“Well,” Mason said, “you’re going to be questioned. The police are going to want to know where you were.”

  “What time was it?”

  “Probably right around ten or half-past.”

  “Well, thank heavens I was all accounted for. I was on the bus at half-past ten.”

  “Talk with anyone?”

  She frowned thoughtfully and said, “Yes, I did. There was a very delightful gentleman, an older man, a man who seemed very well informed. I think he was in the oil business or something. He got off at Bakersfield. There was a drunk sitting next to me, and there was a woman that I talked with between Bakersfield and Fresno. I don’t know who she was. And I changed seats at Fresno and there was a woman sitting next to me who was going up to Sacramento to be a witness in her daughter’s divorce trial. I think she said her name was Olanta. It was an odd name. I’m quite certain that was it—Mrs. Olanta. But her daughter’s name was Pelham, and the case comes up for trial, that is, the divorce case, tomorrow morning. I remember she talked quite a bit about divorces and about husbands and wives and the difficulty they had getting on with each other.”

  Mason glanced at his wrist watch, turned to Della Street and said, “If we’re going to get to Sacramento in time to do any good, we’re going to have to get started.”

  Della Street nodded, moved over to the place where the driver of the rented car was standing. Mason turned back to Mrs. Fargo and her mother. “Now then,” he said, “we’re going to be in a rented car. The driver will be listening. We can’t talk there. This is our last chance. Mrs. Fargo, did you telephone me last night or not?”

  She met his eyes. “No,” she said.

  “Let’s go,” Mason said curtly.

  Myrtle said impulsively, “I didn’t telephone you last night, but if my husband is dead and if there’s any chance—well, if I’m going to have to have an alibi or prove where I’ve been or what I’ve been doing, why, I want you to represent me. I’ve heard a lot about you and … I just can’t believe, Mr. Mason, that …”

  “Now, Myrtle, you’d just better watch what you’re saying,” her mother cautioned. “You don’t need any lawyer. I don’t know what all the idea is of trying to high-pressure you into hiring some lawyer and …”

  “Madam,” Mr. Mason said, “no one is trying to high-pressure anyone into anything. I was laboring under the mistaken impression that I was representing your daughter.”

  “Don’t you know who your clients are?” Mrs. Ingram snapped.

  “Apparently not,” Mason said.

  “Well, you’ve got my daughter off that bus, and you’ve dragged me down here. You’ve got to get us back. You’ve got to do that much. Land sakes, I don’t know what a person’s rights are, but it seems to me that a body should have some sort of compensation when you come along with a lot of detectives and push people around.”

  “Quite right,” Mason said. “I will take you back to Sacramento if you’ll just walk over to this automobile.”

  They walked over to the big seven-passenger car which was waiting at the curb. Mason said to the driver, “I want to catch the bus which just left here, in Sacramento. Can we do it all right?”

  “Easy, the bus makes several stops.”

  “Okay,” Mason said. “Let’s go.”

  Mason discouraged all attempts at conversation while they drove to Sacramento. The driver, apparently curious, tried to point out various objects of local interest and quite obviously would have liked to draw out his passengers, but finally gave up his efforts when it became evident they would be fruitless.

  Several times Myrtle Fargo whispered to her mother. Mason and Della Street were tight-lipped in silence.

  At length they slowed for the outskirts of Sacramento then drew up in front of the Sacramento bus station. Mason handed the driver fifty dollars then gave him a five-dollar tip.

  It would be some ten minutes before the bus arrived.

  Mason said to Myrtle Fargo, “There’s no reason for you to wait around here. I’ll pick up my operatives. You wait for me at your mother’s house. I’ll take a taxi out.”

  Mrs. Ingram and her daughter got out of the car, moved over away from the driver. Mrs. Fargo said, “I hope you don’t think we’re ungrateful, Mr. Mason.”

  “Quite all right,” Mason said. “For a while I thought I was representing you, Mrs. Fargo. I thought I’d fix things so you’d have an alibi all ready and keep the police from barking up the wrong tree.”

  “So they could then go bark up the right tree?” Myrtle Fargo asked.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Would you like to know who did it, Mr. Mason?”

  “That might help.”

  “It was that mistress of his. Arthman could hardly wait for me to get out of the house to have her join him. Honestly, Mr. Mason, I’m broad-minded, but there are limits.”

  Mason said, “You don’t seem particularly broken up about your husband’s death.”

  “I’m not,” she said, “if you want the truth. We’ve been on the point of splitting up half a dozen times. I was coming up here to see what would happen. I thought perhaps my leaving him would bring him to his senses, instead of which he obviously regarded my departure as an opportunity to bring that girl into our home. I’ve felt for some time that he was thinking of turning everything into cash and running away with that woman. Now I know he was.”

  “Do you know who this woman is?” Mason asked.

  “Not specifically. I only know there’s a girl somewhere. A girl he’s crazy about. He was hardly home at all the last month. Always making some excuse to be out. He said it was business. That he had to see a customer and had to get listings on properties. Of course it’s just a temporary infatuation. I know he won’t be true to her. Why, last night when we were at that night club he was making eyes at the girl who takes pictures, and the way he was looking her over you’d have thought he wanted to wrap her up and take her home. He just couldn’t keep his eyes off her legs and hips and …”

  “Myrtle!” Mrs. Ingram snapped. “The way you talk in front of a strange man!”

