Mason gravely handed him a dime. “There’s the phone,” he said. “Hop to it.”

  “I’m not that kind,” Serle said. “I don’t squeal.”

  Mason said, “Of course, if the district attorney wanted actual proof, I could see that he had the lottery ticket and the crooked crap dice which you delivered for twenty-five bucks to Paul Drake.”

  Serle, who had been about to attack his meat pie, paused with the fork poised over the plate. “What the hell are you trying to pull?” he asked.

  Mason speared a carrot, cut a corner from the rich crust of the pie, and conveyed it to his mouth. After watching Serle, Mason said, “Drake’s the head of the Drake Detective Agency. He was working for me.”

  Serle said, “Oh,” tonelessly.

  “We were trying to locate Conway,” Mason said. “We found out about the Conway Appliance Company, but it had moved. We couldn’t get the post office to kick loose with a forwarding address so we sent twenty-five bucks on a chance. The chance paid off.”

  He returned to his meat pie.

  “Look here,” Serle said abruptly, “what do you want?”

  “The low-down,” Mason said.

  Serle pushed back his plate. “I’ll have to call a party,” he said.

  “Someone at the D.A.’s office?” Mason asked.

  “No.”

  “Who?”

  “Just a party.”

  “Go ahead and call,” Mason said.

  Serle was closeted in the telephone booth for nearly ten minutes. “All right, Mason,” he said, returning to the table, “I have a free hand.”

  Mason smiled. “So have I.”

  Serle sat down. “Look here, Mason. Suppose I give you a break in this thing. What’s in it for me?”

  Mason said, “I’ll let you pay my luncheon check.”

  Serle frowned, and said, “I’m not kidding.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “All right then, you had your chance and you’ve lost it.”

  Serle attacked his half-cold meat pie with savage haste.

  Mason finished his salad, cleaned up his plate, lit a cigarette, and sipped coffee.

  “Dessert?” the waitress asked.

  “Bring me ice cream,” Mason said, “and the check to him,” indicating Serle.

  Serle scraped his plate and pushed it back with a gesture of irritation.

  “Your food won’t agree with you eating hastily that way,” Mason cautioned.

  Serle said, “This is a hell of a way to act. I had to talk my head off in order to get a free hand, and now you start getting hard.”

  Mason said, “I’m always hard,” and moved back to let the waitress scrape crumbs from the tablecloth.

  Serle said, in a surly voice, “Bring me apple pie a la mode, and lots of coffee.”

  “Yes, sir,” the waitress said and moved away.

  Mason hitched his chair around so he was sitting sideways to the table, crossed his long legs, and smoked with every evidence of enjoyment.

  “You couldn’t drag that in on cross-examination anyway,” Serle said.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised at what a good lawyer can do on cross-examination,” Mason observed affably. “You can ask a man a lot of embarrassing questions. You can impeach his veracity. You can show that he’s been convicted of a felony and. . .”

  “Well, I haven’t been convicted of any felony,” Serle snapped.

  “No,” Mason told him with a smile, “but you could be before the case came to trial. The federal men work fast, and murder cases usually drag along . . . particularly when a lawyer has some reason for dragging ’em along.”

  Serle said, with a burst of temper, “I smelled a rat on the Drake remittance right after we’d made delivery. I’d just taken over the business. I didn’t know all of the customers. He wrote a letter which led me to believe . . .” His voice trailed away into sulky silence.

  “I know,” Mason said. “Tough, isn’t it? A man always hates to go to jail thinking he’s been a sucker.”

  Serle said, “I’m not a sucker.”

  “You’re being one right now,” Mason said.

  The waitress brought their dessert. Mason started eating his ice cream. Serle pushed his pie to one side, and said, “Oh, all right! Have it your own way. I’d known Louie off and on for several years. He picked up the agency for this loaded dice business. I’d worked out a sweepstakes proposition. I figured I could combine ’em. Louie wouldn’t sell me an interest.

