“What did you do?” she asked, with quick interest. “You were in a spot.”

  “There was only one thing to do,” he said, “the way I figured it. I had to think fast. I might have played it differently, I don’t know. It was one of those times when a man has to make decisions and make them fast. I jerked a passkey out of my pocket and locked the door. It was a simple lock. Then, I pretended I didn’t know there was a cop within a mile, and started banging on the door. The cop came around the corner in the corridor and saw me standing in front of the door and pounding on the panel. I jabbed my finger on the button a couple of times; then made a gesture of disgust and turned to walk away. Then I pretended to see the cop for the first time.”

  “Clever,” she exclaimed.

  “That part of it was all right,” Perry Mason said judiciously, as though he had been commenting on the manner in which he had played a hand in a bridge game after the cards were all played. “But then, I made the mistake of my life.”

  “What?” she asked, her eyes slightly widened and staring steadily at his face.

  “I underestimated the intelligence of J. R. Bradbury.”

  “Oh,” she muttered, with a distinct feeling of relief, and then said, after a moment, “Has he any …?”

  “You’re damned right he has,” Perry Mason said.

  “I can say one thing about him,” she said, “he has a roving eye and a youthful disposition. He was offering me a cigarette when you went out of the door, remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “He leaned forward to give me a light.”

  “Did he try to kiss you?”

  “No,” she said slowly, “and that’s the funny part of it. I thought he was going to. I still think he intended to try to, but something made him change his mind.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Thinking perhaps you’d tell me?”

  “No, I don’t think it was that.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He leaned close to me, held the match to the cigarette; then straightened, and walked to the other side of the office. He stood staring at me as though I had been a picture, or as though he had perhaps been trying to figure just where I’d fit into a picture. It was a peculiar stare. He was looking at me, and yet not looking at me.”

  “Then what?” Perry Mason asked.

  “Then,” she said, “he snapped out of it, laughed, and said he guessed he had better be going after the newspapers and the brief case.”

  “And he left?”

  “Yes.”

  “By the way, what did he ever do with them?”

  “He left them here.”

  “Did he say anything about the brief case when he went out?”

  “No, that was what he telephoned about from the hotel.”

  “What did you do with them?”

  She motioned toward the closet.

  Perry Mason got up, walked to the closet, opened the door and took out a leather brief case and a pile of newspapers. He looked at the top newspaper. The heading showed that it was the Cloverdale Independent of an issue dated some two months earlier.

  “Got a key to the closet?” asked Mason.

  “Yes, it’s on my key ring.”

  “Let’s lock this closet door and keep it locked while we’ve got the stuff in here,” Mason said.

  “Should we have it in the safe?”

  “I don’t think it’s that important, particularly. But just the same, I’d like to have it under lock and key.”

  She crossed to the closet door and fitted the key to the lock, and snapped the bolt into position.

  “You still haven’t told me,” she reminded him, “about how you underestimated Bradbury’s intelligence.”

  “I had seen a girl walking away from the place. I figured she was mixed up in the murder in some way. I didn’t know just how. I didn’t care particularly, unless the girl happened to be Marjorie Clune. But I wanted to make certain about it, so I telephoned Bradbury.”

  “And told him Patton was murdered?”

  “Yes, and asked him about Marjorie Clune. I knew that if it had been Marjorie Clune that was leaving the apartment, I had to work fast and keep ahead of the police.”

  “But there wasn’t anything else you could have done, was there?” she asked. “You had to find out about it, and find out what Bradbury wanted done.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I thought,” she said, “there was something wrong. He acted so absolutely startled when you telephoned to him. I don’t know what there was in what you said, but it seemed to knock him for a loop. I thought he was going to drop the telephone. He started breathing through his mouth, and his eyes got so big I could have knocked them off with a stick.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “that’s the situation in a nutshell.”

  “And how does that get you in bad?” she asked.

  “It gets me in bad,” he said, “because I don’t dare let the cops know that I was in that room. If I should tell them the truth now, they’d probably suspect me of the murder. I’ve got to stand by my story of the locked door. On the other hand, that locked door may figure in the case quite prominently. A whole lot more prominently than I want.”

  “Well,” she said, “isn’t that up to the police to figure out?”

  “I’m not so certain,” he said, “but I am certain that Bradbury is going to be a dangerous antagonist.”

  “An antagonist,” she said, “why, he’s a client. Why should he become an antagonist?”

  “That,” he said, “is just the point. That’s where I overlooked my hand.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The girl who left the apartment was Marjorie Clune. She’s mixed up in the thing some way. I don’t know just how much. Bradbury is crazy about her. He’s desperately in love with her, and he’s served notice on me that if she gets mixed in it, he doesn’t care whom he has to sacrifice. He’s going to clear her at any cost.”

