Garvin’s face showed his surprise. “You say the officers think that?”

  Mason nodded.

  “But why?” Garvin said. “They’re trying to sell me on the idea that my wife went down to the office, got the gun.… They’ve insinuated that Casselman was trying to blackmail her, and—How do you know what the officers are thinking?”

  “Because,” Mason said, “they’ve just been here and virtually threatened me with arrest for concealing evidence and a few other things.”

  Garvin slowly straightened away from the desk. “By George!” he said, “I never thought of that, but you could have done it. I thought I smelled a rat. You’re not so dumb as to let a gun go off accidentally.”

  “Therefore,” Mason said, “if I had the murder weapon in my possession, if I went out there and got you to produce your gun from your desk drawer and then if I fired your gun into the desk, I certainly made a sufficient commotion so that in the confusion I could have substituted the murder gun in place of your gun.”

  “You sure could at that,” Garvin said.

  “Now then,” Mason said, “which gun was it that I fired? The gun that you took out of the desk, or the murder gun that I had with me?”

  “You discharged my gun, the one that I took out of the desk,” Garvin said unhesitatingly.

  “You’re certain of that?”

  “Absolutely certain. I remember every move you made. I remember producing the gun and handing it to you. You took it in your right hand and swung it up and down two or three times getting the balance of it, and about the third time you tried it, you fired it right into the desk.”

  “The gun that you handed me?”

  “The gun that I handed you,” Garvin said. “But you certainly could have switched guns afterwards, because everyone was dashing into the office. I remember you holding the gun in your hand, and then you—Good heavens, Mason! That’s what you did!”

  “The police seem to think so.”

  A grin spread over Garvin’s features. “Now that puts a different aspect on the whole business. How are they going to make any trouble for Dawn if you had an opportunity to switch weapons? All right, Mason, they say all’s fair in love and war. As far as I’m concerned, I’m going to play along with the police on the theory they have.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “why the deuce do you think I gave you the tip in the first place?”

  Garvin thought things over. Suddenly he moved over toward the lawyer, and shot out his hand. “Shake hands, Mason,” he said. “You’re … you’re a gentleman! Wait till I get hold of Dawn and tell her about this!”

  Garvin started for the door, closed his hand around the knob, then suddenly turned back to face the lawyer.

  “Any time you want a good deal on a sports car, Mason, I’ll make you a very extra special price on that X-60 job you were interested in.”

  “Thanks,” Mason said, “but I wasn’t interested in it.”

  “Well, I’ll make you a mighty good price on it anyway.”

  “Just a moment,” Mason said. “Can you tell me everyone who has keys to your office?”

  Garvin seemed surprised. “The janitor, of course, my wife, my secretary.”

  “Your dad?”

  “Oh sure. I have a key to his office, and he has a key to mine. We don’t ever use them but we have them.”

  “I was just checking,” Mason said.

  “You don’t want to sign an order for that sports job?”

  Mason smiled and shook his head.

  “Let me know when you change your mind.”

  Garvin whipped the door open and walked out into the corridor.

  Mason returned to his desk.

  Della Street said with admiration in her voice, “That was some exhibition of salesmanship, Mr. Perry Mason!”

  Mason might not have heard her. “Get down to Paul Drake’s office, Della. Ask him to get men on the job in Las Vegas and find out everything we can find out about Dawn Joyce.”

  Chapter 14

  Less than an hour after Junior Garvin had left the office, Della Street’s telephone rang. She talked for a few moments, then said, “Just a moment. I’ll see.”

  She placed her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone, said, “Chief, it’s Marie Barlow. She’s uncovered some things that bother her.”

  “What?” Mason asked.

  “Apparently some errors that are more serious than mere errors.”

  “Let me talk with her,” Mason said.

  Mason picked up his own telephone, said, “Connect me on Della Street’s line, Gertie, and leave Della Street on there so we can both listen.”