  Mrs. Ingram turned her back, marched over to where the driver was standing by the door of the rented car, then paused to make sure that she missed none of the conversation.

  Mason said, “Regardless of how you may feel personally, it’s necessary to take the reaction of other people into consideration. You’ll be interviewed, police will be asking questions, and perhaps a newspaper reporter, depending on how much of a mystery they make out of the murder and how they want to play it up.”

  “Oh, I understand,” she said. “I’ll be decently mournful but I’m not going to overdo it, Mr. Mason. I’m not going to be a hypocrite.”

  Mason said, “I’ll be at your mother’s house within an hour, armed with names and addresses of corroborating witnesses and probably a written statement or two. I’ll do that much for you. In the meantime you might try thinking real hard about whether or not you retained me last night.”

  “Oh, but I didn’t.”

  “Try thinking some more.”

  “I will. And in the meantime if anyone asks me questions what shall I tell them?”

  Mason said, “Tell them anything you want If you’re not my client I can’t advise you.”

  “Not even as a friend?”

  “No. The friendship is too one-sided.”

  “Am I supposed to be surprised when they tell me that he’s …”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Mason said sharply. “I met you at Stockton, took you off the bus, told you that your husband was dead.”

  “If they should ask me why you did that, what shall I say?”

  “Just tell them I’m big-hearted, and now go join your mother. The bus is coming in.”

  And Mason walked away, leaving her standing, hesitating whether to follow him or join her mother.

  At length she turned, and together with her mother entered the rented car and was driven away.

  Mason felt Della Street at his side, pushing close to him. “Would you like exhibit A?” she asked.

  “What?”

  She pushed a piece of cloth into his hand. “This is Myrtle Fargo’s handkerchief. I lifted it out of her purse. It has the same identical scent as that which clung to the money in that envelope.”

  “The deuce!” Mason exclaimed. He whirled to look for Myrtle Fargo. It was too late. She had entered the car and been whisked away.

  Mason gripped Della Street’s arm with long, strong fingers, piloted her to the runway where incoming passengers were entering the bus depot.

  The austere countenance of Mason’s detective was sternly unsmiling as the man hurried ahead in the vanguard of the passengers. Catching Mason’s eye he drew him to one side.

  “You have the names of witnesses?” Mason asked.

  The man nodded.

  Mason said, “All right, let’s get some written statements from them. Do you suppose we could pick up a few of these witnesses, offer to compensate them for their time and …”

  “I have half a dozen written statements in my pocket,” the man said, “They’re pretty badly scrawled on account of the motion of the bus, but they’re all in order and signed. Here they are.”

  “That’s fine,” Mason said, pushing the statements into his side coat pocket.

  “Perhaps it isn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That bus left at eight-forty-five in the morning,” the detective said. “We found people who sat with her from Fresno. We found a woman who spoke with her at Bakersfield. We don’t find anyone that was on the bus from Los Angeles who …”

  “That’s all right,” Mason said. “She was talking with a man who got off at Fresno and …”

  “Just a minute,” the detective interrupted quietly and courteously but with an air of grim finality. “We found one woman who happened to notice her particularly and who is willing to swear that she wasn’t on the bus when it left Los Angeles, that she came tearing up in a taxicab and barely caught the bus by the skin of her teeth at Bakersfield.”

  “That woman must be mistaken.”

  “She’s the type that doesn’t make mistakes, not in her own mind.”

  “Hang it,” Mason said, “that could cause complications. Did you get a statement from this woman?”

  “Yes. It’s in the bunch I gave you.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “Los Angeles. Her address is in the report.”

  “And your office is here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me have one of your cards. Now I don’t know just what this situation is developing into, but I want you to keep your mouth shut, do you understand?”

  The man nodded.

  Mason said, “Do you bill me or do you bill the Drake Detective Agency?”

  “The Drake Detective Agency.”

  “You can trust your men?”

  “Sure, but let’s not misunderstand each other, Mr. Mason. If the police start asking me specific questions I’ll give them specific answers.”

  “Fair enough,” Mason said, “and in the meantime, I take it you didn’t give your name to any of the passengers.”

  “I’m employed to get information, not to give it.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Of course the police will learn that someone was on the bus asking questions. That is, if they make an inquiry.”

  “I understand.”

  Mason piloted Della Street back toward where the taxicabs were parked, said, “I guess we were just a little too optimistic, Della.”

  “You have those written statements?”

  “Yes.”

  Della Street said, “It might be a good plan to give them to me, then if anyone should ask you where they are you wouldn’t have them.”

  Mason silently passed them over.

  Mason gave a taxi driver the address of Mrs. Ingram’s residence. The driver pulled down his flag and started the car.

  Della Street squeezed Mason’s hand as the taxi twisted through the traffic. “After all, she denied being a client, Chief.”

  Mason nodded silently.

  It was as they pulled up in front of a neat bungalow that Della Street said quietly, “She won’t want to talk in front of her mother.”

