“Why didn’t he buy one?”

  “I’m damned if I know,” Addison said bitterly, “but about three months ago, Edgar and I were out on a trip. I had my revolver along, and I wanted to do a little target work, just to keep my hand in. I don’t think Edgar had ever shot a revolver before. He became interested. I showed him something about shooting, taught him quite a bit about dry shooting, and got him so he wasn’t flinching. He was doing some pretty fair shooting. He was naturally tickled pink. When he wanted to go on this trip, all he could think of was my revolver.”

  “You showed him how to shoot?” Mason asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Gave him practise on what you call dry shooting?”

  “Yes.”

  “In other words,” Mason said, “you’ve done a good deal of revolver shooting, is that right?”

  “I was a member of a team that won first place in the Western Championship a few years ago.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “tell us about the gun. Let’s get that straight.”

  “Well, that’s all there is to it. Edgar borrowed the gun. Police found that gun in the bed of the dry wash. They stumbled on it just by accident. I don’t think they’d ever have found it in daylight, but going down there at night with their flashlights, playing around the wash, the beam of a flashlight reflected from the metal and one of the cops spotted it.”

  “You say it’s the gun with which Edgar was killed?” Mason asked.

  “That’s what the police seem to think.”

  “How many shells in it when it was recovered?”

  “There were no shells. The gun had been wiped free of fingerprints and thrown away, but police say it had been fired rather recently. I’m inclined to agree with them. I always kept the barrel spotless. The gun had been discharged and hadn’t been cleaned. There’s powder residue in the barrel.”

  Mason said slowly, “That looks bad, Addison.”

  “How bad?” Addison asked.

  “Plenty bad,” Mason said.

  Mrs Ferrell said, “Surely, Mr Mason, you don’t think there’s any possibility that John Addison could have …”

  “It isn’t what I think,” Mason interrupted, “it’s what the police are going to think, and what a jury is going to think.”

  There was an interval of grim silence.

  Mason got to his feet. “All right, folks, I’ll do the best I can. Addison, get your desk in order. They’ll arrest you before noon. When they do, don’t talk. Don’t – say – one – word. Can you remember to do that?”

  “My God, Mason, I’ll have to explain some things.”

  “Then you’ll have to explain everything.”

  “Well?”

  “Can you do it?”

  Mason’s eyes bored into those of John Addison. The department store magnate squirmed in his chair.

  “No,” he said.

  “I thought so,” Mason said, and walked out, leaving Addison and Lorraine Ferrell alone in the offices.

  CHAPTER TEN

  At eight o’clock Mason found Paul Drake studying reports which had been placed on his desk. He was holding an electric razor in his hand, shaving himself as he read the reports. Over on the corner of his desk, dishes bore evidence of the fact that he had had ham and eggs, toast and coffee sent in from a nearby restaurant.

  Drake looked up from his shaving, twisted his face at such an angle that he tightened the skin along his neck, slowly drew the head of the electric razor along his neck, said, “Hello, Perry. How’s it coming?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” Mason said.

  Drake had four or five telephones scattered around within easy reaching distance on the desk. “Where do you want to start?” he asked, putting down the electric razor and splashing shaving lotion over his face. “Want to start with Addison?”

  “What about Addison?”

  “Addison’s in a spot, Perry. Police found a gun. They think it’s the gun that did the killing. It’s a .38, and the gun that did the killing was a .38. It had been fired recently but all the shells had been removed from the cylinder. The gun had evidently been thrown away. It lit in some rocks. There was a wooden handle on the butt and a bit had splintered off when it hit a rock. The police looked around and found the splintered piece where the gun had hit. It evidently had been thrown with considerable force, judging by the scratches on the rock where the metal had scraped.”

  “Well?” Mason asked.

  “They did some fast work checking the numbers. It’s Addison’s gun. Apparently he’s some pumpkin as a revolver shot. That gave the police a lot of ideas.”

  “You’re sure a .38 did the job?”

  “Pretty certain. They’ve measured the hole that the bullet made in the glass of the window when it went through. It’s a nice, clean-cut hole, virtually nothing broken out, just the hole with a lot of radiating cracks.”

  “What did they do with the window?”

  “Cut the glass right out of it, mounted it between sheets of transparent plastic. They’re keeping it as evidence.”

  “They haven’t recovered the fatal bullet yet?”

  “Not so far as I know. The autopsy surgeon is probably working on the body about now. The bullet’s somewhere in the guy’s head. A wound of ingress, no exit wound.”

  “Anything else new?”

  “I had a session with Sergeant Holcomb.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He’s all worked up about that report I made to the bank. He says Eric Hansell is a blackmailer, that he thinks the whole thing was a frame-up, to get rid of a blackmailer who was annoying a client of yours, and he thinks that client is John P Addison.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I stuck by my guns and told him I’d had a tip and had passed it on to the bank in good faith, that if there was anything doing between Addison and Hansell, I didn’t know anything about it.”

  Mason nodded.

  “Of course, now this murder case is building up,” Drake warned, “you’re going to run head on into that question again in a big way.”

