“Of course it is,” Mason said angrily. “What the hell did you think? That I was going to lead with my chin?”

  “You have led with it.”

  “Bosh!” exclaimed Mason.

  “Adelle Winters is guilty of cold-blooded murder. We can prove it. Your client is an accessory after the fact—and probably before the fact.”

  “Hang it, Gulling, if my client doesn’t come out in the open and admit she’s mistaken, but simply sits tight, what the hell are you going to do about it?”

  “You’ve asked a question,” Gulling said. “Now I’ll tell you the answer. Adelle Winters had a .32-caliber gun and it was loaded with a very distinctive type of obsolete bullet. That gun was in her possession up until two-twenty yesterday afternoon, when she dropped it into a garbage pail. At approximately two o’clock Robert Hines was killed with a bullet fired from that gun—a bullet exactly matching the shells that were left in the gun, and also matching a bullet that the ballistics experts fired from that gun.

  “Eva Martell swears she was with Adelle Winters every minute of the time. That being the case, we’re going to convict both of them of murder. And I’ll tell you how we’re going to do it, Mr. Mason. When police took Adelle Winters into custody last night, the matron went through her clothes and took her personal possessions. And what do you think she found?”

  Mason tried to keep a poker face. “I don’t see that anything she could have found would make any difference.”

  “Don’t you indeed, Mr. Mason!” Gulling said with cold irony. “Well, perhaps you’ll change your mind when I tell you that she found Robert Dover Hines’s wallet with his identification cards, his driving license, and three-thousand-odd dollars in currency of large denominations. There’s your motive for the murder. And when your sweet, innocent little actress friend gets on the witness stand and swears that she was with Adelle Winters every minute of the time, she’s going to be convicted of first-degree murder. And if she changes her story, she’s going to be convicted of perjury. I’m tired of having people give this office the run-around.

  “And I’m going to tell you something else, Mr. Mason. Eva Martell is wanted by the police. They hold a felony warrant for her arrest. She is now a fugitive from justice. If you conceal her, you yourself will be an accessory, and you know what that means. I’ll give you until noon today to have Eva Martell surrender to the police. In the event she doesn’t, we’ll take proceedings against you. And I think that represents everything this office has to say on die subject. Good morning, Mr. Mason.”

  Chapter 10

  MASON sat on one side of the heavy, coarse-meshed screen that ran the length of the visitors’ room in the jail. On the other side sat Adelle Winters.

  “Mrs. Winters,” Mason said, “I’m going to put the cards on the table. I was trying to help Eva Martell, and I thought at the time it was an easy case—now I find out that it isn’t.”

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “Because of the things you have done. Police feel that you and Eva deliberately planned to murder Hines for the purpose of getting his money.”

  “That’s absurd!”

  “They can build up a pretty strong case.”

  “Eva is absolutely innocent. But I’m in a mess—I know that.”

  “You seem to have dragged Eva in with you.”

  “But I wouldn’t have done that for worlds! I love that girl like a daughter. Are you going to be my lawyer, Mr. Mason?”

  “I don’t think so. I got in here because I told the jailer that I had to talk with you as an attorney to find out whether I’d take your case. That still holds true. But what I want to know is where Eva stands in this.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what happened, Mr. Mason.

  When you spoke to me about the danger of carrying that gun, I pretended not to pay any attention. Actually I was very much impressed. I realized that someone might make it appear we had committed a technical crime. And as I understand it, there’s a law that if you have a gun in your possession when you’re committing a crime, you can’t get probation—you have to go to the penitentiary.”

  “Generally that’s true.”

  “Well, I decided to get rid of the gun. From your office I went back up to the apartment, and the first thing I did there was to take the gun out of my purse and put it in the sideboard drawer. Then—later, when we were planning to get out—I took it out of the drawer and put it on top of the sideboard. But in the excitement of gathering my things together and getting out, I forgot it. Down in the lobby I did some telephoning. I called Hines several times, and got no answer. I called you, and kept hearing the busy signal. Then I suddenly remembered about the gun. So I told Eva to wait—that I had forgotten something and had to go back upstairs.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Oh, perhaps two o’clock, perhaps a little after.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I went up in the elevator, walked along the corridor, opened the door of the apartment. The gun was there on the sideboard. At the time, I didn’t notice anything strange about it; but afterwards I recalled that when I’d left it the muzzle had been pointing toward the wall, though when I picked it up the muzzle was pointing toward me. The door to the bedroom was closed. I didn’t open it—fortunately. The murderer must have been in there right then.

  “So I picked up the gun, turned toward the door, and then noticed that wallet lying on the floor near the bedroom door. I swear to you, Mr. Mason, I didn’t any more than look at it, see that it was Mr. Hines’s wallet, and push it down inside my blouse. I intended to give it to him when I saw him, which I thought would be soon.

  “I left the apartment and picked up Eva, and we took a cab to the Lorenzo Hotel; it took less than five minutes. At the hotel I went at once to the ladies’ room and opened my purse to get my compact. When I did that, I smelled a peculiar powder smell. It came from the gun, of course. So I looked at it, and one shell had been fired. I smelled of the barrel, and it smelled of fresh powder. I wanted to get rid of it, so I took it out to that garbage pail and dumped it in.

