“Chief!” she exclaimed in consternation.

  “What’s the matter?” Mason asked.

  “The man in the car, the dead man, was Steve Merrill! They’ve identified him through associates as being Staunton Vester Gladden, a confidence man who’s wanted for forgeries and a swindle. He’s the one who swindled Evelyn Bagby out of her little inheritance. She made a complaint against him and the police have a record of that complaint.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mason said.

  “The killing wasn’t the way Evelyn Bagby described it at all. It was deliberate murder.”

  “Indeed,” Mason said.

  “The lights weren’t on on the car when it went over the grade and several things about the condition of the car simply don’t check with Evelyn Bagby’s story.

  “Evelyn Bagby had telephoned and left that message for him shortly before noon. The police have learned that from the woman who took the message, a Ruby Inwood, who lives in the same apartment house. Merrill raised some money all right. No one knows how. He had seven thousand five hundred dollars in cash which he showed to some of his associates. He also said he’d have to buy Evelyn Bagby off, so he telephoned and made an appointment with her.”

  “An appointment?” Mason asked.

  “That’s right. She told him she worked until three o’clock in the afternoon, that she was off then until eight. She suggested that he meet her at four-thirty at a place along the road near the Crowncrest Tavern. She designated the place.”

  “Well, well,” Mason said. “The police have really been doing fast work, haven’t they?”

  “They’ve got hold of some witnesses. Drake says they’re going at it hammer and tongs.”

  “Yes, I can well imagine,” Mason told her.

  “And here’s something else. Steve Merrill had a gun. He was showing it around. He was as proud of it as could be. Apparently it was the murder weapon. It was one of those new Colt revolvers.”

  “Tut-tut!” Mason said.

  “What do you mean, Chief?”

  “Then he must have stolen it,” Mason said. “Didn’t you hear Mervyn Aldrich say—?”

  “Chief, you know that was a lie. Mervyn Aldrich was covering up for Helene Chaney. Are you going to let him get away with anything like that?”

  “It’s too early to tell,” Mason said, “but you shouldn’t accuse a reputable citizen like Mervyn Aldrich of covering up anything. What else did Drake tell you?”

  “The police are hopping mad. They’re looking for you. The city police have moved in on the case. Sergeant Holcomb of the Homicide Squad is up at the Crowncrest Tavern trying to find out where Evelyn Bagby is.

  “Joe Padena said you told her the man she shot at was dead and that she had hysterics all over the place, that he thought she went to see a doctor.

  “Holcomb is making like crazy. They have officers staked out at the entrance to your office building and they’ve been trying to pump Paul Drake. He’s worried.”

  “Well, well, well,” Mason said.

  “So you can see what’s happened, Chief. Paul Drake is all worked up about it, and he said they’ve got a dead-open-and-shut case against Evelyn Bagby; that she must have got Steve Merrill out on that road, killed him, put the pillow slip over his head, taken all the money from him, run the car over the grade, and then got in her car and driven back just as cool as a cucumber.

  “Then at the proper time she telephoned you about having found the gun, got you to suggest that she bring it to you. Then she put on that act about having been held up and all of that.”

  “So the evidence would seem to indicate,” Mason said.

  “Paul Drake is waiting on the line. He’s having kittens!”

  “Well, that’s fine,” Mason said. “Tell him we thank him for what he’s done and for him to go to bed and get a good night’s sleep.”

  Della Street regarded Mason angrily, then suddenly started laughing.

  “Now what?” Mason asked.

  She said, “You can be the damnedest, most exasperating individual in the world when you start out, and, believe me, you’re reaching an all-time high tonight.”

  With that she flounced back into the telephone booth, gave Drake Mason’s message, hung up the telephone and returned.

  She said, “You shouldn’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “Do things like that to Paul Drake. Drake had assumed that you’d be turning things upside down trying to get facts ahead of the police. He had been telephoning operatives right and left, getting them to dash up to his office so as to be available. He’d fortified himself with a lot of coffee because he thought he was going to be sitting up all night. He was sitting there all ready to spring into action, and you told him to go home and go to bed. That just about floored him. I think another shock like that and he’ll pass out of the picture for good.”