  “That’s only half of it,” Mason said, handing the taxi driver a bill. “Come on, Della.”

  They ran up the steps to the porch. The taxi driver looked at the bill, grinned and shut off the motor to sit there, waiting. Mason thumbed the bell button.

  Mrs. Ingram came to the door. “Well, hello,” she said. “You don’t seem to have been of very much help.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought a lawyer was supposed to advise his client.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, you weren’t here when the police came. You left my daughter to face it all alone.”

  “The police have been here?”

  “They were waiting for us.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know. They drove away.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” Mason said. “I’ll talk with your daughter and …”

  Mrs. Ingram said angrily, “That’s the thing I’m trying to tell you.”

  “You mean the police took your daughter …”

  “The police took Myrtle with them. She left you this note.”

  She handed Mason a sealed envelope, on which appeared the penciled words, “PERRY MASON, ESQ.”

  Mason tore open the envelope and took out a sheet of paper on which had been written simply:

  I’m sorry, Mr. Mason. I had no idea it was going to turn out like this. I hope you’ll understand.

  Myrtle Fargo

  Mason thrust paper and envelope into his pocket. “Your daughter wrote this, Mrs. Ingram?”

  “Yes, of course. Now then, I want to know what this is all about. I want to know …”

  The telephone bell interrupted what threatened to have been a monologue.

  She said, “Just a minute,” turned on her heel and went to answer the phone. She was back in a moment, saying, “It’s long-distance calling you. They say it’s very important.”

  She led the way to the telephone, stood near by so that she could hear the conversation.

  Mason said, “Hello,” and heard Drake’s anxious voice on the other end of the line.

  “Thank the Lord I got you, Perry,” Drake said. “There’s hell to pay in that Fargo case.”

  “What about it?”

  “Police have located Myrtle Fargo’s car.”

  “Where?”

  “At the parking station at the Union Terminal depot. It just happens that the parking attendant remembers the person who parked it, or thinks he does.”

  “A good description?”

  “Better than that,” Drake said, “or worse than that, whichever you want to call it. He’s identified a photograph of Mrs. Myrtle Fargo, the dead man’s widow, as being the girl who got out of the car. He noticed her because he happened to see her walk over and try to flag a taxi. The driver told her that it was against the rules to pick passengers up in the front of the station and the witness referred her to a taxi-loading place on the south side.

  “Police picked up her trail where a male accomplice rented a plane for her saying she had to be downtown in Bakersfield before one o’clock. They had a tail wind and made good time to Bakersfield. At Bakersfield, she picked up a taxi at the airport and told the driver she simply had to catch the one-ten bus out of Bakersfield. He got her up to the bus depot just about two minutes before the bus pulled out.”

  “The police,” Mason said, “have evidently been working fast.”

  “They have. I thought I’d warn you so you wouldn’t get your feet wet.”

  “They’re wet.”

  “How wet?”

  “Just as wet as they can get,” Mason said, and hung up, to face the snapping, beady eyes of Mrs. Ingram.

  “Now then, Mr. Mason,” she said, “I’m this girl’s mother. You and I had just better have a frank talk. Just what are you going to do for my daughter?”

  “If I could get my hands on your daughter at the present time,” Mason said grimly, “I’d break her damn neck.”

  Chapter 15

  Perry Mason, tilted back in the swivel chair at his desk, read the newspaper accounts which Della Street had carefully clipped from the various papers and placed on his desk.

  The consensus seemed to be that a certain lawyer had tried to build an alibi for Myrtle Fargo and had fallen down on the job rather badly.

  Inasmuch as the police seemed to hold all the trumps in their hands, and have a perfect solution to the murder of Arthman D. Fargo, real estate operator, who had been stabbed to death in his residence at 2281 Livingdon Drive, the faces of police officers on the homicide squad were singularly free from worry.

  One newspaper account went on to state that:

  The face of a well-known trial lawyer, however, is not exactly wreathed in smiles. It is difficult to ascertain exactly what happened from the standpoint of the lawyer because he is answering all inquiries with a terse, “No comment.”

  However, it seems that this attorney was firmly convinced that Mrs. Fargo took the Greyhound bus, No. 320, leaving Los Angeles at eight-forty-five A.M. and scheduled to arrive in Sacramento at ten-five that same evening. So convinced was he that such was the case, or that such could be made to appear to be the case, that he whisked the woman off the bus at Stockton in order to drive her to Sacramento in a rented car, and placed detectives aboard the bus to gather the “evidence.”

  The detectives duly gathered the evidence. That evidence indicated that the woman had not boarded the bus in Los Angeles but had boarded it in Bakersfield at ten minutes past one in the afternoon.

  Police appropriated the lists of names and addresses taken by these private detectives.

  The murdered man left his widow, Myrtle Fargo, and a son, Stephen L. Fargo, aged ten years. The boy is in one of the better known junior preparatory schools near Sacramento, and is very popular with both pupils and faculty. He is considered highly intelligent, loyal and cooperative.

  Mrs. Fargo’s primary concern seems to be with the effect her arrest will have upon her son.