Mason grinned. “You couldn’t have done any better than that if you’d tried all night, Paul.”

  Drake shook his head. “You overlook the weak point in it”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t see how I could tell them I’d stalled around very long after getting that telephone call. I didn’t know just when she’d pulled the trigger, but I surmised it had to be after she’d talked with you on the telephone. That would mean a medical examination would show she’d been dead for perhaps as much as an hour before I’d notified the cops. That wouldn’t look so well. So I told the cops I was working on something at the time which kept me from leaving the office, that I’d told her I’d be right out, but had put my car in the garage and there’d be a little delay. I felt that that way I could stall her along. That’s what I told the cops.”

  “Go ahead,” Mason said.

  “They wanted to know how long it was after the telephone conversation before I got there. I told them it might have been an hour, and I could see they didn’t believe that. They said that if I’d been on the track of something as important as that sounded, I’d have got out there sooner.”

  “So then what?” Mason asked.

  “So I told them that I hadn’t paid too much attention to time, that it had seemed quite a long while to me because I had so much to do, but that it might have been less than an hour; perhaps forty-five minutes, or perhaps even half an hour. And then I got myself in a jack pot. The times were all wet.”

  Mason frowned. “You mean,” he said, “that she had been dead for more than . . .”

  “She’d been dead ever since midnight,” Drake said, “and probably before.”

  “How do they know?”

  “Taking the temperature of the room and the temperature of the body and estimating how long it takes a body to lose a degree of heat, and all that stuff,” Drake said.

  Mason frowned. “It couldn’t have been midnight. She talked with me over the telephone.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Drake said, “but I wasn’t in a position to do any arguing.”

  Mason said, “I guess that’s it, Paul.”

  “What?”

  “She was killed around midnight. That makes it murder.”

  “But she talked with you and . . .”

  “No,” Mason said. “A woman talked with me, a woman who had a rather well-bred voice. That is, the tones were smoothly harmonious, but there was something wrong with the way she spoke, as though she had a marble in her mouth. That explains it.”

  “Explains what?” Drake asked.

  Mason said, “It was a woman who talked with me. This woman said she was Mrs. Perlin. It was a cinch to pull that on me because I’d never heard Mrs. Perlin speak and didn’t know her voice. But the one who called the other person was one who said she was speaking for Mrs. Perlin because she was unable to come to the phone.”

  “What other person?” Drake asked.

  Mason said, “Right at the moment, Paul, that’s neither here nor there.”

  The detective looked at him, sighed, and said, “It’s probably there, but it sure as hell ain’t here.”

  Mason said, “When I looked down at the body, it didn’t seem to me that she’d been a woman who would have had a voice such as the one I’d heard on the telephone. So I asked—this other party—if the housekeeper had been up in the world at one time, and then had some bad luck. Had to go to housekeeping. That would have accounted for the well-bred voice, you know.”

  “What was the answer?”

  “Negative.”

  Drake lit a cigarette. “That means,” he said, “that the party who was with you was someone who knew the housekeeper pretty well, someone who knew the housekeeper’s past, someone who was interested in the Hocksley case because a message brought that person out there. Probably a girl. Give me one guess, Perry.”

  “Don’t take it,” Mason warned.

  Drake removed the cigarette from his mouth, blew smoke at the smoldering end. “I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you, Perry, but there’s just a chance you and some feminine accomplice could be nominated for a murder rap. You might even be elected.”

  “If the woman died before midnight?” Mason asked.

  “That’s what you say.”

  “I ought to know.”

  Drake said, “If you’re going to keep messing around in murder cases, you’d better get married—so you’ll have some corroboration when it comes to bedtime alibis.”

  “What the deuce are you talking about?” Mason said irritably. “Why the devil should I need an alibi?”

  “Darned if I know,” Drake said, “but I have a hunch Lieutenant Tragg is going to become very inquisitive about what you were doing last night.”

  “Tragg doesn’t even know I was anywhere within a mile of Hillgrade Avenue.”

  Drake said, “Tragg gets around.”

  Mason pushed back his chair. “You’ve been up all night, Paul. It gives you a pessimistic outlook.”

  Drake regarded him moodily. He said, “You’re always pulling fast ones, and then expecting me to back your plays without telling me what it’s all about. I’m warning you that if Lieutenant Tragg finds out you were out at Hillgrade Avenue last night, or if he finds out the real reason why you didn’t call me back inside of an hour·, you’re going to have trouble.”

  “What is the real reason I didn’t call you back inside of an hour?” Mason asked.

  Drake regarded the lawyer thoughtfully. “If it’s what I think it is, I hope I’m not right.”

  Mason laughed. “Come on. Out with it.”

  Drake held up his left hand with the fingers extended. With the forefinger of his right hand, he checked off the points as he made them. “First,” he said, “you aren’t kidding me a bit. The reason you didn’t call me was because something very important did turn up. Two, that something important was of a nature which would interfere with a telephone call. Three, you didn’t discover anything from that contact which was particularly new. Otherwise, you’d have passed along the information, so I’d have something to work on. Four, it was a contact which knew a lot about the housekeeper, but one you had to keep absolutely dark. Five, it put you in such a spot that you don’t dare to confide even in me. You’re trying to kid me out of it. Now then, what’s the answer to those five points?”