  “Oh well,” Mason said, “Paul should get a little sleep once in a while. After all, he works hard, Della, and that continual strain can do things to a man.”

  She said, “Go on, be nasty and mysterious. Don’t take me into your confidence.”

  Mason grinned. “There’s a taxi stand a few blocks down the street, Della. I’m going to drive you there. You take the taxi to your apartment. Try and get a good night’s sleep.”

  “And where are you going?”

  “Why,” Mason said, “quite naturally, I’m going up to the Crowncrest Tavern to see if I can do anything to help Sergeant Holcomb. If the police are looking for me I certainly want to co-operate.”

  Chapter 12

  Mason drove the car into the garage of the building where he had his apartment, turned the car around, said to the attendant, “Just let it stand right there, if you will, Joe. I’m going up to my apartment for just a minute.

  Mason hurried up to his apartment, grabbed two .38 caliber shells from a box of ammunition and was back to his car within a matter of minutes.

  Mason drove carefully through the streets of Hollywood, turned up the canyon road and started up the long, winding short-cut grade to the Crowncrest Tavern.

  By this time the officers had not only removed the body but had raised the automobile from the bottom of the canyon and towed it to the police laboratory to check fingerprints and prepare photographic evidence.

  There were tracks where the wrecking automobile had winched the car up the side of the hill. Empty flash bulbs scattered around near the gutter of the road indicated that newspaper photographers had been busy.

  Mason brought his car to a stop, got out in the rain.

  He walked up the road some twenty yards, took the gun from his pocket, took deliberate aim at a redwood post supporting a guardrail and pulled the trigger. He then raised the weapon so it was pointed toward a live oak tree and fired a second shot into the trunk of the tree.

  He swung the cylinder out of the gun, ejected the two empty cartridges he had fired, replaced them with two fresh cartridges from his pocket, then casually tossed the gun in the glove compartment of his car.

  He eased the car into motion and drove directly to the Crowncrest Tavern.

  Heavy rain lashed the cemented parking place, pounded on the roof of the tavern, poured down in rivulets from the eaves. Mason noticed two police cars and several newspaper cars parked around the place. There were few cars belonging to customers. Evidently Joe Padena’s complaint that people didn’t want to drive up to the tavern on a rainy night was justified.

  Mason parked his car, switched off the lights, and shut off the motor. A newspaper photographer on the inside of the Crowncrest Tavern who had been looking out through the plate-glass window, suddenly grabbed his camera and started for the door.

  A few moments later a flashlight blazed into brilliance, dazzling the lawyer. Then Sergeant Holcomb came barging out of the place like an angry bull.

  “Mason,” he said, “where the devil’s this client of yours, Evelyn Bagby?”

  Mason said, “The last I saw of her she was quite hysterical. I believe she was being taken to a doctor.”

  “What doctor?”

  “I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Bill Ferron told me that she gave you the gun with which the shooting was done.”

  “Well?” Mason asked.

  “Don’t stand there like that,” Holcomb said irritably. “You’re a lawyer. That gun is evidence. We want it. You should have turned that in to the police.”

  “Didn’t Mr. Ferron tell you that I asked him if he wanted to look at the gun and he said—?”

  “That was before he knew a murder had been committed with it.”

  By this time several of the newspaper reporters had gathered around, heedless of the rain.

  “A murder?” Mason asked.

  “You heard me,” Holcomb said. “A murder.”

  “Oh, I think you’ve completely misjudged the case,” Mason told him reassuringly. “Some man tried to hold up Miss Bagby and—”

  “Don’t tell me those fairy stories,” Holcomb roared. “Save them for the jury. Where the hell’s the gun?”

