," Della Street said with quick feeling. "You Kept Tragg from trapping you. I'm the one that's been dumb. What do we do now?"

"We go to the office," Mason said, "and make an application for a writ of habeas corpus for Diana Regis. We'll force them either to fish or to cut bait. They'll have to put a charge against her or turn her loose. But we won't be able to get a judge to give us a writ until tomorrow morning, and that will give them all night to work on her. They can do a lot in that time."

Della Street said, "I got Diana to give me her apartment

key."

Mason turned his head quickly. "Got what?" he asked.

"The key to the apartment she and Mildred shared. I thought perhaps you might find some evidence up there. At least that you'd want to take a look."

"Good girl," Mason said. "I didn't think of that myself."

"Want to go there?"

"No, Della, I'm afraid of it. We'd get caught there and, hang it, I don't know enough about Diana Regis. If they try to pin this murder on her ... No, Della, let's go to the office and get a writ of habeas corpus."

Mason drove to his office building. The Drake Detective Agency, working on a twenty-four-hour basis, spewed light out into the corridor.

Mason stopped in on the way down to his office.

"Heard anything yet?" he asked the night operator.

She smiled and shook her head. "Got a good man out on the job. He was on his way sixty seconds after you'd finished your telephone call. I've also got two others on the way down there."

"Okay," Mason said. "I'll be in my office in case anything develops."

He and Della Street walked on down the corridor, their steps echoing against the rows of office doors. Mason unlocked the door to his private office, switched on the lights.

Della Street removed her hat and coat, seated herself at her

secretarial desk and fed sheets of paper and carbon into the typewriter.

Dictating directly to the typewriter, Mason made a petition on behalf of Diana Regis, alleging that she was unlawfully deprived of her liberty by the police who had filed no charge against her, but were holding her in violation of her rights, asking that a writ of habeas corpus be issued returnable before the court, and that the said Diana Regis be admitted to bail in the sum of two hundred and fifty dollars pending a hearing on said writ.

Mason was just finishing the dictation and Della Street's rapid fingers were flashing over the keyboard in a crescendo of speed, winding up the last sentence of the petition when the telephone rang.

Mason picked up the receiver.

Drake's night operator said, "I think we're on the trail of something at that apartment house. Two of the men are there, but when they arrived, the first man had gone. He must be on the trail of something."

Mason's voice showed excitement. "That's swell! As soon as he calls in, get in touch with me here at the office."

Mason hung up the telephone, took a cigarette from the humidor, lit it and said to Della Street, "Looks as though we've got something, Della."

"What?"

"One of the men missing from in front of the Palm Vista Apartments-the first man on the job. He was gone when the other two got there."

"The police there now?"

"Not yet. They're probably busy questioning Diana."

Della Street segregated the originals and carbons of the petition in neat piles, covered her typewriter, dropped it back into the well of her secretarial desk. "What could it be?" she asked.

Mason said, "it could be anything-could be a boyfriend trying to get in touch with her. It could be someone calling for Mildred Danville,.and it could be something really big."

"Such as what?"

Mason said, "Such as Helen Bartsler."

Della Street's eyes glinted. "Think there's any chance "Can't tell," Mason said. "We haven't been particularly lucky so far. Things may turn our way."

"Well, there's nothing to keep us from hoping."

"That's right."

"Suppose they charge Diana Regis with murder. Chief, are you going to represent her?"

Mason said, "Ordinarily I'd wait to take a look at the evidence, but now she thinks I spirited her out of your apartment when Tragg first came to the door. That means I'm elected. I wouldn't want her to spill that story, either to the police or to some other lawyer."

"I wonder just where Mildred Danville fits into the picture," Della said.

Mason said thoughtfully, "Shortly after Diana told Mildred about getting a black eye, Mildred became all excited. Now it probably wasn't the fact that Carl gave Diana the black eye that got Mildred so worked up. It might be the fact that Carl was in Diana's room."

"That sounds logical," Della said.

Mason said, "Let's follow that up a bit. What was there about Carl going to the room that would get Mildred so worked up?"

"1 can't see a thing," Della said.

"Where did Carl get the key, Della?"

"Out of Diana's purse."

"And what else was in Diana's purse?"

"Why 1...1 don't know."

"Something," Mason said, "that threw Mildred into a panic when she knew Carl Fretch had been in the purse."

Della Street's eyes widened. "Of course!" she exclaimed. "That's it!"

"Well," Mason asked, "what was it?"

"The place where the child was being kept!" Della exclaimed. "That must have been it. There was something in the purse ... "

"Wait a minute," Mason said. "If there was something in Diana's purse that showed where the child was being kept, how did it get there?"

Della Street said excitedly, "Because Mildred Danville had borrowed the purse. Don't you remember? She'd taken it ... ."

"Not then," Mason said, "she hadn't. She'd only taken the driving license. She'd borrowed Diana's driving license and car keys. She didn't actually take Diana's purse until after Diana got back from Bartsler's-that is, as far as we know. Of course she may have taken it before, and we don't know about it."

The telephone rang.

Mason fairly grabbed at the receiver. "Yes, yes. Hello," he said. "Hello-what is it?"

The voice of Drake's night operator came over the line crisply efficient. "We've heard from that first operative, Mr. Mason. He was trailing a car. The driver of that car went to the door of that apartment house and tried to get in, and seemed to be looking in the mailbox."

"License number of the car?" Mason asked.

"We have it. We've checked it. It's registered in the name of Helen C. Bartsler, sixty-seven fifty San Felipe Boulevard."

"Who's driving?" Mason asked.

"A rather trim blonde."

"Where is she? Did he lose her? Did he..."

"No, he followed her to twenty-three twelve Olive Crest Drive. The woman parked the car in front of a bungalow and went in. The car's out there. The woman's inside. There wasn't any place near by where the operative could telephone in a report, so he took a part out of the distributor head so she couldn't get the car started, and beat it to a telephone. He wants to know what to do."

Mason said, "Tell him he's done a day's work, to go home and forget it."

"How about the part for the distributor?" she asked.

"Tell him to throw it in the river," Mason said, and hung up. He said to Della, "Grab your hat. We're off."

In a headlong rush they reached the door of the office, switched off lights, raced down the corridor, waited impatiently for the elevator, rode down in silence and piled into Mason's car.

The rain was a steady, monotonous, cold downpour which

made the drying warmth of Mason's car heater doubly welcome as the tires hissed along the all but deserted streets.

Mason swung the car wide for a turn into Olive Crest Drive, shifted into second as the road curved m a steep grade up the slope of a hill before leveling out into a scenic drive. There was a glimpse of the lights of the city below, then a series of houses blotted out the view as Mason drove swiftly to the two thousand block.

A car was parked in front of 2312, and a woman was in the car. As Mason pulled up alongside he could see her silhouette as she bent over the lighted dashboard of the car.

Mason pulled up alongside, watched the woman trying itt vain to start the car.

"Having trouble?" he asked.

She looked up at him somewhat suspiciously, then as she saw Della Street at his side, nodded and smiled.

Mason pulled his car in front of the parked automobile, got out and walked around to stand by the door.

"What seems to be the trouble?"

"I don't know. It just won't start."

"Don't happen to have a flashlight, do you?"

"No, I haven't."

Mason said, "That's all right, I have one."

Mason went back to his own car, got out his flashlight, said, "Let's raise the hood and take a look.... Now I'll disconnect one of these wires and hold it close to the spark plug. If you'll just step on the starter, we'll see if we've got any spark."

After a moment Mason announced, "Your trouble is electrical. You're not getting any spark whatever. Probably got a little water in your distributor head."

Mason removed the distributor head, replaced it, and walked back to meet the steady, inquiring eyes of the young woman.

"Having domestic troubles?" the lawyer asked cheerfully.

She stiffened. "What do you mean?"

Mason said, "Someone's deliberately put this car out of commission. The part that goes on the electrical distributor has been removed. Until you can get a new part, your car is going to stay right here—unless it's towed away."

A frown of annoyance distorted her features.

"Is there," Mason asked, "anything I can do?"

"Do you have a tow rope?"

"Yes, but it's rather difficult to go down these slippery roads on the end of a tow rope. You'd want to know something about driving behind another car. Have you ever been towed before?"

"No, 1 haven't."

Mason said, "I could take you anywhere you wanted to go as soon as I ask some questions in this house. What's that number, Della?"

Della Street called out, "Twenty-three twelve."

Mason said, "I'll take a flashlight and check on these numbers. It must be one of these houses ..."

"It's the house right here," the woman said.

"Oh, is it?"

"May I ask why you wanted to ask questions at that house?"

Mason's face showed surprise.

"It happens that I just came out of there," the woman said.

"Oh," Mason announced, "permit me to introduce myself. My name is Mr. Mason. I'm a lawyer and .

"Not Perry Mason?"

"The same," Mason said.

"Oh."

"And," Mason went on, "I'm investigating a matter for a client, and I understand there's a lead-a rather important lead at this address."

The young woman became visibly agitated. "Would you mind telling me—well, something of what it's about?"

"Not at all," Mason said. "I'm investigating the disappearance of a child. A ... "

"Mr. Mason, how did you find this address?"

"That is something I am not at liberty to divulge."

"Are you retained by ... by a man whose first name is Jason?"

Mason smiled. "You seem to know something about the setup."

"Are you?" she asked.

Mason said, "Well, to be perfectly frank I may be retained by Mr. Jason Bartsler in order to determine certain matters in connection with the estate of his son and a possible grandson, but that is in the offing at the present time. Right at present I am interested in investigating an angle of a murder case."

"A murder case!"

"Yes."

"Why, Mr. Mason, I ... Who was murdered?"

"A young woman by the name of Mildred Danville."

There was a moment of silence, then the woman in the car said, "I'm Helen Chister Bartsler. I married Robert Bartsler."

"Well, well!" Mason exclaimed.

She said, "I presume you came out here to interview Ella Brockton?"

She managed a tone which was not exactly an interrogation but which invited confidences.

Mason remained silent.

"I don't think it would do you any good to interview Ella right at this time, Mr. Mason. She is upset and ... Well, she doesn't know anything anyway, and ... Mr. Mason, are you certain that Mildred Danville was murdered?"

"The police seem to think so."

"Where?"

"Out on San Felipe Boulevard. I believe the number was sixty-seven fifty."

"Good Heavens, Mr. Mason, that's where I live."

"Indeed," Mason said and then added, after a discreet moment, "Perhaps you'd like to be present when I interview Ella Brockton."

Helen Bartsler slid across the seat, stepped to the pavement and slammed the car door. "If you insist upon an interview at this hour, I certainly want to be there."

"Come on, Della," Mason said.

The three of them walked through the cold rain up to the little bungalow. Helen Bartsler rang the bell and, within a matter of seconds, the door was opened by a woman in the late fifties, tall, stoop-shouldered with intense black eyes and a long thin mouth.

"Ella," Helen Bartsler said, "this is Mr. Perry Mason, the

lawyer, and ... I don't believe I got the name of the person with you, Mr. Mason."

"Della Street, my secretary."

Helen Bartsler said, "They want to ask you some questions,

Ella."

"Ask me questions?" the woman asked in a tired monotone which gave no hint as to the state of her inner emotions.

"Yes. It's in connection with the ... "

"Just a moment," Mason interrupted. "Suppose you let me ask the questions, Mrs. Bartsler, and I'd prefer to not say why I'm interested until after I've asked the questions."

Helen Bartsler hesitated, then said somewhat reluctantly, "Very well-if that's the way you want it."

"Come in," Ella Brockton invited in the same tired expressionless voice.

They entered a room where a gas flame burning over imitation logs gave forth a cheery glow and Mrs. Brockton said, "Take off your things. I'll hang them up in the hall closet. Sit down."

"I'll help you hang them up," Helen Bartsler announced, taking Della Street's raincoat.

Mason said, "We'll all help. And please remember, Mrs. Bartsler, that I very much prefer to interrogate Mrs. Brockton before she is given any information."

Helen Bartsler said indignantly, "Well, you're not the police. I guess I have the right to tell Mrs. Brockton anything I want to. If there's been a murder, she's entitled to ... "

"A murder!" the woman exclaimed, pausing with her hand on the door of the closet.

"Mildred Danville," Helen Bartsler said defiantly. "Well, it serves her right," the woman announced. Mason observed, "You seem to have considered it necessary to tell Mrs. Brockton about it. I suppose you know why?" "I see no reason why you should control my actions at all, Mr. Mason."

"Well," Mason said, "that makes it nice. We're out in the open now. You're on one side and I'm on the other."

"Exactly," Helen Bartsler snapped, "and I want to.tell you, Ella, that this man has no right to ask you any questions and you don't have to give him any answers."

"That's entirely correct," Mason said. "And furthermore, I want to warn both of you that I may have interests that are adverse to those of Mrs. Bartsler and that she is attending this interview at her own request that it is my suggestion that she leave and get some lawyer to represent her in case she wants

t0 ""WhatI have to make a fight about?" Helen Bartsler

Asked

"You've kept a child concealed from others, haven't you? "I haven't told Jason Bartsler about his grandchild," she said "I don't know how he happened to find out about it." "And why didn't you tell Jason Bartsler about his

TSecause he's been so cruel, so spiteful, so underhanded. I didn't want my child to be exposed to that influence. I've met he present Mrs. Bartsler and her son, Carl, and they are human bemas But Jason considered me as a gold-digging prostitute, lower than the dirt beneath his feet. However, that's all been settled now . . Well, I guess I hadn't better say too much. "I don't think you had," Mason said. "I'll ask my questions

of Mrs. Brockton."

"And you don't have to tell him a thing," Helen Bartsler

Sald' They entered the living room, seated themselves. Mason, very much at ease, opened his cigarette case, offered cigarettes to the others, settled back in his chair, said to Mrs. Brockton, "I take it you don't mind. I see you have ash trays here. "Go ahead."

Wi

lillsjl

Mason said to Mrs. Brockton, "Just what did you know

about Robert Bartsler?"

Ella Brockton alanced at Mrs. Bartsler. "She took care of him for me," Helen Bartsler said. "That is up to the time Mildred kidnaped him."

Mason said, "Really, Mrs. Bartsler, I think it would be better if you wouldn't answer questions. After all, I'm trying to

interview Mrs. Brockton."

"You don't have any right to tell me what to do and what

not to do."

"How did Mildred Danville get killed?" Ella Brockton asked.

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"Someone shot her in the back of the head."

Black eyes glittered. "Well, she was asking for it."

"Ella!" Helen Bartsler exclaimed.

"She was," the woman said in the same dogged monotone.

Helen Bartsler said suddenly, "I don't think either one of us had better say anything, Ella."

"How long since you've seen the baby?" Mason asked Ella Brockton.

"I haven't seen him since Mildred Danville took him away," the woman said, and this time there was bitter feeling in her voice. "I warned Mrs. Bartsler what would happen. I knew the minute I saw the expression on her face that day that she was going to take the child and..."

"I think that's enough, Ella," Helen Bartsler said firmly.

Mason settled back and smoked in silence.

Helen Bartsler studied him with cold, shrewd eyes that, under eyebrows so blonde as to be all but invisible, seemed strangely unwinking in their scrutiny.

"That," Mason announced, "suits me. I can get my information elsewhere. Come on, Della, let's go."

They were halfway to the door when Helen Bartsler said, "How did you find out about Robert?"

Mason grinned. "That point seems to worry you, doesn't

it?"

"Frankly, yes."

Mason said, "I think it would be much better for you to see a lawyer."

"I already have," she said with a glint of triumph in her eyes, "1 know my rights."

"As the surviving widow of Robert Bartsler?"

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1»

"Yes, and also as the wife of a person reported missing in action. In case you're interested, Mr. Mason, I've already patched up my differences with Jason Bartsler and have made a full settlement."

"Cash?"

"I didn't say that."

"Settlement all signed?"

"It will be as soon as .... Well, I guess I'll let you find out these things for yourself since you're so smart."

"Thank you, I will. Come, Della, let's go."

Helen Bartsler followed Mason and Della Street to the doorway. "You haven't asked any questions about the details of the murder," Mason said, smiling. "Did you overlook that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, about the time element and where the body was found and things like that. People sometimes ask such questions when a body is found on their premises, you know."

"I wouldn't ask you!"

"I noticed that. Good night."

The door banged indignantly shut.

Mason helped Della Street into his automobile, swung it in a U-turn and made time down the steep grade. He stopped in front of an all night lunch counter, said to Della Street, "There's a phone in there, Della, call Homicide. Give Lieutenant Tragg my compliments, and tell him that Helen Bartsler who occupies the house at sixty-seven fifty San Felipe Boulevard will be found at twenty-three twelve Olive Crest Drive—if he hurries."

"Anything else?" Della asked.

"Oh," Mason said casually, "you might give him my compliments—and ask him if he's setting any more traps for us."

Chapter 8

MASON swung the car down the side street, brought it to a stop in front of Della Street's apartment.

He drew Della close to him. "Night," he said tenderly. She closed her eyes, raised her mouth. After a few seconds, Mason released her, opened the car door, walked around to open the door on Della's side of the car.

"Tired?" he asked. "Some.

"Sleep late in the morning. By the way," he added, his

voice sounding almost too casual. "You said Diana gave you her keys. Better let me keep them." Della Street fumbled in her purse, brought out the key to the apartment with the small mailbox key fastened to it. "Come on back and get in," she said. "Don't think that elaborately casual tone fooled me any. If you're going there, then I'm going too."

Mason said, "You're cold and it's rainy and..."

"I'm not cold, and a little rain isn't going to hurt me. I'm dry and warm as toast. Come on. Don't think you're going to talk me out of it."

Mason hesitated.

"You haven't got all day, you know," Della Street reminded him. "The police aren't going to be that dumb."

Mason got back in the car, switched on the motor and lights and swung the car in a wide turn.

"What would happen," Della asked, "if the police caught us in the apartment?"

"They won't catch us, because we aren't going. I take crazy chances at times, but I'm not going to do anything that wild."

"But what are you going for, then?"

"The mailbox," Mason said. "Remember Helen Bartsler fooled around there? She didn't drive to Mildred's apartment just to ring the bell and then drive away. At least, I don't think she did."

"Oh," Della said. "I get it now. I thought you were going

up."

Mason swung the car around a corner, parked it directly in front of the Palm Vista Apartments. He opened the door and got out of the car into the steady cold rain.

Della Street said, "Car parked back there in the alley, Chief."

"Paul Drake's man," Mason said.

"Oh, that's right. I'd forgotten you had them watching the place."

Mason lit a match and held it in his cupped hands so Drake's operative could see his face and know who it was. "Wouldn't want to have them waste time following us around, Della," he explained. "Sit tight, I'll be right back. I'll just take a look in the mailbox." Mason tan up the steps, fitted the key,

swung back the little metal door and took out an envelope which had Diana's name and the address scrawled in pencil on it. He thrust the envelope in his pocket, snapped the door shut, returned to the car.

"Apparently written in a hurry," Mason said, taking the envelope from his pocket, turning it over in his hands, inspecting it under the dashlight. He inserted a lead pencil in under the flap of the envelope. "Wasn't sealed very well. It's going to open along the flap." Mason rotated the pencil, opening the flap of the envelope.

"Read it here?" Della Street asked. "No. We'd better drive on down the street. The police may show up any minute now.

Mason started the car, drove down the street a couple of blocks, parked, turned on the dome light in the top of the car, and held the letter so both he and Della Street could read it.

Diana Dear

Lord, honey! I can't ever explain what happened. A cop picked me up, charged me with overtime parking and driving without a license. I told him I had just run down to the store for an hour's shopping, and had left my purse in the apartment. He said he'd go along with me to get the purse. Oh horrors! But I had to make my bluff good. I went up, opened the door-and there you were, dear, in the bedroom in your undies with your purse on the table. I grabbed your purse before the cop even had a chance to see you, snatched out your driver's license and showed it to the flabbergasted cop. While he was looking it over, I closed the bedroom door. Then because I was just terribly late for something, I had to simply tear out of there—and of course, with the cop tailing along beside me, I couldn't put your purse back, but had to carry it along big as life, Then an hour or so ago, I opened it again-and honey, you must have robbed a bank!

I'll get it back to you as soon as I can, dear. I've tried calling you, but you aren't in. I'm scribbling this while I'm waiting-frantically waiting, my dear, on the most important thing I've ever run up against in my life. I'll call you again later. Darling, if anything happens to me I want

B-E Blonde S

you to have everything of mine, and be sure to look in the cracker box on the top pantry shelf. I've written my life there, and it tells some of yours—the part you don't want known. I'll bring back the purse tonight. In the meantime, I'll keep calling whenever I can get near a phone. Love, and thanks, darling.

Yours,

Mildred Danville.

Mason finished reading the letter, frowned, turned it over in his hand. "Here's a number scrawled on the other side—it's— 3962YZ."

"What does that mean?" Della asked. "I don't know. And we haven't time to do any speculating now."

"You mean you're going to go after that diary?" "Exactly."

"The police will be..."

"Not all the police in the city could keep me from making a try. You wait here and if I..."

Della Street opened the door. "Don't be silly! Think you can go up there without me?"

"You can't do a thing, Della, and

"You're just wasting time," Della pointed out, opening the car door, jumping out into the rain. "Let's get started."

They walked rapidly along the wet sidewalk, paused when they came to one of the cars that was parked in an alley. Mason approached the driver.

"Hello, Mr. Mason," Drake's man said in a low voice. "No police yet?" Mason asked cautiously. "Not yet."

"I can't understand it. We're going in. If anyone shows, honk your horn. Twice for just anyone, three times for the cops. If it's the law, get your car started and be pulling away from the place when you give the signal, and I mean pulling away." "Okay, I got it."

. Mason said, "It's going to be a flying trip. I think I can make it all right. We won't be over five minutes." "Okay. We'll cover the place."

Mason and Della Street crossed over to the apartment house. Diana's key worked smoothly in the outer door. "It's a walk-up," Mason said, "second floor. Remember now, Della, if anything happens, I do the talking, you do the keeping quiet."

They found the door of the apartment. Mason inserted the key, snapped back the lock, switched on the lights. "We don't want to seem furtive about this, Della. It's one of the things you have to do right out loud if you're going to get by .... Let's see, where is the pantry? That looks like it. You raid the cracker

box. I'll take a gander in the bedroom-just a look around

Keep your gloves on. They'll probably fingerprint the place when they get around to it."

Della Street opened the door which led to a small kitchen, switched on the lights. Mason went to the bedroom, clicked the light switch, regarded the twin beds thoughtfully. Both had been made, but one was rumpled as though someone had been sleeping on top of the covers. There were two chests of drawers, one dressing table. Mason's eyes went to the bathroom door. He moved over to it, had his hand on the knob when, from the street came the sound of a short sharp blast on an automobile horn. A second later there was another. Mason waited for the sound of a third. It didn't come.

Mason ran to the bedroom door, made a pass at the light switch, missed it, jerked the door closed, ran to the light switch by the entrance door of the apartment, snapped the lights off, called, "Come on, Della."

Della Street said from the pantry, her voice edged with exasperation, "I can't find the confounded cracker box."

Mason switched out the lights in the kitchen, ran to join her. "Someone's coming. We're probably trapped now, anyway. Here, what's this up on . . Oh oh!"

He broke off as steps sounded in the corridor.

The lawyer stepped out into the dark kitchen. Della Street switched off the light in the little pantry. The steps paused in front of the door of the apartment.

The click of metal against metal was all but inaudible, and the turning of the key was done so slowly and quietly that there was only a faint click as the spring lock snapped back.

The door slowly opened.

For a long two or three seconds nothing happened. Whoever had opened the door stood in the doorway listening, the faint lights from the corridor behind throwing a sinister shadow along the worn carpet of the apartment.

The shadow on the carpet moved.

There was no sound as the figure of the intruder stepped forward into the room and turned to close the door, a motion which was done so swiftly that darkness blotted out the dim light from the corridor before either Mason or Della Street had an opportunity to get a good look at the intruder who was now merely a vague shadowy figure tiptoeing silently across the room to crouch before the partially opened door to the bedroom.

i 1

Mason pushed Della Street back, gently tiptoed across the kitchen to stand in the doorway where he could look into the bedroom, and then became conscious of Della Street's presence as she pressed against his shoulder.

The lower portion of the ribbon of light from the partially opened bedroom door was blotted out by a man's body.

t

Slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time, the figure pushed open the door of the lighted bedroom until the figure was silhouetted against the light.

"Is that Carl Fretch?" Della Street whispered.

The pressure of Mason's fingers warned her to silence. "Yes. That's Carl."

"I'm going back to that pantry," Della whispered, and glided swiftly and silently across the kitchen.

Mason stood in the doorway watching Carl Fretch.

The young man stood on the threshold of the bedroom for, a matter of some seconds before apparently concluding that the occupant of the bedroom who had left the lights on Was in the bathroom.

Slowly he tiptoed his way to the bathroom. Once more he twisted the knob, cautiously opened the door, seemed utterly nonplused when he found the bathroom was empty..

From the street outside, came the blast of a hom, followed by a second and then a third, as a car roared off down the boulevard.

Carl Fretch froze into startled silence, then started tiptoeing toward where Mason was standing invisible m the darkness.

?T

mm

■

Sudden steps sounded from the stairway, the confused footfalls of several persons climbing noisily.

Carl Fretch stopped in his tracks, his posture stiff with apprehension. For a moment he listened, then he darted back to stand in the door of the bedroom.

Steps rounded the head of the stairs, into the corridor, came down to the very door of the apartment. Knuckles tapped a perfunctory rap on the panels, then almost immediately a key clicked back the spring lock.

Carl Fretch, moving swiftly, closed the door of the bedroom.

The door of the corridor opened. Three men pushed their way into the apartment. One of them switched on the lights.

"Good evening. Sergeant Holcomb," Mason said, and managed somehow to give a certain casual note to his voice.

Sergeant Holcomb's face darkened. "You again!"

"In person."

Holcomb tilted back his hat. "What the hell, are you doing here?"

"I was," Mason announced, "about to make an inventory"— and then added as Della Street moved up to join him-with the assistance of my secretary."

Holcomb said angrily, "Well, as far as I'm concerned, you're a house-breaker."

"I was hoping," Mason announced, "you'd got over that habit of jumping at conclusions."

Holcomb said, "Go ahead, wise guy, shoot off your face. You got me lifted off of the Homicide Squad by making a monkey out of me because I listened to you. Now I don't listen. I act."

