“Well,” Mason said, “all this is going to help, Paul. Of course, it doesn’t explain away the fingerprints on that gun or some of the other stuff, but perhaps we’ll begin to find out what it’s all about. You call me about that garbage man.”

  “I’m having him tailed. My man telephones in reports whenever the garbage truck stops long enough to let him get to a telephone.”

  “Okay, as soon as he telephones in again, find out where he is. I’m going on out and talk to this Modena.”

  “I’ll call you. He should … ”

  The telephone rang.

  Drake said, “Wait a minute. It may be the call now.”

  Drake picked up the telephone, said, “Hello,” nodded to Perry Mason, then said into the telephone, “Where are you, Jim?”

  Drake listened, made a note on a piece of paper, said, “Okay. Mason wants to contact him. You think on Washington? Uh huh … . Headed toward the apartment where … I see. Okay. All right, Perry will be out there pretty quick.” Drake put the palm of his hand over the telephone. “It’s Jim Melrose on the job. You want him to do any shadowing after you contact Modena?”

  “No. He can go home then,” Mason said.

  Drake said into the telephone, “Okay, Jim, as soon as Mason picks him up, you can knock off. Mason will be out on Washington. You’ll be right behind the truck, eh? … . Okay. Good-by.”

  Drake hung up the phone, said to Mason, “You’ll find him on Washington somewhere between Cornise and Millford. Jim will be cruising along behind the truck.”

  Mason inclined his head, made a stiff fingered gesture with his hand, said, “Nice work, Paul. We’re on our way. Want to come, Della?”

  “Do I!”

  “Look lively then.”

  They ran down the corridor to the elevator, went down in the elevator, sprinted over to the parking lot and scrambled into Mason’s automobile.

  “Isn’t this terribly risky?” Della Street asked.

  “Isn’t what risky?”

  “What you’re going to do.”

  “Uh huh,” Mason said piloting the car adroitly through traffic. “There’s always a risk when you start doing things.”

  “Suppose Sergeant Holcomb gets the diary ?”

  “That,” Mason admitted, “would be just too bad.”

  “Suppose you get it and Sergeant Holcomb finds out you’ve got it?”

  Mason grinned. “That would be just too good.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Neither will the Sergeant.”

  Della Street sighed and gave up. “Okay,” she admitted smiling, “you win. You always do. Go to it.”

  Speeding out Washington, they were less than three blocks from Cornise when they saw the garbage truck just pulling into an alley. Drake’s operative tagging along behind spotted Mason and Della Street, elevated two spread fingers, received a nod from Mason, and drove on.

  Mason swung into the alley, parked his car just behind the garbage truck and was on the ground when a short, swarthy individual with warm brown eyes, bushy black eyebrows and dark stubble on his chin, climbed down from the garbage truck.

  The man was wearing a uniform which had once been white and which was now laundered to a nondescript shade of gray, interspersed with spots. “You’re Nick Modena?” Mason said.

  The warm brown eyes glinted upward, became suddenly suspicious. “What you want with Nick Modena?”

  “A little business proposition.”

  “What sort of business—monkey business?”

  “A chance to make a little money.”

  “Say, who are you, anyway?” Mason grinned. “My name,” he said, “is Sarg.”

  “Okay, Sarg. Whatcha want?” Mason said, “I want to make fifty dollars for you.”

  “Make fifty dollars for me?” Modena’s voice rose to almost a shout. “For you.”

  “Whatsa matter? What’s crooked?”

  “Nothing crooked.”

  “Whatcha want me to do?”

  “Collect garbage.”

  “For how long?”

  “One time.”

  “Where abouts?”

  “Down the street.”

  “How soon?”

  “Right away.”

  Modena glanced from Mason to Della Street. “Fifty dollars, Sarg?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What do I do?”

  Mason said, “You know the Palm Vista Apartments?”

  “Sure, I know. I take garbage, don’t I?”

  “How do you collect the garbage from there?”