  Mason said, “I’ll bite, Mr. Bones. What is the answer to those five points?”

  “Opal Sunley,” Drake said.

  Mason got up. “I warned you not to make that guess, Paul. I try to keep you out in the clear and you jump right into the middle of the fire.”

  Drake grinned. “I was in the frying pan, anyway,” he said.

  Chapter 10

  Della Street, humming a little tune as she opened the door to Mason’s private office, carrying the morning mail under her arm, stopped short with surprise, said, “Well, well, is this getting to be a habit?”

  Mason grinned at her. “Come on over and sit down.”

  She went back to close the door to the outer office. “What’s the idea?” she asked. “Been up all night?”

  “No,” Mason said. “I got a few hours’ sleep. I guess that’s more than Drake did.”

  “What happened?”

  “A woman telephoned me about one o’clock in the morning, said she was Sarah Perlin, and she wanted to confess to the murder of R. E. Hocksley, wanted me to come at once to six-o-four East Hillgrade Avenue, said if she wasn’t there to wait until I saw a light, then open the back door and walk in. I took the precaution of telling Paul Drake to follow up in an hour if I didn’t telephone him everything was okay.”

  “How did she get in touch with you?” Della Street asked.

  “She called Paul Drake, and Paul held her on the line while he got in touch with me. I told Paul to give her my private number.”

  “This was Mrs. Perlin, Hocksley’s housekeeper?”

  “The voice said it was Mrs. Perlin. I don’t think it was.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think Mrs. Perlin was dead at the time. When I got out to the house on Hillgrade, I found her lying on the floor with a gun in her right hand and a bullet through her heart. It could have been suicide.”

  “Did you report to the police?”

  “Not directly,” Mason said. “I had other fish to fry. Opal Sunley came wandering in with a story that was just about as wild as mine. I didn’t realize how utterly incredible my story would sound to Lieutenant Tragg until I heard Opal Sunley telling me her version of about the same thing.”

  “What did you do?”

  Mason grinned. “I let Paul Drake hold the sack,” he said. “The hour was about up. Opal Sunley offered to play square if I wouldn’t notify the police, but give her a chance for a getaway.”

  “Isn’t that compounding a felony?”

  “It most certainly is—if she was guilty of a felony.”

  “And how about not reporting the finding of the body?”

  “I can get by with that in a pinch because I knew that Drake was on his way up. It only made a difference of a few minutes. The thing that bothers me is this Sunley woman.”

  “What did you do with her?”

  “Took her to a night spot and tried to get her tight.”

  “Do any good?”

  Mason shook his head. “She is a very bright young woman, or else I telegraphed my punch pretty badly. She started taking defensive measures even before I’d ordered the first drink.”

  “What were the defensive measures?” Della Street asked. “I might have occasion to use them sometime.”

  “Crackers and butter,” Mason said, “and lots of butter. She’d eaten about five squares before I got the first cocktail into her. After that, I knew it wouldn’t be much use.”

  “Evidently the young woman knows her way around,” Della Street said.

  Mason nodded. “I got her telephone number—Acton one-one-one-one-o.”

  “What did she tell you about young Gentrie?”

  “Not a great deal. Young Arthur Gentrie is madly in love with her. She’s older than he is and considers it a case of puppy love, but doesn’t want to destroy his illusions. She says that it’s very, very serious when a young man starts putting an older woman on a pedestal and becomes really infatuated for the first time in his life.”

  “Is it the first time with Junior Gentrie?” Della Street asked.

  Mason said, “He told her it was.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “He said there’d been puppy loves in his life before, but nothing that could approach the devastating effect of this feeling that he has for her.”

  “And so she keeps on going out with him and encouraging him?”

  “She says she isn’t encouraging him. She’s trying to be an older sister to him, but Junior won’t, as she expresses it, cool off. She said she had been trying to find some younger woman who would be sufficiently attractive to Junior to get his mind into what she calls a more normal state. The hell of it is, Della, she’s got a boy friend—some chap she’s crazy over—and she’s keeping all this about young Gentrie away from her regular boy friend because he’s insanely jealous. Of course, she’s also keeping all news of the boy friend from Gentrie because she doesn’t want to destroy his illusions.”

  Della Street said, “It’s nice business if you can get it. How old is she?”

  “Around twenty-two or twenty-three according to her looks, but something she said made me place her at about twenty-five.”

  “What did Opal Sunley tell you about what happened in Hocksley’s flat?”

  “According to her story, she arrived for work at the usual time in the morning, saw bloodstains, went out to look at the automobiles, saw that someone had been riding in the back of Hocksley’s automobile, and spilling blood. She couldn’t find either Hocksley or Mrs. Perlin. So she notified the police.”

  “That’s all she told you?”