"Suit yourself," Mason said.

The two plain-clothes officers who accompanied Sergeant Holcomb looked to him for instructions.

"How'd you get in?" Holcomb asked.

"My client, Diana Regis, gave me the key to her apartment and asked me to do something for her here."

"Humphi" Holcomb said. "Her key!"

"Exactly," Mason said, "just as I presume you took Mildred Danville's key and came to take a look around."

"How long you been here?"

"I don't know. Five minutes, perhaps. Perhaps ten minutes. Why don't you look around. Sergeant?"

"I'm looking around," Holcomb said. "What have you found, anything?"

"Nothing of any importance."

"I don't like the idea of you being here. How do we know your client gave you a key and told you to come here?"

"I've told you so."

"Well," Holcomb said after a moment's hesitation, "I told you I didn't listen to you any more."

"Then quit asking me questions," Mason said.

Holcomb jerked his head toward the bedroom. "Take a look around, boys. I'll handle this."

The two officers swung toward the bedroom, pushed open the door. A moment later he called out, "Windows open on the

fire escape, Sarg. Looks like somebody's gone down Hey, you!

Come back here. Stop or I'll shoot!"

Holcomb raced for the bedroom.

"Guy just getting down the fire escape," one of the officers shouted, "beat it down the alley."

"Don't stand there with lead in your pants," Holcomb yelled, "get down and pick him up. What the hell are you standing there gawking at?"

The two officers raced back through the living room, out through the door and down the stairs.

Holcomb said to Mason, "Come on over here and sit down.

No funny stuff."

"Are you," Mason asked, "by any chance trying to take me into custody?"

"I don't know," Holcomb said. "I do know I'm not going to let you pull any razzle dazzle on me. What have you got in your pockets?"

"Personal belongings," Mason said.

"Who was it got down the fire escape? Your man, Paul Drake?"

. Mason remained silent.

Holcomb said, "You sure got a crust, Perry Mason, prowling around with your detective, digging up evidence in advance of

the police and trying to fix things so we can't make a case. Now I'm going to tell you something, wise guy, if you've taken anything out of this place, or if Paul Drake has, you're going to get charged with burglary. Get that? I'm going to throw the book at you."

Mason lit a cigarette, said, "Do sit down, Della. I'm afraid you'll find the Sergeant is in one of his more belligerent moods."

Heavy steps sounded on the stairs. One of the officers who had dashed out said, "He got away, Sarg."

"Well, take the car and look alive," Holcomb shouted angrily.

"Jim's got the car. He's making a swing around the block. I thought perhaps you'd want some help up here."

Holcomb said, "All right, keep an eye on these two. I'm going to take a look around."

Sergeant Holcomb started prowling around the apartment, looking in drawers and closets.

Mason smoked in silence.

Holcomb returned to Mason, said, "We got a tip that Mildred Danville left some sort of a diary."

"Indeed," Mason observed.

"Now that there diary," Sergeant Holcomb went on, "might be evidence."

"Evidence of what?"

"Evidence that would give us some sort of a lead on who the murderer might have been."

"Of course," Mason pointed out, "neither one of us knows what's in the diary—assuming that there is a diary. Sergeant."

Holcomb frowned, "I don't know what's in it, but you might."

Mason raised his eyebrows.

Holcomb said, "Now I'll be a gentleman. If Miss Street will tell us on her word of honor that she hasn't anything she's taken from this apartment and that she doesn't know anything about a diary, we won't search her.

"We'll search you, Mason. If you haven't taken any evidence from here, we'll let you go."

"You say you're going to search me?" Mason asked incredulously.

"You're damn right."

"Without a warrant?"

"That's right."

"I think not," Mason said calmly.

"Wait until Jim gets here," Holcomb said. "You've got away with murder. Mason, and from now on whenever you run up against me, you're going to get a few jolts."

"Try searching me without a warrant," Mason said, "and you'll get a jolt yourself."

Holcomb tilted back his hat. "There's ways of doing these things, wise guy."

Something more than a minute elapsed, then there were feet on the stairs again and the third officer entered the room. "Couldn't do a thing with the guy that got down the fire escape, Sarg," he said, "but there's a car parked up near the corner. Car is registered in the name of Jason Bartsler. There's another car parked down the alley, guy sitting in it. I shook him down for a driving license. He's an operative for the Drake Detective Agency, said he was sent out here to watch the joint, won't tell us anything else."

"Jason Bartsler, eh," Sergeant Holcomb said. "All right boys, impound that car. Shake down the guy that's casing the place. If Drake sent him over here to keep watch, he saw the guy that went down the fire escape. Get a description. Tell him it's a burglary rap, and if he withholds essential evidence from the police, we'll take his license and make it tough for the whole outfit. Frank you take these two along with you."

"May I ask what you intend to do?" Mason asked.

"You're damned right you can ask, wise guy," Sergeant Holcomb said, "because I was about to tell you anyway. You're under arrest on a charge of burglary, and on a charge of obstructing justice by suppressing evidence. You're going to jail. Della Street is going to jail. You're' going to be booked. We wouldn't search you for anything without a warrant—indeed no! But when you're booked and jailed, you know, you have to be searched. Your belongings are taken away from you, and you're given a receipt for them. There's an easy way, and there's a

hard way of doing these things. You like to have them done the hard way. That suits me. Come on, buddy, take 'em along."

Chapter 9

A BIG incandescent bulb backed by a white porcelain reflector blazed light down from the ceiling. The desk of the Property Clerk occupied a corner of the room with steel bars forming a background. Ahead was a narrow barred passageway, and behind was a steel door opening into a wider corridor.

Perry Mason, white-faced with rage, stood in the silence of futility, his mouth a grim gash across his face, his eyes blazing, but he said nothing.

Sergeant Holcomb, hat on the back of his head, grinned at the two burly officers who stood by the desk of the Property Clerk.

"That all of it, boys?"

"That's all of it," one of the men said.

Holcomb said, "We keep this letter about a diary for evidence. Looks to me like they stole it out of the apartment. Mason hasn't got that diary, so I guess the secretary had it. Phone up to the Matron's office. If it ain't there, it'll be because they didn't have a chance to get it before we showed up. Come to think of it, Mason was standing in the doorway of the kitchen when we got there. I guess this secretary of his was in the pantry."

Holcomb slid a heavy manila envelope over toward Perry Mason. "You're booked," he said, "for obstructing justice, section one thirty-five. Penal Code, also for unlawful entry. You're released on your own recognizance. You can have your property back by signing the receipt on the back of this envelope-all except that letter. That's evidence. You can take it up with the D.A.'s office when the arraignment will be."

Mason said in a voice that was harsh with his effort to control his rage, "1 presume you know how irregular all this is?"

"Me, I don't know nothing," Sergeant Holcomb said grinning. "I'm just a dumb cop. You're the smart guy. If you think there's anything irregular about it, make a squawk to the

proper authorities. In the meantime, Mason, don't think you're going to play button-button-who's-got-the-button with evidence in this case. There are ways of getting what we want."

Mason said nothing.

"Of course," Holcomb went on, "if you want to go before a magistrate and have him release you on your own recognizance why that'll be some time tomorrow morning, and you can go on into a cell and go to bed. But right now, I'm telling you you can be released on your own recognizance. All you've got to do is to sign your name and walk out. You're going to sign it and walk out some time, you may as well do it now and save yourself spending a night in jail. But if you want to have it done all nice and regular, and object to being released irregularly, why just wait until you can walk out with a court order. I don't give a damn. There's the door."

Mason picked up the fountain pen which had been duly listed as a part of his property and signed the receipt on the back of the envelope. The Property Clerk tore off the flap with the receipt and the inventory of contents and filed it in a card case. He was completely bored with the entire affair and made no effort to conceal his indifference.

Sergeant Holcomb said to the man at the steel door, "Okay, open it up. He's released on his own recognizance."

Mason walked out through the steel door. Behind him Sergeant Holcomb chuckled audibly, said, "Shucks, you're such a stickler for doing things according to law, I thought you'd stay in jail until a judge released you. Good-by, sweetheart!"

Mason crossed a barred waiting room, climbed a flight of stairs to a cage where another turnkey twisted a big brass key, shot back a bolt, opened a steel barred door and let Mason walk out of the jail, sickeningly sweet with its smell of disinfectant, into the pure night air.

Della Street was waiting outside. One glance at Perry Mason's face told her all she needed to know. She came close to him and slipped her arm through his.

Silently they walked through the rain, back to the parking place where Mason's car had been left. The lawyer climbed in white-faced with rage, and jabbed the ignition key into the lock.

Della Street said, "I know how people feel now when they commit murder."

"Search you?" Mason asked.

"A matron stripped me to the skin and went through every inch of me."

"What did they do with the diary?" Mason asked.

"There wasn't any diary."

Mason took his eyes from the dashboard of the car, swung around to look Della Street full in the face.

"Didn't you get it?"

"Of course I got it," she said, "and then I heard the signal for the police. There was part of a loaf of bread there. I dug out the inside, put in the diary, kneaded the bread back over the opening I'd made and dropped the half loaf into the garbage pail. Then I went to join you in the doorway where Sergeant Holcomb saw me."

Mason's face slowly relaxed. "Good girl!" he said.

He backed the car around out of the parking place, slammed it into low gear, stepped on the throttle, swung out into the rainy street, ran through the gears and started making speed.

"Going to make a try for it?" Della asked.

"No. That's what they'll be expecting us to do as soon as Holcomb checks up with the matron and finds out it wasn't on you."

"You mean they'll follow us?"

"Not us," Mason said. "They'll put a lot of spotters around that apartment house. They'll let us go in, and when we come out, they'll arrest us all over again."

"Do they have any right to do that?"

"No."

"Chief, as far as I'm concerned, I ... How I hate that man."

Mason said nothing.

"The big baboon," Della Street went on bitterly. "They took him off the Homicide Squad because you made such a monkey of him, and now he's going in for strong-arm tactics. Won't they find that diary in the garbage pail?"

"They may not," Mason said. "Remember that Carl Fretch

beat it down the fire escape. Sergeant Holcomb's first reaction will be one of stupefied bafflement, then before he decides that you hid the diary some place in the building, he'll remember the man who got down the fire escape. He'll reach the conclusion the diary went with him."

"Then what?" Della Street asked.

"It's hard to tell," Mason said. "He may think it was one of Paul Drake's men and try to bring pressure to bear on Paul. He may get Jason Bartsler up out of bed. He may get a lead- to Carl Fretch."

There was another long interval of silence. "Where are we going?" Della Street asked. "Home."

"You're not going to do anything about Carl?"

"No."

"Do you suppose Carl knows you were in there?"

"He may have stuck around long enough to hear some of the conversation with Sergeant Holcomb."

"Suppose he knows about the diary?"

"I don't know."

"What was he after?"

"That again is something you can't tell."

"It gave me the creeps seeing him tiptoeing toward that bedroom. I wouldn't want to have been sleeping in there. There was something so menacing about him.... Chief, how did he get a key to that apartment?"

"When he had Diana Regis' purse," Mason said, "he undoubtedly took an imprint of all the keys in there and had duplicates made."

"And why did he do that?"

"Perhaps just amatory persistence. Perhaps something else."

Once more they were silent. Mason drove rapidly through the deserted streets, swung his car to a stop in front of Della Street's apartment.

"Night," he said.

Della looked up at him solicitously. "Chief, get over it, will you?"

"What?"

"That tense rage."

Mason tried a forced grin.

Della started to get out of the car, then glanced back at him. Her arm came up around his neck, pulled his head back down to hers. For a long interval her lips clung to his, then she suddenly freed herself from Mason's embrace.

"That," she announced, "should get your mind off of Sergeant Holcomb. Remember to wipe the lipstick off your mouth. Good night, Chief."

Chapter 10

MORNING sun shone brightly on the rain-washed buildings of the city. The blue sky was innocent of so much as the trace of a cloud. The sunlight poured through the eastern windows of Mason's office and splashed a golden oblong on his desk as Della Street carefully dusted the top of his desk, then adjusted the Venetian blinds so that there would be no glare from the sunlight.

She had just finished when Mason clicked back the lock on the door of his private office.

"Hello, Della, did you sleep?"

"Some. How about you?"

Mason smiled and shook his head. "I was too damn mad to sleep. Give Paul Drake a ring and ask him if he can come in right away, will you, Della?"

Della Street stuffed her dust cloth into a drawer of her secretarial desk, picked up the telephone and put through the call to Paul Drake while Mason was putting his hat and light topcoat in the hat closet.

As Della Street hung up the telephone and said to Mason, "He'll be right in," the lawyer nodded, walked over to the desk, started to sit down, changed his mind and started pacing the floor.

"Can't you," Della Street asked, "get him for false arrest or something of that sort?"

Mason said, "I could make a few passes at him and make myself the laughing stock of the town. It would simply advertise what had happened. I've pulled too many fast ones to start crying for help when the party gets rough, but I'll get that big

ape yet. Lieutenant Tragg has brains, and he's dangerous. Holcomb is simply a conceited, arrogant, dumb cop who thinks he's tough. He ... "

Drake's code knock sounded on the door to Mason's office and Della went over and opened it.

"Hi, Della," Drake said, and grinned at Perry Mason.

"What the hell have you two been doing?"

"Why?"

"I didn't get any sleep last night."

"Neither did I," Mason said.

"I see your old friend Sergeant Holcomb is messing around, more belligerent than ever. I thought they'd transferred him."

"He's evidently worked his way into the good graces of the powers that be," Mason said. "What did he do to you, Paul?"

"Came up and got me out of bed to tell me that one of my operatives was holding out a diary on him, then accused me of having been in Diana Regis' apartment with you, of having stolen this diary and made my escape out of the window and down the fire escape."

"What did you tell him?"

"I was too flabbergasted to even get mad," Drake said. "I guess I finally convinced him, but the sheer surprise of it put me on the defensive enough so I called my operative who had been watching the apartment and asked him what had happened. He'd seen an automobile belonging to Jason Bartsler drive up and park in front of the place and a youngish man approach the outer door of the apartment house with all of the assurance in the world, fit a key to the door and go in. Naturally my operative assumed the man lived there, but because the guy looked in Diana's mailbox, he got the license number on the car just as a matter of routine. He says the other operative on the job signaled you with two horn blasts."

"Did he see this chap come down the fire escape?" Mason asked.

"No, he didn't. The fire escape was on the alley and where my man was parked, you couldn't see that. The law came there right after this bird went in and the relief operative started his car, signaled you with three blasts, and then got the hell out

of there, so then this bird took over. Holcomb got rough with him trying to pump him. The guy acted dumb, said it was a routine tailing job, that he was to pick up a blonde with a black eye when she came out and he hadn't paid much attention to people going in. He's smart-a hell of a lot smarter than Holcomb, so he made it stick."

"What did you do with Holcomb?"

"Well, after he crabbed around that we weren't co¬operating with the police, I woke up enough to get sore and put on a counter-offensive. That got rid of him-and I think scared him a little."

"Then what, Paul?"

"Well, as soon as I learned it was Jason Bartsler's car, I went up to the office and got hold of the reports which had come in from the operatives who were covering the Bartsler residence. Seems that a man who apparently was Carl Fretch, Jason Bartsler's stepson, went out in a car and came home in the small hours of the morning in a taxicab."

"Pass that information on to Sergeant Holcomb?"

"I did not," Drake said. "Holcomb doesn't even know that we were watching the Bartsler residence. He did spot my operative down in front of Diana Regis' apartment house so I had to kick through on that. The other stuff I kept mum about."

"Anything else happen out at Bartsler's?"

Drake grinned. "Along about daylight this morning, Sergeant Holcomb and a couple of men went down and aroused the household. Lights were on for quite some spell, and then the cops, looking very hard-boiled, marched Carl Fretch off to Headquarters. As nearly as I could tell, he's there yet."

Mason hooked his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, started pacing the floor, thoughtfully digesting the information.

"I take it, from what Sergeant Holcomb let slip, that you had rather a hard night. Perry."

Mason clamped his lips in a firmly determined line. "I'm going to pay my respects to that gorilla one of these days."

"What about the diary that's missing?" Drake asked.

"It's missing."

"It just occurs to me," Drake warned, "that the police are going to get really tough about that."

"Let them get tough."

"I have an idea there's something in the diary about Diana Regis' past life-something that will give them a good angle for an investigation."

Mason said, "Phooey! They have an idea that they'll find something prejudicial to Diana they can feed to the newspapers. They couldn't get any of that stuff admitted in evidence and they know it, but they can dish it out to the newspapers and let the newspaper reporters smear it all over the papers. Then when the girl comes up for trial, the jurors will remember all about what they read in the papers. It's an old police trick by which they get stuff before the jury they couldn't possibly put in as evidence in the regular way."

Drake said, "Well, I don't know the law myself. Perry, but isn't there some law that makes it a crime to withhold any evidence?"

Mason nodded.

"I'm just telling you," Drake said, "that Holcomb-is really worked up about this thing, feels that this diary slipped through his fingers by some hocus-pocus, and he's really going to town on it. If you have that or know where it is, my own suggestion is that you'd better run for cover."

"The hell with Sergeant Holcomb," Mason said. "If there's anything shady in the past life of my client, it certainly doesn't have anything to do with this murder case."

"How do you know it doesn't?"

"Because it couldn't."

"It might furnish a motive."

"Don't be silly," Mason said. "Suppose there was a diary kept by Mildred. And Mildred and Diana were old friends, and they'd been sharing an apartment. Why should Diana suddenly want to kill her because of something Mildred knew?"

"Why should she want to kill her anyway?" Drake asked.

"She didn't."

"The police think she did."

"Bunk! .... Paul, according to a letter which Mildred wrote Diana and which was probably the last thing she ever wrote, Mildred had taken Diana's purse because a cop had pinched her for some minor violation and asked to check up on

her driving license. She didn't have one, so pulled the old gag that she'd left it in her apartment, and the cop decided to go up to her apartment and check with her. Now I want to tmd that cop."

"Any idea what time the thing happened?"

"Probably some time around the first part of the afternoon."

"Yesterday?"

"That's right."

"You don't know where?"

"It was evidently some place within a block or two of the apartment because Mildred evidently told the cop she'd just run down to do a little quick shopping and had forgotten to take her purse with her. The cop went back to the apartment with her and she naturally had to pick up Diana's purse and take it along because that's where Diana's driving license was, and Mildred was passing herself off, for the time, as Diana."

"I'll see what I can find out," Drake said, dubiously.

"And I want a complete check up on the arrivals and departures at the Bartsler residence."

Drake said, "Remember, Perry, my men didn't get on the job there at Bartsler's until midnight. You've got to take hearsay for most of this stuff. Apparently Mrs. Bartsler left around two or two-thirty in the afternoon. She was gone all evening and didn't get back until eleven o'clock. Bartsler himself left at five o'clock and got back about ten. Carl Fretch left at six o'clock, got back at ten forty-five, was only in the house fifteen minutes, then picked up Bartsler's automobile, went out at eleven and came back in a taxi at ten minutes to two. A man who evidently is associated with Bartsler, a chap by the name of Glenmore, left somewhere around noon, came back at nine- thirty and stayed there."

"Driving a car?" Mason asked.

"His own."

"First and last, seems to have been a lot of activity."

"There was."

"Do you know what time it started to rain last night, Paul?"

"Officially it started raining at seven fotty-seven. That rain figures in the police theory of the murder, you know, Perry. The

B-E Blonde 7

position of the body and the clues on the ground show that death took place some time after the rain had started."

Mason's eyes became level-lidded with thought. "About how long after, Paul?"

"Oh, some time around an hour to an hour and a half. They're fixing the time of death, I understand, as between eight and nine."

"Just how much of a case have they got against Diana?" Mason asked.

"It's pretty early to tell much about it. I get most of my information as to police activities through a friend on the newspaper who gets his stuff from the cops. I can tell you this much, Perry, the case they have against her is pretty strong. There's mud on Diana's shoes, and an analysis of that mud shows it's exactly the same soil as that in which the body was found. There are footprints near the body and those footprints were still sufficiently well preserved when the police found the body so they can pretty well pin them on Diana. All of that stuff doesn't make too strong a case, but they're working on the thing and may uncover some more evidence. The police theory is that Mildred Danville started to run from Diana when she realized Diana was trying to kill her that Diana opened her purse, pulled out a gun and shot that she dropped her purse when she fired that after she had killed Mildred she went down to the body, bent over it and took something from the body—something that the killing was over, and the police would like to claim it was that diary—so you can see that letter you found becomes pretty important."

"You know what was in that letter?" Mason asked.

"Sure, it'll be in the newspapers tonight, a complete facsimile of it."

Mason said, "Damn Holcomb anyway."

"It's evidence," Drake said. "They're holding it as such."

Mason resumed his pacing of the floor.

"Of course," Drake went on, "if they should claim that letter is a forgery they've got a lot of stuff to back them up-the fact that the letter was found in youi possession rather than in the mailbox, and that you're acting as her attorney and all that stuff."

"I know," Mason said, "but once we can prove that Mildred picked up Diana's purse it's up to the police to prove that she ·gave it back. You get busy and see if you can find that cop who made the pinch."

Drake uncoiled himself from the big chair where he'd been sitting, said, "Well, I'll start my men out and see if we can find that cop."

"If you find him," Mason warned, "get a statement out of him. Sew his testimony up before Holcomb tampers with his evidence."

"Think Holcomb would do it?"

"You're damn right I do. Holcomb would do anything to get a conviction in this case. He's mixed up in it too deep himself."

Drake said, "I'm on my way. Want me to still keep men on Bartsler's house?"

"I think so."

"It's a little difficult with things happening the way they are. They may spot my men."

"If they do, they'll think it's the police," Mason said. "Stay with it. Also keep a check on the place where Mildred and Diana had their apartment. I want to know what goes on there."

Drake said, "I'll keep you posted," and went out. Della said, "I'd like to know what Carl told the police."

"So would I."

Mason said, "Now that Holcomb's mixed up in the case he'll move Heaven and earth to get hold of that diary. He'd like to smear Diana's reputation all over the newspapers. And watch the way they'll see that the newspapers have a chance to play up the fact that she has a black eye."

"Why?"

"Oh, you just don't associate a black eye with a woman of respectability," Mason said. "And there's a big section of the reading public that will think that a girl who has a black eye is fully capable of murder. The thing I can't figure out is why Diana's black eye got Mildred so excited. It must be because Carl Fretch had gone through Diana's purse. Now if Mildred had borrowed this purse on some prior occasion, we can begin to see some reason for Mildred's excitement. But suppose there's some other reason. Suppose it was something other than Carl..."

The telephone rang, the unlisted telephone to which no more than half a dozen persons in the city had the number.

Mason himself picked up the receiver, said, "Yes. Hello.

What is it?"

Paul Drake's dry laconic voice came over the wire. "Looks like you lose, Perry."

"What?"

"The police have found the murder weapon."

"Where?"

"Diana Regis' apartment, shoved down in the bottom of the dirty clothes hamper."

Mason said angrily, "Then it was planted there. That's what Carl Fretch was doing when

"Take it easy. Perry, take it easy," Drake said. "You haven't heard all of it yet."

"Give me all of it then."

"It's got Diana's fingerprints all over it. And those are the only fingerprints on the gun."

"That all?" Mason asked.

"Isn't that enough?"

"Too damn much," Mason said, and dropped the receiver back into place.

Chapter 11

DIANA REGIS sat on the opposite side of the heavy screen mesh which separated the prisoners' side of the table from the visitors' side. In the background hovered a big-boned matron, while a sharp-eyed officer kept watch on the visitors' side to see that no attempt was made to pass any article through the screen mesh.

Mason held his ears close to the screen, and Diana, her black eye now turned to a shade so dark that it seemed a greenish hue, leaned forward so that she could tell her story in half whispers.

"What," Mason asked, "is there in your past life that you want to conceal?"

"Why, nothing."

"You're certain about that?"

"Yes."

"You're divorced?"

"Yes."

"You got the divorce or did he?"

"I did, cruelty."

"Hang it," Mason said irritably, "you try holding out on me all the time. Can't you realize you're just cutting your own throat when you hold out information on your lawyer?"

"I guess," she admitted somewhat ruefully, "I should have told you about the gun."

Mason said sarcastically, "It might have been considered worthy of mention by someone who wanted to play fair with her lawyer."

"Mr. Mason, please don't."

Mason said, "I've got so far into this that I can't very well back out. Wow you start pulling all of this stuff on me. Go ahead and tell me about the gun, and try telling the truth."

"Mr. Mason, I've always told you the truth, only—well, about the gun, I didn't because I thought it was Mildred's, and that perhaps she'd been intending to do something, well, desperate."

"How do you know it was Mildred's?"

"I've seen her with it."

"When?"

"The last two or three weeks. She's.... I know she carried a gun."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"When did you discover this gun?"

"Last night."

"When?"

"Right after I left Miss Street's apartment the first time. I decided I'd go down to my apartment and see if there was anything there-any further message from Mildred. 1 took a taxi."

"What time did you get there?"

"I don't know."

"How soon after you left Miss Street's apartment?"

"Not over fifteen minutes."

"Was it raining?"

"Yes, it had just started to rain, perhaps twenty minutes earlier."

"Then where was the gun?"

"Lying on top of the dresser."

"What did you do?"

"I naturally wondered what it was doing there. I picked it up and looked at it and then put it in the dresser drawer and then thought that perhaps... well, I didn't know... I didn't want to have it found right on top so I went over to the dirty clothes hamper and put it in there."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I just was worried about Mildred. I thought she might have got into some sort of trouble. She told me she was going to try something rather desperate."

"Then what?"

"Then I started back to Della Street's apartment, but it was raining and-well, I was worried about Mildred, wondering if she'd got into some sort of trouble, so I took a taxi and went right out to San Felipe Boulevard."

"How long did that take you?"

"It was quite a long ride from my apartment. It must have taken twenty-five minutes or half an hour."

"Do you know what time you got there?"

"It must have been around half past eight or quarter to nine."

"And what did you do?"

"Just what I told you, Mr. Mason. I looked around for a while, went over to my car and waited, then I got out and walked around back, and then I found Mildred's body and then I got in my automobile and drove back to try and find Miss Street, and she was gone and .... Well, that's just the way it happened."