  A moment later Mason heard the click of the connection and said, “Hello, Marie, this is Perry Mason. I’m on the line. What is it?”

  “I didn’t want to bother you, Mr. Mason,” she said, “but I wanted you to know about it. There’s something wrong here.”

  “What?”

  “Checks have been made out on bills that have been received, but the firms to whom the checks were paid apparently didn’t have any orders to do any work.

  “For instance, I’ve uncovered several receipted bills from the Acme Electric and Plumbing Repair Company. The total of the different statements amounts to over six thousand dollars.

  “Now there are canceled checks showing that payments have been made in the exact amount of the respective statements. The statements aren’t itemized. They’re only general; such as, repairs and wiring on a certain building.”

  “Well, why not ring up the Acme Company and ask them what it’s all about?” Mason said. “Tell them you’re preparing a statement for property appraisers for income tax, and you want itemized bills and want to know how the orders were placed.”

  “I already thought of that,” she said. “There’s only one thing wrong with it.”

  “What?”

  “There isn’t any Acme Electric and Plumbing Repair Company listed in the book.”

  “What about the street address?”

  “There’s a street address,” she said, “1397 Chatham Street, and apparently there isn’t any such firm at that address.”

  “What about the bill?” Mason said. “The billhead—is it printed?”

  “It’s printed, and looks very imposing. It has a place for job numbers, ledger numbers, order numbers, and all of that. They’re all filled in, in pen and ink, and look very fine, but there isn’t any such company. Apparently no such job was performed and …”

  “How about the checks?” Mason asked. “How were they endorsed?”

  “With a rubber stamp and then cashed. The bank’s closed, and I can’t get any information on that until tomorrow morning.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “let’s start checking, Marie, but don’t get stampeded into doing anything until we know a little more about it. What does it look like to you?”

  She said, “It looks very much to me as though someone found out that Eva Elliott was green on the job and simply had billheads printed and sent in a bill to see what she would do. The first one was only three hundred and twenty-six dollars and eighty-five cents.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She made a check.”

  “Then the check must have been mailed,” Mason said.

  “The check was mailed all right, and cashed.”

  “Go on,” Mason said, his voice showing his interest. “What happened after that?”

  “After that, nothing happened for a month, and then there was a bill for seven hundred and eighty-five dollars and fourteen cents. It was paid, and the next month bills came in for three jobs. They were in various amounts, but the total was twenty-nine hundred dollars and some odd cents.”

  “Found anything else?” Mason asked.

  “The next month there were three more bills. That’s all so far for the Acme Electric and Plumbing Repair Company, but if someone had found out it was that easy to get Eva Elliott to send out checks, I have a hunch it didn’t stop there.”

  “How were the checks signed?” Mason asked.

  “By Garvin. You know the way Mr. Garvin does. He’ll have his secretary type out checks for bills that come in, and on the eighth of the month he’ll sign all of the checks so as to get his cash discounts. Now that’s another crazy thing. Eva Elliott made out checks for the bills and didn’t take off the two per cent cash discount even when the billheads said right out in printing at the top: ‘Two per cent cash discount if paid by the tenth.’ ”

  “All right, Marie, I’ll check into it. Thanks a lot for calling. What was that address again?”

  “I have it, Chief,” Della Street said, “1397 Chatham Street.”

  “We’ll take a look,” Mason said. “How’s everything coming, Marie?”

  “Oh, it’s an unholy mess,” she said, “but I’m getting it straightened out a little at a time.”

  “Don’t overwork,” Mason told her. “You’ll be there tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be on the job tomorrow.”

  “I’ll try to run in. I’d like to have a look at some of those statements.”

  “Okay, I’ll be here.”

  “Bye now,” Mason said, and hung up.

  He looked at Della Street and frowned. “Now that’s something,” he said. “We’d better ask Paul Drake to take a look at this address on Chatham Street and see if he can find anything about the Acme Electric and Plumbing Repair Company.”

