Mason said, “Yes, I can see where that would make for considerable complications. It looks as though the police might be right. What’s their theory about the overturned goldfish bowl?”

  “Well,” Drake said, “the goldfish could have been in a bowl on that overturned table, and Faulkner could have upset the whole works when the shot was fired and he fell down dead.”

  Mason nodded.

  “Or,” Drake went on, “someone could have been in the room some time after the murder was committed and upset the goldfish bowl either accidentally or on purpose.”

  “Any theories about that someone?”

  “It could have been Mrs. Faulkner, who didn’t like the looks of the thing, upset the goldfish bowl, either accidentally or on purpose, then got in her car and went around the corner to wait for you to show up.”

  “But how could she have known that I was coming?”

  “As nearly as I can tell,” Drake said, “it’s the way you doped it out last night, Perry. Staunton must have given her a ring.”

  “In other words, she was in the house. She had already discovered the body. She had upset the goldfish bowl. Staunton rang up on the telephone. He wanted to talk with Faulkner. She told him Faulkner couldn’t be reached at the present moment; was there any message she could take, and Staunton told her that Sally Madison and I were on our way out there.”

  Mason got up from behind his desk, started pacing the floor restlessly. “That, of course, presupposes the fact, Paul, that there was some inducement used to make Staunton keep his mouth shut. I mean about that telephone conversation. If Faulkner died at around eight-fifteen or eight-thirty, Staunton must have learned by this time from the police or the papers that Mrs. Faulkner was there in the house with her dead husband. . . . Hang it, Paul, what are we sticking around here talking for? Why don’t we get in touch with Staunton and see what he has to say when we really start pouring it on him.”

  Drake didn’t move from his chair. “Don’t be silly, Perry.”

  “You mean the police have sewed him up?”

  “Tighter than a drum. He won’t get back into circulation until after he’s made a complete written statement and sworn to it. By that time, he’ll have sewed himself up in a sack. He won’t dare to make any statement under any circumstances that would change the statement he gave the police.”

  Once more, Mason resumed his pacing of the floor, then he said, “Put men out to watch Staunton’s house. As soon as the police let him get back into circulation, ask him one question.”

  “What question?” Drake wanted to know.

  Mason said, “Last Wednesday Faulkner took these fish out to him and told him to telephone the pet store and ask for treatment. Find out what time the pet store sent out the treatment tank.”

  Drake showed surprise. “That’s all?”

  “That’s all. There are other questions I’d like to ask him, but by the time the police get done with him, he won’t answer. So just ask him that one question. Today’s Saturday, and everything closes at noon. They’ll probably keep Gridley and Staunton sewed up until it’s too late to get any court orders. And the way things are now I don’t dare to ask for a habeas corpus on Tom Gridley.”

  The telephone rang.

  Della Street answered it, said, “It’s for you, Paul,” and handed the instrument over to Drake.

  Drake said, “Hello . . . Okay, spill it . . . Right . . . You sure? . . . All right, give me everything you’ve got.”

  Drake listened for nearly two minutes while the receiver continued to give forth a continuous rattle of crackling, metallic sounds.

  At the end of that time, Drake said, “Okay, I guess there’s nothing much to do except keep a line on what’s happening and let me know.”

  He hung up and turned to Perry Mason.

  Mason took one look at the detective’s face and asked, “Is it that bad, Paul?”

  Drake nodded.

  “What is it?” Della Street asked.

  “You lose,” Drake said.

  “What?”

  Drake said, “This is confidential, Perry. The police don’t want it to leak out, but I’ve got it straight from one who knows. They took Sally Madison into custody. They found the gun and the roll of bills in her purse. They fingerprinted the gun and got some excellent latents. There were two fingerprints on top of the barrel, not complete fingerprints, but nevertheless enough to enable the police to make an identification. Tragg is nobody’s fool. He closed up the room in the Kellinger Hotel, went to work on the bathroom mirrors and the doorknobs, got fingerprints of both Della Street and Sally Madison. Then he checked the prints on the gun. He found he had half a dozen fingerprints of Sally Madison, and two of Della Street. Then, after they’d photographed the gun, they turned it over to the ballistics department and fired a test bullet and compared that with the bullet they found in Faulkner’s body. There’s no question but what the gun they took from Sally Madison’s purse was the weapon with which the murder was committed. And there’s also no question but what that weapon belonged to Tom Gridley. It was a thirty-eight caliber revolver he’d purchased six years before when he was acting as messenger for a bank. The gun is registered with the police.”

  Della Street looked up at Perry Mason in dismay.

  Mason said grimly, “All right, Paul. Put as many men on the job as are necessary to give it complete coverage. Find out where they’ve got Sally Madison held for inquiry if you can. Della, get out some blanks and fill out a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of Sally Madison.”

  Drake said, “It won’t do you any good, Perry. They’ll have wrung her dry by this time. There’s no use trying to lock the stable after the horse has been stolen.”

  “To hell with the stable,” Mason said. “There’s no time for that now. I’m going after the horse!”