  “Take it in a pail, tilt it up, dump it out, put back the pail …

  “No, I mean do you go to each individual apartment?”

  “Whatsa matter, you think I’m crazy? Go to each apartment? Sure not.”

  “How do the apartments dispose of their garbage?”

  “How should I know? Put it out in front, maybe janitor takes, puts in big barrel. Me, I get big barrel.”

  Mason said, “This time, it’s going to be different. You go to this apartment on the second floor. You knock at the door. When the man comes to the door, tell him that you’re there to collect the garbage. He’ll give it to you. You take it down to the wagon, dump it, and that’s the whole job.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  “I get fifty bucks?”

  “If you get the garbage, you get fifty bucks.”

  “Suppose I don’t get garbage?”

  “Then you don’t get any money.”

  “Whosa man in the place now?”

  “He’s a man in my employ,” Mason said casually. “That is, I pay a part of his wages. He’s supposed to be working for me as well as a few others.”

  “Why you no tell him yourself?”

  “No, I want you to make fifty dollars.”

  Modena shook his head, blinked his eyes from Mason to Della Street, then back to Mason. “Something’s crazy.”

  “Fifty bucks,” Mason said, opening his wallet and taking out five ten dollar bills. “As soon as you come down with the garbage.”

  Modena shrugged his shoulders, spread hands in a typical gesture of surrender. “What’s holding us back?”

  “Nothing,” Mason said, getting back into his car.

  Modena climbed up in the driver’s seat of the garbage truck. Both cars backed out of the alley. Mason followed along behind the rumbling garbage truck until it stopped in front of the Palm Vista Apartments.

  “How much chance,” Della asked, “do you think you have?”

  “Considerably better than an even gamble,” Mason told her.

  “After all, the foodstuff around there should be getting pretty smelly by this time, and there’s certainly nothing phony about Modena. And in case the officer wants to look out of the window, he can see the garbage truck parked here. Unless he’s familiar with the routine of the apartment, or the garbage business, it won’t occur to him that there’s anything particularly unusual about it.”

  “If it doesn’t work,” Della Street said, “they’ll know where the diary is.”

  “Perhaps—perhaps not.”

  “Well,” Della Street said laughing, “there’s one thing about Nick Modena. He certainly isn’t nervous.”

  The short chunky man swung down from the garbage truck, walked down the alley to the service door, pushed it open and vanished into the apartment house. His walk was neither too fast nor too slow, just the regular rhythmic stride of a man who has work to do and is anxious, but not too anxious, to get it over with.

  Della Street kept looking at her wrist watch, counting the seconds. Mason never took his eyes from the garbage wagon.

  “Gosh, Chief! It’s been three minutes and ten seconds,” Della said. “Something must have gone wrong.”

  Mason, without moving his eyes from the garbage wagon, merely shook his head.

  “Four minutes!” Della announced.

  Mason said nothing.

  “Five minutes!” There was almost a trace of panic in Della’s voice.

  “It’ll take him a while to get up there and back,” Mason said.

  “Five minutes and thirty seconds. Oh...”

  Nick Modena came marching unconcernedly out of the apartment house, swinging a garbage bucket by the handle.

  Mason started the motor, pulled the car alongside.

  “You want?” Modena asked skeptically.

  Mason produced fifty dollars. “I want—I want that loaf of bread.”

  “Jiz!” Modena said as he accepted the fifty dollars and. watched Mason pull the stale loaf of bread from the garbage pail.

  “Have any trouble?” Mason asked.

  “Trouble? No. Man come to door. I tell him I’ve collect the garbage. He says who sent me. I tell him Sarg. He says, ‘Okay.’ … What the hell!”

  Della Street gasped in dismay. “Look up at the window, Chief.”

  “Has he spotted us?” Mason asked.

  “Yes.”

  A window on the second floor was suddenly raised. An officer thrust out his head. “Hey,” he shouted, “what’s coming off down there?”

  Mason answered with a cheery wave of his hand.