  “I’m going to run into lots of questions,” Mason said.

  Drake said irritably, “Well, don’t tell me anything more than I know right now. I have enough questions to answer, myself.”

  “You’ll have more. Mrs Laura Mae Dale is the mother of Veronica Dale. And Veronica Dale is at present working in Addison’s department store on Broadway. I want to get a line on Mrs Dale. Anything you can pick up about her daughter, Veronica will be all to the good.”

  “Okay,” Drake said wearily, “I’ve got some men reporting for duty in about fifteen minutes. I’ll start them working.”

  “I don’t want anything clumsy,” Mason told him. “I don’t want the heavy-footed stuff. What I want is the light touch with a clever build-up. I don’t want these people to know anyone’s taking an interest in them.”

  “Don’t worry,” Drake said, “I don’t know how deep the water is, but I do know that the ice is damn thin. The boys I use on this case are going to be the best in the business.”

  “That’s the stuff,” Mason told him. “Now listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you, Paul, because I want you to remember exactly what I say.”

  “Why?”

  “So you’ll be able to know what I didn’t say.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You’ll keep this under your hat,” Mason said. “Addison picked up Veronica Dale. She was hitchhiking. He brought her to the city. She impressed him as being an innocent young thing of a type that doesn’t exist any more. She was posing as a synthetic creation of cherubic innocence that was in vogue in the novels of the gay nineties.”

  Drake said, “What time?”

  “Sometime along in the evening.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, out east of the city,” Mason said with a wave of his hand.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Addison played the fatherly part, a very much concerned and perturbed father who was astounded at the chances the young thing was taking. Put yourself in Addison’s shoes. He’s amassed considerable wealth. He knows exactly where he’s putting his foot down before he takes a step. He had picked up this young, apparently innocent girl who casually tossed off the remark that she was hitchhiking her way into a strange city where she knew no one, had no place to stay, was virtually without funds, and was arriving well after the dinner hour.”

  “The big question in my mind,” Drake said, “speaking as a practical detective, is how she had got that far with all that innocence intact.”

  “I told you she painted an impossible picture,” Mason said. “Addison used his influence with the Rockaway Hotel to get her a room. He escorted her to the hotel, then tried to step out of her life.”

  “But didn’t do so?”

  “The girl was arrested on the street for vagrancy.”

  “On the street?”

  “That’s right.”

  “For the love of Mike, Perry, police don’t pick girls up on the street unless they’re doing one thing, and doing it damned openly.”

  “I know,” Mason said, “but there’s a chance the girl wanted to get arrested.”

  “You mean she wasn’t –?”

  “Perhaps she just put on the appearance,” Mason interrupted.

  “But why?”

  Mason said, “I went to her rescue. I put up bail. I got the case dismissed.”

  “When?”

  “The next morning.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then her mother, Laura Mae Dale, called on me and left a phoney address, by the way.”

  “What did she want?”

  “Wanted to pay my fee.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  Mason grinned. “A hundred and fifty bucks.”

  “Bargain basement?”

  “Pre-inventory sale,” Mason said.

  “And I suppose Addison paid another five hundred bucks.”

  “I told you,” Mason said, “to listen very carefully to what I had to say so you’d know the things I hadn’t said.”

  “Oh, oh,” Drake observed.

  “The mother,” Mason said, “comes from a Midwestern town, probably within fifty miles of Indianapolis. She has a restaurant there. She’s very much concerned about her daughter’s adventure into the great and wicked world. The daughter doesn’t have any idea the mother is here. The mother doesn’t want her to know. She wants to keep an eye on what’s happening, to see whether Veronica settles down, goes to work and gets a job, or whether she starts sowing a wild oat around.”

  “Just one oat?” Drake asked, grinning.

  “Just one oat,” Mason said.

  The smile suddenly left Drake’s face. “You plant that oat in the right soil and it might sprout into quite a crop,” he said.

  “A veritable golden harvest,” Mason told him.

  Drake suddenly sat bolt upright in the chair.

  “Now,” Mason went on, “I want you to go to see John Addison before police arrest him. He knows you’re working for me. Get him to call Veronica in and tell her to go with you.”

  “Then what?”

  “Take her to Della’s apartment. Della will take charge from there.”

  “Why don’t you go to see Addison yourself?” Drake asked.

  Mason said, “I may not be able to regulate my own comings and goings much longer, Paul.”

  And he walked out while Drake was thinking that over.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Mason, entering his private office, found Lieutenant Tragg comfortably ensconced in the client’s chair.

  “Hello, Tragg. How did you get in here?”

  “He walked in,” Della Street said angrily.

  Mason frowned. “I have a reception room, you know, Tragg.”

  “Sure, I know. And if I’d waited in the reception room, and you’d slipped in through that corridor door, Della Street might have given you a tip-off and you might have slipped right out again.”

  Mason said wearily, “I have a string of appointments today, so I hope you’ll be brief, Lieutenant. I presume the police consider they are a special class and don’t need to have themselves announced in the regular way.”