  Chapter 12

  Paul Drake was back in Perry Mason’s office within five minutes after he had left. He encountered the lawyer just leaving from the exit door of his private office.

  “Where to?” Drake asked.

  “Wilfred Dixon,” Mason told him. “I’m going to check up on Dixon and on the affairs of the first Mrs. Faulkner. He is her lawyer. What’s new? Anything important?”

  Drake put his hand on Mason’s arm, drew Mason back into the inner office and closed the door. “Sometime during the night,” he said, “an attempt was made to get that goldfish tank out of the office. It sure looks as though you called the turn on that business, Perry.”

  “Just when was the attempt made?”

  “Police don’t know. For some reason or other, they never looked into the other side of the duplex house, but confined their investigations to Faulkner’s residence. Then, this morning, when Alberta Stanley, the secretary, opened up the real-estate office, she found the place something of a wreck. There was a long rubber hose which had evidently been used to siphon the water out of the empty goldfish tank. That is, it was empty of goldfish.”

  Mason nodded.

  “After the water was siphoned out, the goldfish tank had been tipped over on its side and all of the mud and gravel in the bottom had been scooped out and left in a pile on the floor.”

  Mason’s eyes narrowed. “Has it occurred to the police as yet, that someone was looking for that bullet Faulkner carried into the office?”

  “You can’t tell, Perry. It hasn’t occurred to Sergeant Dorset, but you never know what Lieutenant Tragg is working on. Dorset shoots off his mouth to the newspaper boys and tries to get publicity. Tragg is smooth as velvet. He kids the boys along and prefers results to publicity.”

  “Anything else?” Mason asked.

  Drake said, “I hate to do this, Perry.”

  “Do what?”

  “Be hanging crepe all over things, but it’s one of those cases where every bit of information you get is the kind you don’t want.”

  “Shoot,” Mason told him.

  “You remember Faulkner had a reputation of being a man who would skin the other fellow in a business deal. He kept within his own standards of honesty but he was completely ruthless.”

  Mason nodded.

  “Well, it seems that Faulkner was really anxious to get hold of that formula that Tom Gridley had developed for the treatment of gill disease. You remember he bought out Rawlins’ pet shop? That was the first move in his campaign. Then, it turns out that Tom Gridley had mixed up a batch of his paste which was to be painted on plastic panels that were to be introduced into fish tanks. The trouble with Gridley is that he gets so interested in what he’s doing and . . . well, he’s just like a doctor. He wants to effect cures and doesn’t care too much about the financial end of things.”

  “Go ahead,” Mason said.

  “Well, it seems that yesterday evening, Faulkner, who had, of course, got the combination of the safe from Rawlins, went down to the pet store, opened the safe, took out the can of paste that Gridley had mixed up and sent it to a chemist to be analyzed. Rawlins was there and tried to stop him but it was no soap.”

  “Faulkner certainly was a heel,” Mason said.

  “According to the police, it furnishes a swell motivation for a murder.”

  Mason thought the matter over and nodded his head. “Academically it’s bad. Practically it isn’t so bad.”

  “You mean the way a jury will look at it?”

  “Yes. It’s one of those things that you can play up strong to a jury. While technically it’s a motivation for murder, it’s such a flagrant example of oppression by a man who has money and power, who’s picking on a chap in his employ . . . No, Paul, that isn’t at all bad. I presume the theory of the police is that when Gridley found out about it he became terribly angry, took his gun and went up to kill Faulkner.”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  Mason smiled and said, “I don’t think Tragg will hold to that theory very long.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the evidence is against it.”

  “What do you mean? It’s Gridley’s gun, there’s no question of that.”

  “Sure, it’s Gridley’s gun,” Mason said. “But mind you this: If the circumstantial evidence means what the police think it means, Tom Gridley effected a settlement with Faulkner. He may have gone up there intending to kill him, but Faulkner gave him a check for a thousand dollars. Faulkner wouldn’t have done that unless he had reached some sort of a settlement with Gridley. Gridley certainly couldn’t have killed him before the check was made out, and would have had no reason to have killed him afterward.”

  “That’s right,” Drake said.

  “The minute Faulkner died, that check, and also the five-thousand-dollar check that Sally Madison has, weren’t worth the paper they were written on. You can’t cash a check after a man dies. I have an idea, Paul, that you’ll find Lieutenant Tragg begins to think this motive isn’t as simple as it appears to be on the surface. Hang it, if it weren’t for the evidence against Sally Madison and the fact that Della Street’s fingerprints are on that gun, we’d sit tight and tell the police to go jump in the lake. As it is, I’ve got to find out all the facts and be the first one to get the correct interpretation.”

  “Suppose Sally Madison bumped him off?”

  “Then,” Mason said, “the police have a perfect case against Della Street and me as being accessories after the fact.”

  “Think they’ll press it?”

  “You know damn well they’ll press it,” Mason said. “They’d like nothing better.”

  “Well, of course,” Drake pointed out, “you can’t blame them. You certainly do skate on thin ice, Perry. You’ve been a thorn in the flesh of the police for a long time.”