  “Then Louie wanted to get out. He told me he’d made a killing, had picked up twenty grand on the first installment, and said he was going to get a hundred before he quit.”

  “Blackmail?” Mason asked.

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m not thinking,” Mason said, finishing his ice cream. “I’m listening.”

  “Of course, it was blackmail! It was a sweet hookup.”

  “Know what he had on Leeds?” Mason asked.

  “Of course not. You don’t think Louie was that simple, do you? When a man has a gold mine, he doesn’t give his friends a chance to jump the claim.

  “Well, I bought the business. I thought it would be a good thing to move it, but I kept the name because it was a mail-order business.”

  “Go ahead,” Mason told him.

  “The law raided my dump. I was out. They picked up a lot of incriminating stuff, but couldn’t prove any deliveries. My assistant was smart enough to dump the tickets where they’d be absolutely safe.”

  “The officers will pick up your mail as it comes in,” Mason said.

  Serle laughed. “That’s what you think. As soon as I heard about it, I beat it to the post office the very first thing and left a change of address. There won’t be a single letter come into the dump.”

  “Nice going,” Mason observed.

  Serle looked pleased with himself.

  “Then what?” Mason asked.

  “Then, of course, I went to Conway. I was sore. I thought he’d sold me something hot.”

  “What did Conway say?” Mason asked.

  “Conway was worried. He said he’d bail me out, that the thing had been clean as a hound’s tooth when he sold it to me. Naturally, I told him it was Leeds that was responsible for the police tip-off. He said it couldn’t be. I told him it was, and that it was up to him to square the rap.”

  “Just what did Conway say?” Mason asked.

  “He said, ‘Tell you what you do, Guy. Hide out until I have a chance to get things fixed up the way I want ’em. It’ll probably take me a couple of hours, but it may be a little sooner. Give me a ring, and I’ll let you know when to come up. Then you come up to my apartment, and we’ll talk things over.’ I told him I didn’t want to talk things over, I wanted action. He told me to come up, and I’d get action.”

  “So you went up?” Mason asked.

  “Yes, I went up. I was pretty nervous. Louie was busy as a one-armed paper hanger, answering the telephone, and scribbling a bunch of figures. Neither of us had eaten, and Louie gave me the number of a restaurant and told me to have some grub sent up. He said he could only give me a few minutes while we were eating. He said he was putting over a couple of big deals.

  “While we were guzzling grub, Louie said to me, ‘Now listen, Guy. I dropped most of that twenty grand I made in the touch from Leeds, but I’m resourceful and I stick by my friends. Now I don’t want you to know anything about this—it wouldn’t be good for you—but a party’s going to be in here a little before ten with some dough—lots of it. Now, suppose you call me up and get an okay to be sure there’s no hitch. Then go down to jail, be booked, put up a cash bond, and walk right out.’”

  Mason stared at the tip of his cigarette. “You say Louie had a lot of other things he was doing?” he asked.

  “Yes. The phone rang two or three times, and he put in a couple of calls.”

  “What were they?” Mason asked.

  Serle said, “I can’t help you much there. I had my own problems to worry about. Some of it was dope on the horses. Some of it wasn’t. I remember he told somebody that things had been all settled up, and there wasn’t going to be any trouble. He said, ‘Why don’t you come on down, and let me talk it over with you?’ And then he said, ‘Well, I could run up for just a minute. I don’t want to be away more than a minute or two, but I can run up if you want.’ And then he said, ‘Well, that’s all right then. You come down, but don’t do it before ten o’clock. I’m going to be busy until after ten o‘clock.’”

  “Anything else?” Mason asked.

  “There were lots of calls. I can’t remember all of them. One of them was from his girl. She seemed to be all steamed up about something, and he was trying to smooth her over with a lot of yes-yes stuff. Hell, Mason, I can’t remember all that junk. If I’d known he was going to get bumped off, I’d have listened, but all I wanted was to find out where I stood.”

  “Go on from there,” Mason said.