  “Just about. I had to worm it out of her about her boy friend. I think that was the main reason she didn’t want the police to report her as having been in that bungalow at one-forty-five in the morning. Yet she was driving a borrowed car. I got the license number, of course.”

  “The boy friend’s car?”

  “No. Strangely enough it’s not. It belongs to a girl by the name of Ethel Prentice who is evidently a close friend of Opal’s—lets her take a jalopy in times of need.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Oh, she told a few things about her job over there. This man Hocksley was very much of a man of mystery, and so is Karr who lives in the flat above him. Somehow, that’s taxing credulity just a little bit too much. Two men of mystery drifting into an apartment house. They arrive within a week of each other, and, before that, the flats have been vacant for five months.”

  “You think Karr and Hocksley have some connection?”

  Mason shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’s rather a coincidence. Have you seen Karr’s ad in the paper?”

  “No. What is it?”

  “Opal Sunley told me about it—and said she noticed it because she’d seen Wenston’s name on the door of the other flat. It’s been running two days.”

  Mason took the morning paper from the desk, opened it to the classified ad section, turned to the personals, and said, “Listen to this. ‘Personal. Wanted information concerning the daughter of the man who was a partner in a gun-running expedition up the Yangtze River in nineteen-twenty-one. Detailed information is purposely withheld from this advertisement, but the right party will know who I am, who her father was, and will be able to give proof of our association in the expedition in the fall of 1920, and the first part of 1921. I do not wish to be pestered, and, therefore, give warning that any imposter will be prosecuted to the limit of the law. On the other hand, the young woman who is the genuine daughter will be given a considerable sum of partnership assets which I have held for her in trust because I did not know until recently, and by accident, that my partner left any heirs at law. Do not seek to obtain an interview until after first writing Rodney Wenston, 787 East Dorchester Boulevard or telephoning Graybar 8-9351.’ ”

  Mason finished reading the ad, pushed the newspaper to one side. Della Street pursed her lips. “Whew! And Opal Sunley told you about the ad?”

  Mason nodded.

  “I’d say that was rather significant, wouldn’t you?”

  “Uh huh. Karr mentioned he started the ball rolling to clean up his partnership, but he didn’t mention this ad.”

  “How did Opal happen to tell you about it?”

  “Just talking.”

  “What did she tell you about Hocksley?”

  “Nothing much I didn’t know already. She got all of her work from wax cylinders. Hocksley dictated at night, and spent most of the day in bed.”

  “Sleeping all day?”

  “No. He’d be in his room. He’d get up along in the afternoon and read the papers, have coffee and toast, and sometimes do a little dictation.”

  “To the machine?”

  “Yes. Mrs. Perlin, the housekeeper, was the only one to go in and out of Hocksley’s room. She’d wait on him as soon as he wakened, bringing him the work Opal Sunley had typed, bringing out cylinders for Opal to transcribe, taking him his meals—the newspapers—sometimes sitting in there and talking with him. Opal could hear the hum of low-pitched conversation.”

  “Any heart throbs between Hocksley and the housekeeper?” Della Street asked.

  “Opal says she doesn’t know.”

  “She considers it’s a possibility then?” Della Street asked.

  “Apparently a very definite possibility.”

  Della Street thought that over for a few seconds, then shook her head and said, “That isn’t right, Chief.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “That story of hers. No girl on earth would go on working for a man under those conditions without making it a point to learn more about him. In the first place, there’d be legitimate questions she’d have to ask about the work. In the second place, all that attempt to be secretive would simply arouse her curiosity.”

  “Then you think she was lying to me?” Mason asked.

  “I know darn well she was lying.”

  Mason smiled reminiscently. “She did it most convincingly,” he said.

  Della’s eyes were twinkling. “The hussy!”

  Mason said, “Well, there’s no percentage in sitting around waiting for something to break. Why wouldn’t this be a fine time to communicate with the murderer?”

  “Fine—but how are you going about it?”

  “You could go down to a hardware store, Della, and buy a sealing machine for cans. Also get a new tin. We’ll scratch a message on the lid, seal it up, make certain there are no fingerprints on it, and plant it on the shelf at the Gentrie residence.”

  “Think the murderer would get it?”

  “It would be interesting to find out.”

  “What sort of a message?”

  “Oh, something that would tend to keep things moving,” Mason said. “We don’t want the case to get static. It would give the police too much of a chance to catch up on us.”

  Della Street picked up the dictionary from Mason’s desk. “Think up a nice message, and I’ll put it in code for you.”

  Mason said, “Well now, let’s see, Della. We want something that will get some action. Suppose we left the murderer a message. Let’s see. It will have to be dictionary words. We can’t use participles or plurals. We want something that will get swift action. Suppose we did this: ‘Lawyer Mason has fingerprint photograph his wallet fatal unless recovered.’ No, let’s see. We couldn’t use recovered. That’s past tense. The word in the dictionary would be recover.”

  Della Street, frowning down at her shorthand notebook, said, “We could use recovery, Chief. That would be a noun, and would be listed. We could use the words recovery made instead of recovered.”

  “Okay, let’s try putting it in code.”