  “The gun?” Mason said, glancing toward his car, and frowning. “What you have said puts a slightly different complexion on the case, Sergeant, and—”

  “I’m not going to monkey with you,” Sergeant Holcomb said. “I know all about the gun. It’s one of the new Colt, light-weight, two-inch barrel pocket guns of .38 caliber. It has become a vital piece of evidence in the case. I’m telling you now as an officer that a murder was committed and that this gun fired the fatal shot. That makes the gun evidence. Now then, you go ahead and withhold evidence in this case and I’ll charge you with a violation of law. Are you going to produce the gun or not?”

  Mason hesitated a moment, then opened the right-hand door of the car, moved his hand toward the glove compartment, then thought better of it.

  “Now wait a minute, Sergeant,” he said, “I have no objection to producing anything that is evidence in the case, but IF I should produce any gun I certainly am not going to do it in response to an order from you to produce a gun with which a murder was committed. If you want to ask me for a weapon which, to the best of my knowledge and belief, is the same weapon which Evelyn Bagby referred to when she said that she fired two shots at random—”

  Sergeant Holcomb lowered his shoulder, caught Mason in the chest, pushed him back off balance.

  The sergeant pulled open the door of the glove compartment, reached inside, triumphantly produced the weapon, swung the cylinder open, noticed the two empty cartridges, grunted with satisfaction, and dropped the weapon into his pocket.

  Newspaper photographers, crowding in, battled for position. Flash bulbs blazed.

  One of the photographers said, “How about running through that action again, Sergeant. Let’s have a close-up of you taking the gun out of the glove compartment.”

  Sergeant Holcomb was only too willing to comply.

  Mason stood somewhat ruefully to one side until the photographers had secured their close-up pictures.

  Holcomb turned to Mason. “Now I want you to produce Evelyn Bagby.”

  “I’ll produce her as soon as her physician gives permission.”

  “That physician stuff!” Holcomb ejaculated. “That’s just a bunch of hooey! You have her staked out someplace.”

  “I’m quite certain that I don’t know where she is,” Mason said, “and I don’t think you had any right to reach in the glove compartment of my car and—”

  “Oh, bunk!” Holcomb said. “There’s no use arguing with you. I’ve got what I want anyhow.”

  He turned his back abruptly and strode into the Crowncrest Tavern.

  Mason, taking advantage of the fact that the reporters and photographers were crowding around Sergeant Holcomb, wanting close-ups of the gun, walked around his automobile, slid in the driver’s seat, started the car and was driving back down the road to Hollywood before anyone noticed that he had left.

  Chapter 13

  Mason sat by the head of the bed. Della Street re-moved the bed tray containing dishes and the remnants of a breakfast.

  Evelyn Bagby, wearing one of Della Street’s nightgowns, propped herself up in the bed and smiled at Perry Mason.

  “How are you feeling?” Mason asked. “Like a million dollars,” she said. “A little fuzzy-headed but—boy, that was a good sleep.”

  A caged parrot, excited over the influx of visitors, craned his neck trying to see everything that went on. From time to time he would say, “Poor Polly! Poor Polly! Polly want a cracker? Pretty Polly! Watch it now, Polly! Awk—awk!”

  Mason said, “You’re going to have quite a day today. You’ll have to prepare for it.”

  “Do they think that—can you tell me?”

  “I’m going to tell you,” Mason said, “and it’s going to be a jolt.”

  “What?”

  “The automobile at the bottom of the ravine contained a man who was quite dead. He’d been shot in the right side of the head. He was wearing a pillow slip with two holes cut for eyes, and the slip was held in place with a rubber band around the top of the head.”

  She nodded. “That’s just the way I remember it.”

  The parrot burst into a shrill cacophony of parrot laughter.

  “And,” Mason went on, “there was a hole in the pillow slip. According to the police laboratory technician it was not a bullet hole and that pillow slip had been put on after the man had been shot.”

  “But wouldn’t—didn’t—but that bullet hole in the side of the head, wouldn’t that have killed him instantly?”

  Mason nodded.

  “Watch it now!” the parrot screamed.