Mason said, "Now listen, Diana, let's be fair about this thing. When Mildred's body was found it was lying face down in the mud. There were tracks where her fingers had dragged

through the mud. Now your story simply can't be true, because if that gun was actually used as the murder weapon the killing must have taken place after it started to rain."

"I can't help it. I'm telling you the truth, Mr. Mason."

"How much did you tell the police?"

Her eyes shifted.

"Good Heavens!" Mason said angrily. "Can't you play fair with me? How much did you tell the police?"

Tears came to Diana's eyes. "I told them everything."

"I told you to keep your mouth shut."

"I know you did, but they—well, it was all right until they found that gun, and then they were so nasty and sneering and triumphant, and-and my fingerprints were on the gun and they started to bully me. Well, I told them the truth."

"But," Mason said angrily, "it can't be the truth. Mildred wasn't killed until after it started to rain."

Diana said nothing.

"Look here," Mason charged, "you're trying to protect someone. You found that gun some time after you'd discovered the body, not before. You hid it and..." -

"No, Mr. Mason, honestly. I swear."

"How," Mason demanded, "could that gun have been used in committing the murder if the murder was committed after it started to rain, and ... wait a minute!"

Mason drew his brows together in a frown. His voice suddenly showed excitement. "Look here, Diana, you've got to tell me the exact truth. You can't deviate from it by so much as a hairsbreadth."

"I'm telling you the truth, Mr. Mason."

Mason abruptly got up from the chair and signaled the matron that the interview was over. "All right," he said, "I'm going to get busy. If you're lying you'll get a first degree verdict slapped into your face."

Mason left the jail, came down to where Della Street was sitting in the automobile waiting. "Well?" she asked.

Mason said, "She says she found the gun before she went out to San Felipe Boulevard. That means that she found the gun very shortly after it began to rain."

"But the murder couldn't have been committed then," Della

Street said. "The marks of the hand dragging through the mud show that it had already started to rain when the murder took place."

Mason nodded slowly.

"Then she's lying," Della Street said bitterly.

"No," Mason said, "there's one chance, one slender theory that may give us a fighting chance. The girl may be telling the truth."

"I don't see how."

Mason said, "What do you do with a rain water cistern at the end of the dry season, Della?"

"I wouldn't know, why? What's that got to do with it?"

Mason said, "You drain the cistern of the old water that's in it. You let the new rainfall wash the dirt off the roof and then you close the cistern so you collect a fresh supply of rain water."

"Well?" she asked.

"And yesterday when it was apparent that it was going to start raining the natural thing to have done would have been to open the drain faucet in the cistern and let the old water drain out. And that water would naturally run down into the low part of the backyard where the body was discovered so that the murder could have been committed before the rain started, and there still would have been mud there that would have left the tracks of the clutching fingers..."

"Chief!" Della Street exclaimed. "I remember now. You said the faucet was open when we were out there!"

Mason nodded. "The point is, can we prove it?"

"Could I be a witness?"

"Did you notice the water running out through the faucet?"

She puckered her forehead in thought, then said, "No, I didn't see it. I remember you mentioned that the faucet was open, but I actually didn't turn around to look at it."

"There you are," Mason said.

"But how about you? Couldn't you be a witness?"

"Not while I was also a lawyer for the defendant—and even if I were a witness, would the jury believe me? No, Della, we've got to rely upon the police photographs. They should

show that there is a stream of water coming down from the faucet on the cistern."

"Did you tell Diana?" she asked.

Mason shook his head.

"Why? It would give the girl some hope, something to cling to, something..."

"And the police would find out she was clinging to something, work her over until they found out what it was, and we'd be licked before we started. No, Della, the only hope we have of using that theory is to bring it as a stunning surprise to the prosecution, let them build up their entire case on the theory that the murder was committed an hour or so after the rain started, and then spring this on them to show that it could have been committed before. That's the only way we can ever account for the time element on the finding of that gun."

Della Street gripped his arm. "Gosh, Chief! I'm so excited! If it will only work!"

Mason started the car, said grimly, "It's dam near got to work. There was some sort of bond between Diana and Mildred that made Diana intensely, fanatically loyal to her friend. She saw Mildred's gun and hid it-and didn't tell me. She found Mildred's body-and told no one but tried to get me to go out with her. She's playing a deep game."

"Find out what the trouble was in her past life?" Della asked.

"No."

"Why?"

"Because I was afraid to have her tell me about it. Once she told me, it would be easier for her to start talking the second time and tell the police all about it. I gave her a brush- off for holding out on me, and then left. She'll grit her teeth now and hold out on the cops until doomsday-or let's hope so."

Chapter 12

THE preliminary hearing in the case of The People versus Diana Regis found the prosecution wearing that complacent smirk which indicates an airtight case. After suffering several ignominious defeats at the hands of Perry Mason, it was a triumphant moment when Claude Drumm, the chief trial deputy, had at last a case so bulletproof that it would try itself, a case that simply couldn't be upset no matter which way the cat jumped.

With cold-blooded triumphant verve, Drumm began the presentation of his case, smashing each point home with telling effect, striking his blows with as much sure precision as though he had been a carpenter driving nails into the scaffold on which Diana Regis was to be hanged.

And because Drumm wanted to fully enjoy the taste of triumph now that he had it at his command, he put on evidence in the preliminary hearing with as much painstaking care as though he had been trying a murder case in front of a jury, realizing, of course, that behind him interested members of the press were taking notes on the testimony of each witness, supplementing then notes with photographs taken in the corridors of the courthouse and following the recesses of court.

First, Drumm put on the manager of the apartment house who identified Diana Regis, the defendant, as the young woman who had shared an apartment with Mildred Danville, and Mildred Danville, she testified, was dead. The witness had been taken to the morgue where she had viewed the body of Mildred Danville and had no hesitancy in identifying it as the body of the young woman who shared the apartment with Diana Regis.

Then Drumm went on to introduce the state meteorologist. The meteorologist testified that it had been overcast during the entire day of the murder, that it had not commenced to rain until seven forty-seven that at seven forty-seven there had been about three minutes of a gentle sprinkle, followed by a deluge of unusual severity which had lasted for some two hours, following which the rain had become more gentle.

although a total precipitation of two and four-tenths inches had resulted from the storm which had begun officially at seven forty-seven and had ended at six thirty-two a.m.

Dr. George Z. Perllon, a police autopsy surgeon, testified that the body had been placed in his custody at approximately one a.m. that death had been caused by a thirty-eight caliber bullet which had entered the back of the neck above the odontoid process and had traversed forward and upward that in his opinion, from the condition of the body at the time it was delivered to him, death had taken place approximately four to five hours before he examined the body. He had based his opinion upon body temperature, as well as "other factors."

"Cross-examine," Claude Drumm announced.

Mason's voice was suave. "You think death might have occurred as late as four hours before you saw the body, Doctor?"

"Yes."

"In other words, nine p.m. on the day previous."

"Yes."

"And you think that it could not have occurred more than five hours prior to the time you saw the body?"

The doctor shifted his position. "Well, of course, in fixing arbitrary limits for death, a person has to take into consideration certain variable factors which" ... "

"Can you answer the question, Doctor?"

"Certainly. I am answering it."

"I don't think so. I am asking you for a direct answer. Doctor. Could death have taken place more than five hours before you saw the body?"

"Oh, it could have, yes," the doctor said testily. "I am telling you when I think death occurred. If you want to explore the most remote possibilities it could have been eight or nine hours. But that's so unlikely as to be fantastic."

"Let's not have your thoughts, Doctor, let's have your best estimate predicated upon medical facts which you can produce. Now did I understand you to say that death could have taken place as much as eight or nine hours before you saw the body?"

"It is conceivable, yes, but hardly probable."

"What are the extreme limits within which you would say death could possibly have occurred?"

"Well, perhaps as late as ten-thirty the night before or perhaps as early as six o'clock—if yew want to go to absurd lengths of extreme possibilities."

"Six o'clock would then be seven hours before you worked on the body?"

"Yes."

"When you said as much as nine hours you really didn't mean that. Doctor?"

"Well, I meant that that would be the extreme limit of even a remote possibility."

"But there is a remote possibility that death took place as much as eight hours prior to the time you made your examination?"

"If you want to go into all of the extreme interpretations of evidence in the case, yes."

"You mean the medical evidence, Doctor?"

"Yes."

"Then as an extreme limit, death could have taken place as much as eight or nine hours prior to one o'clock. Is that right?"

"Well, yes-if you want to discard probabilities."

"Thank you," Mason said, "that is all."

Claude Drumm took the doctor for redirect examination.

"As I understand it," Drumm said smiling reassuringly at Dr. Perllon, "your answers to Mr. Mason's questions went to extreme limits."

"Absolutely."

"The limits during which death might have occurred under the most unusual, under the most medically improbable circumstances?"

"Exactly. Circumstances that are fantastically improbable."

"Now then, Doctor, what are the time limits within which death most probably took place? Calling now. Doctor, not for your mere opinion, but for an interpretation of the medical facts."

"Death probably took place between four and five hours prior to the time I saw the body."

"And on what do you base that statement, Doctor?"

"In part, upon the peculiar development of rigor mortis."

"What was there about that, Doctor, which you consider distinctive?"

The doctor settled himself more solidly in his chair. He was on firm ground now. "Rigor mortis makes its initial appearance in the jaws, and usually takes place from three to five hours after death. The rigor mortis then generally involves the lower muscles, spreading to the neck, the chest, the arms, the abdomen, the legs and the feet. In the body of the deceased, rigor mortis had made its initial appearance only in the jaw muscles, but before proceeding with the detailed autopsy I permitted rigor mortis to develop sufficiently in other muscles so that I could form some estimate as to the rate at which it was developing therefore I fixed the time of death as being four to five hours before the body was delivered to me. In other words, from a period between eight and nine o'clock of the preceding evening."

"Thank you," Drumm said in the tone of one gentleman to another, and his smile indicated to both the judge and the witness that the attempts of a shyster to obscure the situation had been very adroitly foiled. "1 don't suppose," he said, "that Mr. Mason cares for any recross examination."

Mason said casually, "I have just one question and only

otie."

"Very well," Drumm snapped.

Mason smiled at the doctor, a cold icy smile. "Death could have occurred as much as nine hours before you examined the body, Doctor?"

"As I have stated," the doctor said with ponderous dignity, "the state of rigor mortis is a determining factor. Now rigor mortis has a tendency to develop within certain general time limitations "

"Could death have occurred as much as nine hours before you examined the body?" Mason asked.

"I am trying to explain, Mr. Mason."

"I don't want an explanation, I want an answer. You answer my question, and then you can explain it afterwards if you want to, but I want an answer to my question. Could death

have taken place as much as nine hours before you examined the body?"

There was a moment of tense silence.

"Yes or no?" Mason asked. "Could it have taken place as much as nine hours before you examined the body?"

"Yes!" the harassed doctor all but screamed.

Mason's smile included both Drumm and the doctor. He said in a low voice which contrasted with the doctor's enraged shout, "Thank you, Doctor, that is all."

Lieutenant Tragg took the witness stand, explained his position, recounted something of his police experience, mentioned the length of time he'd been assigned to the Homicide Squad. On the night of the twenty-sixth of last month, the night of the murder, he had gone to a residence at sixty- seven fifty San Felipe Boulevard. He had there found the body of Mildred Danville sprawled out in the rear of the house lying face down in the mud. It was raining at the time and had been raining for some three hours prior to the time the body was discovered. He had also discovered a purse on the sidewalk in front of the house, a purse which was subsequently identified by the defendant as being her property. The purse contained some fifteen hundred dollars in cash in addition to the usual feminine articles including a driver's license made out to the defendant.

At this point Drumm suggested that the witness be excused temporarily in order to enable him to introduce maps and diagrams, and there being no objection on the part of the defense, the court permitted a draftsman to take the stand who introduced in evidence various maps showing the location of the premises at sixty-seven fifty San Felipe Boulevard.

Tragg, returning to the witness stand, identified the place where the body was found, and also the place where the purse was found by making appropriate "X" marks on the various maps which had been received in evidence. He then testified to a search of the premises where the defendant shared an apartment with the decedent, and where he had instituted a very thorough search. He had looked in a hamper of soiled clothes and had there found a thirty-eight caliber revolver which he had marked for identification by making certain

cabalistic scratches on the barrel of the gun. He identified a gun which was handed him by the prosecuting attorney as being the one he had found.

At that time, Drumm asked that the weapon be received in evidence, assuring the Court that it would be connected up by a ballistic expert as the one with which the murder was committed. Then Drumm called to the attention of the Court the fact that it was the usual hour for the noon recess, and intimated that it would be convenient for the prosecution to take the usual adjournment at this time.

The judge glanced at the clock, nodded, and adjourned court until two o'clock that afternoon.

Paul Drake, working through the crowded courtroom, reached Mason's side.

"We've got the cop. Perry."

"The one that arrested Mildred Danville for a traffic violation?"

"Yes. Overtime parking."

"Where is he?" Mason asked with excitement.

"He's at my office, Perry. I'm holding him there. Certainly bad plenty of trouble finding him. He was a relief officer who was on duty in this precinct only for that one day."

"Let's go talk with him," Mason said. "What's his name?"

"Philip C. Rames."

"What sort of a chap, Paul?"

"Pretty good. Of course you know how those cops are. They have very elastic memories when their jobs are at stake, and usually a cop hates to testify to something that will knock the prosecution's theory of the case into a cocked hat."

"Well, let's have a talk with him," Mason said. "We'll get a statement out of him if we can."

"How's the case going, Perry?"

"About as I expected it," Mason said. "They're building a foundation. Hang it, Paul, I've got a defense in this case, but I'm not certain whether I can prove it. And if I can't establish it by evidence, I'm licked. But I know that the faucet in that rain water system was open. I remember it definitely. So far I haven't been able to get a took at the police photographs, but

I'm afraid that ... Oh well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Let's go see what Rames has to say."

Chapter 13

PHILIP C. RAMES was a broad-shouldered, flat-waisted officer in the thirties who regarded life with a somewhat puzzled frown as though trying to comprehend something which seemed always just a little beyond his mental grasp.

He frowned at Mason as Drake performed the introductions.

Mason said casually, "I wanted to ask you about this blond young woman who didn't have a driving license with her."

Rames nodded.

"Remember her name?"

"No, I don't."

"You'd know her if you saw her again?"

"Yes. I think I would."

"Can you recall the circumstances of the arrest, Mr. Rames? It's rather important."

"Why is it important?" Rames asked quickly.

Mason smiled. "A client of mine is very much concerned in certain incidental aspects of the case."

Rames ran his hand along the back of his neck, scratched the hair over his ears, said, "Well, I didn't give her a ticket. It wasn't anything particularly serious. She was parked overtime and it just happened that as I was getting ready to make out a tag she showed up. I'd been making the rounds a little faster than usual, and she could have been only five minutes overdue on the parking—anyway, that's what she claimed, and she might have been right at that. I decided to take a took at her driving license, and the way she acted when I pulled that one on her made me think perhaps she was operating a car without a license—you know, the usual excuse about running down to do a little shopping and leaving her purse in her apartment, not realizing she'd left it until after she'd got, started, and then thinking it wasn't worthwhile going back for it because she was going to shop where she had charge accounts."

Mason exchanged a swift glance with the detective, then said, "Go on, Rames. What did you do?"

"Well, I asked her where she lived. It wasn't too far from there, a matter of five or six blocks, so I decided to call her bluff. I told her, 'All right, you say the car's only been here five minutes more than an hour. Just leave it here and I'll drive you up to your apartment and back to your car, and you can get your purse and show me your driving license.'"

"How did she take that?"

"She didn't take it so very good," Rames said, "I knew as soon as I pulled that line on her that I had her-at least that's what I thought, and it ain't very often that I get fooled."

"So what happened?"

"Well, she climbed in the car with me. She didn't want to, but it was either that or else get a ticket. We went to this apartment house, some place just off Washington, and she opened the door, and sure enough there was a purse lying on the table. She opened it and took out her driving license."

"You checked the description?"

"You're damn right I checked it."

"Then what?"

"Well, I felt sort of cheap," Rames confessed. "It- ain't often we make a bum guess that way, so I drove her back to her car and kidded her along a little bit and told her she'd better keep her driving license with her at all times after this, and that even five minutes overtime parking was technically just as much of a crime as parking for a longer time, and I was letting her off this time but I didn't want to catch her again."

Rames scratched his head once more and grinned. "I didn't tell her I was a relief officer and that I might not be on that beat again for two months."

"Do you remember where the car was parked?" Mason asked.

"Yes, as it happens I can tell exactly where it was parked, because it was next to a fire hydrant, and she only missed being within the limits by about half an inch. Here, you got a map of the city there? I'll show you the exact spot."

Drake spread out a large scale map of the city. The officer bent over the map, pulled a stubby lead pencil from his pocket,

B-E Blonde 8

moistened it, moved around the table to orient himself and then made a little dot on the map. "Right there. There's a fire hydrant, and she was parked over on this side of the fire hydrant. Been there for at least an hour and five minutes. I have an idea it might have been an hour and a half."

"And you think you'd recognize this young woman?"

"I think 1 would. She was a pretty classy number, blonde with bluish green eyes and a blue outfit—just a neat package."

Mason opened his brief case, took out a photograph of Mildred Danville. "Is this the woman?"

"She looks familiar. It's hard to make an identification from a photograph. ... Say, wait a minute, I've seen this picture somewhere. Hey! What are you fellows trying to pull?"

"We're simply trying to get you to identify a picture," Mason said.

"Well, wait a minute. That picture's been in the papers. Here, let's take a look."

Rames whirled and picked up a newspaper which was on the table at the back part of Drake's office. "Shucks, I thought that picture looked familiar.... Sure, here it is! Mildred Danville, the girl that was murdered by the blonde who shared the apartment with her. Say this may be important!"

"You're certain," Mason asked, "that this is the young woman who took you to her apartment and showed you her driving license?"

Rames grinned at him. "Well, now, Mr. Mason, you've got your work to do, and I've got .my work to do. I guess I'd better report this before I do any more talking."

Mason said, "We've had a Umographer taking down your statement, Rames, and I'd appreciate it if you'd let her transcribe that and then sign it.

"Stenographer? Where?"

"She's in an adjoining room," Mason said, "taking it down in shorthand over the inter-office communicating system. A girl can take shorthand much more accurately when she's at her own desk, you know, and

"Say, what were you trying to do, trap me?"

"Certainly not," Mason said. "No one has asked you to tell anything except the truth."

"Well, I better report this before I do any more talking, and I'm not signing any statements until I get a clearance from the DA's office. You write that up and send a copy over to the D.A. and..."

"Did you," Mason asked, "make any statement that wasn't the truth?"

Rames grinned at him. "Smart lawyer," he said. "It's okay. You work your side of the street and I work mine. So long, boys."

"Can you," Mason asked, "tell us approximately what time this was?"

Rames merely grinned at him, opened the door and walked

out.

"Well," Mason said, "that's that."

"Think it'll do you some good" Drake asked.

The lawyer grinned. "Sure it will do me some good, particularly when we have your stenographer read into the record the last part of the conversation. It shows Rames is biased and won't do a thing that will hurt the prosecution's case if he can possibly avoid it. How about the apartment, Paul? Are the police still keeping a guard there?"

"Leave it to Sergeant Holcomb," Drake said. "They've sewed that apartment up as tight as a drum."

"Someone watching the door?"

"Not only watching the door, but actually living in the apartment, staying right there, a man who's on the job twenty- four hours a day, has his meals brought in three times a day. Sergeant Holcomb isn't taking any chances. And if I know him, he'll keep that man there until doomsday, or until Diana Regis gets convicted."

"Then Carl Fretch managed to convince him he didn't get the thing Holcomb wanted?"

"No one knows what happened with Carl Fretch. He was up at Headquarters for about twelve hours, then they released him. I guess they put him through the mill all right, but I have an idea Fretch talked his way out of something at that. He's rather a smooth customer."

Mason said moodily, "Holcomb hasn't any right to have a

man in' the apartment. He can put a guard at the door if he wants, but to have a man live right in the apartment "

"When Sergeant Holcomb wants to do anything," Drake said, "he isn't particularly hampered by a lot of technicalities. He goes ahead and does what he wants to do and leaves it up to the other man to stop him. Couldn't you get a court order..."

Mason, said, "The minute 1 tried, it would be a dead giveaway. Holcomb would know that the thing we both wanted was still in the apartment and I was hoping to get it out if I could get rid of his man."

"Well, that's the way it is," Drake said.

"Look,' Paul, could you get an operative to pull a fast one and try to'... ."

"Nix." Drake interrupted, "not with a police guard on the

job."

"Thin would be just incidental, something that .

"Not a chance. Perry. No private detective is going to take a chance on, sneaking something out from under the noses of the Police Department. It's too risky. You get caught and your license is revoked and you're out of a job."

Mason frowned down at the carpet, "Hang it, Paul, I've got »? got that thing out of the apartment."

"That's one place where we can't help you a bit. Perry. The police guards will know me. They'll know you. They'll know Della Street, and there isn't another soul you'd dare to trust, or that would even consider doing the job. How about this cop, won't he do you some good?"

"In all probability," Mason said, "they'll find some way of spiking my guns by having him get vague about something. But you can gamble one thing he'll take the position that he can't possibly identify the purse, so that he can't tell whether Mildred picked up her purse or Diana's. And he won't, under any circumstances, ever admit that the driving license that was shown to him was in the name of Diana Regis. He'll say he can't remember the name."

'"Jase look pretty black against her?" Drake asked.

"Black as ink unless I can get some new facts. Of course this is just a preliminary hearing. If they bind her over, I'll still .stand a chance, but I'd like to do something to counteract the

newspaper publicity they're building up.... One thing we've got to do, Paul. We've got to trace Mildred Danville's moves on the day of the murder. That's one place where Rames has given us something to work on. Her car was parked there for at least an hour and five minutes. Now what was she doing there? What's in the general vicinity?"

"I don't know, offhand," Drake said, "but we'll sure find out. I'll have men working on that, and have a complete map of the block showing every building, who occupies u, and what it's used for."

Mason nodded, said, "Well, I've got to get a lilt? to eat and get back to court. By the way, Paul, who tollects the garbage at this apartment house?"

"I don't know. Why?" Drake asked grinning "Think you could get the garbage collector to walk in and pick ijp what you want?"

"You never can tell," Mason said casually, "I.might hire myself out as a garbage collector and ..."

"Don't try it," Drake warned. "Don't ever kid youiself that Holcomb won't have a man on the job who would spot you no matter how you tried to disguise yourself. And if they ever caught you pulling that stuff ... "

"Oh, I don't know," Mason said casually. "It might work out all right. Find out who collects the garbage and give me that information by the time court adjourns this afternoon, will you, Paul?"

"I'll get you the information," Drake said dryly, "and the advice goes with it. Don't try anything with Holcomb. That guy is tough. He knows you want something that's in that apartment. He wants it, too. He isn't taking any chances of losing out, and he'll be ruthless as hell. And if you know where that diary is, my lad, you just leave well enough alone and let it stay there."

Mason's eyes were focused on the distance. He said, "Find out who collects the garbage, and once you find him, put a man on him. I may want him in a hurry."

Chapter 14

JUDGE WINTERS took his place on the bench promptly at two o'clock, peered over his glasses at the counsel table, said, "Counsel for both parties seem to be present and the defendant is in court. Proceed, gentlemen. I believe Lieutenant Tragg of the Homicide Squad was on the stand. Lieutenant, if you'll resume your position in the witness chair, we'll proceed with the case."

Tragg returned to the witness chair.

Claude Drumm cleared his throat, produced a heavy manila envelope.

"Lieutenant," he said, "I'm going to show you some photographs which, I believe, were taken in your presence by persons, however, other than you. I'm going to ask you to look at these photographs one at a time, and tell whether they represent and faithfully portray the scene of the crime and the position of the body as you saw it when you were called to this house on San Felipe Boulevard."

Lieutenant Tragg shuffled through the photographs, going through the motions of looking at each one.

"They do," he said.

Drumm took the photographs. "We will introduce these in order as various exhibits. The first photograph shows the body lying face down, taken toward the road. The second photograph

"Just a moment," Mason interrupted. "I want to see each particular photograph, and I may want to cross-examine the witness on each of the photographs before they are introduced in evidence."

Drumm showed some surprise. "You don't question the accuracy of the photographs, do you?"

"I don't know," Mason said. "I haven't seen them."

Judge Winters said, "I take it the prosecution has proper evidence of the authenticity of these photographs?"

"Certainly," Drumm said. "We can identify them by half a dozen witnesses if necessary. I will further state that I intend to put the photographer on the stand who took these pictures, but I didn't want to withdraw Lieutenant Tragg again and

have his testimony interrupted. However, if it becomes necessary...."

"I am not intending to question the authenticity of the photographs," Mason said, "but I do feel that I am entitled to ask some questions as to the things that are shown in the photographs for the purpose of testing the Lieutenant's recollection."

"Oh, very well," Judge Winters ruled. "You'll have ample opportunity to cross-examine."

"Technically I believe I have the right to cross-examine as to the recollection of the witness on the photographs before the photographs are admitted in evidence."

"Very well, if you wish to do so," Judge Winters ruled. "I see no reason why you shouldn't. In fact," he added somewhat reprovingly, "I can't see that it makes any great difference one way or the other."

Mason said, "May I see those photographs, please?"

Drumm said with dignity, "You can see the first one, which is what I am now offering in evidence."

"Very well," Mason said, taking the first photograph. "Now, Lieutenant Tragg, this photograph shows the body lying face down in the position in which it was found. The body had not been moved at the time the photograph was taken?"

"That's right."

"The picture is taken toward the road, I believe?"

"Yes, sir."

"And shows a corner of the house?"

"Yes, sir."

Mason regarded the picture intently, took a magnifying glass from his pocket, studied the photograph several seconds, then inquired, "Lieutenant, this photograph was taken very shortly after you arrived at the scene of the murder?"

"Yes, sir."

"Could you say about how long?"

"I would say not to exceed fifteen minutes."

"Had anything been touched?"

"What do you mean? The body hadn't been touched."

"Had anything else been touched?"

"Nothing that might have any bearing on the murder."

Mason hesitated a moment, then handed the photograph back to Drumm. "Mo objections," he said. "The photograph may be received in evidence."

Drumm said, "The second photograph shows footprints in the mud leading to the body of the deceased and then returning to the boardwalk. It is the contention of the prosecution that those footprints were made by the defendant."