  “Well,” Della Street said, “that’s something for even a motion-picture secretary. Just open the letters, take out the bills, type out checks and send them in for the boss’s signature, then mail out the disbursements.”

  Mason grinned. “Some system of bookkeeping, but it seems to have paid off all right.”

  “At least for one person,” Della Street said.

  Gertie opened the office door, said excitedly, “Here’s the afternoon paper, Mr. Mason, with a photograph in it showing a bloody footprint in Casselman’s apartment and there’s someone from Las Vegas calling, a woman who says the only name you know her by is Lucille.”

  “Put Lucille on,” Mason said, as Della Street took the newspaper from Gertie’s hand and relayed it across the desk to him.

  Gertie hurried back to the switchboard.

  Mason picked up the telephone, waited until he heard the connection being made, then said, “Yes, hello. This is Mr. Mason talking.”

  The woman’s voice was urgent with excitement. “Mr. Mason, I guess you know who I am. This is Lucille at the Double-O Motel.”

  “Go on, Lucille,” Mason said.

  “Mr. Garvin simply had to talk with his son about an urgent matter.”

  “Telephone?” Mason asked.

  “No, personally. He chartered a plane.”

  “Go on.”

  “He took elaborate precautions to see that he wasn’t followed to the airport.”

  “Go on.”

  “He told me that he would telephone me at three o’clock on the dot, at six o’clock on the dot, at eight o’clock on the dot, and at ten o’clock on the dot, that he’d be back by ten. He said if I didn’t get any one of those calls, I was to call you and tell you. Otherwise, I wasn’t to let you or anyone else know where he was.”

  “Okay,” Mason said. “I gather that the three o’clock call didn’t come through.”

  “That’s right. I haven’t heard from him at all. I wanted you to know.”

  Mason said, “Thanks. That means he’s been picked up. There’s nothing we can do until they book him. We’ll stay on the job. Thanks for calling.”

  Mason hung up the phone, started studying the picture on the second page of the afternoon newspaper.

  “Interesting?” Della Street asked.

  “Very,” Mason said. “You can see there’s a man’s footprint here, a footprint which has been made with a bloody shoe and there’s a heel mark, the stamp of a fairly new rubber heel. Police have been able to make out the name: ‘The Spring-Eze.’ ”

  Mason pushed back the paper and started pacing the floor.

  At length he paused and regarded Della Street quizzically.

  “It’s my contention, Della, that an attorney doesn’t have to sit back and wait until a witness gets on the stand and then test his recollection simply by asking him questions. If facts can be shuffled in such a way that it will confuse a witness who isn’t absolutely certain of his story, and if the attorney doesn’t suppress, conceal, or distort any of the actual evidence, I claim the attorney is within his rights.”

  Della Street nodded.

  “In this case,” Mason went on, “the facts keep shuffling themselves. Usually the police get the main suspect, but have difficulty finding the murder weapon. Here they have the murder weapon and have so many main suspects, they don’t know what to do.”

  Della Street said, “In this case you’re one up on them. Knowing that you didn’t switch weapons you know the murder weapon was in Junior’s desk.”

  Mason nodded. “The only trouble, Della, is that I don’t know who put it there, and I won’t know until I can talk with Garvin, Sr.”

  “And if he didn’t put it there?”

  “Then the murderer did.

  “We’re going to have to work late tonight. Police are holding Stephanie Falkner. Now they’ve also picked up Garvin, Sr. He made the mistake of underestimating the police.

  “We’ll get Paul’s men to check various job-printing establishments and see if we can find where these billheads of the phony repair company were printed. How’s your headache?”

  She looked at him, then slowly closed one eye. “Much better,” she said.

  Chapter 15

  Mason and Della Street entered the dimly lit interior of the cocktail lounge.

  “Well,” Della Street said with a sigh, “this is a welcome and relaxing atmosphere after the tense strain of working on a case.”