  Della Street squinted her eyes thoughtfully; then suddenly turned to her notebook.

  “Did you,” she said, “expect a message from a young woman who was to ring up and leave an address?”

  “Yes,” he said, “that’s Marjorie Clune. She’s going some place where I can talk with her. I haven’t had a chance to talk with her yet and find out what happened. She had an audience all the time.”

  “Just before you came in,” Della Street said, “a young woman’s voice came over the telephone and said, ‘Simply tell Mr. Mason I’m at the Bostwick Hotel, room 408, and to check that alibi.’ ”

  “That was all?” he asked.

  “That was all.”

  “Check what alibi?”

  “I don’t know. I figured you would.”

  “There’s only one person who has an alibi in this case,” he said, “and I’ve checked it.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “That’s Thelma Bell. She was out with a fellow named Sanborne, and I checked it before she got in communication with him.”

  “Perhaps that’s the alibi she wanted you to check.”

  “I’ve already checked it.”

  He frowned thoughtfully at her; then shook his head slowly.

  “That’s the only thing it could mean,” he said. “I’ll check it again as soon as I’ve talked with Paul Drake. He’ll be waiting around for me. He was to have met me out at Patton’s apartment, but he got wise to what had happened, and kept back under cover.”

  “You want me to wait?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, “you go on home.”

  As she put on her hat and coat, and added touches of powder to her cheeks and lipstick to her lips, Perry Mason hooked his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, and started pacing up and down the floor.

  “What is it, chief?” she asked, turning away from the mirror to watch him.

  “I was thinking,” he said, “about the blackjack.”

  “What about it?”

  “When you can tell me,” he said, “why a man should kill another man with a knife; then walk into another room and throw a blackjack in the corner, you’ll have given me the solution to this whole case.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, “it’s one of those cases where a man planted evidence. He might have had a blackjack that had some one’s fingerprints on it, some one that he wanted to implicate in the crime. The fingerprints might have been made months before he carried the blackjack, and then—”

  “And then,” he said, “he certainly would have killed the victim with the blackjack. There wasn’t a mark on Patton’s head. The thing that killed him was that knife thrust, and it killed him instantly. That blackjack had no more to do with the man’s death than the revolver that’s in the upper right-hand drawer of my office desk.”

  “Why was it left there then?” she asked.

  “That’s what I want to know,” he told her, and then suddenly laughed.

  “You’ve got enough to puzzle your brains over without trying to turn detective.”

  She stood with her hand on the knob of the door, regarding him curiously.

  “Chief,” she said, “why don’t you do like the other lawyers do?”

  “You mean plant evidence, and suborn perjury?”

  “No, I don’t mean that. I mean, why don’t you sit in your office and wait until the cases come to you? Let the police go out and work up the case, and then you walk into court and try and punch holes in it. Why do you always have to go out on the firing line and get mixed up in the case itself?”

  He grinned at her.

  “I’m hanged if I know,” he said, “except that it’s the way I’m built. That’s all. Lots of times you can keep a jury from convicting a person because they haven’t been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I don’t like that kind of a verdict. I like to establish conclusively that a person is innocent. I like to play with facts. I have a mania for jumping into the middle of a situation, trying to size it up ahead of the police, and being the first one to guess what actually happened.”

  “And then to protect some one who is helpless,” she said.

  “Oh, sure,” he said, “that’s part of the game.”

  She smiled at him from the door.

  “Good night,” she said.

  Chapter 9

  Perry Mason dialed the number of Paul Drake’s office, and heard the voice of the detective saying cautiously, “Hello.”

  “Don’t mention any names in case you’re not alone. The coast is clear up here.”

  “I’ll be in to see you in about ten minutes,” Paul Drake said. “Can you wait?”

  “Yes,” Mason told him.

  The lawyer dropped the receiver back into place, tilted back in his swivel chair and lit a cigarette. Then he took the end from his mouth and held the cigarette so that he could watch the smoke as it curled slowly upward. He sat entirely without motion, watching the curling smoke with eyes that seemed half dreamy. Not until the cigarette was more than half consumed did he nod his head slowly as though he had reached some decision; and then he returned the cigarette to his mouth. He smoked steadily until he had finished the cigarette, then pinched it out, dropped it in the ashtray, and looked at his watch.

  It was at that moment that he heard a rattle on the knob of the door which opened into the corridor.

  Perry Mason walked to the door, stood with his hand on the knob.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  “Open up, Perry,” said Paul Drake’s voice, and Perry Mason opened the door to let the detective walk in.

  “You covered the situation?” asked Perry Mason.

  “Sure,” Paul Drake told him. “I figured that was what you’d want me to do.”

