“Sooner or later you’re going to have to tell your story—officially. You can tell it to me now unofficially. If there’s anything about it that sounds fishy, I’ll point it out.”

  “Why should any of it sound fishy?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mason said. “All I know is that your extreme reluctance to talk may be an indication of guilty knowledge. You’d better consult a lawyer, if that’s the case.

  “And remember this, Mrs. Bass, someday you’re going to be on the witness stand and I’m going to cross-examine you and if you don’t tell me your story now, I’m going to ask you why you were afraid to tell it.”

  “Who says I’m afraid to tell it?”

  “I say so.”

  “Well I’m not.”

  “Then why won’t you tell it?”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t tell it.”

  “Make up your mind.”

  The room was silent for several seconds, then Hannah Bass said, “There wasn’t anything wrong with it, it was just yielding to a childish whim. Robert is an unusual boy. He loves Western pictures. He wants to grow up and be a marshal or a cowpuncher or something of that sort. He’s crazy about firearms. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “How did it happen that you started letting him have the .22?” Mason asked.

  “It was one time when I was baby-sitting with him. I had to stay there for two days while Mr. and Mrs. Jennings were away. They left Robert with me.”

  “You occupied the spare bedroom on the second floor?”

  “Yes.”

  “At the front of the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go on,” Mason said.

  “Well, I opened a drawer in the bureau in order to put some of my things away and found this gun.”

  “What sort of a gun?”

  “A Colt Woodsman.”

  “You know something about guns?”

  “I was married to a man who ran shooting galleries. He was one of the best shots in the country. He taught me how to handle guns.”

  “And how to shoot?” Mason asked.

  “I became a very good shot,” she admitted.

  “All right, what happened?”

  “Robert came walking into the room while I was looking this gun over. He was completely fascinated with it. He wanted to hold it for a while.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I took out the magazine clip and saw that it was fully loaded. I snapped back the recoil-operated mechanism and found there was no shell in the barrel. So I let Robert handle the gun.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “He was completely fascinated. He had seen me work the mechanism. He wanted to know how to handle the gun and all about it.

  “So then I took the shells out of the magazine, put the magazine in place and let him play with the empty gun for a while. Then I put it back in the drawer. I don’t think Robert talked about anything else all day. I was afraid his parents wouldn’t like what I had done, although for my part I think the best way to teach boys about firearms is to teach them at an early age and teach them to handle them safely. However, all parents don’t have the same idea.”

  “So what did you do?” Mason asked.

  “I made Robert promise that he wouldn’t tell his folks anything about that gun.”

  “And after that?” Mason asked.

  “Well,” she said, somewhat reluctantly, “after that Robert had sort of a hold on me. When his parents would be gone he’d insist on having me unload the gun and let him keep it in his hand. At first I made him stay in the house, but after a while—well, I let him take it outdoors and play with it.

  “For the life of me I don’t see that there was anything wrong with what I did, but there were times when I felt as though I should go to Mrs. Jennings and discuss the matter with her.

  “The trouble was I had already let Robert play with the weapon. I don’t think I have ever seen a child as completely fascinated with any toy as Robert was with just holding that automatic in his hands.”

  “Did he ever pull the trigger?” Mason asked.

  “Of course he did. However, I made him promise that he’d never, never pull the trigger when the gun was pointed at anyone. I showed him the safety, showed him how to put it on and keep it on, and it was part of his agreement with me that he was always to have this safety in place while he was handling the gun.”

  “You were there with him at night?” Mason asked.

  “Sometimes. I’ve stayed as much as a couple of days at a time.”

  “And Robert has played with the gun each time?”

  “Yes.”

  “And at night has he ever slept with the gun under his pillow?”

  “Once, yes.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “He’s a rather nervous, high-strung child despite the fact that he keeps his emotions under such excellent control. He liked to camp out in that tent on the patio and he told me it would give him a feeling of assurance if he had the gun with him. He said there were noises in the night and he wanted some protection, was the way he expressed it.”

  “And you let him take the gun?”

  “Just that once. That was when I found he had a shell for it. That’s when I began to get frightened of the whole business. I told him he was just a little boy seven years old, that he couldn’t have any gun for protection until he got to be a big man.”

  “Now then, when Lorraine Jennings and Barton Jennings went down on Friday night to meet Norda Allison at the airport, did you take care of Robert?”

  She shook her head.

  “Who did?”

  “I think they left him there alone with the dog. Rover wouldn’t let anyone get near Robert. I think his folks put Robert to bed and then just quietly went down to meet the plane.”

  “Would they leave him alone like that?”

  “Sometimes. The dog was always there. Sometimes they’d leave after he’d gone to sleep. I don’t like the idea of that. I think that whenever you are planning on leaving a child alone, you should tell him. I think if a child wakes up at night and finds he’s alone, when he expects his parents to be there, it gives him an emotional shock.”

  “Did they ever say anything to you at any time about the gun, or did you ever say anything to them? In other words, do you think that they knew you were letting him take the gun?”