  “And that’s the real, honest-to-goodness truth, Mr. Mason—every word of it!”

  “I want to believe your story, Mrs. Winters,” Mason told her. “I’m anxious to believe you’re innocent. But the story you have just told doesn’t convince me, and I don’t see how you can possibly expect a jury to believe it.”

  “Oh, I can improve on it, Mr. Mason, if I have time,” she assured him.

  “You mean you’re going to change that story?”

  “Sure—to make it better.”

  “Regardless of the facts?”

  She snorted. “Facts don’t mean a damn thing. Lots of times, the truth isn’t very convincing. But I’m pretty good at fixing up stories, Mr. Mason, and I can improve this one considerably. As it is, I’ve told you the real truth—I wouldn’t tell that to anyone else.”

  “You want me to believe that after you first left the apartment, and went down to the lobby, and then came back up in the elevator, both Hines and the murderer walked in without your seeing them; that they walked into the bedroom; that the murderer killed Hines with your gun that he had picked up from the sideboard; that he replaced the gun, took Hines’s wallet and threw it on the floor, and then was trapped in the bedroom by your return?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s the way it happened?”

  “That’s the way it must have happened.”

  Mason looked at her. “That is,” he went on, “just to make the thing more convincing, the murderer took that wallet containing something over three thousand dollars and tossed it on the floor, so that you could find it and walk off with it?”

  “You don’t believe me, do you, Mr. Mason?”

  “No.”

  “That’s exactly the way it happened. Cross my heart and hope to die, Mr. Mason, I’m telling you the truth.”

  “How do you suppose Hines got into the apartment house without your seeing him?”

  “I don’t know.” There was a moment of silence. Then she said, “He had to get there, Mr. Mason. If he was killed with my gun, he had to be there before I left—no matter who killed him. His body was there in the bedroom.”

  “It was for a fact,” the lawyer conceded. Then he asked abruptly, “How about that number Hines gave you so that you could call him? Did he tell you where the phone was located?”

  “No.”

  “And while you were telephoning, you didn’t see him come into the apartment house? Neither you nor Eva saw him enter?”

  “No—nobody came in during the few minutes we were there before I started upstairs.”

  Mason said, “There’s one way of putting the facts together so your story isn’t quite so implausible. I’ll investigate that theory.”

  “What’s that?”

  ”That Hines lived in another apartment in the same building, and that was the apartment where the telephone was located.”

  “Yes. That’s so. That must be it. That would make my story sound better, wouldn’t it?”

  Mason studied her.

  “Now you’re sure this story you’ve told is the truth.”

  “It’s the truth, Mr. Mason,” she said, and after a moment added, “but I haven’t a damn bit of confidence in it.”

  Chapter 11

  FROM a phone booth in the reception room at the jail, Mason called Paul Drake.

  “How are you coming?” Paul asked.

  “Not so good,” Mason admitted, “but I have a lead, Paul.”

  “What?”

  “Have Della give you the telephone number the girls were instructed to call in order to get in touch with Robert Hines. Find out where that phone is located. I’m particularly anxious to find out whether Hines had an apartment there in the Siglet Manor on Eighth Street.”

  “I think the police have dug up everything there is to know about your friend Hines,” Drake said. “He didn’t live there—he lived in a downtown residential hotel and had had the same room there for five years. He was single, and rather taciturn; he played the ponies occasionally, and seems to have done a bit of sharp-shooting here and there. He was tighter than the bark on a tree when it came to putting money out.”

  “Just check on that telephone number anyway, Paul. It’s important. Get me the lowdown on it as soon as you can. What have you found out about that apartment where Reedley hangs out? Or rather, about his neighbor?”

  “We may have struck pay dirt there, Perry. Her name’s Daphne Gridley. She’s a commercial artist. She’s also done some work as an interior decorator. She’s been there five or six years in the apartment house, and apparently it was through her efforts that Reedley got the apartment he’s in now.”

  “What does she look like, Paul?”

  “Class.”

  “How old?”

  “Twenty-six or twenty-seven.”

  “Blonde or brunette?”

  “Chestnut-haired.”

  “Knows her way around?”

  “I think so.”

  “Making money?”

  “She inherited a flock of it five or six years ago. She only does the art stuff to keep busy.”

  “Well, it doesn’t do us any particular good, Paul, except that it checks with what we discovered. There’s a certain amount of personal satisfaction in that.”

  “What you discovered,” Drake corrected. “And you just can’t ever tell. It might help if you had something on Reedley, and I think I can find out a little more if I go to work on the Gridley woman. How about it?”

  “Use your judgment. I seem to have a bear by the tail and I’m going to need all the help I can get. Chase down that number right away, Paul. I’ll call you back inside of twenty to thirty minutes.”

  “Okay,” Drake said, “I suppose the police will have beaten us to it, but there’s no harm in giving it the once-over. They can’t rule you off for trying, Perry.”