"No objection to that photograph," Mason said. "Let me see those photographs and I'll .... Thank you.... No, these photographs may all be received in evidence without objection."

Mason returned to his seat.

Diana Regis looked at him with anxious solicitude. Mason avoided her eyes.

Drumm waited until the photographs had all been stamped by the clerk of the court, and each marked with its appropriate exhibit number before again returning to examine Lieutenant Tragg.

"Now then. Lieutenant, did you have any discussion with the defendant in regard to the footprints which are shown upon this photograph-Exhibit Number Ten?"

"I did."

"Where did that conversation take place?"

"At Police Headquarters."

"Were any inducements held out to the defendant? Were any promises made, or any threats used?"

"No, sir."

"Who was present?"

"The photographer who took the pictures, a deputy coroner, one of my assistants and the defendant."

"And you were present

"Yes. I was asking the questions."

"And what statement, if any, did the defendant make?"

"Well, as nearly as I can recall her exact words," Tragg Said with a frosty smile, "she stated 7 had an appointment with Mildred at this address. I was to be there at ten o'clock. I arrived a few minutes early. J saw my car parked in front of the house, or almost in front of the house, and so knew Mildred was there. I paid off the taxi that had taken me out and went up the steps and rang the bell. There was no

answer. The house seemed dark. I thought that was strange and walked around to the back of the house and knocked on the back door. There was still no answer. I saw a walk leading down toward a place in the backyard where there were some chicken coops and I saw something lying there. I knew there was a flashlight in the glove compartment of my car. I went hack to the car and opened the glove compartment, got out the flashlight, and returned. Then I saw that the thing which was lying in the little hollow near the chicken coops was a body. I went over to the body and knelt down beside it. It was Mildred. She was dead. That's all I know about it. That's the first I knew that anything had happened.'"

"Did you have any interview with the defendant about this gun which has been received in evidence as People's Exhibit Number Four?"

"I didn't personally", Tragg said. "That interview was with another officer. Sergeant Holcomb."

"Oh, yes," Drumm said. "I will call Sergeant Holcomb a little later. I think that is all at the present time, Lieutenant Tragg. Do you wish to cross-examine. Counselor?"

Mason nodded, got to his feet, said, "Lieutenant Tragg, at the time you arrived at the scene of the crime it was raining, wis it not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Raining very hard?"

"Yes, sir."

"And this body was found in a rather shallow depression in the backyard?"

"Yes, sir."

"A depression which had collected a rather considerable

amount of water?"

"Some water. Yes sir."

"Water which had drained into the depression from the surrounding higher points of ground?"

"Well, I don't know how much had settled in the depression from the higher points of ground. 1 think the ground Was soaking up a good deal of the early rain," Tragg said cautiously. "But it was where rain from the higher ground would have a tendency to collect."

"You're certain of that?"

"Yes, sir."

"I call your attention to the photograph, People's Exhibit Number Seven," Mason said, "and ask you if it isn't a fact that rain water would collect in a large cistern which had been erected and evidently maintained for the purpose of..."

"I think you're right on that," Tragg interrupted. "I believe that water from the roof of the house drained into this cistern."

"Now then, at the time you first came to the scene of the crime, water was draining into this cistern?"

"I believe so. Yes, sir."

"And there is a drain faucet at the bottom of that cistern?"

"I ... I think there is."

"Then any water which collected in that hollow must have been due, in large part, to water which was draining from the lower part of this rain water cistern?"

"I didn't say that," Tragg said.

"I'm asking you now whether that is or is not a fact?"

"I don't think so."

"Why not, Lieutenant?"

"I don't think that faucet in the bottom of the cistern was open. Let's take a look at that photograph, please."

Mason handed him the photograph.

"I saw you looking at it with a magnifying glass," Tragg observed with a smile.

Mason bowed, handed Tragg the pocket magnifying glass.

Tragg studied the photograph carefully. "The way it looks in this photograph. Your Honor, there isn't any water corning down from this faucet."

"The photograph," Mason announced, "speaks for itself."

I'm asking you for your recollection, Lieutenant. Was that drain faucet open or closed?"

"I think it was closed."

Mason said, "That's all. No further questions," and returned to his seat at the counsel table with no outward indication of the crushing blow that had been dealt his case.

"Call Helen Chister Bartsler," Drumm said.

Helen Bartsler came forward, held up a gloved hand, was swom and took the witness stand.

"You live at the premises described as sixty-seven fifty San Felipe Boulevard?" "I do."

"How long have you lived there?" "For about a year."

"Have you been employed during that time, Mrs. Bartsler?" "I have operated a small chicken ranch there with some degree of success."

"You have not had outside employment?" "No."

"Were you acquainted with the deceased, Mildred Danville?" "Yes."

Tor how long had you known her?" "For a period of some three or four years." "Had she ever been in your employ?" "Yes." "When?"

"In the early part of 1942." "And for how long was she in your employ?" "A period of two or three months—during my confinement and immediately afterwards."

"And did you see her again after that?" "Yes. We remained friends."

"And did you see her on the night of the twenty-sixth?" "No, sir."

"Or on the morning of the twenty-seventh?" "I saw her body."

"When had you last seen her prior to the twenty-seventh?" "I don't remember exactly. It had been two or three days before that."

"Had you talked with her over the telephone?" "Yes."

"Had there been some unusual occasion incident to this conversation?" "Yes."

"What was it?" Drumm asked.

Judge Winters stirred uneasily, looked down at Mason. "Any objection as to its competency or relevancy?"

"None, Youi Honor."

"Very well, answer the question."

Mrs. Bartsler tilted her chin. "Mildred Danville," she said in a low, clear voice, "had kidnaped my son. I was trying to get him back."

Judge Winters stiffened to attention and regarded the witness with frowning scrutiny. "Did you say the deceased had kidnaped your son?"

"Yes."

The silence of the courtroom was so tense that the scribbling of pencils on the part of the reporters was distinctly audible.

"When," Drumm asked, "did this kidnaping take place?"

"My son," the witness said, "was in the custody of Ella Brockton who resided at twenty-three twelve Olive Crest Drive. Mildred Danville had become very much attached to Junior during the time she worked for me. She had called to see him on several occasions, and two days before her death—the twenty-fourth, she persuaded Mrs. Ella Brockton not .

"Were you there at the time?" Drumm interrupted.

"No, sir."

"Your knowledge then is of what Mrs. Brockton told you subsequently?"

"Yes.

"Then we won't go into that. We'll establish that by other evidence."

"No objection as far as the defense is concerned," Mason

said.

"It's plainly hearsay," Drumm snapped.

"It is, of course, hearsay," Judge Winters said. "But if it is a fact that will be established by other evidence, and there is no objection on the part of the defense to receiving it in this manner ... well ... "

"My question didn't call for it," Drumm snapped. "And if it did, I withdraw that much of the question. I prefer to establish my case in the regular manner."

"Very well," Judge Winters ruled.

"Now then, did you have any telephone conversation with the deceased in regard to your son?"

"I did."

"When?"

"There were two or three conversations following the kidnaping."

"And what did she say? What was the general gist of those conversations?"

"I'd prefer to have the testimony more specific," Mason said.

"Very well. What did she say when she called the first time?"

"She said that she had my son that she was willing to have some discussion with me about the custody."

"About the custody of your son?"

"Yes."

Judge Winters leaned forward, regarded the witness in frowning appraisal. "You mean she had some conversation about the custody of your son?"

"Yes."

"Why would she confer with you about the custody of your son?"

"She was very much attached to the boy. She wanted to force me to agree that I would leave him with her a part of the time."

"And did you so agree?"

"No."

"What did you do?"

"I told her that if she didn't return the boy to Mrs. Brockton, I would have her arrested for kidnaping."

"What did she do then?"

"She hung up the telephone."

Judge Winters settled back in his chair frowning thoughtfully.

"Then what happened?" Drumm asked.

"The next day," she said, "Mildred Danville called me again and accused me of having stolen the boy from her custody."

"You mean that she didn't have your son any more?"

"So she said. It was, of course, a subterfuge to keep from being arrested tor the kidnaping."

Judge Winters leaned forward once more. "Where is your son now?" he asked impatiently.

126

Helen Bartsler met his eyes. "I don't know."

"Have the authorities been notified of this?" Judge Winters asked.

"They have, Your Honor," Drumm said. "Every effort has been made to locate the boy. So far those efforts have been fruitless. At the request of parties concerned, we have tried heretofore to keep from having this angle of the matter given any publicity."

One of the newspapermen looked at the clock, then hurried from the courtroom. A moment later, other newspapermen followed.

"Most remarkable," Judge Winters said.

"I think, if the Court please, that as the evidence along these lines develops, it will appear that in the disappearance of this son, the defendant was implicated in a plot with Mildred Danville and

"That," Mason announced, "is objected to. It is prejudicial and it constitutes misconduct. There is no such evidence before the court...."

"I was merely stating what the evidence would disclose," Drumm snapped. "I have a right to state that in advance."

"The time is past when you can make any opening statement," Mason said. "And, furthermore, you haven't any such evidence and can't produce any such evidence. You are merely trying to make the most out of an unfounded inference you would like to have drawn from such evidence."

"That will do," Judge Winters announced. "If the prosecution has any evidence, it will put it on and the evidence will speak for itself. In the meantime, there will be no interchange of personalities between counsel. Proceed, Mr. Drumm."

"Directing your attention to the twenty-sixth. Did you have any conversation with Mildred Danville?"

"I did."

"How did that conversation take place?"

"Over the telephone."

"And what did she tell you at the time of that conversation?"

"She told me that she knew where my son was that I

could have him back if I would cooperate with her and make some sensible agreement with her in regard to his custody."

"Did she tell you where the boy was?"

"No."

"Did she make any statement about coming out to your house to meet you?"

"No."

"And what did you tell her?"

"The same thing that I had told her before-that if she didn't have my son back, I would have her arrested for Kidnaping."

"And what did she tell you?"

"She told me that she thought she could get him and bring him back, that when I knew the entire circumstances she knew I'd be reasonable. She said that she had been double- crossed, but that her sole desire had always been to do what was best for my son."

"When did she say she'd bring your son back?"

"That night."

"At any particular time?"

"She said at approximately ten o'clock."

"And did she say where she would bring him back?"

"Yes, to Ella Brockton, twenty-three twelve Olive Crest Drive."

"So what did you do, if anything?"

"I left mv house right after this call and went out to Mrs. Brockton's residence and waited. I waited hour after, hour until somewhere around midnight. Then I thought I might have misunderstood her, so I jumped in my car and drove to her apartment and rang the bell. There was no answer. By this time, I was frantic. I drove back to Ella Brockton's and resumed my waiting. I stayed there until the officers came."

"And you had no intimation that Mildred Danville had gone to your place at sixty-seven fifty San Felipe Boulevard?"

"No."

Drumm said, "Now, your son's name, please?"

"Robert Bartsler."

"His father's name was Robert Bartsler?"

"Yes."

"His father is living or dead?"

"He is dead. He was killed on December seventh, nineteen hundred and forty-one."

"And are any of your husband's relatives surviving?"

"His father."

"Have there been any arguments between you and your husband's father over the son?"

Helen Bartsler tightened her lips. "Mr. Jason Bartsler, the boy's grandfather, has been particularly mean to me ever since my marriage. He thought that I was an adventuress who married his son for money. He did everything that he could to break up the match."

"Is all of this relevant?" Judge Winters asked, frowning at Drumm and glancing speculatively at Mason.

"I intend to connect it up," Drumm said.

"You had better connect it up now then, so I can get some idea of why this testimony is supposed to be relevant."

"I will ask you," Drumm said, "whether you know now where the defendant in this case was employed during the last three or four weeks prior to the twenty-sixth, the date of the murder?"

The witness said in a loud, clear voice, "She was in the employ of Mr. Jason Bartsler."

"Thank you," Drumm said. "You may cross-examine, Counselor."

Mason nodded, said, very casually, "Mrs. Bartsler, you are familiar, of course, with the rain wafer cistern attached to the house at San Felipe Boulevard?"

"Naturally."

"You use this regularly?"

"Yes. I use it as a source of soft water for washing clothes and washing my hair."

"Do you know the capacity of that cistern in gallons?"

"No, sir, I don't."

"Do you know whether or not it was nearly empty on the evening of the twenty-sixth?"

"I don't know how much was in it."

"You made no effort to gauge the water remaining in it?"

"None whatever. I simply used the rain water when I had occasion to use it, and all I know is there was water in it."

"Now on the evening of the twenty-sixth when you saw that it was clouding up and that it was probably going to rain, you opened the drain faucet so that you could drain out the old water from last year's rainy season, didn't you?"

"That is objected to as improper cross-examination. It is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial," Drumm said. "It is entirely irrelevant and extraneous matter."

"I don't think it's irrelevant or extraneous," Judge Winters ruled, "but the question of whether it's cross-examination is another matter."

"I certainly don't see how it can possibly have any bearing on the case," Drumm argued.

"Of course," Judge Winters pointed out, "I don't want to be placed in the .position of anticipating the course of counsel's case, or the points he's going to make, but it would seem to me from the testimony which has already been introduced and the photographs which have been received in evidence that the contention will be made by the prosecution that the murder was committed well after the rain had started and had softened up the ground."

"Exactly," Drumm said.

"Therefore," Judge Winters went on, "if it should appear that sometime prior to the time it began to rain the cistern had been emptied, and the water from that cistern drained down into that low place in the backyard where the body was found, it might have some bearing upon the circumstantial evidence as to the time at which the murder was committed."

"Well, it's not proper cross-examination anyway."

"On that score, I think I will be forced to sustain the objection," Judge Winters ruled. "I think that as it now stands, this is a matter of defense to be brought out by the defendant."

"Very well," Mason said smiling, "perhaps I can get at it another way. I believe you stated on your direct examination, Mrs. Bartsler, that you left the house about six o'clock?"

"Very shortly after six."

"And didn't return until well after midnight?"

"That's right. At that time I was taken back by the

B-E Blonde 9

130

officers—thanks to someone who disabled my car so it wouldn't run, and gave the officers information as to where I could be found."

"Didn't you want to see the officers?" Mason asked. "You surely weren't avoiding them."

"I would have preferred to have gone home under my own power."

"But you didn't go to your house, and weren't anywhere near your house between six o'clock in the evening and some time well after midnight?"

"That's right."

"You weren't near the front of the house?"

"No."

"When was the last time you were near the front of the house?"

"When I left, shortly after six."

"When was the last time you were at the back of the house?"

"I don't know, some time that afternoon."

"Had you been near the drain at the cistern that afternoon?"

"Same objection," Drumm said. "It's still not proper cross- examination."

U'!'l I

Mason said, "If the Court please, the witness has been interrogated on direct examination as to when she left the house, and I certainly have a right to challenge that statement by a searching cross-examination dividing the premises into their component parts."

Judge Winters smiled. "The objection is overruled."

"When was the last time you were at the drain to the cistern?" Mason asked.

"At the drain?"

"Yes." ■ ·

"By that you mean the faucet at the bottom of the cistern that drains out the wiater?"

"Yes."

"I haven't been there for days. That is, I haven't touched it, if that's what you mean."

"And the child, Robert, concerning whom you have testified,

is the natural child of you and your deceased husband, Robert Bartsler, a posthumous child born some four months after your husband's purported death?"

"Yes."

"Had you ever advised Jason Bartsler that he was a grandfather?"

"Objected to as incompetent, irrelevant, and not proper cross-examination," Drumm said.

"Sustained," Judge Winters ruled. "Since the question quite evidently relates to some conversation that would necessarily have been held almost three years ago."

"No, Your Honor," Mason said, "the question is whether she ever advised her husband's father of the birth of the son."

Judge Winters' face showed surprise. "Surely, Counselor, you don't contend ... Oh well, the objection is overruled."

Helen Bartsler said in a clear, calm voice, "No, I never told him. He is a selfish, domineering, heartless parent. He had no love for his son, no love for me, and never recognized me as one of the family. I considered the birth of my son none of his business."

Judge Winters leaned forward, asked incredulously, "You mean the man never knew he had a grandson?"

"I never told him he had one," Helen said coldly.

Judge Winters shook his head. "Proceed," he said to Mason, but his eyes remained on the witness.

"And after your son was kidnaped, did you get in touch with Jason Bartsler?" Mason asked.

"No."

"And you had no information leading you to believe that Mildred Danville was going to be at your house at San Felipe Boulevard that evening?"

"No. I understood she was coming to the residence of Ella Brockton at twenty-three twelve olive Crest Drive."

"Thank you," Mason said. "That is all."

Judge Winters leaned forward. "The Court has a few questions. Mrs. Bartsler, do 1 understand that because you felt Mr. Jason Bartsler had never received you into the family, you undertook to revenge yourself by concealing from him the birth °f your son?"

"No, Your Honor, I didn't conceal it. 1 simply never told him about it. The child's birth certificate was duly and regularly recorded."

"But you never told him about it?"

"No."

"In order to revenge yourself for the treatment he had extended to you?"

"No. I did it for the best interests of mv son. His grandfather is a cruel man. He prides himself upon being cynical. He is cynical, sneeringly so. He has no knowledge of the finer emotions. He is always looking for an ulterior motive. 1 didn't want Robert's boy to judge his father by any such standards. I didn't want him to know his grandfather-for the boy's own good."

"And that was your only reason."

"Yes, Your Honor."

Judge Winters sighed. "Very well," he said in a voice that showed he was far from convinced. "The prosecution will call its next witness."

Drumm began to fill in time with routine witnesses, a ballistic expert who testified to firing test bullets from the revolver which had been introduced into evidence, comparing them in a comparison microscope with the fatal bullet which had been recovered from the brain of Mildred Danville. They were, he announced, identical. The fatal bullet had been fired from this revolver.

A fingerprint expert took the stand, testified to examining the revolver for fingerprints, showed enlarged photographs of fingerprints which had been found upon the weapon. "Fingerprints," he announced, "which were all made by one person." He then introduced photographs of the fingerprints of the defendant, and at long and tedious length, pointed out points of similarity. "There were," he explained, "no fewer than seven clear fingerprints found upon the gun, each of which had so many points of similarity with those of the defendant that it was possible to state beyond any peradventure cf doubt that those fingerprints had been made by the defendant. And as to certain smudged prints on the gun, while they could not be positively identified, there were enough points of similarity to

indicate the strong probability that they also were those of the defendant, that there was no evidence whatever that would indicate they were made by any other person. In other words, that all of the fingerprints on the gun that could be identified had been made by the defendant, and those that could not be identified gave no indication of having been made by any other person."

It was plain that Judge Winters was very much impressed by this line of testimony, and he carefully followed the tedious testimony through the long afternoon, checking the different fingerprints, and making his own comparison as to points of similarity.

At four-thirty, court adjourned until the next morning.

Mason, walking back to his office with Della Street, said, "Well, that's the way it is, Della. We know good and well that Helen Bartsler is lying. She must have opened the dram on that rain water cistern. There's no way of proving her a liar, particularly in view of the fact that the police flashlight photographs don't show the background clearly enough to show whether that faucet is open, and water draining out or not. I might have trapped her into admitting she opened that faucet if Judge Winters hadn't gone ahead and pointed out what I was getting at and the purpose of the question. That tipped her off and she'd never have admitted turning on the drain faucet after that."

"Do you think she's guilty of the murder?" Della Street asked.

"It's hard to tell. We know she's lying. She's lying about the telephone conversation with Mildred Danville, lying about knowing that Mildred was coming out there for a ten o'clock appointment, probably lying about the time she left the house. And she is quite probably lying about the drain faucet on the rain water cistern in order to bolster up her other lies."

"Why do people lie like that?" Della Street demanded indignantly.

"To save their own skins," Mason said. "They do it many, many, many times in murder cases. You take Helen Bartsler, for instance. She may not have had anything to do with the murder of Mildred Danville but she knew that Mildred Danville

was to be out there at ten o'clock. Some time around ten o'clock she went back to her house and found Mildred lying face down in the mud, and decided she had better get out of there and build herself an alibi. And there was something about that conversation which she and Mildred had over the telephone when the ten o'clock appointment was made that she wanted to keep out of the evidence. Therefore, she went out to her friend, Ella Brockton, and they fixed up an alibi. There's just a chance we can break that alibi by trapping Ella Brockton. But it's one chance in a hundred.

"Then there's another angle. How did Lieutenant Tragg know a body was out there? It probably was an anonymous telephone call—but who placed it? And why? And what is the reason Mildred Danville became so attached to Helen's son?

"What we've got to do is to find out what happened, and why it happened, and the only way we can do that is by detective work and logical reasoning. Otherwise, we're just groping around in the dark, asking questions that have no particular purpose back of them, going up and down blind alleys."

"I see what you mean," Della Street said, "but how are we going to find out what did happen?"

"In the first place," Mason said, "we've got to find out why Mildred Danville parked her car so long at that particular place. We've also got to find out why Diana's account of how she sustained the black eye had such an effect on Mildred. Why do you suppose a black eye should have caused so much excitement?"

Della said, "It must have been because he was in Diana's room, searching. That must have been the significant part... Something in there caused a lot of excitement."

"But what?"

"Search me."

"What are you going to do?"

"Tonight, we'll try to get possession of that diary."

"Chief, that's dynamite!"

"I know it is, Della, but it's got to be done. I know now how a doctor feels when he's sitting by the bedside of a patient he's powerless to save. After all, Della, a lawyer is sort of a

doctor of justice. Hang it! If I could only reconstruct some of the things that happened the afternoon of the twenty-sixth I should be able to find some flaw in the prosecution's case—or else convince myself my client is guilty."

"Chief, can't you do something with Helen Bartsler's alibi? If Helen Bartsler knew Mildred was dead ... Well, why did she go to the apartment?"

Mason said, "It must have been to try and see Diana, but she could have ... Wait a minute!" Mason said frowning. "There's one thing she could have done."

"What?"

"Dropped that letter to Diana into the mailbox."

"Of course!" Della exclaimed. "Perhaps that's the only reason she went there at all. But why?"

"She wanted Diana to get the letter. But where did Helen get it, and how did she get it? Had Mildred given it to her ... ? Now wait a minute. That letter must have been written along in the afternoon before Mildred had talked with Diana on the telephone—and yet Helen must have put that letter in the mailbox at Diana's apartment. Now why was it so important that the letter should be found in Diana's mailbox?

"Hang it! That's the disadvantage of groping around in the

dark. We've simply got to get the case worked out between now and tomorrow morning. We've got to know what's back of all of these various moves. We've got to reconstruct what was done. Come on, Della, let's go start Paul Drake working."

Chapter 15

PAUL DRAKE looked up from notes on which he was working as Mason and Della Street entered the office. "Hello, Perry. How's the case coming?" "It isn't coming. It's going."

"Well, I've got some miscellaneous information for you." "Shoot."

"Mrs. Jerry Krason, a neighbor of Ella Brockton, lives out

on Olive Crest Drive at twenty-three-o-nine. That's right across the street from Ella Brockton's house. She's a nosey old gal with a tongue that's hinged in the middle of her mouth and clacks like one of the old-fashioned police rattles, but she's smart and observing, and hard to rattle."

"What," Mason asked, "does she know?"

"Apparently quite a bit, Perry. She's been taking an interest in what's been going on across the street ever since the child left. She says that on the night of the twenty-sixth, the house was dark, and she knows there wasn't anyone home up until about nine o'clock. At about nine o'clock when it was raining cats and dogs, Ella Brockton came home in a taxicab that she was there alone until about eleven-fifty. Helen Bartsler drove up and parked the car and went inside, and that almost immediately another car parked down the street a ways and a man came up and raised the hood of Mrs. Bartsler's car."

"Your operative?" Mason asked.

"Uh huh, taking out the distributor head so he could go and telephone for instructions."

Mason grinned, "Well, that's a break."

"It's going to be next to impossible to use it in court though."

"Why?"

"There's a regular feud between Mrs. Krason and Ella Brockton. Mrs. Brockton had the Krasons arrested for trespass, and went to the authorities to make a complaint that she was a cat poisoner. There's some circumstantial evidence pointing to Mrs. Krason, I guess. It's a regular neighborhood feud. Another thing, Perry, I'd hate like the devil to have it come out in court that one of my men had tampered with an automobile in order to get a chance to telephone in a report. Of course under the circumstances that was the only thing he could have done—the only way he could have let us know. He intended to take the distributor head, go telephone us, and then in case the woman was still in there when he got back, he could replace the part and that would be all there'd be to it. If she was trying to get the car started, he could come along as a good neighbor who happened to be parked near by, start tinkering with the

automobile and slip the commutator into place while he was pretending to inspect the wiring."

Mason said, "Anyway, it gives me a break. So far the breaks have been going all the other way. That gun has Diana's fingerprints all over it. What gets me, is that I can't figure the thing out. I can't tell what happened. Why should the fact that Carl Fretch was in Diana Regis' room and hit her in the eye, cause such terrific commotion?"

"You must be barking up the wrong tree on that," Drake

said.

"I can't be, Paul. When Diana first told Mildred about her adventures, it was just a nice little gossip party. Then Mildred had a chance to think things over for four or five minutes-and evidently became all excited, made this ten o'clock appointment and called Diana back. Carl Fretch and the black eye he gave Diana must have some hidden significance. What else is new, Paul? Did you get the name of the garbage collector?"

"The one who has the garbage contract is a woman," Drake said, "and a darn smart woman at that. She ... "

"I don't want her," Mason interrupted. "Not if she's smart. Who's the garbage collector?"

"The one who actually does the collecting in that district is a chap by the name of Nick Modena. He has greedy eyes."

"He's my man," Mason said. "Where do I locate him?"

"Go on down to your office and I'll have him located for you within half an hour. He's out on the job somewhere."

"Okay. What else is new?"

"I've got a little blonde number who has made a contact with Carl Fretch."

"Any date?"

"Not yet. Give the boy time."

"He doesn't need time."

"·This operative is good," Drake said.

"Can she take care of herself?"

Drake grinned. "Any place, any time, anywhere."

"Strong?"

"She weighs about a hundred and twenty," Drake said, and she can look so demure that you'd think she's right fresh

off the pantry shelf, but she knows all of the answers and most of the angles."

"Suppose the party gets rough?"

Drake said, "For a while she was a female boxing champion—so called. Used to put on an exhibition bout with a male sparnng partner. And she's good. She wants to know how much she has to take in case there's a date."