  “I never said anything to them and they never said anything to me. Robert promised me that he wouldn’t tell them and I’m satisfied he wouldn’t. Robert is a child, but he’s a man of his word.”

  “But you do know Robert wanted the gun when he was sleeping out in the patio?”

  “Yes.”

  “If Robert had wakened and wanted something in the house and had found his mother and his stepfather were away, do you think it is possible that he could have gone to that bedroom and taken the gun out of the drawer?”

  A look of sudden alarm came on her face.

  “Do you?” Mason asked.

  “Good heavens, did he do that?” she asked in a half whisper.

  “I’m asking you if it’s possible.”

  “It’s very possible,” she said.

  Mason smiled and said, “I think that does it, Mrs. Bass. Here’s your forty dollars for the baby-sitting.”

  “Good heavens,” she said, “if he had done that, if Mr. Mason, do you think that child could possibly have … good heavens, no! It’s preposterous! He wouldn’t have done anything like that!”

  Mason said, “Those are the words you use to reassure yourself, Mrs. Bass, but if there had been a mirror in front of your face, you would have seen from your dismayed expression exactly how possible you thought that would have been.”

  Mason handed her four ten-dollar bills.

  Hannah Bass blinked for a moment, then abruptly got up and without a word walked out into the corridor, pulling the door shut behind her.

  Mason smiled reassuringly at Alice Colton. “You may take the child back now, Mrs. Colton, and thanks a lot. We certainly appreciate your co-operation. You may have aided the cause of justice.”

  Chapter 10

  It was ten o’clock on Sunday morning when Mason’s unlisted telephone rang.

  Mason picked up the receiver. “This is Perry.”

  Paul Drake’s voice, sharp with urgency, came over the telephone. “I have something, Perry, that you’d better look into. I’m afraid my man pulled a boner, but there was nothing to tip him off.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I had tails put on the Jennings’ house the way you wanted. Barton Jennings went out this morning, visited an apartment house and then came back. My man tailed him both ways, but he’s a little uneasy about it.”

  “Why?” Mason asked.

  “Call it an investigator’s sixth sense, if you want,” Drake said, “but my man feels that Barton Jennings went out there on a specific errand and managed to accomplish that errand right under the nose of the operative.”

  “Where’s your man now?”

  “Up here.”

  “You’re at the office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hold him there,” Mason said. “I’m coming up.”

  Mason telephoned the garage man in the apartment house to have his car ready for action. He took the elevator to the garage, jumped in his car, drove to the all but deserted parking lot in front of the office building, left his car and went to Drake’s office.

  Drake’s operative was a small man whose silvery-gray eyes were thoughtfully watchful beneath bushy white eyebrows. He was small in stature, somewhere in his late fifties, and as keenly incisive as a sharp razor. He had, nevertheless, cultivated a habit of blending into the background as successfully as a chameleon.

  Mason had a vague impression that this man’s name was Smith. He had met him on half a dozen different cases but had never heard him referred to by any other name than “Smithy.”

  Paul Drake, tilted back in his chair with his heels up on the desk, smoking a contemplative cigarette, waved a greeting to Mason.

  Smithy shook hands.

  Mason sat down.

  “You tell him, Smithy,” Drake said.

  The operative said, “At eight o’clock this morning Barton Jennings left his house carrying a suitcase. He was moving with some difficulty. His leg was bothering him. He had a cane in one hand, the suitcase in the other. He got in his automobile and drove very slowly and casually down to a gas station. He had the car filled up with gas, the windshield washed, the tires checked, then he drove around the block and started back toward home.

  “Just something about the way the fellow was driving the car made me feel he had something in mind that he intended to do, if he was certain he wasn’t wearing a tail. So I hung way, way back, just taking a chance.

  “Then I saw him swing over to the side of the road a bit. I’ve had guys pull that trick on me before, so I turned down a side street, went for half a block and made a U turn.

  “Sure enough, Jennings did just what I thought he was going to do. He made a complete U turn and came tearing back down the street going fast. I was where I could get a brief glimpse of the maneuver, so I came dawdling out of the side street at slow speed and crossed the intersection just ahead of him. That gave him a chance to pass me and it never occurred to him I was following him. After about eight or ten blocks at high speed he slowed down and then drove directly to this apartment house.

  “He parked the car, took the suitcase, went in, and was there for about half an hour; then he came out and drove to his house. After he left the apartment house, he didn’t take any precautions to see that he was free of a tail. He had all the assurance of a man who had accomplished a mission and wasn’t worrying about anything any more. He had the same suitcase with him that he’d taken in.”

  “He went home?” Mason asked.

  “He went home, put his car in the garage, went in the house, and after a while came out and sat on the porch, ostensibly reading the Sunday papers, but actually looking around to see if anybody was keeping him under surveillance.

  “When a subject does that, it’s a lot better to get off the job and have somebody else come on, so I beat it to a phone, telephoned Paul for a relief and told him I had something to report.”