  “Hey, you! What the hell are you doing?” the officer demanded.

  “Collecting garbage,” Mason said cheerfully, tossing the loaf of stale bread into the back of his automobile and opening the door on the left-hand side.

  “Hop in, Della.”

  Della Street, with a flash of legs and a flounce of skirts, slid across the seat. The officer in Diana Regis’ apartment leaned far out of the window. His face was dark with anger.

  “Hey, you!” he shouted. “Come back here with that or … ”

  Mason slid the car into gear, stepped on the throttle. With a smooth rush of powerful acceleration the car shot down the street.

  Mason turned to Della Street and grinned. “That,” he announced, “makes it a lot better.”

  “You mean it makes it a lot worse.”

  “Why?”

  “That officer recognized you. He also got your license number. He’ll make Modena go back upstairs and Modena will tell all about you paying him to——”

  “Collect the garbage,” Mason interposed.

  “But you posed as an officer. The guard in the apartment thought a Sergeant … ”

  “No. The name was Sarg.”

  “That’s an assumed name.”

  “Right. A man can use a fictitious name whenever he wants, just so he doesn’t impersonate someone.”

  “But you got the evidence.”

  “I received a loaf of bread they had thrown away.”

  Della Street sighed resignedly. “Well, I guess I can leave it to you to get out of this one. You’ve always wriggled your way out of all the others, but this one seems particularly brazen.”

  “That’s what makes it so nice—all open and aboveboard. Get that bread, Della, and see if the diary’s still there.”

  Della twisted around over the back of the front seat, retrieved the loaf of bread, pulled out the plug she had inserted, took out a flexible leather-covered diary which had been rolled into a tight cylinder.

  Mason grinned at her. “Luck’s turning, Della.”

  “So far,” she said.

  “It’s far enough. A man can’t ask Fortune to give him any more than a break. The rest is up to him.”

  “Won’t Sergeant Holcomb try something like he did before, some strong arm stuff?”

  “Perhaps. It won’t do him any good.”

  “Why?”

  Mason said, “Because we’re not going anywhere near the office. We’re going to run for cover. We’re going to go over that diary page by page. Then we’re going to put it in an envelope and mail it to you at your apartment. And by the time Holcomb finds out where the diary is, the show will be over.”

  Della Street said, “That’s going to be an awful slap in the face to Sergeant Holcomb.”

  Mason grinned. “Please don’t make me bust out crying, Della.”

  Chapter 16

  IN the lobby of one of the small outlying hotels that fringed the main metropolitan district, Mason and Della Street settled down in adjoining chairs. They were, they had explained to the clerk, waiting for a friend.

  Mason took the leather-bound diary from his pocket, opened it and held it on the right hand arm of his chair. Della Street leaned over and together they read the events which had been chronicled by a girl who was now dead.

  The diary started back some five years ago, started with a romantic attachment which had quite evidently tinged the writer’s outlook with the rosy glow of optimism. There were entries every few days here, entries that were the outpourings of a girl in love.

  Mason hastily skimmed through these pages, although Della, her eye caught now and then by some statement which attracted her, gave at times a reluctant consent to the turning of the pages.

  Then there came days of doubt, then disillusionment, times when the history of a week or ten days at a time was lumped together in one, two or three line entries, days of apprehension, of suffering, of worry.

  Then Mildred Danville met Helen Bartsler. And the diary faithfully chronicled the strange relationship which had sprung up between the two women, a relationship so strange that it seemed incredible.

  Helen Bartsler was a widow, deprived of her husband whom she loved, deprived of any companionship with her husband’s father who was embittered, cynical and regarded his daughter- in-law as a gold digger who had ensnared his son. Mildred Danville was a disillusioned woman who was faced with motherhood.

  Helen had commented on the strange dictates of society. Had the child been hers, it would be able to hold up its head as the offspring of a hero. As the child of Mildred Danville, the infant would always be branded with a stigma.