"Well," Mason said judicially, "she isn't hired just to go out and act coy. On the other hand, I don't want to put her in a position where she has to take too much. She's going out to get information. Tell her to get what information she can, but- oh, tell her to use her own judgment."

"She's pretty good," Drake said. "I've had her on some other cases. She'll put up with a lot if she's getting information, and she can usually get it."

"Okay. I want to know something about Carl Fretch. I want to know what the police said to him, and what he said to the police, and what was said to Jason afterward. It's all fresh in the boy's mind, and he should talk."

"He should," Drake said. "He's a funny one."

"Anything else?" Mason asked.

"Helen Bartsler seems to have fixed things up with Grandpa. She and Jason got together right after court adjourned. They're still talking."

"Oh, oh," Mason observed. "That might mean something. Who made the break, do you know?"

"Jason broke the ice. She was distant at first, then he said something and she warmed up a bit."

"Well," Mason said, "all this is going to help, Paul. Of course, it doesn't explain away the fingerprints on that gun or some of the other stuff, but perhaps we'll begin to find out what it's all about. You call me about that garbage man."

"I'm having him tailed. My man telephones in reports whenever the garbage truck stops long enough to let him get to a telephone."

"Okay, as soon as he telephones in again, find out where he is. I'm going on out and talk to this Modena."

"I'll call you. He should

The telephone rang.

Drake said, "Wait a minute. It may be the call now."

Drake picked up the telephone, said, "Hello," nodded to Perry Mason, then said into the telephone, "Where are you, Jim?"

Drake listened, made a note on a piece of paper, said.

"Okay. Mason wants to contact him. You think on Washington? Uh huh ... ." Headed toward the apartment where ... I see. Okay. All right, Perry will be out there pretty quick." Drake put the palm of his hand over the telephone. "It's Jim Melrose on the job. You want him to do any shadowing after you contact Modena?"

"No. He can go home then," Mason said.

Drake said into the telephone, "Okay, Jim, as soon as Mason picks him up, you can knock off. Mason will be out on Washington. You'll be right behind the truck, eh?... Okay. Good- by."

Drake hung up the phone, said to Mason, "You'll find him on Washington. You'll be right behind the truck, eh? .... Jim will be cruising along behind the truck."

Mason inclined his head, made a stiff fingered gesture with his hand, said, "Nice work, Paul. We're on our way. Want to come, Della?"

"Do I!"

"Look lively then."

They ran down the corridor to the elevator, went down in the elevator, sprinted over to the parking lot and scrambled into Mason's automobile.

"Isn't this terribly risky?" Della Street asked.

"Isn't what risky?"

"What you're going to do."

"Uh huh," Mason said piloting the car adroitly through traffic. "There's always a risk when you start doing things."

"Suppose Sergeant Holcomb gets the diary?"

"That," Mason admitted, "would be just too bad."

"Suppose you get it and Sergeant Holcomb finds out you've got it?"

Mason grinned. "That would be just too good."

"I don't get it."

"Neither will the Sergeant."

Della Street sighed and gave up. "Okay," she admitted smiling, "you win. You always do. Go to it."

Speeding out Washington, they were less than three blocks from Cornise when they saw the garbage truck just pulling into an alley. Drake's operative tagging along behind spotted Mason and Della Street, elevated two spread fingers, received a nod from Mason, and drove on.

Mason swung into the alley, parked his car just behind the garbage truck and was on the ground when a short, swarthy individual with warm brown eyes, bushy black eyebrows and dark stubble on his chin, climbed down from the garbage truck.

The man was wearing a uniform which had once been white and which was now laundered to a nondescript shade of gray, interspersed with spots.

"You're Nick Modena?" Mason said.

The warm brown eyes glinted upward, became suddenly suspicious. "What you want with Nick Modena?"

"A little business proposition."

"What sort of business-monkey business?"

"A chance to make a little money."

"Say, who are you, anyway?"

Mason grinned. "My name," he said, "is Sarg."

"Okay, Sarg. Whatcha want?"

Mason said, "I want to make fifty dollars for you."

"Make fifty dollars for me?" Modena's voice rose to almost a shout.

"For you."

"Whatsa matter? What's crooked?"

"Nothing crooked."

"Whatcha want me to do?"

"Collect garbage."

"For how long?"

"One time."

"Whereabouts?"

"Down the street."

"How soon?"

"Right away."

Modena glanced from Mason to Della Street. "Fifty dollars,

Sarg?"

"That's right."

"What do I do?"

Mason said, "You know the Palm Vista Apartments?"

"Sure, I know. I take garbage, don't I?"

"How do you collect the garbage from there?"

"Take it in a pail, tilt it up, dump it out, put back the pail.

"No, I mean do you go to each individual apartment?"

"Whatsa matter, you think I'm crazy? Go to each apartment? Sure not."

"How do the apartments dispose of their garbage?"

"How should I know? Put it out in front, maybe janitor takes, puts in big barrel. Me, I get big barrel."

Mason said, "This time, it's going to be different. You go to this apartment on the second floor. You knock at the door. When the man comes to the door, tell him that you're there to collect the garbage. He'll give it to you. You take it down to the wagon, dump it, and that's the whole job."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"I get fifty bucks?"

"If you get the garbage, you get fifty bucks."

"Suppose I don't get garbage?"

"Then you don't get any money."

"Who's a man in the place now?"

"He's a man in my employ," Mason said casually. "That is, I pay a part of his wages. He's supposed to be working for me as well as a few others."

"Why you no tell him yourself?"

"No, I want you to make fifty dollars."

Modena shook his head, blinked his eyes from Mason to Della Street, then back to Mason. "Something's crazy."

"Fifty bucks," Mason said, opening his wallet and taking °ut five ten-dollar bills. "As soon as you come down with the garbage."

Modena shrugged his shoulders, spread hands in a typical gesture of surrender. "What's holding us back?"

"Nothing," Mason said, getting back into his car.

Modena climbed up in the driver's seat of the garbage truck. Both cars backed out of the alley. Mason followed along behind the rumbling garbage truck until it stopped in front of the Palm Vista Apartments.

"How much chance," Della asked, "do you think you have?"

"Considerably better than an even gamble," Mason told her. "After all, the foodstuff around there should be getting pretty smelly by this time, and there's certainly nothing phony about Modena. And in case the officer wants to look out of the window, he can see the garbage truck parked here. Unless he's familiar with the routine of the apartment, or the garbage business, it won't occur to him that there's anything particularly unusual about it."

"If it doesn't work," Della Street said, "they'll know where the diary is."

"Perhaps-perhaps not."

"Well," Della Street said laughing, "there's one thing about Nick Modena. He certainly isn't nervous."

The short chunky man swung down from the garbage truck walked down the alley to the service door, pushed it open and vanished into the apartment house. His walk was neither too fast nor too slow, just the regular rhythmic stride of a man who has work to do and is anxious, but not too anxious, to get it over with.

Della Street kept looking at her wrist watch, counting the seconds. Mason never took his eyes from the garbage wagon.

"Gosh, Chief! It's been three minutes and ten seconds," Della said. "Something must have gone wrong."

Mason, without moving his eyes from the garbage wagon, merely shook his head.

"Four minutes!" Della announced. Mason said nothing.

"Five minutes!" There was almost a trace of panic in Della's voice.

"It'll take him a while to get up there and back," Mason

said.

"Five minutes and thirty seconds Oh Nick Modena

came marching unconcernedly out of the apartment house, swinging a garbage bucket by the handle.

Mason started the motor, pulled the car alongside. "You want?" Modena asked skeptically.

Mason produced fifty dollars. "I want-I want that loaf of bread."

"Jiz!" Modena said as he accepted the fifty dollars and watched Mason pull the stale loaf of bread from the garbage pail.

"Have any trouble?" Mason asked.

"Trouble? No. Man come to door. I tell him I've collect the garbage. He says who sent me. I tell him Sarg. He says, 'Okay.' .... What the hell!"

Della Street gasped in dismay. "Look up at the window, Chief."

"Has he spotted us?" Mason asked.

"Yes."

A window on the second floor was suddenly raised. An officer thrust out his head. "Hey," he shouted, "what's coming off down there?"

Mason answered with a cheery wave of his hand.

"Hey, you! What the hell are you doing?" the officer demanded.

"Collecting garbage," Mason said cheerfully, tossing the loaf of stale bread into the back of his automobile and opening the door on the left-hand side.

"Hop in, Della."

Della Street, with a flash of legs and flounce of skirts, slid across the seat. The officer in Diana Regis' apartment leaned far out of the window. His face was dark with anger.

"Hey, you!" he shouted. "Come back here with that or..."

Mason slid the car into gear, stepped on the throttle. With a smooth rush of powerful acceleration the car shot down the street.

Mason turned to Della Street and grinned. "That," he announced, "makes it a lot better."

"You mean it makes it a lot worse."

"Why?"

"That officer recognized you. He also got your license number. He'll make Modena go back upstairs and Modena will tell all about you paying him to "

M

144

"Collect the garbage," Mason interposed.

"But you posed as an officer. The guard in the apartment thought a Sergeant ... "

"No. The name was Sarg."

"That's an assumed name."

"Right. A man can use a fictitious name whenever he wants, just so he doesn't impersonate someone."

"But you got the evidence."

"I received a loaf of bread they had thrown away."

Della Street sighed resignedly. "Well, I guess I can leave it to you to get out of this one. You've always wriggled your way out of all the others, but this one seems particularly brazen."

"That's what makes it so nice—all open and aboveboard. Get that bread, Della, and see if the diary's still there."

Della twisted around over the back of the front seat, retrieved the loaf of bread, pulled out the plug she had inserted, took out a flexible leather-covered diary which had been rolled into a tight cylinder.

Mason grinned at her. "Luck's turning, Della."

"So far," she said.

"It's far enough. A man can't ask Fortune to give him any more than a break. The rest is up to him."

g

"Won't Sergeant Holcomb try something like he did before, some strong arm stuff?"

"Perhaps. It won't do him any good."

"Why?"

Mason said, "Because we're not going anywhere near the office. We're going to run for cover. We're going to go over that diary pace by page. Then we're going to put it in an envelope and mail it to you at your apartment. And by the time Holcomb finds out where the diary is, the show will be over."

! i ■ "

V, i

Della Street said, "That's going to be an awful slap in the face to Sergeant Holcomb."

Mason grinned. "Please don't make me bust out crying, Della."

Chapter 16

IN the lobby of one of the small outlying hotels that fringed the main metropolitan district, Mason and Della Street settled down in adjoining chairs. They were, they had explained to the clerk, waiting for a friend.

Mason took the leather-bound diary from his pocket, opened it and held it on the right hand arm of his chair. Della Street leaned over and together they read the events which had been chronicled by a girl who was now dead.

The diary started back some five years ago, started with a romantic attachment which had quite evidently tinged the writer's outlook with the rosy glow of optimism. There were entries every few days here, entries that were the outpourings of a girl in love.

Mason hastily skimmed through these pages, although Della, her eye caught now and then by some statement which attracted her, gave at times a reluctant consent to the turning of the pages.

Then there came days of doubt, then disillusionment, times when the history of a week or ten days at a time was lumped together in one, two or three line entries, days of apprehension, of suffering, of worry.

Then Mildred Danville met Helen Bartsler. And the diary faithfully chronicled the strange relationship which had sprung up between the two women, a relationship so strange that it seemed incredible.

Helen Bartsler was a widow, deprived of her husband whom she loved, deprived of any companionship with her husband's father who was embittered, cynical and regarded his daughter-in-law as a gold digger who had ensnared his son. Mildred Danville was a disillusioned woman who was faced with motherhood.

Helen had commented on the strange dictates of society. Had the child been hers, it would be able to hold up its head as the offspring of a hero. As the child of Mildred Danville, the infant would always be branded with a stigma.

It seemed but a step for the women to change identities. They were of the same age, height, weight, general

S-£ Blonde 10

appearance. It remained only for Mildred in a consultation with a reputable doctor to give the name of Mrs. Robert Bartsler, to show, casually, the marriage certificate. Later on when the physician signed a birth certificate he had no hesitancy m complying with the formalities which made the child appear to be the son of Robert Bartsler, deceased, and Helen Cluster Bartsler.

At the time Mildred had intended that the infant would be released for adoption, but, because of the switch in identities, there had been no hurry-and the tiny hands had gripped the hearts of these two lonely, disillusioned women. They had put off releasing the child for adoption until both came to realize such a step could never be taken.

Then, later, came a measure of friction, the companionship of misery came to an end. Each woman began living her separate life, and Mildred Danville came to see Helen Bartsler in a different light.

Gradually the entries in the diary changed until finally a disillusioned Mildred Danville had penned the lines which gave her final, accurate appraisal of Helen Bartsler, a cold, calculating, selfish and vengeful woman whose initial generosity had now become a part of some sinister campaign designed to get even" with the man she had come to hate—Jason Bartsler.

Both Mason and Della Street were now reading with absorbed interest.

Mildred Danville, it seemed, had acquired something of a philosophy about life. She had acquired it the hard way, because life had left her no alternative but acquire it she did, and this hard-won philosophy came to her aid at the time when Helen Bartsler secreted Mildred's child, refused to tell Mildred where the child was or what her plans were in connection with it.

Mildred had gone to a lawyer, and the lawyer had advised her that she didn't have a legal leg to stand on, and Mason, reading this entry, said in a low voice aside to Della Street, "Quite evidently the lawyer didn't believe her, thought the whole thing a fabrication."

"Well, you can't blame him," Della Street said. "Mildred had deliberately given Helen Bartsler every insignia of title—if

that's the way you can talk about a baby," she added with a little laugh. "But isn't it tragic, Chief? Think of this mother who has been through so much, and now finds that the companionship of her baby is denied to her."

Mason nodded, said, "Let's take a look at the last entries. Those are the ones that may throw some light on what happened."

"Oh, Chief, let's not skip what's in between. Let's..."

Mason turned the pages rapidly, shook his head. "We can't tell when Sergeant Holcomb will start his counterattack," he said. "Let's find out what we can about the events that led up to the murder."

"Chief, shouldn't we find out where she met Diana and- well, just check up on that trouble of Diana's?"

"Good idea," Mason said. "Let's see. That was about two years ago, wasn't it?"

The lawyer skimmed through the pages, pausing here and there for a selection, then said, "Here it is."

The diary told of meeting Diana, and sketched a word picture at that time of a harassed, worried girl fleeing from something which couldn't be left behind. It mentioned Diana's true name, and something about the murder of a husband.

"Good heavens," Mason ejaculated. "I remember that case! The wife was under suspicion for some time. They never arrested her, but police had her in for questioning a dozen times. It was a San Francisco case—never has been solved, even yet. So that's the thing that's been hanging over Diana's head. Holcomb would literally crucify her with that."

Mason turned back to the diary, read how Diana had turned to Mildred Danville, an old friend, seeking some sanctuary from the prying eyes of the public, trying to forget and, in turn, to be forgotten. It was Mildred's suggestion that Diana should take an entirely new name and a new environment. By that time Mildred Danville was a radio actress. She thought Diana's voice was sufficiently good to make her a living in radio, introduced her at the studio, helped pick up small parts for her.

"Well," Mason said, "there it is in black and white. Once

Sergeant Holcomb gets hold of that, he'll feed it out to the newspapers, and Diana won't stand a chance in the world."

"Can they introduce that other case as evidence?" Della asked.

"They won't have to. The newspaper publicity will crucify the girl before she ever gets near a jury."

"What," Della Street asked, "are you going to do?"

Mason said, "I'm going to try and find out why Diana's black eye led to Mildred's murder."

"You think it did?"

"It seems to have some definite connection."

Mason turned through the pages, then .frowned with disappointment.

On the twenty-fourth there was a short cryptic entry saying "Possession is nine points of the law they say, and I will be the tenth."

There were no subsequent entries in the book.

Della Street looked at Mason. There was a heavy rnanila envelope in Mason's brief case. He took it out, addressed the envelope to Della Street at her apartment address, affixed stamps, walked over to the mailbox in front of the hotel, dropped in the envelope and said, "Well, that's that."

"Now what?" Della Street asked.

Mason grinned. "We go directly back to the office just in case Sergeant Holcomb wants to make something of it. It's much better to have it over with now than to wait until the middle of the night, then be routed out of bed because the damn fool has a warrant."

"Face the music?" she asked.

Mason laughed. "We're playing the music, the dancing can be done by Sergeant Holcomb."

They got in Mason's car. The lawyer drove slowly toward his office. "Hang it, Della, there has to be some reason, some ... Oh, for heaven's sake!"

"Look out!" Della screamed.

Mason swung the wheel sharply, avoided the oncoming car, slid in to the curb, shut off the motor.

Della Street looked at him with alarm. "Did you blackout or something?"

Mason said, "Good Lord, Della! I know the answer!"

"The answer to what?"

"The answer to the whole darn business," Mason said, "and I should have known it a lot earlier. It's been staring us in the face all the time."

"What do you mean?" Della asked.

Mason said, "Look, Della, the account Diana gave of her black eye. She was telling Mildred over the telephone, and she must have told her exactly the same..."

The low throbbing note of a police siren, not as yet building up enough speed to give a high pitched scream, but merely emitting an attention-compelling growl, caused Mason to look up.

Two police cars were closing in on them, one behind, one swinging in toward the front.

"Oh, oh!" Della said under her breath.

The car behind seemed to be a regular radio prowl car, but the one in front was a special police car from which Sergeant Holcomb debauched aggressively. Following him from the car was Lieutenant Tragg.

Mason took his cigarette case from his pocket. "Have one?" he asked Della.

Mason was lighting Della Street's, cigarette when Sergeant Holcomb's angry countenance was framed in the window. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded belligerently.

"Lighting a cigarette," Mason said.

"Well, you're coming to Headquarters."

"Got a warrant?"

"I don't need one."

"Why not?"

"You committed a felony."

"Felony?" Mason asked raising his eyebrows.

"You committed a burglary."

"Tut tut, Sergeant," Mason said. "You must be more careful. Even your police book of instructions tells you better than that."

"A burglary," Sergeant Holcomb went on. "And don't think I can't hang it on you. We collared that garbage man. He told all about how you bribed him for fifty bucks to go up there and

trick the man into giving you the garbage. I suppose what you wanted was in that loaf of bread."

"And that's burglary?" Mason asked.

"Burglary by trickery."

"But didn't your man give the garbage man that loaf of bread?"

"Well then, it's embezzlement."

"No," Mason said, "on the contrary. There's the rule of abandoned property Which is entirely different from trusts. The loaf of bread was abandoned. It was given away. But you forget, Sergeant, that I represent Diana Regis, and that Diana Regis is about to offer Mildred Danville's letter for probate as her last will. She's also asking to be appointed executrix. Under the circumstances, and in view of the fact that Diana is the sole beneficiary under Mildred Danville's will, I am not only entitled to take possession of any personal property, but it's my duty."

"Well, we aren't going to argue about a lot of technicalities," Holcomb said. "You've stuck your neck out and

"Of course," Lieutenant Tragg interposed smoothly, "if Mason wants to take the position that he was taking this in custody as a part of the estate, we'll take a look at the diary as evidence, Sergeant, and in the event it appears that evidence has been suppressed, then we'll ... "

"Evidence of what?" Mason asked. "We don't know."

"You'd better find out, Lieutenant."

Tragg said, "Don't crowd things too far, Mason."

"I don't intend to. If you're referring to a diary, Lieutenant, I don't know how you can consider that it's evidence. I don't know how you can even introduce it in evidence regardless of what's in it. However, you seem to know what you're doing. And, by the way, may I ask how you located me so quickly?"

Tragg said grimly, "Put out a general alarm over the radio. As soon as a radio car picked up your car license, they radioed in and then shadowed you—two-way radio."

"Really a great thing," Mason said, "a marvelous boon to the Police Department."

"Never mind the kidding," Sergeant Holcomb interrupted. "Where's that book?"

Mason said, "I wouldn't lie to you, Sergeant, because that ,would be concealing the book, and I wouldn't want to do that- just in case it should turn out to be evidence."

"Okay, wise guy, where is it?"

"The book," Mason said, "is with Uncle."

"Uncle?"

"Uncle Samuel' Mason said. "It's dropped into a mailbox with postage thereon fully prepaid, and if you think it's evidence, Sergeant, I refer you to the postal authorities. Perhaps you can find out some way of getting the United States postal authorities to turn the addressed stamped envelope over to the Police Department."

Holcomb's face darkened.

For several seconds there was complete silence.

"You can't pull that stuff on me," Holcomb blustered at length. "That's just a stall - "

Tragg interposed, "He's telling the truth, Sergeant."

"How do you know?" Holcomb demanded.

"Because it's such a simple thing to do, such a clever thing to do, and such a damned effective thing to do," Lieutenant Tragg said bitterly.

Mason recognized the defeat in the Lieutenant's tone. He switched on the ignition of his car, started the motor. "Well, gentlemen," he said, "that's all I know about it."

"You know what's in that diary?" Holcomb demanded.

"Certainly," Mason said.

"What is it?"

Tragg said, "You can't get anywhere that way, Sergeant. We'll go to the D.A. and see if we can't find some way of getting the book out of the mail."

Holcomb said angrily, "I'm for dragging him down to Headquarters and ... "

"And," Mason interrupted smilingly, "letting the newspapers get hold of the manner in which the police officer handed over the loaf of bread. That would be swell publicity. It Would really help Diana's case. On second thought. Sergeant, I Won't be technical about the warrant. If you want to arrest He, I won't even raise the point."

Lieutenant Tragg put his hand on Sergeant Holcomb's shoulder. "Come on, Sergeant. We'll go see the D.A."

Mason slid the car into gear, glided away from the curb.

Della Street sighed. "Gosh, Chief, my hands are wringing wet."

Mason said, "Don't talk to me just now, darling, 1 have an idea that it might be well to concentrate on driving. Do you know, Della, 1 have a hunch that if 1 should violate any of the traffic laws between here and the office, I might find myself accused of reckless driving while intoxicated. That police radio car is trailing right along behind."

Chapter 17

DELLA STREET followed Perry Mason down the long corridor, watched Mason fit a latchkey mto the door of his private office, and then as Mason opened the door and stood to one side for her to walk on in, she caught his arm and said impulsively, "Give."

Mason grinned, tossed his hat m the general direction of the hook in the cloak closet, kicked the door shut and said, "We've got work to do."

"I know all that, but come on and give."

Mason said, "One phone call first, Della. Get Paul Drake's office on the line."

She made a little face at him, said, "All right, put me off. If I die of suspense right here in the middle of the office, Lieutenant Tragg will certainly pin it on you as a murder."

"Darned if he wouldn't," Mason admitted, "and if he didn't Sergeant Holcomb would beat me up with a rubber hose until I confessed. Rush that call through to Paul, and then we'll talk."

A moment later, Della Street had Paul Drake on the line.

Mason said, "Paul, how much of a pull do you have with the newspapers?"

"No pull, but we have contacts here and there. A detective agency that stays in business has to have friends scattered around in various places."

Mason said, "I don't know which one of the newspapers it was, and I don't know just how long ago, but I would say within about a week. I want you to find out the address of the person who put a want ad in the paper and gave the box for a reply of three nine six two YZ."

"How soon do you want it?" Drake asked.

"I want it so fast that it's going to surprise you."

"Not me."

"Five minutes."

Drake said, "Make it an hour."

"Five minutes."

"Make it forty-five."

"Five minutes," Mason said and hung up.

Della Street looked at him with a frown. "What's that number?" she asked.

"Don't you remember?"

"It seems familiar to me. I ... Oh, yes! That's the number that was scribbled in pencil on the back of one of the sheets of paper on which Mildred Danville's note was written."

"Exactly," Mason said, "only it wasn't the back of the piece of paper."

"What do you mean?"

"The note," Mason explained, "was written on the back of the sheet."

"I don't get you."

"Those sheets were torn from a pad, a pad about four by six inches. The paper had a somewhat elusive scent to lt-the scent of face powder."

"You mean Mildred had been carrying those sheets in her purse?"

"Let's put it this way. For some reason, Mildred wanted to make some notes, so she went into a dime store, picked up a pad of scratch paper, and put it in her purse. Some time later, she wrote the number three nine six two YZ on the pad, then, later on, when she wanted to write a note to Diana she simply tore off that sheet, turned it over and started her note on the back or it."

"But how do you know that's the number of a box for a Want ad?"

"I don't," Mason admitted, "but it's a ten to one guess that it is. A number of four digits with two letters of the alphabet after it isn't a telephone number, it isn't a house number. It's mighty apt to be the box number that would be put on the end of a want ad."

"And what," Della Street asked, "has all of that got to do with Diana's black eye?"

"It wasn't the black eye," Mason said.

"What was it? The finding of young Carl Fretch in her room?"

"Not that."

"I don't get it."

"A matronly woman with a limp."

"You're going too fast for me," Della Street said, frowning.

"A matronly heavy-set woman with a limp," Mason repeated. "That's the way Diana described the woman when she told us the story, and it's undoubtedly the way she described the woman when she told Mildred ... "

"Oh, you mean the woman who came and wanted to sell Jason Bartsler the mine?"

"Or did she?" Mason asked.

"Did she what?"

"Want to sell him a mine."

"You mean she ... Gosh, Chief!" Della Street exclaimed, "You mean that somewhere in the paper there was a want ad reading something like 'Woman with highest references who has a way with children, and house with large backyard looking for children to keep in daytime nursery, or...'"

"Exactly," Mason interrupted.

"Then," Della Street said, her voice showing her excitement, "Mildred Danville went to Ella Brockton and got hold of the boy, and took him to this woman."

"Go on," Mason told her, "you're doing fine."

"But then how did Bartsler get in touch with the woman?"

"He didn't. She got in touch with Bartsler."

"How?"

Mason said, "Suppose you were a matronly woman, inclined to respectability, and a rather stunning blonde came to you with a very small boy. Her name was Danville, and the

child's name was Robert Bartsler, and she seemed very much upset, and wanted a place to leave the child—probably for a few days while she was looking around for a suitable apartment and a maid, and ... "

"Why sure," Della Street said. "As soon as the blonde left the woman would start looking through the telephone directory for the name of Bartsler."

"Exactly," Mason said.