  “You have any idea what apartment the guy went to?” Mason asked.

  “No.”

  “What apartment house was it?”

  “The Cretonic. It’s a small apartment house out on Wimberly. I don’t think there are over fifteen or twenty apartments in the place altogether. It’s a walk-up, two-story affair, moderately priced apartments—the kind that would appeal to persons in the low white-collar brackets.”

  “Let’s go,” Mason said.

  “I thought you’d want to take a look,” Smithy said. “Two cars?”

  “One,” Mason said. “We’ll go in mine. You sit here on the job, Paul, and we may telephone for some help. Come on, Smithy, let’s go.”

  Smithy and the lawyer took the elevator down to Mason’s car, drove out to the Cretonic apartments. Mason got out and looked the place over.

  “Jennings needed a key,” Mason said, “to get in or else he pressed the bell of some apartment and they buzzed the door open.”

  Smithy nodded.

  “You don’t have any idea which?”

  “No, Mr. Mason, I don’t. I just wasn’t close enough to see what he was doing, and I didn’t dare to get close enough. I can tell you one thing though, he was stooped over here at the side of the building. I could see his left elbow hanging pretty well down.”

  “Well, that’s a clue,” Mason said. “Let’s look at the lower cards.”

  Mason took his notebook, jotted down some names, said, “There’s half a dozen, but that’s still too many.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Mason,” Smithy said, “if you’ll stand right here in the doorway and look down at the names on the directory and let your left arm stick out a little bit the way it would if you were leaning over and punching a button with your right thumb, I might be able to do a better job. I’ll go back to the same place where I had my car parked and in that way we may be able to narrow it down a little bit.”

  “Go ahead,” Mason told him.

  He waited until the detective was in the right position and then Mason stooped down and made a pretense of jabbing each one of the lower call buttons with his thumb.

  When he had finished, Smithy came moving up and said, “I think it’s the lowest one on the left-hand side, Mr. Mason. Your elbow looked just about right then.”

  Mason examined the card. It was oblong, but evidently from an engraved calling card, and said simply, Miss Grace Hallum.

  “We’ll give it a try,” Mason said.

  “Any idea what you’re going to tell her?”

  “I’m not going to tell her anything,” Mason said. “She’s going to tell us.”

  He pressed the button.

  There was no answer.

  Mason pressed the button two or three times more, then pressed the button marked Manager.

  A moment later the outer lock buzzed open and Mason entered the small lobby. A door opened behind a counter in the corner of the lobby and an intelligent looking, well-kept woman in her early fifties stepped out to smile at the lawyer and the detective.

  “Something for you gentlemen?” she asked.

  “Vacancies?” Mason asked.

  She smiled and shook her head.

  “I understood that Grace Hallum’s apartment was to be vacant,” Mason said. “I tried to ring her but she doesn’t answer. Do you know anything about her?”

  “Oh yes,” the manager said. “She’s going to be gone for some little time. She made arrangements with me to feed her canary.”

  “When did she leave?” Mason asked.

  The manager looked at him curiously. “Are you a detective?” she asked.

  Mason grinned and jerked his thumb at Smithy. “He is.”

  “Oh—what’s the trouble?”

  “No trouble,” Mason said. “We’re just trying to get a line on her.”

  The manager’s lips clamped together. “Well, I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can tell you except that she’s gone.”

  Mason played a hunch. “Did she have the boy with her?”

  “She had the boy with her.”

  “Suitcases?”

  “One doesn’t go for an indefinite stay without suitcases.”

  “Taxicab?” Mason asked.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

  “Does she own a car?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Mason tried to be as charming as possible. “It wouldn’t hurt you to be a little more communicative.”

  “I’m not so certain about that. I don’t discuss tenants’ affairs.”

  “Oh well,” Mason said, “it isn’t particularly important. We’re just checking, that’s all. How long has she had the boy, do you know?”

  “I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Well, thanks a lot,” Mason said. “Good-by.”

  He gave her his best smile and led the way out of the apartment house.

  “I don’t get it,” Smithy said.

  “What?”

  “Your technique,” Smithy told him. “I’d have flashed my credentials and suggested she might get into trouble if she tried to withhold information.”

  “I have a better idea,” Mason told him, studying the directory. “Let’s see, Grace Hallum was in 208. Let’s look at 206 and 210—who’s in 206?”

  Smithy consulted the directory.

  “Miss M. Adrian,” he said.

  “Give her a ring,” Mason instructed.

  Smithy pressed his thumb against the button.

  In a few moments the door was buzzed open.

  Mason and the detective again entered the apartment house. The manager had now retreated into her apartment and the door behind the little counter was closed.

  The two men climbed the steps to the second floor.

  Mason tapped on the door of 206.

  The door opened the scant two or three inches allowed by a heavy brass safety chain. A woman with a long, thin nose surveyed the two men suspiciously. “What is it?” she asked.