  It seemed but a step for the women to change identities. They were of the same age, height, weight, general appearance. It remained only for Mildred in a consultation with a reputable doctor to give the name of Mrs. Robert Bartsler, to show, casually, the marriage certificate. Later on when the physician signed a birth certificate he had no hesitancy in complying with the formalities which made the child appear to be the son of Robert Bartsler, deceased, and Helen Chister Bartsler.

  At the time Mildred had intended that the infant would be released for adoption, but, because of the switch in identities, there had been no hurry—and the tiny hands had gripped the hearts of these two lonely, disillusioned women. They had put off releasing the child for adoption until both came to realize such a step could never be taken.

  Then, later, came a measure of friction, the companionship of misery came to an end. Each woman began living her separate life, and Mildred Danville came to see Helen Bartsler in a different light.

  Gradually the entries in the diary changed until finally a disillusioned Mildred Danville had penned the lines which gave her final, accurate appraisal of Helen Bartsler, a cold, calculating, selfish and vengeful woman whose initial generosity had now become a part of some sinister campaign designed to “get even” with the man she had come to hate—Jason Bartsler.

  Both Mason and Della Street were now reading with absorbed interest.

  Mildred Danville, it seemed, had acquired something of a philosophy about life. She had acquired it the hard way, because life had left her no alternative; but acquire it she did, and this hard-won philosophy came to her aid at the time when Helen Bartsler secreted Mildred’s child, refused to tell Mildred where the child was or what her plans were in connection with it.

  Mildred had gone to a lawyer, and the lawyer had advised her that she didn’t have a legal leg to stand on, and Mason, reading this entry, said in a low voice aside to Della Street, “Quite evidently the lawyer didn’t believe her, thought the whole thing a fabrication.”

  “Well, you can’t blame him,” Della Street said. “Mildred had deliberately given Helen Bartsler every insignia of title—if that’s the way you can talk about a baby,” she added with a little laugh. “But isn’t it tragic, Chief? Think of this mother who has been through so much, and now finds that the companionship of her baby is denied to her.”

  Mason nodded, said, “Let’s take a look at the last entries. Those are the ones that may throw some fight on what happened.”

  “Oh Chief, let’s not skip what’s in between. Let’s——”

  Mason turned the pages rapidly, shook his head. “We can’t tell when Sergeant Holcomb will start his counterattack,” he said. “Let’s find out what we can about the events that led up to the murder.”

  “Chief, shouldn’t we find out where she met Diana and—well, just check up on that trouble of Diana’s?”

  “Good idea,” Mason said. “Let’s see. That was about two years ago, wasn’t it?”

  The lawyer skimmed through the pages, pausing here and there for a selection then said, “Here it is.”

  The diary told of meeting Diana, and sketched a word picture at that time of a harassed, worried girl fleeing from something which couldn’t be left behind. It mentioned Diana’s true name, and something about the murder of a husband.

  “Good heavens,” Mason ejaculated. “I remember that case! The wife was under suspicion for some time. They never arrested her, but police had her in for questioning a dozen times. It was a San Francisco case—never has been solved, even yet. So that’s the thing that’s been hanging over Diana’s head. Holcomb would literally crucify her with that.”

  Mason turned back to the diary, read how Diana had turned to Mildred Danville, an old friend, seeking some sanctuary from the prying eyes of the public, trying to forget and, in turn, to be forgotten. It was Mildred’s suggestion that Diana should take an entirely new name and a new environment. By that time Mildred Danville was a radio actress. She thought Diana’s voice was sufficiently good to make her a living in radio, introduced her at the studio, helped pick up small parts for her.

  “Well,” Mason said, “there it is in black and white. Once Sergeant Holcomb gets hold of that, he’ll feed it out to the newspapers, and Diana won’t stand a chance in the world.”

  “Can they introduce that other case as evidence?” Della asked.

  “They won’t have to. The newspaper publicity will crucify the girl before she ever gets near a jury.”