  “That’s about all there is to it,” Serle told him. “I left there right after we’d eaten, went down to a poolroom I knew, and hung around there until ten o’clock, then I called Louie, and he said everything was okay, that he’d stick around and wait for me to call from the station, jump in a cab, come down and put up the bail, and that would be all there was to it.”

  “Did you call the police immediately after that?” Mason asked.

  “No, I didn’t. I wanted a little time to go over what I was going to tell the law. I played a game of pool and figured things out. I can think better while I’m knocking the ball around.”

  “What time did you call Louie?” Mason asked.

  “Right around ten o’clock.”

  “As late as ten-thirty?” Mason asked, casually.

  “Hell, no, it was ten o‘clock. Christ, he told me to call at ten, and I called at ten. When a guy’s going to put up the cash to spring you on a felony rap, you don’t let half an hour slip through your fingers.”

  Mason said coldly, “Serle, you’re lying. You called him around ten-thirty. You didn’t remember the exact time. The first time you told your story, you admitted it. But after you’d talked with Homicide and seen they wanted to fix the call before Leeds had left, you decided to oblige them. You figured you could square your rap if you were obliging.”

  Serle said doggedly, “It was ten o’clock when I called. . .. They say Leeds is a multimillionaire.”

  “So I hear,” Mason said.

  “Maybe this is going to be kind of important to him,” Serle suggested. “He might want to do something for me.”

  Mason met his eyes in cold, steady appraisal.

  The waitress approached, said hurriedly to Mason, “You’re Perry Mason?”

  He nodded.

  “There’s a call for you from your office. They said it’s very important, to get you at once.”

  Mason gestured toward Serle with a sweep of his hand. “Give him the check,” he said, “with my compliments.”

  He strode to the telephone booth. Della Street was on the line. “Listen, Chief,” she said, breathlessly. “Drake’s located Alden Leeds.”

  “Where?”

  “Seattle. Emily Milicant’s with him. Drake’s Seattle correspondent is keeping him under surveillance. Your plane leaves in thirty minutes. Think you can make it? I’ve got your reservation. I’ll wire you all the details care of the Portland airport.”

  Mason said, “I’ll make it. Take this in shorthand.”

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  “Milicant’s apartment was on the sixth floor. Check everyone who had apartments above him. Serle let something slip about a conversation Milicant had over the phone. It may have been with someone above him in the same apartment house. Tell Drake a waitress named Hazel Stickland of the Home Kitchen Cafe took a runout powder. Have him check on that waiter who took the food up to Milicant’s apartment. We’re taking this waiter’s story too much for granted. Find out if he knows this waitress. Have Drake try to find Hazel. Serle’s sold us out to the D.A., lock, stock, and barrel. He fixes that conversation at ten o’clock. He knows he’s lying, but he figures he can square his own pinch that way. Alden Leeds probably telephoned police the tip-off that got Serle’s place raided. Milicant knew that when Leeds called, Leeds probably left another twenty grand with Milicant when he paid that last visit. Milicant must have been killed almost immediately after that. . .. Give all that dope to Paul Drake. Got it?”

  “Got it,” she said. “Happy landings, Chief.”

  Mason hung up and sprinted out of the restaurant.

  Chapter 10

  It was drizzling when Mason entered the Seattle Hotel. “You have a J. E. Smith here?” he asked.

  The clerk verified the registration, and said, “Yes. Three-nineteen. Shall I give him a ring?”

  Mason said slowly, “No, I’ll call him after I’ve freshened up a bit. I had to leave in a hurry. Any place around here where I can get some clean clothes?”

  “The middle of the next block,” the clerk said. “They’ll be open for an hour yet. Tomorrow’s Sunday. Everything will be closed.”

  Mason nodded. “I want two rooms,” he said, “one for myself, one for Mrs. George L. Manchester of New York. I’ll pay for both rooms in advance. Give me the key to the room you select for Mrs. Manchester. I’ll look it over, see if it’s okay, and leave the key at the desk when I come down.”

  Mason took a billfold from his pocket and slid a twenty-dollar bill across the desk to the clerk, then signed his name and that of Mrs. George Manchester on the registration card the clerk handed him.