"And," Della Street went on, "it being an unusual name, she'd find only one Bartsler in the telephone directory, and she'd call up that number and Jason Bartsler would answer the telephone, and she would tell him that a blonde who acted rather mysteriously had given into her care a child nearly three years old named Robert Bartsler, and

"Go on," Mason said, as Della Street stopped.

"My gosh, Chief, I can't go on. The possibilities of what would come after that are staggering."

Mason said, "Of course, we're piling a lot of conclusions on a rather slender foundation of fact, Della, but it's an explanation that accounts for everything, and so far it's the only explanation that does account for everything. A matronly heavy-set woman with a limp. Mildred Danville had given the child to this woman to keep and the child promptly disappears, and then a couple - of days later Mildred is gabbing away over the telephone with Diana, and Diana is telling her about having a beautiful black eye, and Mildred is really enjoying it, and then goes on to say that at the exact moment she arrived at the house without money to pay the taxicab, a matronly, heavy-set woman with a limp was walking up the stairs, asking the man who answered the door for Mr. Bartsler."

Della frowned, "About a mine, Chief?"

Mason shook his head and smiled. "That was what she said to Bartsler's assistant—and that was after this woman had talked with Bartsler over the phone. Naturally, Bartsler couldn't suddenly start answering the doorbell himself when he hadn't been in the habit of doing it, and he'd hardly want a woman come to the door and say to whoever answered the bell, 'I'm calling about the little grandson.'"

Della Street said, "My gosh. Chief, I'm so excited I'm all

tmgly. I feel as though I'd been sitting on a foot until it had gone asleep and the pins and needles had spread all over my body. And think what a deep dark- game Jason Bartsler has been playing. Gee whiz! If ... "

Mason's unlisted telephone rang a peremptory summons. Mason scooped up the receiver and Paul Drake said, "Now, listen. Perry. I don't want you to take this as any precedent.

Ordinarily, it would have taken an hour, but I just happened to be lucky and stumble onto ... "

"Never mind all that stuff," Mason interrupted, "who is it?"

"Mrs. J. C. Kennard, three six nine one Lobland Avenue. And I've found out something else, Perry. In that block where Mildred left Diana's car parked, there's a little children's store. A blonde had been in there the day before with a young boy and bought some garments. They were to be altered the next day, but there was some delay and the woman had to wait. She didn't have the boy with her when she went in for them. I didn't show Mildred's picture because I was afraid if I did they'd spot her as the murdered girl and contact the police- but the time element fits okay. It sure was Mildred."

"Nice work," Mason said. "How about the ad Mrs. Kennard put m the paper, Paul. What was in that?"

"Gosh, I don't know, Perry. I was working fast on that ad business. I happened to find a lead that could give me what I wanted from the cashier's office, and I didn't bother to check back. Give me another twenty or thirty minutes and I can..."

"It doesn't make any difference," Mason said. "I think I know what it is, anyway. Grab your hat and coat, Paul."

"I'm just going out to dinner," Drake said. "Been working hard all day, didn't get any lunch ... "

"And if you grab a pocketful of those chocolate bars out of your desk you won't need any dinner," Mason said, "not for a while, anyway. Got an operative around the office you can trust?"

"Got a girl here just making a report on another matter," Drake said. "She's the only one."

"Blonde or brunette?"

"Blonde. You've met her, Anita Dorset."

"Okay," Mason said, "pick her up and bring her along. We may need her and we may not. Meet you at the elevator, Paul."

"Aw, Perry, have a heart. I'm starved. I..."

"In exactly ten seconds," Mason said, and hung up.

"Get that address?" Mason asked Della Street.

"Yes, I took it down, three six nine one Lobland Avenue."

"Okay, let's go."

Mason grabbed his light topcoat from the coat closet, held Della's coat for her, and crossed the office with long strides to jerk open the door. He held it open for Della, then let it click shut behind them as they strode down the hall for the elevator.

Mason was ringing for the cage just as Paul Drake and a tall rangy blonde who might have been anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-two stepped out into the corridor.

"You remember Anita Dorset?" Drake said.

Mason raised his hat. Della bowed and smiled.

The elevator flashed on a red light and the heavy doors slid smoothly back.

Going down in the elevator, Drake said tentatively, "Even a sandwich, Perry ... "

"Got the chocolate bars?" Mason interrupted.

Drake nodded lugubriously.

"Eat one of them, then."

"I hate to do it, Perry."

"They spoil my appetite for dinner."

"If you spoil it you won't keep talking about it," Mason told him. "Come on, let's go."

Anita Dorset's eyes were smiling tolerantly as she saw the expression on Drake's face.

"Chocolate repeats on me, Perry," he protested.

"That's swell. You can get twice the nourishment out of °ne bar. Save your appetite if you'd rather, Paul. You may be able to eat after a couple of hours."

, Drake sighed, took four chocolate bats from his pocket, offered one to each of the others. Della Street and Anita Dorset . declined. Mason took the chocolate bar, opened it and thrust a piece of chocolate into his mouth as they crossed the street to the parking place where Mason had left his car.

"Going in your car?" Drake said.

"Uh huh."

"Aw, why not go in mine?" Drake asked, pleadingly. "It you're in a hurry you're going to scare me to death."

Mason, munching on the chocolate bar, shook his head. He strode on toward the parking place. Drake lugubriously tore away the upper portion of .he wrapper on a chocolate bar, started to break off a piece, then slowly put it back in his pocket, "1 can stick it out another half hour," he said. "Maybe something will turn up."

Mason said, "Tell you what you do, Paul. Take your car and tag along behind me. You can take Miss, Dorset, and..."

"Nothing doing," Drake interrupted. "I'm not going to try to follow you through traffic. If you get pinched it's your funeral. I'm not going to have any more ... "

"All right. Meet me out at thirty-six ninety-one Lobland Avenue. We may get out there before you do. Climb in your car and tag along behind. I may have a job for you after you get out there."

Drake's face it up. "Okay, that'll be fine. We'll be there within five or ten minutes of the time you get there, and..."

"And if you stop for a hamburger sandwich on the way,"

Mason said, "I'll never give you another case as long as you

live.

Drake's face fell. "The damned mind reader," he said bitterly to Anita Dorset. "A guy can't even entertain a thought without that big hunk of cheese prying it out of his mind."

Mason whipped open the door on the left-hand side of Ms car. Della already had the door open on the right, and she jumped into the seat with a light, graceful motion.

Mason had the motor running almost before he had slammed his door shut, and was backing and twisting the car as Drake resignedly climbed into his own car.

The address on Lobland Avenue proved to be a modest, neatly kept bungalow with a roomy backyard, a vine-covered porch, and an air of quiet respectability.

Mason said, "No use waiting for Paul, Della. He'll be plodding along at a conservative legal rate of speed. Let's take a look, huh?"

"You mean go in?"

"Sure. We'll ring the bell."

"And what if she says she's

"She probably won't be. There aren't any lights in the window. Let's find out if anyone's home."

Mason and Della Street walked up the wide cement walk which led to the porch. The porch was fenced in so that small children could play without danger of falling downstairs.

"Guess you were right," Della said. "This looks like it."

Mason said, ringing the bell, "It's building up a very big theory on a very small fact, but somehow I think it's right."

The bell sounded distant and muffled in the interior of the house. Mason rang again, then he and Della walked around to the backyard.

In the light which filtered in from the street lamp, they saw that the backyard had been fitted up with swings, a sand pile, a playhouse, and an imitation sailboat some ten feet long, equipped with a little cabin and a stubby mast.

"You were right!" Della exclaimed.

Mason, frowning at the backyard said, "Anything unusual about this setup, Della?"

"Only that I'd like to be a kid and get turned loose on the swing.

"A lot of rather neat carpentering work, isn't it?"

"Uh huh."

"That would make quite an investment if a person hired a carpenter to do it."

"Well, a carpenter must have done it."

"Yes, but perhaps a carpenter who wasn't hired at the regular union rate. Perhaps some handy man who was a roomer, or perhaps a close friend."

Della nodded. "That sailboat idea," she said, "is definitely something new. I've never seen one of those before. I'll bet the kids have a great time clambering around on it and pretending they're pirates. There're headlights out in front. That must be Paul Drake driving up."

Mason and Della Street moved around to the front of the house, saw Paul Drake and Anita Dorset get out of the car.

Mason, talking in a low voice, said, "Paul, the backyard's full of gadgets for kids, a fine imitation sailboat, swings, and stuff of that sort. There's a house with lighted windows over there. You and Miss Dorset go on over and see what you can find out. If Mrs. Kennard ran a professional nursery and has suddenly given up the thing, put on a song and dance. Ten the neighbor that Anita Dorset wants to operate a similar nursery, and is very much interested in the carpenter who did the carpentering work on Mrs. Kennard's place. See what you can find out about him."

"Why, Perry?"

Mason said, "I think he might know where Mrs. Kennard

is."

Drake said, "It's worth a try. I suppose we don't eat until we find her for you. Come on, Anita, let's go."

Mason and Della Street watched while Drake and his companion moved over to the neighbor's house, saw the open front door shed an oblong of golden radiance as a man came to the door. They couldn't hear the conversation, but they could hear the man turn and call to his wife, after which the couple stood in the doorway and engaged in a long low-voiced conversation, following which Anita Dorset took a notebook from her purse and jotted down some data.

The door closed. Drake and his companion came back to join Mason and Della Street.

"Well?" Mason asked.

"She ran a nursery up until the twenty-sixth of last month, then she disappeared—out like a light."

"No explanation?" Mason asked.

"She telephoned this neighbor, asked her to please tell all the women who brought children that the nursery was closed because the woman who ran it had been exposed to smallpox, and was being placed in quarantine that she didn't want to do anything about it publicly, because that would make it hard for the children to get placed in other nurseries. It sounded fishy as hell, and the neighbor woman is all worked up over it, She did what was required of her, but she's just dying to do a little investigating and gossiping. I think we can go back there and get an earful after ... Well, later on."

"After what?" Mason asked.

"Oh, nothing. Just later on, sometime."

Mason laughed. "You meant after dinner, Paul, and nearly betrayed yourself. Okay, what have you found out about the carpenter."

"Man by the name of Thurston. He roomed there for a while and then went to work in an assembly plant and moved out so he would be closer to his work."

"Get his address?"

"Not yet, but I can. That should be easy—unless he's trying to cover up."

Mason said, "All right, Paul, get this straight and get it fast. I want you to locate this man Thurston. From him, get the present address of Mrs. J. C. Kennard who lived here at this address. It isn't going to be easy. You'll have to find out what the situation is and then make up a good stall that will get you the information. The minute you get that, get in touch with me. And keep Thurston sewed up so he can't get to thinking things over, and tip Mrs. Kennard off. That's going to be a job. It may be a tough one."

"Where will you be?" Drake asked.

"I'll be at the residence of Jason Bartsler if I'm not at the office. Ring the office first. If I'm not there, ring Jason Bartsler's residence and say that it's very important that you speak to me. Tell them you're a client, and I was drawing up some papers, that you have to give me some information about those papers right away."

"All right," Drake said. "Now here comes the pay-off. When do you expect us to do all of this?"

Mason glanced at Della Street and winked. "Take your own time, Paul."

"What?" Drake exclaimed incredulously.

"Sure," Mason said, "just so you do it before dinner."

Chapter 18

CARL FRETCH answered the doorbell when Mason rang at Jason Bartsler's residence.

"Good evening," Mason said.

Carl Fretch put on a suave, polished, sophisticated manner.

"Good evening," he said with a voice that was well modulated. "Was Mr. Bartsler expecting you?"

"He should have been," Mason said.

Carl Fretch maintained that air of aloof detachment, that utter boredom with the routine affairs of life which went with the part he was playing with himself. And he was careful to make it clear how unimpressed he was with the importance of his visitors.

"Won't you come in?" he asked with courteous politeness, but no enthusiasm. "Just be seated for a few moments, if you will, please," he added impersonally, and then vanished through the door into the other part of the house.

Della Street held her hands up and flexed the fingers. She pulled back her lips so that Mason could see her teeth. "If I could only get my hands on that lad," she said.

Mason grinned.

"Of all the insufferable little leasts," Della said. "I'd just like to see him put in some position where that pose of his would be punctured. He ..."

The door opened. "Mr. Bartsler will be glad to see you," Carl said in the voice of one who grants a very great favor. "I explained to him," he added self-righteously, "that it seemed to be very important."

"You're so good to us," Della Street spat at him sarcastically.

Carl Fretch raised his eyebrows with slow affectation. "Not at all," he said in a drawl which might have been an attempt at being a man of the world, or might have been studied msolence.

Mason and Della Street went through the door, through the room beyond and into the library which Tason Bartsler had fitted up as an office.

"Good evening," Mason said.

"Hello, Mason How do you do, Miss Street. Sit down. What's the cause of this visit?"

Mason said, "I'm calling on behalf of Diana Regis."

"What about her?"

"I think you can give me some help."

"In what?"

"In bringing about a dismissal of this charge against her"

"I'm afraid not, Mason. The evidence looks pretty black. There are a few things you don't know yet, things that I've learned confidentially from the prosecuting officers in connection with their questions. I'm not at liberty to divulge them, but I wif! say that you're rowing upstream against a pretty swift current. I don't think you can make it, Mason."

Mason offered Della Street a cigarette. Bartsler declined one and took a cigar from his humidor. Mason, in turn, declined one of Bartsler's cigars, and lit his own and Della's cigarette.

Mason inhaled deeply on the cigarette, stretched his long legs out in front of him, crossed his ankles and smiled at Bartsler. He said, "A nice homey matronly heavy-set woman With a limp. What do you know about hef!"

It was plainly not a question Bartsler had anticipated. He showed surprise that seemed puzzled as he studied Mason thoughtfully.

"Nothing."

"Think again."

"I don't need to. I know nothing about any such woman."

Mason said, "Perhaps I can refresh your memory, Bartsler."

"I think you'd better."

"We'll go back to the night Diana Regis had her experience with your stepson. When she returned in the taxicab there was a woman waiting to see you, a woman who gave her name, but Diana didn't remember it ... "

"Oh, wait a minute," Bartsler said. "JVow I get it. Yes, some woman who wanted to see me on a crazy mining deal."

Mason frowned. Bartsler's voice had just exactly the right degree of sudden recollection. If the man was acting it was a consummate piece of acting.

"Well," Bartsler asked, "what do you want? What does she have to do with it?"

"She may have a lot to do with it, Bartsler. Suppose you tell me exactly what she wanted to see you about."

"About a mine."

"Can't we do better than that?"

There could be no mistaking the flush which darkened Bartsler's features, nor the anger in his eyes.

"I don't like your tone, and I don't like that approach, Mason. As it happens, I'm telling you exactly what she wanted to see me about."

"Rather an unusual hour for a woman to call on you with reference to the sale of a mine, wasn't it?"

"That's what I thought," Bartsler said. "I couldn't understand why Frank Glenmore let her in to see me. Of course she had a very plausible story about how she worked during the day and couldn't possibly get in except in the evening that she hadn't intended to sell this mine until recently, and then she had been told that I sometimes bought up mines of this sort, and all of that stuff. But tell me, Mason, why do you think she is of any particular importance? I take it it's because she saw Diana Regis getting out of the taxicab and loaned Diana money with which to pay off the cab driver. There c rtainly can't be any question about that, and I can't see that it has any bearing whatever on the case. The money she advanced was returned to her."

Mason asked very casually, "Remember her name?"

"Yes, it was Kennard, and she had what is known as a prospect rather than a mine. In other words, there was a showing of rather good ore, but nothing had been blocked out, and taken by and large, it certainly wasn't the type of mining deal that I'm interested in at all."

Mason studied Bartsler and smoked thoughtfully. His face might have been carved from granite. "Your visitor, Mrs. J. C. Kennard, resides at thirty-six ninety-one Lobland Avenue," he said. "Up to the date that she called on you, she had rather an interesting and somewhat unusual business. Perhaps we should call it a profession."

"What was it?" Bartsler asked, "and how do you happen to know so much about her?"

Mason said, "She ran a nursery for children of various ages. Does that mean anything to you?"

"Does it!" Bartsler all but shouted. "You mean she might have been in a position to know something about my grandson? She..."

"There is every reason to believe that she had your grandson in her custody," Mason went on. "And following her visit to you, she has skipped out. Now then, suppose we quit beating around the bush and ... "

JBartsler's hand shot out to the table, his thumb frantically jabbed a bell button. In another room could be heard the sound of a buzzer, "You're damn right we'll find out," he said angrily.

A moment later, Frank Glenmore thrust his head into the room, saw the visitors, smiled a greeting. "Good evening. Miss Street. Good evening, Mr. Mason. What was it, Jason?"

Bartsler said, "Cone in here, Frank, and, sit down."

Something in the tone of his voice caused Glenmore to give the.man a somewhat quizzical glance.

"You remember Mrs. Kennard who called on us two or three nights ago?" Jason asked without preliminary.

"Yes. Rather heavy set. Let's see, I believe she had a slight limp. Her property was in that district that has been so intensively prospected of late ... "

"What did she tell you she wanted to talk with me about?" Bartsler asked.

Glenmore's eyebrows elevated. "Why, about selling you her mine, of course."

"And you were present when she talked with me?"

"Yes."

"All of the time?"

"Yes."

"And what did she talk about? What did we discuss?"

"Why, her mine, of course. She brought samples which she showed you, and there was a chain of title, location notices and things of that sort. And ... "

"And you were present during the entire interview?"

"Yes."

"And who showed her out when she left?"

"We both did."

Bartsler said to Mason, "Owing to the shortage of servants.

we are just running things on a hand to mouth basis. I trust you see what I'm getting at?"

Mason nodded.

"May I ask what this is all about?" Glenmore asked, his tone giving every indication of puzzled curiosity.

Bartsler said, "Mason seems to think that Mrs. Kennard might know something about my grandson."

"About your... What?" Glenmore asked.

"Grandson," Bartsler said, regarding his associate with narrowed eyes. "There is some reason to believe that several months after my son died his wife had a baby. It came out in court today."

"Why ... why! ... Good heavens, Jason, you never told me... why, that's been almost three years! A grandson!"

"And this grandson was concealed from me."

"Concealed! Couldn't you have secured a court order?"

"In fact, Robert's widow denied that there ever had been a child. Only today, on the witness stand did she admit it."

Glenmore had nothing to say to that. His face gave every indication that Bartsler's statement was a great shock to him.

"Now then, Frank, let's go back to ... "

"The time she came here?" Glenmore interrupted. "I remember it very clearly on account of thinking at first Diana had come with her. Diana explained that she hadn't but ... "

Jason Bartsler came suddenly upright in his chair. "How do we know she didn't. Frank?"

"Why they both said Glenmore's voice trailed away into the silence of one who realizes a sudden doubt.

"Go ahead," Bartsler snapped. "Let's get the straight of this. How do we know they didn't come together and fix up a story- anything to prove they didn't come together, Frank?"

Glenmore said in the slow diction of one who is thinking, "I guess there isn't any prooL.. If you want to get right down to brass tacks."

"I want to get right down to brass tacks," Bartsler announced.

"Well, I remember I heard the bell. I thought Carl might answer it. It was getting pretty late, and I thought it must be someone for—for that end of the house."

"I understand. Go on."

"Well, after I'd waited for perhaps a minute, or a minute and a half, 1 went to the door."

"Had the bell been rung for the second time?"

"I believe it had, but I can't be certain. I remember I waited until I was afraid the person might go away. I knew Carl was upstairs and thought he'd be certain to come down."

"He didn't make any move to do so?"

"No. He was ... well, that's when Diana says he was..."

"I understand," Bartsler interrupted. "Let's get back to what happened when you opened the door."

"Well, let's see .... This woman was standing right in front of the door, as though she'd been the one who had rung the bell,, and then there was Diana, and right back of Diana the taxi driver "

"Only the one taxi?"

"That's right."

"That settles it then."

"No, Jason, I wouldn't be too certain. I'm not even certain that I didn't hear some other car drive away-and, of course, this woman could have come on a street car. She looked the type.

"Did she tell you she'd paid Diana's fare?"

"I'm trying to think. I think it was Diana who said, 'I've left my purse somewhere and had to borrow my taxi fare from this woman,' and I told Diana I'd take care of it, and Diana swept on past me and ran up the stairs in a hurry. Hang it, Jason, I don't think they came together."

"What makes you think they didn't?"

"Just the way the whole thing was done. It was all natural and ... I just don't think they'd have been good enough actresses to have put it across ... and then there was the cab driver. He was still there putting money in his pocket. He heard what Diana said and didn't show any surprise. He would have if they'd arrived in the same cab."

"Not if Diana had made some crack about it being her turn to pay, and then gone through the motions of not having her purse."

"I suppose so. It could have been but somehow I don't think it was. And I'll tell you something else, Jason. If this

woman had anything else on her mind except selling her mine, she was an artist. There wasn't a move she made, not a thing she said that didn't just fit into that picture, the picture of a middle aged woman who has a mine she's inherited or had wished off on her as the result of some financial investment or wild speculation. Shucks, she had all the regular reactions, the idea that her mine was so good she wanted to keep an interest in it-you know how they act."

"I'll agree with you on that one," Bartsler said. "I've been doing a little thinking on that since you started talking. Her whole approach was so typical it dam near has to be genuine. She wouldn't possibly have had all those typical symptoms unless she actually did have a mine to sell .... Look here. Mason, is there any chance you're off on the wrong track here?"

"I could be," Mason admitted, "but the evidence I have leads me to believe she had your grandson in her custody."

Bartsler's face showed sudden expression. "Look here, Masbn, couldn't it have been the other way around? Couldn't she have come here to sell me her mine, and then, while she was here, or after she had left ... No, that wouldn't help. That's impossible .... Or is it? Couldn't she have acquired the child later-or even had the child without knowing who it was, and then connected the name later? What I'm getting at is that we may be barking up the right tree but after different game. You get what I mean, Frank?"

"Yes. I was thinking along those lines myself, but I didn't want to say anything ... ."

Bartsler said, impatiently, "You say anything that comes into your mind. Those others are nothing to me-at a time like this."

"I don't want to stick my nose in, that's all."

"This means so much to me that everything else is insignificant beside it. Speak up and to hell with the others."

Glenmore said, "I'd be inclined to think that if she knows anything about a grandson she acquued that knowledge after her visit here-or during that visit."

"Whom did Mrs. Kennard see before she talked with Mr. Bartsler?" Mason asked.

"No one. She made a telephone call, gave me her name, and told me that she had a mine she wanted to sell that she had assays showing the presence of ore that had a very " jh value that she had done some development work, and that it would be necessary for her to talk with us at night. And would ,it be possible to make an appointment."

"Then what?" Mason asked.

"I suggested that she might drop by some evening that week. I'd hardly anticipated she'd come that night-or that she'd come so late any night. When she said evening, I thought she meant early evening."

"And no one else saw her?"

"Now wait a minute .... Let's see. I took her in and talked with her. Then I came in and talked with Jason and told him the woman was waiting, told him generally about what she had, and suggested that he might like to talk with her."

"That's right," Bartsler said. "You outlined the proposition, and I told you I didn't think we'd be interested, but since she was here, I'd like to talk with her for a few minutes."

"And during that time," Glenmore said, "she was in the reception room and there's just a chance that But then, I don't see what difference it would make."

"Chance that what?" Jason Bartsler asked.

"Mrs. Bartsler or Carl Fretch might have passed through the room. But certainly there wouldn't have been any opportunity for more than a few words."

For several seconds there was silence, then Bartsler said meaningly to Glenmore, "Check that, will you, Frank?"

Glenmore seemed embarrassed. "It might be a little difficult now."

"Well, try it."

"And it might be embarrassing from my own viewpoint. You can readily understand."

Bartsler said crisply, "Well, if you feel that way... Tell Carl to get in here fast—and ask Mrs. Bartsler if she can make it a Point to get here as soon as possible. Tell her it's very important."

Glenmore nodded, left the room.

Bartsler chewed at his cigar. "Damn it. Mason," he said.

"the thing's impossible, and yet, that's the way it must have happened."

"Perhaps," Mason said, "inasmuch as it's your wife and your stepson, you'd better cross the i's and dot the t's so that there'll be no possibility of misunderstanding. I wouldn't want to assume something that might have no actual existence, particularly something about the state of your own mind."

Bartsler said, "My wife and I have been married long enough for the keen edge of romance to wear off. I know now that it was purely a business transaction with her. She wanted cash. She wanted position. She wanted influence. And, as is usual when someone tries to sell something that shouldn't be put up for sale, the buyer never gets what he thinks he's buying."

"And your stepson?" Mason asked.

"My stepson," Bartsler said with some feeling. "Let's not have any misunderstanding about that little brat. He needs a swift kick in the spot nearest his center of gravity. He's a four- flushing, grandstanding, hypocritical, selfish, conceited jackass."

"That," Mason said, "seems to cover quite a bit of territory."

"If I had a little more time to think of new ones, I could cover it better," Bartsler said. "I wouldn't put anything past him. He's so completely obsessed with the idea that he has to live the life of a successful actor that he'd do anything-anything- except work. He's just another little nincompoop who wants to begin at the top."

"And his mother?" Mason asked.

"Is very devoted to him. Thinks he's all of the famous male leads in Hollywood rolled into one."

"And would do anything to further his ambitions?"

"Yes."

Mason said, "Of course the subject is a delicate one."

"Damn it, it doesn't need to be," Bartsler said angrily. "When I say 'anything' I know what that implies the same as you do. She'd lie. She'd steal. I don't know but what she'd even kill in order to ... "

"Whom are you talking about?" asked a cold cultured voice from the opposite end of the room.

Bartsler looked up, saw his wife, got to his feet, said, "You remember Mr. Mason, dear, and Miss Street."

"Good evening," she said coldly, and then to Bartsler, . "About whom were you talking, Jason?"

Jason met her eyes. "Damn it, if you want to know, I was talking about you."

. "I see. And were you, by any chance, asking Mr. Mason to represent you in a divorce action?"

Bartsler said, "No, and let's not.

Her smile was frosty. "If you had been, it would have been a bit premature. I am filing a petition in my own divorce case tomorrow afternoon."

Bartsler was silent for the space of two quick breaths, then said in tight-lipped anger, "Well, I guess that winds it up."

"Oh no it doesn't," she said sweetly. "That's only the first gun Mr. Mason will tell you that our property matters will have to be adjusted."