  Mason nodded. “We’ll sit and relax, have a couple of cocktails, then get a nice steak dinner with baked potato and all the fixings. We can have a bottle of stout with the steak, and—However, Della, let’s just check before we sit down. I’ll give Paul Drake a ring to let him know where we are.”

  Mason stepped into the telephone booth, dialed Paul Drake’s number, said, “Perry Mason talking. Put Paul on, will you?”

  Paul Drake said hello, and Mason said, “We’re just letting you know where we are, Paul. We’re going to take time out for a couple of cocktails, a good dinner.…”

  “Hold it!” Paul Drake interrupted.

  “Not yet,” Mason said. “A bottle of stout with the steak, perhaps a little garlic toast, and …”

  “Hey! Whoa! Back up!” Drake shouted into the telephone. “You’re wasting precious time.”

  “What is it?” Mason asked.

  “Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide telephoned not over five minutes ago. They’re frantically trying to reach you.”

  “Why?” Mason said.

  “Homer Garvin, Sr. is being held for questioning in the office of the district attorney. He refuses to make any statement unless you are present. The D.A. is going to call in newspaper reporters and let them know of developments unless you show up and unless Garvin quote satisfactorily explains unquote certain evidence against him.”

  Mason hesitated for a moment.

  “You there?” Drake asked.

  “I’m here,” Mason said. “I’m thinking. All right,” he said, reaching a sudden decision, “where is Garvin now?”

  “At the D.A.’s office.”

  “Tell them to expect me,” Mason said. “I’m coming up.” He slammed up the telephone, jerked the door open.

  “Oh-oh,” Della Street said, “here goes a perfectly good dinner.”

  “That’s right,” Mason told her. “It’s postponed. Garvin, Sr. is in custody. They have him at the D.A.’s office. He refuses to make any statement unless I’m present, and demands that they notify me as his attorney.”

  “And they did?”

  “They did.”

  “That means they’re laying a trap for you too,” Della Street warned.

  “I know it,” Mason told her. “However, I’m going to walk into it. Take my car, go to the office and wait. I’ll get back there just as soon as I can and then we’ll go to dinner. I’ll take a taxi to the D.A.’s office. Okay, Della, be seeing you.”

  Mason thrust the keys to the car into her hand, dashed to the door, jumped into a waiting taxi and said, “You know where the district attorney’s office is? I’m in something of a hurry.”

  The lawyer sat on the edge of the seat while the taxi driver twisted and wormed his way through traffic.

  As the cab came to a stop against the curb, Mason handed the driver a five-dollar bill, said, “A good ride, keep the change,” and sprinted for the elevators.

  A uniformed officer sat at the reception desk in the district attorney’s office.

  Mason said, “I’m Mason. I think they’re expecting me.”

  “Go on in,” the officer said. “He’s in Hamilton Burger’s office. Last on the left.”

  Mason pushed open a swinging door, strode down a hallway flanked with officers, pushed open the door of an office marked “HAMILTON BURGER, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, PRIVATE,” and said, “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  They were seated in shirt sleeves in a tight little group: Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide, a uniformed officer, a shorthand reporter, Homer Garvin, and Hamilton Burger, the barrel-chested, grizzly bear of a district attorney.

  The room was filled with a heavy aroma of cigarette smoke.

  Hamilton Burger cleared his throat importantly, but first nodded to the shorthand reporter.

  “Mr. Mason,” he said. “Mr. Perry Mason. Please come in and be seated. Let the records show that Mr. Perry Mason has arrived. Now, Mr. Garvin, you have stated that you would explain matters only when your attorney was present. I am now asking you to explain the bloodstained shoe, and the print of that bloodstained shoe in the apartment of George Casselman, who was murdered last Tuesday night.”

  Mason said, “Just a moment, gentlemen, if my client is going to make any statement, I want to talk with him first.”

  “We’ve waited long enough already,” Hamilton Burger said.