  The bellboy took Mason to his room. The Manchester room was three doors away and on the other side of the corridor. When the bellboy had left, Mason took the stairs to the third floor and knocked on the door of 319.

  Emily Milicant’s voice asked sharply, “Who is it?”

  “Express package,” Mason said gruffly.

  There was a moment of silence, then the rustle of motion, and the door opened a cautious inch.

  Mason pushed it open. Emily Milicant fell back in dismay. A white-haired, thin man with cold, gimlet eyes, seated in an overstuffed chair by the radiator, frowned at Mason. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

  Emily Milicant answered the question. “Perry Mason, the lawyer.”

  The man in the chair said, “Lock the door.”

  As Emily Milicant locked the door, Leeds asked, “How’d you find us?”

  “Easy,” Mason said. “Too easy. If I found you, the police can find you.”

  Emily Milicant, speaking rapidly, said, “Alden was simply terrified by that sanitarium. He was afraid he was going to be railroaded into an insane asylum. So he decided to run away.”

  Mason, seating himself on the bed, calmly appropriated pillows with which to bolster his back. He lit a cigarette, and said conversationally to Alden Leeds, “When did you last see John Milicant?”

  Leeds said, “It’s been about a week, I guess.”

  “Try again,” Mason said.

  Leeds stared at Mason, his cold, gray eyes, under frosty eyebrows, boring steadily into the lawyer’s. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  Mason said, “You called on John Milicant at ten-five last night.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You called on him where he’d had an apartment under the name of L. C. Conway,” Mason said.

  Emily Milicant started to say something, then stopped suddenly.

  Mason went on casually, “Don’t tell me that you don’t know John Milicant was murdered last night sometime between ten and ten-forty-five.”

  Emily Milicant came to her feet, her eyes staring. “John!” she cried, and then, after a moment, “Murdered!”

  Alden Leeds started to get to his feet, dropped back in the chair, and said sharply, “He’s lying, Emily, trying to get something out of you. Don’t fall for it.”

  Mason fished in his inside pocket, took out a clipping, hastily torn from an early edition of the afternoon paper. He passed it across to Emily Milicant who read a few lines and crossed over to kneel beside Alden Leeds’ chair. Together they read the newspaper account

  Mason said to Leeds, “You may or may not know that I’ve been employed to represent you by Phyllis.”

  “He knows,” Emily Milicant said quickly. “Oh, Mr. Mason, this is awful . . . not that I didn’t expect it would happen some day. I’ve told him time and time again that he must quit associating with. . .”

  “Forget all that stuff,” Mason interrupted roughly. “I don’t know how much time we have. Not much, I’m afraid. Milicant was your brother. Under the name of Conway, he’d been blackmailing Alden Leeds. You, Leeds, went up to John Milicant’s apartment last night. You were there at just about the time the murder must have been committed. The apartment was searched. It looks as though you’re the one who did the searching. Now, never mind lies, tears, or sentiment. Shoot fast and shoot clean.”

  Leeds said, “I left there at nine-forty-five.”

  “Guess again,” Mason said. “Private detectives were keeping the place under surveillance. You were clocked in at five minutes past ten and out at ten-sixteen.”

  Emily Milicant, wiping tears from her eyes, said, quietly, “That’s right, Alden, it was ten-twenty-five when he called me and told me that you’d just left.”

  Mason’s eyes bored steadily into hers. “He called you?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “On the telephone?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Where?”

  “At my . . . at a number I’d given him where he could call me.”

  “Not at your apartment?” Mason asked.

  “No.”

  Alden Leeds said slowly, “Until yesterday afternoon, I had no idea L. C. Conway and John Milicant were one and the same. I thought John Milicant was acting as my friend. He told me that he knew Conway, that Conway was a crook, but that he could handle him.

  “I gave John Milicant a check for twenty thousand. The check was payable to Conway, and endorsed so Conway would accept it. John said Conway wouldn’t go to the bank himself.”