Bartsler said angrily, "If you think I'm going to disgorge any money for you and that brat of yours ... "

"That will do, Jason," she said sharply, interrupting him. "You may, of course, abuse me, because that seems to be your privilege as a husband. But I think my son can very well be left out of it. I am supporting him. He isn't dependent on you in any way."

"You're supporting him!" Bartsler snorted. "You get money from me and pass it over to him."

"Nevertheless, it is my money when I pass it over to him."

"And that accounts for his damn smirking independent attitude," Bartsler said. "He acts as though he didn't owe me a thing in the world, not even respect."

"I was not aware that he owed you anything," Mrs. Bartsler said icily. "One either commands respect or one doesn't get it."

"Well, I'll command it all right! And if he's done what I think he's done ... "

"What do you think he's done?"

"I think he's ... Well, we'll wait and find out what he has to say about it."

Frank Glenmore came tiptoeing back into the room, He shook his head gently.

"Not here?" Bartsler asked.

"No."

"If you're looking for Carl," Mrs. Bartsler said, "he won't be in until quite late. He has a date, I understand."

"Whose car?" Bartsler asked.

"Don't worry, Jason, he took my coupe."

Bartsler said, "That damn spoiled four-flusher! If he'd only get out and ... "

"I don't think you need to discuss him, Jason. Really he has no connection with you whatever. He is purely and entirely my responsibility. He is, of course, bitterly disappointed that he can't be overseas with his more robust comrades ... "

"Disappointed!" Bartsler stormed. "That's a good one! That little yellow-livered coward wouldn't risk his skin within twenty- five thousand miles of

"That will do, Jason."

Bartsler went on as though she hadn't spoken, a front line trench. When he hears a champagne cork pop, he has to fight himself to keep from crawling under the table! Give him a gun and ... "

"You wished to see me?" Mrs. Bartsler interrupted. "I take it there is some reason for your request. If it was merely to put me in a humiliating position by discussing your fancied grievances against my son, I warn you, Jason, that my divorce complaint has not as yet been filed, and it can be changed to include any humiliating experiences you now inflict upon me. Mr. Mason and Miss Street will bear witness that I was Called in here, apparently for no other purpose than to listen to a profane tirade against my son."

Bartsler sighed, said, "What's the use? You know a woman named Kennard?"

She puckered her brows, "Kennard Kennard ? No,

Jason, I think not."

"She's a rather heavy-set woman somewhere around sixty who walks with a limp. She has a rather beaming matronly expression," Bartsler said. "She was here, I believe, on the evening of the twenty-fourth. You may place it because that was the night Carl hit Diana ... "

"Jason, I do wish you'd refrain from condemning Carl in

that manner. Carl did not hit that creature. You have placed me in a most embarrassing position by acting upon the assumption that in the first place Carl would hit a woman, and in the second place, that his word is absolutely without value. That is one of the things which has made it impossible for me to further continue to live with you, or under your roof. It has been the most refined form of mental cruelty sufficient to ..."

"Sufficient to give you something with which you can run to a lawyer and pick on me for alimony," Bartsler interrupted.

"Really, Jason, I see no need for prolonging this discussion. If you are going to insist on bringing Carl into it, I'm afraid I shall have to withdraw. But if there is any information I can give you, anything which will be of advantage to you in your business, or anything that will help you..."

"You remember this woman? Did you ever see her?"

"I think, now that you have mentioned it, I saw her, yes."

"Where?"

"She was, I believe, waiting in the reception room. I didn't pay very much attention to her, simply noticed that there was a woman of that general description there."

"See her walk?"

"I did not."

"Did Carl see her?"

"You'll have to ask Carl."

"Where is Carl?"

"He's out."

"With whom?"

"I don't know that it makes any difference," she said, "but simply because I don't want you to feel I am withholding anything that may be of advantage to you in connection with any business matter, I'll tell you. He's out with a very refined, nice-appearing young woman. However, as nearly as I can see, it makes absolutely no difference to you where he is. I don't think that you have the slightest sympathy or affection for the boy, and therefore what he does is no concern of yours."

Bartsler said, "Affection hell. I don't want to kiss him! I want to know whether he talked with that. Kennard woman."

"I'm quite certain that he didn't, Jason. If the woman was here to see. you, I'm quite certain that Carl would keep entirely

out of the picture. You know as well as I do that he is scrupulously careful never to interfere in any way, never to give you the slightest cause for ... "

"1 know," Bartsler interrupted, "he's been carefully coached."

She bowed submissively, turned and swept from the room, head up.

"All right," Bartsler said angrily, "I'm in a hell of a mess. Don't look at me like that, Mason. I know I played right into her hand. I know this will sound like hell when she puts it in a divorce complaint, about how in the presence of business associates I called her in and impugned her motives, berated her son's character, and, in general, exposed her to the scom and ridicule of my friends and business associates, all of which caused her great and grievous mental suffering."

Mason said, "That leaves us as far as ever from finding out about Mrs. Kennard."

"No it doesn't," Jason said. "I know the answer now. Mrs. Kennard came here. She used that mining deal as a stall to get in. That's all it was. While she was waiting to see me, my wife got hold of her, found out what she was really here for and decided a grandson would upset her apple cart. Damn it, Frank, find out everything you can about this woman. Get a line on her! Get detectives working on it! I want that woman. I want to find out just what was said to her, and by whom."

"I'll do that right away," Glenmore promised. "If you'll excuse me for a minute, I'll telephone to the detective agency that handles our work and get them started."

The telephone rang.

Glenmore moved over to the instrument, picked up the receiver, said, "Hello," then said, "Yes, just a moment, please."

He turned to Mason, extending the telephone receiver. "For you, Mr. Mason," he said. "A client who says it's most important."

Mason picked up the receiver, said, "Yes. Hello."

Paul Drake's voice came over the wire. "Now listen. Perry, I don't want you to think this establishes a precedent. After all, it's just luck. We located this man Thurston and he has her address. She didn't thmk there was any possibility anyone

would try to get in touch with her through Thurston. Looks like Thurston is a sort of a favorite boy fnend. She let him know her address as soon as she'd pulled out."

"He know why she changed?" Mason asked. "You mean took a powder?"

"Yes."

"No. Get your pencil and I'll give you that address. I'm going to keep 'Thurston sewed up so that he doesn't tip her off that someone's looking for her."

"By taking him to dinner, I suppose," Mason said.

Drake chuckled. "That's what I thought," he said. "I've invited him to join us for dinner."

"You and your stomach," Mason groaned. "What's the address?"

"Staying with a sister name of Ruffin, eleven ninety-one Killman Boulevard. And now if you'll excuse me, Perry, I think Mr. Thurston is hungry, and I wouldn't want to let him out of my sight. I'm ordering nice thick, juicy tenderloin steaks with French fried potatoes, cocktails, head of lettuce salad, mince pie a la mode—and on the expense account. Oh boy! How's your ■chocolate bar setting?"

There was a click at the other end of the line.

Mason hung up the telephone, said to Bartsler, "Well, I think this woman either had your grandchild, or knows who did—that is, if you really have a grandchild. I wanted to find out what was back of her visit,and that's the only reason 1 called on you."

"We'll find out, all right," Bartsler said.

"And what was Carl Fretch doing in Diana's apartment?" Mason asked.

"Says he wasn't there," Bartsler said. "He still sticks with the story that he was out with a girl. They parked the car and got out. Someone stole the car. He finally kicked through with the name of the wren he was with. Police checked up. She confirmed his story-so there you are."

Mason said, "I'll be going. If you find out Carl talked to this Mrs. Kennard, I'd appreciate it it you'd let me know."

"I will," Bartsler promised, "but when I locate the woman

I'm not going to tell you where she is until after I've talked with her. It's each man for himself on that end of it."

"I understand," Mason said. "And now we'll say good night. We have quite a bit of work to do."

Jason Bartsler escorted them to the door. "I think we're on the homestretch now," he said as he closed the door.

Out in the car, Della said, "Not a word about patching up his differences with Helen."

Mason nodded, his manner preoccupied.

"Was that Paul who telephoned?"

"Uh huh."

"Had he located Mrs. Kennard?" "Thinks he had."

"We going out there now?"

Mason spun the car into a tight turn at the corner. "Going out there right now," he said.

Della Street sighed. "Hand me one of those chocolate bars, will you. Chief?"

Chapter 19

MASON swung his car into Killman Boulevard. Della Street kept track of the numbers. "This is the nine hundred block ... the ten hundred block ... the eleven hundred block ... that must be it, the light stucco house over there on the left."

Mason shot the car in to the curb, switched off lights and the ignition. The night was cold and clear, and the stars blazing down in steady splendor seemed to be drawing the earth closer to them.

Mason walked up the steps with Della Street, rang the

bell.

Steps sounded behind the closed door. Mason, listening intently, heard the altering tempo of those steps, a heavy step and then a light one, a heavy then a light, a heavy then a light.

Della Street's fingers touched his hand. "Gosh, Chief," she whispered, "it's someone who limps." The door opened.

A somewhat heavy-set woman with graying hair, keen

determined eyes from which radiated a network of fine lines that gave to her face a somewhat benevolent expression, smiled at them.

"Mrs. Ruffin?" Mason asked.

"No," she said, "I'm sorry. Mrs. Ruffin is out."

Mason let his face show disappointment. "That's too bad," he said. "I wanted to see her about a matter of business-about some property she's going to inherit."

"Property?" the woman asked, fairly pricking up her ears.

Mason nodded. "A relative who ... well, perhaps I'd better wait until Mrs. Ruffin ... "

"I'm Mrs. Ruffin's sister, Mrs. J. C. Kennard. Perhaps if she's going to inherit property, I'm going to inherit some, too."

"Oh, are you Mrs. Kennard?" Mason asked, taking a notebook from his pocket and turning the pages. "Why I had you listed as living on Lobland Avenue."

"Come in, come in," the woman beamed at them. "I am visiting my sister for a few days. She hasn't been well, and- well, you know, nothing that confines her to the house, but just nervousness, and I thought I'd run over and do the housekeeping for a while."

"I see," Mason said, permitting Mrs. Kennard to escort Della Street and him into the comfortable although somewhat cheaply furnished living room.

"Do sit down," Mrs. Kennard urged, "and tell me about it. ■ I wonder if it was Uncle Douglas. We always thought he might have some property."

Mason smiled. "Well, simply in order to follow the routine procedure in such matters, Mrs. Kennard, let me ask you some questions before I answer any-not that I have the slightest doubt as to your identity, but then you know there's a certain procedure we have to follow in these things."

Mrs. Kennard folded her hands on her lap, beamed at him. "Go right ahead, young man, go right ahead."

Mason said, "You're a widow, Mrs. Kennard?"

"That's right. Mr. Kennard died in nineteen hundred and thirty-four."

"You've never remarried?"

"No."

B-E Blonde 12

"And your sister?"

"Mrs. Ruffin is divorced."

Mason frowned. "That's bad."

"Why?"

"Because so many times divorce decrees are obscurely drawn. Property settlements aren't carefully worked out, you know, opportunities for lawyers to come in and claim that the property hadn't been all divided."

"But wouldn't any property that she received by an inheritance be her separate property, and something her husband couldn't touch in any event?"

"That's right as a general proposition," Mason said, "but we have an instinctive dread of running into divorce cases, although it isn't so bad when the property is coming to the wife, and it's the husband who's divorced. When it's the other way around, there are quite frequently a lot of complications. You haven't any children, Mrs. Kennard?"

"No."

"And your sister?"

"She has a boy."

"Over twenty-one, or under?"

"Oh, he's over. My sister's older than I am, and her boy's- well, let me see, Ralph must be past thirty now. He's married and has one child."

"Your sister has some occupation?"

"Well, not right at present. She did work in a candy company up until two months ago."

"And you?"

She smiled. "I'm a working woman."

"May I ask what occupation?"

"Well, for the last few months I've been keeping a nursery. You know, so many people are working now, and don't have any place to leave their children, and it's almost impossible to get competent domestic help. Well, I've built up rather a good business."

"That's recent?"

"Oh, yes."

"Very interesting," Mason said. "How did you get your clientele, Mrs. Kennard?"

She laughed and said, "I just put a want ad in the paper, and you'd be surprised how many women brought their children to me. Of course, they made an investigation first, then came and talked with me. But I didn't have any trouble at all getting business."

"That's quite interesting, indeed. And among the clients was there one named Mildred Danville who was murdered a few nights ago?"

Mrs. Kennard had been smiling, the genial, affable smile of one who wishes to make a very good impression, and is anxious to cooperate in giving information. When that question hit her with the impact of a blow, she tried to hold her face so that it wouldn't change expression. But the result was a ghastly travesty.

"And," Mason went on, "she left with you a child whose name was Robert Bartsler, and because she didn't give you exactly the most convincing story, you became rather concerned and looked in the telephone directory to find if you could locate someone by the name of Bartsler. You found a Mr. Jason Bartsler, and you rang his telephone. Now suppose you tell us what happened after that, Mrs. Kennard."

Mrs. Kennard blinked her eyes, her tongue moistened her lips, but she said nothing.

Mason's smile was affable, "Really, Mrs. Kennard, I think it will be much better if you tell the truth, and put your cards right on the table. After all, you know, a murder has been committed, and your connection with it puts you in a very, very serious position."

Mrs. Kennard said, "You're crazy!"

"Suppose," Mason went on, "you tell us where the child is, Mrs. Kennard."

"I don't know."

"Will you deny that a child named Robert Bartsler was left with you?"

"I don't know the names of all of my children."

"When you left and closed up your day nursery very suddenly, you said that you had been exposed to smallpox."

"I think I have been exposed to smallpox."

"Yet you told us that you came here to take care of your sister."

"Well, I did. I could do both, couldn't I?"

"Did you take any child with you when you left the nursery?"

"No, of course not."

"So you have no child here at all?"

"Certainly not!"

Mason glanced at Della Street, then let his eyes rove around the room. He noticed a huge dictionary on the top of a small table. He glanced at the dictionary, then at Della, then at the dictionary, then back at Della.

She followed the direction of his eyes, frowned, then suddenly smiled and nodded, almost imperceptibly.

Mason turned back to Mrs. Kennard. "Did you discuss anything with Mr. Jason Bartsler other than the possible sale of a mine?"

"No, of course not."

"How did you happen to go to him?"

"A friend told me about him."

"Who is the friend?"

"A man who had done some work for me and who knew something about mines."

"A man you have known for some time?"

"Yes."

Della Street moved unobtrusively over to the table by the dictionary.

"Oh, what a splendid dictionary," she said.

Mrs. Kennard turned to look at her with eyes that were still dazed and punch groggy.

Della Street started to pick up the dictionary. "Is this the seventh edition?" she asked.

She picked up the dictionary, held it some eighteen inches above the table, then suddenly let it slip from her fingers.

"I've dropped it!" she exclaimed, and screamed.

The thud of the heavy book on the floor, and Della Street's scream mingled into a sudden volume of noise, following which the silence seemed suddenly tense as everyone waited for some other sound to follow.

"Oh," Della Street said, "I'm so sorry," and then remained silent.

The thin, reedy wail of a child in an adjoining bedroom merged into a lusty yell.

Mason said, "Come on, Della," and started in the direction of the noise.

Mrs. Kennard got up out of her chair, started walking toward the front door.

Mason and Della Street groped their way through a strange house, moving through dark rooms, groping for light switches, guided by the child's crying.

They found the boy in a back bedroom lying in a crib.

Mason switched on lights.

Della Street said, "Oh, you poor thing!" and moved over to the crib. She leaned over and picked the child up.

Instantly the child stopped crying.

Della Street smiled at him, wiped the tears from his eyes. "Hello, honey," she said. "What's your name?"

"Robert Bartsler and I'm 'most three and I won't never, never see my daddy any more," the boy said all in one singsong as trough reciting something he had carefully learned by rote. Then he began to cry again.

"What," Della asked, "do I do with him?"

"Start dressing him," Mason said. "Bundle him up in clothes and get him ready to move."

Mason rushed back to the front of the house. "Mrs. Kennard," he called. "Oh, Mrs. Kennard!"

There was no answer.

"Mrs. Kennard," Mason shouted, raising his voice.

He moved through the front room, felt a draft of cold air.

"Mrs. Kennard," he shouted again, and went out into the front corridor.

The front door was standing wide open. Mason's car which he had left parked at the curb was gone.

Chapter 20

MASON'S fingers spun the dial of the telephone to the division marked "Operator."

"Hello, hello. Operator!" Mason said. "Hello, this is an emergency. Get me the Police Department! Put through the call at once .... Hello, hello, Police Headquarters? Let me talk with Lieutenant Tragg."

"He isn't in," the voice at the other end of the line said.

"Who's on duty in Homicide?"

"Sergeant Holcomb."

"Put Sergeant Holcomb on the line. This is Perry Mason. This is an emergency!"

A moment later Holcomb's voice said, "Yeah, what is it?"

"This is Perry Mason, Sergeant Holcomb. I want to get a police car on the job immediately."

"Oh, you do, do you?"

"Listen, get this straight. I've found out the reason Mildred Danville was murdered, and I think I know who murdered her. Now in order to keep another murder from being committed, it's going to be necessary to rush a police car to the house of Jason Bartsler at once. Put enough men in the place to see that nothing happens until I get there."

"Well, ain't you smart!" Holcomb said. "And I suppose after we lead with our chins on this, you'll have some newspaper reporters out there and spill your story to them and make it look as though the Police Department placed a lot of credence in it. Nothing doing. Mason. You paddle your own canoe. As far as this department is concerned, we know who killed Mildred Danville and why."

"Look here, Holcomb," Mason said patiently, "I can't outline my theory to you over the telephone, but I'm telling you just as sure as you're sitting there, that if you don't get men out to Jason Bartsler's place, a murder is going to be committed."

"Okay," Holcomb said, "if it is, we'll remember that you seemed to have been mixed up in it, and you can explain to the grand jury how you knew so much about it and why you're not an accessory. Why don't you go there yourself, if you're in such a hurry?"

"Someone's stolen my car," Mason said.

"Well, now... ain't.... that too... bad! Ha, ha, ha! Good-by, Mason."

Mason slammed up the telephone as he heard the click at the other end of the line. He hesitated a moment, then looked around for a telephone book, couldn't find one, dialed information and said, "Give me the number of Jason Bartsler's residence, please. It's highly important."

"Just a moment-how do you spell the last name?"

"B-a-r-t-s-l-e-r, and please rush it."

"Just a moment."

It was some fifteen seconds later that a voice said, "His number is Westgate 9643."

Mason said, "Thank you," and was dialing the number with frantically hurrying fingers.

A few moments later a voice asked, "What number are you calling, please?"

"Westgate nine six four three."

"Just a moment."

Again there was a delay, then the voice said, "That line seems to be out of order. I am reporting it. Will you call a little later, please?"

Mason's forefinger slammed down the pronged cradle in which the receiver rested, clearing the line for another call, called a taxi company. "This is an emergency," he said. "Can you send a taxicab out to eleven ninety-one Killman Boulevard immediately?"

"I'm sorry, we have no cabs available for calls in that district."

"This is an emergency. This is a matter of life and death, and ... "

"We hear that so often," the girl said in a bored voice. "If the matter has such urgency, you had better call the police, or an ambulance. I think I can have a cab out for you in thirty minutes, if that will do."

"It won't do," Mason said savagely. "Very well. Good-by."

Mason dialed the number of Drake's Detective Agency and when he had Drake's night operative on the line, said, "This is Perry Mason. Where's Paul?"

"He telephoned in that he was eating dinner. He has someone ... "

"Oh, Lord!" Mason groaned. "Any idea where he is?"

"Yes. He left a phone number where I could reach him if there was anything of any particular importance."

Mason said, "Get a call through to him. Tell him to burn the road up getting out to eleven ninety-one Killman Boulevard. I'll be waiting for him. Wait a minute. Is there anyone there in the office who can get out here quicker than that?"

"No, Mr. Mason, I don't think there is. I think Mr. Drake

"AD right, get Paul. Now listen. Anita Dorset is with him, and they're entertaining a man by the name of Thurston at dinner. Tell Paul to have Anita stay with Thurston, and for him to jump in the ear and get out here, and to step on it."

"Very well, Mr. Mason."

Mason hung up the telephone, started pacing the floor.

Della Street entered the room carrying the baby in her arms. "Look Chief, isn't he cute?"

Mason nodded perfunctory acknowledgment, said, "All ready to travel?"

"Yes. I've bundled him up aD nice and warm."

Mason said, "We've got to act out of here, and there's no way of getting out. Mrs. Kennard stole mv automobile and probably went for reinforcements. I can't get any action out ot the police, and the taxi companies won't send a cab out here. Everyone has pulled that life-and-death stuff on them until they're tired of it. ... Okay, I'll tell you what I'll do, Della. I'll do it the hard way, if I can't do it the easy way."

He once more dialed Operator, said, "Connect me with Police Headquarters at once, please."

"Hello," Mason said as soon as he had an answer. "This is Jason Bartsler. I'm at my residence at 2816 Pacific Heights Drive. There's a masked man trying to get in the back door. Send radio officers outright away."

The man at the other end of the line seemed strangely unexcited. "What's your telephone number, Mr. Bartsler?"

"Westgate 9643," Mason snapped.

"A masked man, you say?"

"Yes."

"You see him?"

"Yes. Hurry! Send men out, or he'll get away."

"This is Mr. Jason Bartsler?"

"Yes."

"You're talking from your phone there at that number?"

"Yes. For heaven's sake, send somebody out here! What's the idea?"

"Sorry," the voice said, "but you hang up and I'll call you right back for a confirmation. Orders just received from Sergeant Holcomb not to pay any attention to any calls from your telephone unless they were verified. Seems as though some lawyer is trying to stampede the police into rushing a car out there so he can get some publicity for his theory on a murder case. You understand, Mr. Bartsler. Just hang up and I'll call you back. Westgate 9643. Okay, hang up."

Mason slammed the phone up and cursed under his breath.

"What's the matter?" Della asked.

"That damn fool Holcomb," Mason stormed. "So darned afraid that I'm going to slip a fast one over on him by planting some evidence and having him discover it under such dramatic circumstances that it'll make the newspapers."

"What," Della asked, "do we do?"

"Paul Drake's on his way out here, or should be if he's got his stomach full. Lord, I hope he doesn't get the call just as he's being served the steak. Switch out the lights, Della."

"You mean all the lights?"

"All the ones that are here. You take your end of the room. I'll take this end."

Mason picked out one light switch and Della Street turned out a floor light.

"There are lights in those other rooms," she said.

"That's all right," Mason told her, "just turn out the lights here."

"What's the idea?"

"We'd be too good targets for anyone who wanted to shoot through a window."

"Good heavens, Chief! Do you mean there's that much danger?"

"There may be," Mason said. "I don't know just what we're getting into, but I'm beginning to get the whole picture now."

Della Street said, "Get over on the davenport. I'm coming over and sit beside you. There, there, Robert. It's all right. This is Della Street. She is a friend of your mother's. Do you want to go and see Mother?"

This brought fresh wails from the child. "I want my mommie," he sobbed.

"You've been on a visit?" Mason asked.

"I want my mommie," the childish treble repeated somewhat sleepily.

Della Street said, "Come on. Chief. Tell me what's happening."

Mason said, "The whole case was laid out like a pattern, and I didn't see it."

"Why not?"

"Because I failed to take into consideration one thing so simple that it escaped my attention."

"What?"

"The time element."

"What's that got to do with it?"

Mason said, "Go back to 'the night of the twenty-fifth. Diana came home from her automobile ride. It was something after ten o'clock."

"Well, what of it? I mean why is that significant?"

"She met Mrs. Kennard. Mrs. Kennard had just driven up. Diana went upstairs. She found Carl in her room. They had an argument. Carl very calmly, very efficiently popped her one in the eye and then walked out. Diana got a little -hysterical. She put cold compresses on her face. Then she took a bath, soaked her swollen feet, dried herself, put on her shoes because she had neglected to take her slippers into the bathroom with her, put on a house coat, and then had the altercation with Mrs. Bartsler which resulted in her running downstairs. She put on her coat which was in the coat closet, then started out and heard voices. She felt she was pretty conspicuous with her swollen

eye, and waited in the closet for some ten or fifteen minutes for the coast to clear so she could see Mr. Bartsler. Then after ten or fifteen minutes when she thought everything was all right, she opened the door to step out and found Bartsler and Glenmore just escorting Mrs. Kennard to the door. She didn't want to be conspicuous, have Mrs. Kennard see her black eye so she hurried out of the door ahead of everyone, and walked down to the corner drugstore. That was when she decided she'd go to her apartment and spend the night there. She found she didn't even have telephone money with her, so she started walking. She got to the apartment and didn't have her key. She wouldn't ring the manager to get her up and be admitted with a passkey because she was so painfully conscious that she was wearing a long fur coat, a house coat underneath that, her shoes and nothing else. So she went to the bus depot and waited for Mildred to return to the apartment. From time to time, she'd call Mildred with a nickel she'd borrowed from a total stranger."

"Well?" Della asked as Mason ceased talking.

Mason said, "Fit that together, Della. Put the time element together. Patch that up with what we know now, and you'll see why it's so absolutely, utterly imperative for us to get to Jason Bartsler's place and ... "

At the sound of the name the childish cries began again.

"Yes, dear," Della said. "You mustn't talk now. You must close your eyes and go sleepy-by."

"Turn on the light."

"No it's your bedtime."

"I want my mommie."

"After a while, perhaps, dear."

"And Auntie Mildred."

"Yes, dear."

"You're a nice lady."

"Well, now you go to sleep."

"I want the mans to tell me a story."

"No," Della Street said, "the mans is busy now. He's thinking."

"Why?"

"Because he's thinking,"

"What for?"

"About lots of very important things. You must keep quiet now."

"Tell me a story."

"I don't know any stories, honey."

"Tell about Jack and the Beanstalk."

"I don't know it very well."

"My mommie knows all about Jack and the Beanstalk."

"Yes, dear. But you mustn't talk now."

"Turn on the light."

"No, we have to be in the dark. Would you like to take a ride in an automobile after awhile?"

Mason got up and walked over to the darkened window. He raised the shade, looked out into the yard.

"Chief, hadn't you better come away from that window?"