  “How did you get wise to what had happened?”

  “In the first place,” Paul Drake said, “I was delayed a little with starting trouble. The starter went haywire. The whole thing seemed locked. I couldn’t figure out what was the matter. I kept trying it both with the crank and with the starter; then some pedestrian came along who knew his onions. He said one of the gears had dropped out of position. That if I’d put the car in high gear and rock it back and forth, it would work all right. I tried it and it did.”

  Perry Mason watched Paul Drake narrowly.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “I’m just telling you,” Paul Drake said, “why I was a little late.”

  “How much late?”

  “I don’t know.

  “I got out there just as you were headed away in a taxi. I got a glimpse of you going down the street. You looked as though you were going places in a hurry. I figured something was wrong; that there’d either be a message for me at Patton’s apartment, or that you were up against an emergency. I went up, plenty cautious. A uniformed cop was just getting the door open as I came down the corridor.”

  “You didn’t tip your hand?” asked Perry Mason.

  “No. I didn’t know whether you’d want me for an alibi or not. There were a few curious roomers forming a circle of spectators, and I joined them.”

  “You didn’t get in?”

  “You mean to Patton’s apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. I couldn’t get in. They got the homicide squad right away. But I was friendly with a couple of the boys, and then there were the newspaper photographers. I got all the dope.”

  “Let’s have it,” Perry Mason said.

  “In the first place,” Paul Drake told him, “and before I go ahead with it, have you got anything to tell me?”

  “Only that I was a little bit delayed myself,” Mason told him, “and when I got there, I found the door locked. I looked through the keyhole; saw a hat and stick and gloves. I knocked on the door, and—”

  “I know all about the story you told the officers,” Paul Drake said.

  “Well,” Mason told him, “what else would there be?”

  Drake shrugged his shoulders.

  “How should I know?” he asked.

  “Well,” the lawyer said, “if you know my story, that’s all there is to it.”

  “It’s a good story,” Paul Drake said, and then added after a moment, “except for one thing.”

  “What’s the one thing?” Mason wanted to know.

  “I’ll tell you the facts,” Drake told him, “and then you can put two and two together.”

  “Go ahead,” said the lawyer curtly.

  Paul Drake squirmed about in the big leather chair so that his long legs were swung over the arm of the chair. The opposite chair arm braced the small of his back.

  “Hat, gloves, and cane on the table in the living-room. Those were Patton’s. A woman—the one you met, by the way—whose name happens to be Sarah Fieldman, occupying the opposite apartment, heard a girl having hysterics; figured the sounds must have come from the bathroom; thinks the girl was locked in the bathroom and perhaps some man was trying to get in. The body was lying in the bedroom, clad in underclothes, a bathrobe thrown over one shoulder, one arm through the sleeve, the other arm not in the sleeve; death almost instantaneous; a single stabbing puncture with a large bread knife. The knife was new. The wound was directly over the heart. It was a messy murder, a lot of blood spurting around; the doors both locked, the door from the bedroom bolted on the inside. An open window leading to a fire escape; marks on the bed indicating a man might have gone across the bed and out on the fire escape, or might have climbed in through the fire escape.

  “In the bathroom, the police find a girl’s handkerchief, all wet as though it had been used as a wash rag, or had been dropped in blood and then an attempt made to wash it out. There was bloody water spattered around the sides of the wash bowl. It had been a hasty job. Looks as though some woman had tried to clean the blood on her clothes, or herself, without much success. In the outer room, the police found a blackjack.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mason interrupted. “You say the knife was a new knife. How could the police tell that?”

  “Evidences of a chalk price mark on the blade. Also, the knife was brought to the apartment wrapped in paper. Apparently the wrapping paper is the same paper that was wrapped around the knife when it was purchased. The police have some fingerprints on the paper. They’re not so good—mostly smudged. Knobs of the doors on the inside contain no fingerprints. Looks as though some one had wiped them off. The outer knob has too many prints to be of any value—the police, Mrs. Fieldman, perhaps yours, and lots of others.”

  “Any suspects?” asked Perry Mason.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Any one seen leaving the apartment?” asked the lawyer.

  Paul Drake looked at him with that expression of droll humor on his face, his eyes glassy and utterly without expression.

  “What makes you ask that?” he inquired.

  “Just a routine question,” Perry Mason told him.

  “The officer on the beat,” said Paul Drake, “reported a woman who acted suspiciously. There were a couple of telephone messages from women on the table. The police would have attached more importance to those, if it hadn’t been for one thing.”

  “What was the one thing?” the lawyer inquired.

  “Your friend, Dr. Doray,” the detective said. “His car was parked out in front of the place at the time of the murder. That is, it was parked within half a block of the place.”