  “But he was driving the car when I saw him,” Evelyn Bagby protested.

  Mason said, “The police have other ideas. Now here’s some more. The police have identified the dead man.”

  “Who was he?”

  “His name,” Mason said, “that is, the name he was going under in Hollywood, was Steve Merrill. Evidently he was the man you knew as Staunton Vester Gladden.”

  She sat bolt upright in bed, her eyes searching Mason’s face. “Mr. Mason, you’re not joking!”

  “That would be rather a grim joke,” Mason said, and then added significantly, “On you.”

  “So that explains it,” she exclaimed.

  J “What does?”

  “Can’t you see? I had penetrated Merrill’s disguise. I had found out that he and Staunton Vester Gladden were one and the same. He had defrauded me and I had sworn out a warrant for his arrest. Heaven knows how many other people had been defrauded and had sworn out complaints against him. If they knew Gladden and Merrill were one and the same he’d be in bad. So he had to silence my lips. That’s why he telephoned and left a message that he would make a settlement. Then he waited until I got in my car and had started down the hill. Then he tried to crowd me off.”

  “And then you shot twice,” Mason said.

  She nodded.

  “And one bullet entered his head and the other went through the pillow slip.”

  “But if he was wearing a pillow slip and I had been the one who fired the shot, the same bullet would have gone through—”

  “That’s the point,” Mason said. “That’s the place where the police are going to claim that it was cold-blooded, deliberate murder; that you killed Merrill first and then went and got a pillow slip and put it over his head and made up this story of the attempt at a holdup.”

  The parrot said sympathetically, “Poor Polly, poor Polly!”

  “Why, Mr. Mason, that’s completely … that’s the craziest thing. They can’t get away with that for a minute.”

  “It would help,” Mason said, “if you could explain how it happened that the pillow slip from your bed was the one which was found on Merrill’s head.”

  The parrot said, “Watch it now, watch it now.”

  “Can you give me any more details, Mr. Mason?”

  Mason said, “Merrill had rented a Chewy from a drive-ur-self car agency. He lived in the Sternwood Apartments. Residents of that apartment house customarily parked their cars in an adjacent vacant lot.

  “Oscar Loomis had a Chevvy of the same model as the one Merrill had rented. He lived in the same apartment house. He had parked his car next to the one Merrill was driving.”

  “At four-forty Loomis came out for his car and found it gone. He notified the police. A few minutes later, Boles, who had also rented an apartment in this house, appeared and suggested to Loomis that Merrill might have switched cars by mistake. He said he’d seen Merrill drive away a few minutes earlier and that a woman was with—”

  “Boles,” she interrupted. “What was he doing out there? He was supposed to be living in Riverside.”

  “I know,” Mason said. “I had detectives look into that. I think Merrill may have staged that jewel theft to try and frame you, to get some valuable jewels, and to delay the wedding. Right at the moment I don’t know how he did it, but it would seem Boles might have been an accomplice.

  “Boles claims he hadn’t known Merrill until after the gems were stolen and that Merrill got in touch with him when he knew Boles was a witness to what had happened.

  “As a lawyer I’m very skeptical about all that. At any rate Boles and Merrill became friendly. Merrill confided in Boles, telling him about you, and about the spot he’d been put in because you’d recognized his picture.

  “But Boles has an alibi. Boles was with Loomis at twenty minutes to five. Then Ruby Inwood, a girl who lives in the apartment house, joined them. The three of them went out to dinner and were together until after eight o’clock.

  “This Ruby Inwood seems to be a play girl. She doesn’t work, but she has a fine apartment, dresses well and has men friends. Right at present she’s driving a new car which, according to rumor, was provided by some Lothario.

  “Boles seems to be in the clear on Merrill’s death, but I’m still working on the theory he may have been an accomplice in the jewel theft.

  “Now take Aldrich. He can’t furnish any witnesses as to where he was between four-thirty and seven-thirty. Irene Keith told me she’d be in, waiting for my call. I’ve had detectives checking her. She was out.