  “Trying is right. I’ve got to hit the high spots. However, I have a hunch the police may not know about this. Hines was mixed up in some gambling activities, and the police know all about those. But it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they hadn’t bothered to chase down that phone number—perhaps they didn’t even get it from the women. Well, I’ll call you back.”

  “Okay,” Drake said. “But you’d better play them pretty close to your chest, Perry. This is beginning to look a little tough for the Winters woman.”

  “Are you telling me!” Mason said. “And the worst bit of evidence you don’t even know. Well, I’m not representing her—that’s one consolation.”

  Mason hung up, returned to his auto, and drove a dozen blocks to a rooming house run by a woman who had once been a client.

  “Hello, Mae,” Mason said. “How’s our girl friend?”

  “Fine, Mr. Mason. She’s in 211. I took up some breakfast to her about an hour and a half ago. She doesn’t want to be any trouble and didn’t want to bother me, but I told her you said she mustn’t be seen in public until you had things fixed up.”

  “Right,” Mason said. “Thanks a lot, Mae.”

  Mae Bagley was a tall blonde woman in the early thirties. Her face could be hard, but as she looked at Perry Mason her eyes softened. “I didn’t even put her on the register, Mr. Mason, just in case they did get a tip-off or anything. Two-eleven is supposed to be vacant.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Mae.”

  “You said to bury her, and when you say anything—well, that’s all there is to it.”

  “That’s nice of you, but it’s taking chances—”

  “I’d take ‘em for you any day, Mr. Mason.”

  “Thanks, Mae. You’re a good egg. I’ll go on up.”

  Mason climbed the stairs to the second floor and tapped on the door of 211.

  Eva Martell opened it so quickly that it seemed she must have been sitting by the door waiting for the lawyer’s arrival. She was dressed for the street and her face lit up when she saw who it was.

  “Oh, I’m so glad to see you! I thought it was the woman coming for the dishes. I wanted to take them down to her, but she said you had . . . But do come in and sit down. Here—take this chair, it’s the most comfortable. I’ll sit over here by the window.”

  Mason seated himself, took out his cigarette case, opened it, and offered her a cigarette. She shook her head. “I’ve been smoking too much, and I’m getting a bit nervous. Just waiting, not knowing what’s going on. Tell me, Mr. Mason, is Aunt Adelle out yet? Have you been able to fix things up?”

  Mason lighted a cigarette. “I have some bad news for you, Eva. I’m not going to beat around the bush because there isn’t time. I’m going to hand it to you straight from the shoulder.”

  Her face showed tension, but her eyes were unflinching. “Go ahead,” she said.

  “Police have what seems to be a dead-open-and-shut case against Adelle Winters.”

  “For . . . you mean . . . ”

  “For murder and theft.”

  “Theft?”

  “Or perhaps robbery. You remember the well-filled wallet that Hines had, from which he took the bills with which he paid you?”

  She nodded.

  “Police found that wallet in Adelle’s possession when the matron searched her at the jail. There was something over three thousand dollars in currency left in it.”

  “Why, Mr. Mason, that’s incredible! She couldn’t have taken it. Why, she’d have told me something about it if—”

  “She took it all right,” Mason said. “She told me so.”

  “When?”

  “Just a short time ago. When she told me she went back upstairs to get the gun, she found the wallet lying on the floor there in the living room. Presumably Hines must have been dead in the bedroom right then, with his murderer crouching beside the body.”

  “Without a gun?”

  “Without the murder weapon, anyway.”

  “Mr. Mason, I can’t believe it!”

  “You can’t believe it! What do you think a jury’s going to do?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “that leaves you right in the middle of a mess. I tried to patch things up with the district attorney’s office and ran up against a brick wall. They’re laying for you.”

  “As an accomplice?”

  “As being mixed up in the whole business, along with Adelle Winters.”

  “But I didn’t know a thing about it!”

  “You signed an affidavit that contained a false statement.”

  “Well, I . . . I didn’t see any reason for them to . . . You know how it was, Mr. Mason!”

  “You remember that, when you discovered the body, you telephoned to me at my office and asked me to come out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “At that time, where was your Aunt Adelle?”

  “Right there.”

  “In the room with you—the living room of the apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where was the body?”

  “In the bedroom.”

  “Now what was your Aunt Adelle doing while you were telephoning to me?”

  “She—let’s see—she went over and examined the body to make certain the man was dead.”

  “And while she was doing that, she could very well have lifted the wallet from the inside breast pocket of the coat, where she knew he carried it.”

  “Mr. Mason, Aunt Adelle wouldn’t do anything like that!”

  “But she could have done it.”

  “She wouldn’t have.”

  “She could have done it?”

  “Yes. She could. She had the opportunity, but she simply wouldn’t do that.”

  “Well, Hines was killed with her gun. His wallet with something over three thousand dollars in it was found in her possession. The D.A. could even make out a case of deliberate robbery, during which the victim had resisted and been shot. It’s a mess, and you’re mixed in it. The D.A. has given me until twelve o’clock to turn you in. I’m sorry, Eva, but I’m going to have to do it.”

  “Anything you say, Mr. Mason.”