"I want to see Drake when he comes," Mason said. "Providing he comes. Good Lord! What's holding him up? Isn't he... Wait a minute. Here are some .headlights—coming around the corner.... Now wait a minute, Della. Sit tight. We're not absolutely certain this is Paul Drake. Hold everything. I want to get those lights out in the hall. I don't want to go to the door and stand silhouetted against the light."

Mason jerked open the door to the lighted corridor, switched out the lights, then walked cautiously to the front door. He turned the knob, opened it a few inches.

Paul Drake's characteristic figure, moving now with a rapidity which seemed altogether foreign to his lazy, drawling, good nature, debauched from the car and sprinted up the walk.

Mason called over his shoulder, "Okay, Della, come on. Make it scrappy!"

Mason pulled the door open, said, "Lo, Paul. Got a gun?"

"Gosh no. Perry. What's the matter?"

"Never mind. Let's get going. Della has the baby. Careful not to stumble, Della." .

"What's the matter with the lights?" Drake asked. "There's lights on at the back of the house. Can't you turn these ... "

"No, no," Mason said sharply. "No lights, Paul. Let's get out of here!"

"What is this, a kidnaping?"

"Next thing to it," Mason said. "Okay, Della, let me help you down the stairs. Careful now. ... You get in the back seat.... Okay, Paul, get in that door. I'll drive."

"You would!" Drake groaned. "You'll wreck the bus! This thing isn't accustomed to your type of driving. You let me ... "

"Get in on that side," Mason ordered sharply. "I'm driving."

Drake sighed, climbed in the right-hand door. Mason jerked open the left-hand door, slid in behind the steering wheel, slammed the door shut, stepped on the starter, and had the car in second gear almost before the motor had caught.

"Hold your hats," Drake said grimly to Della Street. "Here we go!"

The car lurched away from the curb, gathered momentum, screamed around the corner and leapt forward as Mason slammed it back into high gear.

"Hang on to that baby, Della," Mason warned.

"I'm hanging," Della said.

The child cried delightedly and held on to Della for dear

life.

"Shut up," Paul Drake called back over his shoulder. "You're too young to know the facts of life, or what this goof at the Wheel is capable of doing. For the love of Mike, Perry, have a .heart. Where are we going?"

"Jason Bartsler's residence."

Provided the bus holds together that long and nothing gets in our way," Drake said half humorously. "If you really Want to save tires for me, Perry, just take those other corners on two wheels. It'll go faster that way-like a bicycle-and it'll save wear and tear on the other two.... Hey, you! I didn't really mean it. For the love of Mike, Perry. Take it easy! Slow down!"

From the back seat Della Street heaved a sigh of relief.

"Well," she said, "that'll be the last corner until just before we get to the Bartsler house."

The little boy shrieked with delight. "Whee-eee-ee," he cried.

"Speak for yourself, son," Drake said over his shoulder.

Della Street laughed, but her laugh was nervous.

Drake said, "When the office telephoned me. Perry, they gave me some new information about that letter. Mildred got

a kid on a bicycle to deliver it, gave him half a dollar. He told his folks when he read about the murder. He saw her picture and thought he recognized it, then when he read the address. My gosh. Perry, take it easy!"

Mason held the throttle down close to the floorboard, piloted the car with smooth skill, disregarding boulevard stops as well as traffic signals, winding in and out through what little traffic there was on the boulevard. The youngster in the back seat insisted upon standing up, and Della Street was kept busy holding him steady. Paul Drake held on in grim silence.

From behind them came the blaze of a red spotlight, the sound of a siren.

Drake turned around, said laconically, "Okay, Perry, you've got a customer."

Mason poured throttle into the motor. "It's only another four or five blocks. We haven't time to stop and explain."

The police car behind roared into speed, accelerating as Mason was accelerating. The sound of the siren became a high- pitched screaming that froze traffic in its tracks, gave Mason more of an opportunity to urge his car into even greater speed.

The police car gained and then gained no more. The two cars raced along the boulevard keeping their respective distances.

"They're going to start shooting at tires pretty quick" Drake said. "It isn't so bad when they shoot at the driver. They always go high but when they shoot at a wheel they invariably hit a passenger."

Mason said, "Brace yourself. This is the corner,"

He swung wide, pressed his foot on the brake pedal, released it, pressed again, released, then leaned against the wheel.

The tires burnt long skid marks into the pavement. The scream of friction-burnt rubber was audible above the noise of the siren. The car skidded, straightened with a neck-snapping jerk as the wheels once more gripped the pavement. The car went forward like an arrow. Another two blocks and Mason swung in to the curb and slammed on the brake.

Behind them, the police car screamed to a stop. Mason had

the door open, was running up the walk toward the residence of Jason Bartsler.

From the police car came a gruff command. "Halt, or we'll let you have it."

Mason turned. "Hurry up, you damn fool," he shouted. "We're trying to prevent a murder."

The officer remained obdurate. "Halt, or I'll give you a load of buckshot!"

Mason paused. From the interior of the house sounded the roar of a shot.

A half second later another shot crashed out. A bullet smashed through a big plate glass window in the front of the house, leaving a hole from which radiated jagged cracks.

Mason beckoned to the men in the police car. "Hurry up," he shouted, "bring that gun!"

A third shot crashed out from the inside of the house.

Della Street screamed at Paul Drake, "Do something!" Then releasing her hold on the child, she was running toward the police car. "It's Perry Mason, the lawyer. He's trying to prevent a murder!"

"It's Mason, all right," a voice from the interior of the car carried to Della Street's ears.

Paul Drake slid out from the car. "Better keep an eye on the kid, Della," he said, and started running toward the back of the house.

Officers ran past Della. One of them rushed up the front steps, at the door, another one circled around the house.

Two more shots came from the interior of the house in rapid succession. Mason flung his weight against the door, and was thrown back. The officer at the door raised the butt of his sawed-off shotgun, brought it down hard against the sash of a window which opened onto the front porch. The glass crashed in, and the officer kicked out the jagged pieces that remained in the bottom of the pane, then jumped through the window into the lighted interior of the house.

Mason came through behind the officer so fast that their shadows mingled.

From the rear of the house came a sharp command, the

cracking sound of a pistol shot, then the heavy boom of a sawed-off shotgun and silence.

There were lights in the living room which Jason Bartsler used as his office. The doors were opened.

Mason said, "This way."

"Wait a minute!" the officer said. "Take it easy. We open the front door first."

"No, no. This way. There's a body in there."

The officer looked, following the direction indicated by Mason's finger.

The shoulder and arm of a man who lay sprawled on the floor were visible through the door. The hand held an automatic.

The officer hesitated, moved forward, holding the sawed- off shotgun in readiness.

A voice sounded from the back window. "Hey, Bill, a man tried to beat it out this way. This guy, Paul Drake, grabbed him, but couldn't hold him. The man broke loose just as I came up. I yelled at him to stop and he took a shot at me. I poured buckshot into him. He managed to get through the back yard into the alley. I hit him all right. He's left a trail of blood."

"Go get him!" the officer barked. "What's holding you back?"

"Thought I'd let you know."

"All right, I know! Stay with him! There's a body in here."

They entered the room.

The figure of Jason Bartsler was sprawled at full length on the rug of the living room. From a leg which was crumpled in under him emerged a slow welling stream of red.

Mason dropped to his knees, felt for Bartsler's wrist.

"Pulse all right," Mason said. "Look him over for wounds.

Turn him over."

"Get that gun out of his hand," the officer demanded.

Mason turned Bartsler over. The gun slipped from nerveless fingers. The lawyer's hands ripped aside the robe which covered the pajamas, pulled back the coat part of the pajamas. The officer, still holding the sawed-off shotgun in one hand pulled down the lower part of the pajamas with the other.

A bullet had entered just above Jason Bartsler's right knee

and had gone out through the calf of the leg. It seemed to be the only wound on the man's body.

Mason bent and sniffed the muzzle of the automatic. It had been freshly fired.

"Fainted from the shock," Mason said. "Looks as though the bullet hit the joint. Let's get him up on that couch and get some brandy down him."

"Say," the officer commanded without moving to comply with Mason's request, "suppose you do a little talking. What's coming off here?" He went to the front door, unlocked it, returned.

Mason said, "Someone tried to kill Jason Bartsler."

"Looks to me like Jason Bartsler tried to kill someone else."

"We'll let him tell you about it," Mason said, "when he regains consciousness. Come on, let's get him up on that davenport."

The officer helped Mason lift the wounded man up on the davenport. Mason found some brandy, moistened Bartsler's lips with it, held it under his nostrils, said to the officer, "Better get an ambulance., hadn't you?"

Another siren sounded outside the door, quavered into silence as the car moved in to park at the curb.

"Sounds like an ambulance now," the officer said.

"I don't know how it got here unless it was mind reading," Mason pointed out.

Bartsler's eyelids fluttered. Mason slipped a hand under Bartsler's head. "Take a drink of this."

Mason tilted the brandy down the man's throat. Bartsler swallowed, coughed, then reached for the glass. "Did I get him?" he asked.

"We don't know yet," Mason said.

Heavy steps sounded on the porch. Men rushed pell-mell into the room, caught sight of the occupants and stopped. Lieutenant Tragg looked at the radio officer, at the figure on the davenport, at Mason. "What's happened?" he demanded.

Mason said, "Frank Glenmore tried to kill Jason Bartsler. I think we got here in time. One of the radio officers shot Glenmore as he went out the back door."

Tragg sized up the situation swiftly, said to the radio

B-E Blonde 13

officer, "All right, get out and help your partner. See if you can locate Glenmore. We'll take care of this. How are you feeling, Bartsler?"

"Pretty shaky," Bartsler said. "What can we do about that knee?"

"We'll have an ambulance coming," Tragg said, and then to Mason, "Sorry we didn't get here sooner. I'd been out. When I got in, Holcomb told me about your telephone conversation. He thought he'd done something smart thought you were trying to plant something and use the police to give an air of authenticity."

"I know."

Tragg said, "In a way you can't blame him." He turned to Bartsler. "Can you tell me what happened?"

Bartsler reached for the second glass of brandy which Mason was extending to him. He said, "Glenmore got a phone call. I heard him talking. He seemed excited. Shortly afterwards I wanted to call and the phone was dead as a doornail. I couldn't understand it. I looked back of the telephone and found that the wires had been completely cut through. And the minute that happened, I became suspicious. I went to the desk and got out my automatic. But I didn't suspect Glenmore. I suspected my wife.

"Glenmore came in. He asked me something, and walked around behind the chair. ... I don't know what it was that suddenly made me suspicious, but I glanced up into the mirror and saw that he had a gun. I flung myself out of the chair, at the same time reaching for my automatic, and he shot. The shot hit me in the knee and knocked me flat. I still hadn't been able to get my automatic.

"I was virtually helpless, and I saw Frank taking deliberate aim. I read murder in his eyes. And just then there was the sound of this police siren and tires screaming around the corner, and that rattled Glenmore. He looked apprehensively back over his shoulder and then took a hasty shot. I jerked my body around, and the bullet went past my head and into the floor. I don't think it missed me an inch. I had my gun out then, and Frank started to run. He turned in the doorway for another shot, and we pumped lead at each other. 1 don't know whether I got

195

him or not. I took another flying shot as he turned to run. I think I hit him with that one because he stumbled, caught at the side of the door, turned and shot again. I was crazy with pam and shock. I heard steps and people running, and ... I guess I fainted.... And that brings you up to date. How did you happen to get here. Mason?"

iS§«

Mason said, "I figured it out. I knew that Mildred Danville

■ must have taken your grandson from Helen and concealed him - somewhere. I had reason to believe it was with a Mrs. J. C. Kennard. You remember she called to see you the night Diana

Regis got' her black eye?"

"Yes, yes. But she wanted to see me about that mining claim."

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"She did when she got in here," Mason told him. "But what had happened was that she became suspicious of Mildred Danville. She knew the boy's name was Robert Bartsler. She looked for a Bartsler in the telephone book, found one, and rang · up. Frank Glenmore answered the telephone. She explained to him that she had a child who gave the name of Robert Bartsler, and who had been left by a woman by the name of Mildred Danville, and she wondered if it was all right. Glenmore did some quick thinking. If he could get the possession of that child, it would give him a lot of power. He evidently knew a divorce . action was in the offing. It's conceivable he intended to hold

■ the child for the highest bidder. I don't know just what your own situation was here, but it's very evident what Glenmore .tried to do. He told Mrs. Kennard to come on down, and when she came to the door he pulled that stall about a mining claim to throw Diana off the track. He hadn't anticipated an audience when he went to let Mrs. Kennard in.

"Glenmore took Mrs. Kennard into one of the other rooms, talked with her in detail, and made some kind of a deal with her. Then he brought her in here to you, after he'd coached her about a mining claim she was to offer you. I take it Glenmore did most of the talking."

"He did at that. But where's my grandson, Mason? If you've found him ... "

"Take it easy," Mason said. "I'm coming to that. I want to get the other straight while Lieutenant Tragg is here. As a

matter of fact, I should have deduced what happened sooner, because you'll remember Glenmore said he only talked with her a few minutes before he took her in to see you, and you only talked with her a few minutes. Yet we know that she must have been in the house for some forty-five minutes or longer. And since you talked with her only about five or ten minutes, it's obvious that Glenmore must have been talking with her in considerable detail.

"However, the deal was fixed up, and Glenmore was sitting pretty. He had you right where he wanted you."

"The dirty double-crosser," Bartsler said. "I'd caught him in some financial jugglery that I wanted to straighten out. I'd insisted we call in a certified public accountant, and the man was going to work tomorrow. I didn't realize how serious the situation must have been."

Mason said, "Glenmore arranged with Mrs. Kennard to take young Robert and go to live with her sister, taking elaborate precautions to see that she wouldn't be traced. But when Diana Regis told Mildred Danville how she received her black eye, and mentioned that a matronly woman with a limp had called to see you and was just ringing the doorbell when Diana arrived, Mildred suddenly realized what had happened. The description of Mrs. Kennard was so striking that she knew at once Glenmore must have bribed Mrs. Kennard to sell her out. So Mildred then decided to make peace with Helen Bartsler, and made a ten o'clock appointment to meet Helen. But before Helen kept that appointment, Frank Glenmore got there and silenced Mildred's lips."

"How did he know Mildred was wise to him?" Bartsler asked.

"There can be only one explanation," Mason said. "When Mildred learned through Diana that Glenmore had talked to Mrs. Kennard, she made the fatal mistake of telephoning Glenmore and telling him what she knew. That might have worked if Glenmore's motives were merely those of greed, but I think we'll find he has some reason that hasn't been disclosed as yet for wanting to control Jason Bartsler. His back is to the wall. He's stopping at nothing. Mildred quite probably invited him to be there at Helen's house with the baby. Instead he went there

prepared to do anything rather than surrender the child until he had what he wanted. Mildred had a gun. She made the mistake of trying to use it. Glenmore got it away from her and in a frenzy of desperation shot her, then he wiped the gun free of fingerprints, took it to Mildred's apartment and left it in a temptingly obvious place—a place where Diana would be almost certain to touch it."

"How did he get in?" Tragg asked.

Mason smiled. "A man of Glenmore's desperation wasn't to be balked by the lock of an ordinary apartment house door."

"If that's the case," Tragg pointed out, "then Helen must have been lying when she said

"Of course she was lying," Mason interrupted impatiently. "She was trying to save herself and protect her own skin. Things were difficult enough for Helen without any murder complications. There are a lot of angles to this we don't know as yet, Lieutenant. And there's no use taking time to go into them now. But when Helen saw it was going to look like rain, she opened the faucet on that cistern

"You've scored a point there, all right," Lieutenant Tragg admitted. "One of the officers on Homicide came to me after the session of court this afternoon and told me that he distinctly remembered the faucet on the cistern was open, and running quite a stream."

Mason nodded. "That's one of the most important points in the case. It means that Mildred could have been killed before it started raining. She was killed much earlier than you thought."

"But my grandson," Bartsler said. "Hang it, I want to see my grandson. Pretty quick some damned intern will be shooting hop into me... I want to see my grandson."

Mason turned to one of the officers. "Would you mind going out and asking Miss Street who's waiting in the car outside to bring the little boy in? Tell her it's all safe now, and we have nothing to conceal from the officers."

The officer looked to Tragg for confirmation.

"Go ahead," Lieutenant Tragg said.

Running steps sounded as a man hurried around the walk from the side of the house. They heard the thud of steps on

the porch, then the officer of the prowl car dashed into the room, caught Lieutenant Tragg's eye and nodded, said, "Drake found him in a woodshed next door. You'll have to make it quick. Lieutenant. Is there a stenographer here?"

Tragg frowned, looked around the circle of faces.

Mason said, "We'll take the baby. You can take Della Street."

"You'll have to hurry," the officer warned.

Tragg started for the door with quick strides, met Della

Street coming in.

"Quick, Miss Street, come with me. Get a pen and notebook in that purse of yours?"

She nodded.

"Your stomach strong, enough for a dying statement?"

Again she nodded.

Mason took the little boy from her, caught Della Street's eye, made a signal warning her to utter silence, then entered the room with young Robert Bartsler.

Chapter 21

DELLA STREET snuggled up close to Mason in the front seat of the car.

Mason slid the car through the gear shift", pulled away from the big house where people were milling around in confusion, where newspaper photographers were exploding flash bulbs and asking questions.

"Pretty bad, Della?" Mason asked solicitously.

"Pretty bad, but not too bad. He'd been hit with a charge

of buckshot in the back. They missed his spine, but well,

of course it was the end, and in order to make the dying statement admissible in evidence they were brutal about it. They told him he was dying, made him admit he knew it." "He confessed?"

"Yes, the whole business. I guess you know it all anyway. Lieutenant Tragg said the details were almost exactly the way you'd reconstructed them. He was in charge of operations on

the mines and was supposed to get a royalty on each ton of ore milled. Well, it was quite a mix up, but some of the mines had run into pretty rich stuff, and Glenmore was surreptitiously mixing other rock with that rich stuff so that the tonnage which went through the mills was all the same. But of course it was much easier for him to pick up rock from the dump than to mine it. In that way he had been getting almost double the rate of payment. Of course he had some of the key members of his crew standing in with him. Bartsler became suspicious, and Glenmore was looking for something he could get on Bartsler, some hold that would... Oh well, you know all the answers anyway."

"Did he say anything about the boy not being Bartsler's grandson?"

"No, honest. Chief, I don't think he knew. Apparently he thought Mildred Danville had simply stepped in and kidnaped the boy ... Good heavens! What's Ite?"

Mason slid the car around and let the headlights illuminate a figure that was limping along the street. "Looks as though he'd been held up and robbed... It's Carl Fretch!"

Mason opened the door, jumped out to the sidewalk. "Hello, Fretch," he said. "What's the matter?"

Fretch gave him a glance that was evidently intended to be full of scornful dignity and marched past.

"Hey!" Mason sid. "What's happened?"

Fretch didn't even look back.

Mason said to Della Street, "I wanted to talk with him and tell him what's happened at the house... Oh, well, let him go."

"What on earth do you suppose happened to him?" Della Street asked.

Mason grinned. "The boy," he said, "was out with one of Paul Drake's female operatives, if you'll remember. She was instructed to get information, but that she didn't have to put up with too much in order to do it. And, if you'll remember, while the girl was a demure looking dish, she had really been on the stage with a sparring partner as a female featherweight champion. Evidently, Carl's fistic success had gone to his head. If he's going to act the part of a cave man he should learn the manly art of self-defense."

Della Street laughed. "Wait until Diana sees him! He's got a beautiful eye that's going to be a shiner by tomorrow morning."

Mason said, "Paul Drake has some good operatives, but his cars are in lousy shape."

"How will he get back since we've taken his car?"

"Oh, the police will take him. Since he was there at the shooting, he's going to be a witness and they won't get finished with him for an hour or two. In the meantime, Della, we have something to do."

"I'm a mind reader," she said. "We're going to get some eats."

"Something to take the taste of the chocolate out of my mouth. It's been repeating on me," Mason admitted.

"Here, too," Della said laughing.

"Perhaps we can find a nice juicy steak somewhere with mushrooms and perhaps some lyonnaise potatoes and French bread toasted so that it's a golden brown on the outside, but warm and chewy on the inside and ... "

"And because it's late at night," Della Street said, "and there aren't going to be any more clients, perhaps we could dust a little garlic on it?"

"And have a bottle of red wine to go with it," Mason said.

"What," Della Street asked, "is holding us back?"

"Just a dread of having Sergeant Holcomb find out that we've been violating speed laws," Mason admitted, grinning.

Della Street asked, "How are you going to break the news to Bartsler about the boy not being his grandson?"

"Don't be silly! I'm not."

"You mean you're going to let him..."

"Why not?" Mason asked. "The boy's an orphan now. No one knows his father. His mother has been killed. He has a birth certificate that describes him as the son of Robert Bartsler, and legally entitles him to the name of Robert Bartsler, Junior. Bartsler has a lot of money and the youngster will bring Helen and Jason together and

"But won't Bartsler know? Won't he see there isn't any family resemblance? That

Mason laughed. "Just to show you, Della, how we interpret

evidence just the way we want to interpret it, you should have heard Bartsler making over the little fellow. Before the ambulance arrived, and they gave him a shot of hop, Bartsler was getting acquainted with the boy, and I swear to you I don't think he even knew his knee was paining him. His face was all lit up, and for a confirmed skeptic you certainly should have heard his gullibility."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, tracing the family resemblance. He pointed out to me how the boy had his mother's forehead and his son's mouth, and his eyes were the exact image of Bartsler's mother's, and..."

"Good heavens!" Della Street interrupted. "And that from a skeptic who prides himself on being hard to convince."

"Exactly," Mason said. "It simply goes to show how credulous a man can be despite his efforts to be cynical and hardboiled when it comes to something he wants to believe. How many men look at themselves in the mirror and see themselves as they actually are? They see the mental image they have created of themselves, ten to twenty years younger than they actually are."

Della Street laughed. "You're talking about women now," she said.

"No," Mason said, "a woman is more honest with herself, a little more critical in her appraisal. Women don't kid themselves the way men do. They're more romantic and more realistic."

Mason swung the car around the comer into a side street. "Remember this little isolated place, Della?" he said with enthusiasm. "It's where they serve you that heavy bread-like pastry with cheese and spices melted over it."

"Oh yes!" Della exclaimed. "And they have some perfectly marvelous wine! It's been a long time since we've eaten here. Chief."

"Paul Drake and I used to meet here a lot," Mason said. "I wonder if Paul ever did get his dinner finished. I never found out."

Mason and Della Street entered the little restaurant. The head waiter recognized them, escorted them to a booth.

"What," Della Street asked after a cocktail and green olives, "are you going to do about Mildred's diary?"

"With proper ceremonies," Mason said, "I am going to bum it. After all, a lawyer is something like a doctor, only where a physician doctors men's bodies, a lawyer has to minister to their minds—although we might do a little judicious blackmail."

"You mean with Helen?"

"Yes. If she's a good girl and treats Bartsler properly, we'll promise to keep the diary out of circulation."

"A felony," Della Street said.

"Exactly."

"But how about Bartsler? What will hold him in line?"

"I think the grandson will do that," Mason said. "He..."

"Well for the love of Pete! Here's Paul Drake tagging us along."

Drake walked across the dining room, said, "Slide over, Perry. Don't think you're going to have dinner and a tete-a-tete and leave me out."

"What's the matter?" Mason asked. "Didn't you get your dinner finished before my phone call interrupted you?"

Drake frowned as though thinking back. "Oh, that," he said suddenly. "Oh sure! I didn't get the dessert, but I had the dinner. But that's quite a while ago! A let's happened since then."

"You mean you're hungry again, and you're going to horn in on our dinner?" Mason asked, his eyes twinkling.

"Exactly," Drake said, "I had an idea you'd come here. And those damn cops made me get a taxi. You'll find it on the expense account. Boy, oh boy, you left Bartsler's place five minutes too soon!"

"How come?"

"You should have seen Carl Fretch."

"I did see him."

"Where?"

"On the street about two blocks from the house. He was walking."

Drake threw back his head and laughed. "Just before he arrived, my operative telephoned in a report. Remember I told you she'd been a boxer in ... "

"Yes, I remember. What did she have to report?"

Drake said, "She got Carl to admit he'd been in Diana's apartment. He was boasting about how his acting had completely fooled the cops."

"Why did he go to the apartment, Paul?"

"Want me to draw you a picture?"

"You mean only that?"

"Only that. The lad, according to reports, is a persistent wolf who relies on blackmail and strong-arm stuff to supplement his quote charm unquote. He told my operative no woman had ever successfully stood him off. He'd made wax impressions of Diana's keys said that after a man had bit a woman good and hard once she had an instinctive biological desire to surrender after that."

"Go on," Della Street said, smiling, "this is going to be good."

"Well," Drake said, my operative was reporting rather hurriedly and over the phone. She says she'll tell me the spicy details later But Carl thought he had a pushover there, because she was stringing him along getting information. When he really got down to brass tacks and found he hadn't correctly appraised the situation, he decided to fall back on physical violence. My operative thinks she has a broken knuckle. She also has his car. Carl walked home."

"How did Carl take it, Paul?"

Drake said, "You should have heard the boy sobbing out his story to Lieutenant Tragg. A couple of teeth were knocked out and he lisped when he..."

"Someone coming," Della Street said in a low voice.

Mason looked up toward the man who had left a woman companion at the table and was coming toward him.

"Shucks, Della," Mason said, "we seem to have no privacy at all."

"Oh, I'll leave if you're going to be surly about it," Drake grinned. "I thought perhaps Della would give me a dance before..."

The man stood in the entrance of the booth and cleared his throat. "You'll pardon me for interrupting," he said, "but you're Perry Mason. I've seen you in court, and I have been

trying to get you all evening. When you walked in here, I thought it was fate that had brought you here. I simply must consult you about something that bothers me, something rather mysterious, and something very important."

Mason smiled and shook his head. "Not until after I've had another cocktail, some hors d'oeuvres, some steaks, and..."

"I'll wait," the man said anxiously, "if you'll only talk with

me."

"And we'll be eating garlic," Mason warned. "What is it all about?"

"It's about a fish."

"Are you, by any chance, trying to kid me?"

"No, no," the man said, "a goldfish."

"And it's important?"

"Of course, it's important. It's driving me crazy! But don't let me detain you now, Mr. Mason. I'll be waiting over there with my companion, and if you'll join us for an after-dinner brandy, I'll give you the high lights."

The End.