  “We don’t like to wait in people’s offices,” Tragg said, grinning. “It wastes our time and gives people a sense of superiority.”

  “Which you don’t want them to have?”

  “We like to have them a little on the defensive. You know psychology, Mason, why waste time arguing about it?”

  “What do you want, Tragg?”

  “I understand you had a run-in with Sergeant Holcomb.”

  “I did?” Mason asked, raising his eyebrows. “It’s news to me.”

  “It isn’t news to Holcomb.”

  “I don’t know what Holcomb thought. I thought I was assisting him.”

  Tragg said, “You made Hansell mad.”

  “Isn’t that too bad,” Mason said.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Mason. When Hansell got mad, he decided to come clean. He admitted the whole thing.”

  “Did he, indeed?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I suppose,” Mason said, “Sergeant Holcomb was so anxious to get at me he promised Hansell immunity from just about everything short of murder if Hansell would give him something that would implicate me.”

  “I don’t know what Holcomb told him,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “I do know that they want to see you at Headquarters.”

  “Who does?”

  “Several people.”

  “What about?”

  “For one thing,” Tragg said, “they want to ask you about a forgery.”

  “What forgery?”

  “The cheque that Hansell presented at the bank.”

  “It was forged, wasn’t it?”

  “The bank says it was.”

  “So what?”

  “Hansell says you forged it.”

  “That I forged it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Now, isn’t that something!” Mason said.

  “It sure is,” Tragg commented dryly.

  Mason studied the police lieutenant for a moment, said, “You still with Homicide, Lieutenant?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then how does it happen that a lieutenant of Homicide is asked to come up here and extend an official invitation for me to go to police headquarters for a forgery charge?”

  “We’re working on the case together,” Tragg said.

  “You and Holcomb?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Holcomb used to be on Homicide.”

  “He isn’t on Homicide any longer. Sometimes he helps out, but he’s on general stuff now. Get your hat, Mason. Let’s take a walk.”

  “Suppose I don’t choose to take a walk?”

  “That might be just too bad for you.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “You’re damn right it’s a threat,” Tragg said. “Look, Mason, I’ve tried to be nice. We’ve got the deadwood on you on a forgery charge. You forged a cheque and gave it to Eric Hansell.”

  “You have the word of a crook.”

  “We have a the word of a crook for that,” Tragg agreed, his voice weary, “and we have corroborating circumstances all along the line. We’re going to get some more corroborating circumstances. We have enough to issue a complaint right now. You pulled a very, very slick stunt on a blackmailer, but it got mixed up in a murder case and backfired. If it hadn’t been for the murder, you’d have been sitting on top of the heap. As it is, you’re sitting on a keg of powder.”

  Mason glanced at Della Street, saw her pencil was flying over the pages of her shorthand notebook as she took down the conversation.

  “What does Addison say about the cheque?”

  “Addison’s bank did the saying. The signature is forged. It isn’t too good a forgery at that. And your friend Addison is in trouble up to his eyebrows.”

  “How come?”

  “We can prove he was driving along that road which goes within a quarter of a mile of the place where the murder was committed at just about the time it was committed.”

  Mason kept his voice elaborately casual. “Okay, Tragg, we’ll take a walk.”

  He picked up his hat.

  “Any messages?” Della Street asked.

  “Nothing,” Mason said. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  “He may be back shortly,” Tragg corrected.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lieutenant Tragg opened the door and said to Mason, “Go on in.”

  The lawyer entered a big, plainly furnished room.

  Sergeant Holcomb, chewing nervously on a cold cigar, sat at one end of a long oak table. Midway at the table, Eric Hansell, now once more restored to impudent assurance, was smoking a cigarette.

  At the other end of the table a shorthand stenographer was taking down the conversation.

  Sergeant Holcomb grinned as Mason entered the room. Lieutenant Tragg, coming in behind Mason, pulled the door closed, said, “Take a chair, Mason.”

  Sergeant Holcomb said to Hansell, “Now, I want you to repeat just what you told us. Just go ahead and tell me exactly what happened. I want Mason to hear it.”

  Hansell said, “It was a shakedown. I’ll admit that.”

  “Go right ahead,” Holcomb said.

  Hansell reached for a fresh cigarette.

  Mason said, “Remember, Hansell, these people can’t give you immunity. They …”

  “Now, you keep out of this,” Holcomb said threateningly. “We’re handling this! When you hear the whole story you’ll sing a different tune.”

  Hansell’s green eyes flicked briefly to Mason’s face, “Wise guy,” he said sarcastically.

  “And you,” Lieutenant Tragg snapped to Hansell, “keep your trap shut except when you’re spoken to, and when you’re told to say something, say that and no more! Now let’s cut out the comedy. Get busy. Start talking.”

  Hansell lit the cigarette, took a deep drag and said, “I nose around and get bits of information. That’s my business. If it’s something I can’t handle, I turn it over to George Whittley Dundas for his gossip column. He’ll pay me peanut money. I can’t make a living on that, but by having an outlet for publicity, it gives me a chance to make a better shakedown.”