  Mason nodded. “I’ve had it coming to me once or twice,” he admitted, “but what makes me sore is to think that they’d really hang it on me in a case where we were absolutely innocent and only trying to help a young fellow who had T.B. get enough money to take treatments that would cure him. Hang it, Paul, I’m really in a mess this time, and they’ve got Della roped into it. That’s what comes of trusting a golddigger. Oh well, there’s no use conducting post-mortems. By the time the police let me get in touch with Sally Madison she’ll have been bled white. I’m getting out a writ of habeas corpus and that of course will force their hand. They’ll have to put a charge against her. But by the time they do that, they’ll have really put her through a clothes wringer. Keep working, Paul, and if you get anything new, let Della Street know. Work on this case as you’ve never worked on anything else in your life. We’re working against time and we’ve got to find out not only the evidence, but we’ve got to interpret that evidence.”

  “Did the broken goldfish tank mean anything to you?”

  “It means a lot,” Mason said.

  “How come?”

  “Suppose Sally Madison isn’t as dumb as she appears. Suppose back of that poker face of hers is a shrewd, calculating mind that isn’t missing a bet.”

  “I’ll go with you that far,” Drake said.

  “And suppose,” Mason went on, “she reasoned out what had happened to the bullet that Faulkner had taken to the office. Suppose when Faulkner gave her the key there in the café at the time he made the deal with her and told her to get Tom Gridley and go out and treat his fish, Sally Madison went out instead and used the soup ladle to get the bullet out of the tank. Then suppose she very shrewdly sold that bullet to the highest bidder.”

  “Wait a minute,” Drake said. “You’ve got something wrong there, Perry.”

  “What?”

  “According to all the evidence, those goldfish must have been gone when Sally got there. Faulkner must have given her a complete double cross on that.”

  “All right, so what?”

  “So when she went there to get the bullet, she would have known that the goldfish were gone.”

  “Not goldfish,” Mason said, “a pair of Veiltail Moor Telescopes.”

  “Okay. They’re goldfish to me.”

  “You won’t think so after you’ve seen them,” Mason said. “If Sally Madison went in there to get that bullet, the fact that the fish weren’t there wouldn’t have stopped her from getting what she was after.”

  “And then she went back and got Tom Gridley and came out the second time?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well,” Drake said, “it’s a theory, Perry. You’re giving that girl credit for an awful lot of sense.”

  Mason nodded.

  “I think you’re giving her too much credit,” Drake said.

  Mason said, “I didn’t give her enough credit for awhile. Now I’m going to make my mistakes on the other side. That girl’s batted around a bit, Paul. She knows some of the answers. She’s in love with Tom Gridley. You take a woman of that type, when she falls for a man, it’s usually a combination of a starved-mother instinct and a sex angle. My best guess is that that girl would stop at nothing. Anyway, I haven’t time to stay here and talk it over now. I’m on my way to see Dixon.”

  “Be careful,” Drake warned.

  Mason said, “I’m going to be careful with everybody from now on, Paul, but it isn’t going to slow me down any. I’m going to keep moving.”

  Mason drove to the address of Wilfred Dixon, found the house to be a rather imposing edifice of white stucco, red tile, landscaped grounds, a three-car garage and an atmosphere of quiet luxury.

  Mason had no difficulty whatever in getting an immediate audience with Wilfred Dixon, who received him in a room on the southeast side of the house, a room which was something of a cross between a den and an office, with deep leather chairs, Venetian blinds, original oils, a huge flat-topped desk, a portable bar, and a leather davenport which seemed to invite an afternoon siesta. There were three telephones on the desk, but there were no filing cases in the room, no papers visible on the desk.

  Wilfred Dixon was a short, chunky man with perfectly white hair, steel-gray eyes, and a face which was deeply tanned from the neck to the roots of the hair. His complexion indicated either considerable time spent on the golf links without a hat, or regular treatments under a quartz lamp.

  “Won’t you sit down, Mr. Mason,” Dixon invited, after giving the lawyer a cordial grip with muscular fingers. “I’ve heard a great deal about you, and naturally it’s a pleasure to meet you, although, of course, I can’t understand why you should look me up. I presume it’s connected in some rather remote way with the tragic death of Harrington Faulkner.”

  “It is,” Mason said, giving Dixon a steady look.

  Dixon met his eyes with calm assurance. “I have, of course, managed the affairs of Genevieve Faulkner for some years. She was the first wife, you know. But of course you do know.”

  And Dixon smiled, a disarming, magnetic smile.

  “You knew Harrington Faulkner personally?” Mason asked.

  “Oh yes,” Dixon said, as though stating a fact which must have been well known and perfectly obvious.

  “Talked with him occasionally?”

  “Oh yes. You see, it was a little embarrassing for Genevieve to hold business conferences with her former husband. Yet the first Mrs. Faulkner—I’ll call her Genevieve if you don’t mind, Mr. Mason—was very much interested in the business transactions of the firm.”

  “That firm made money?” Mason asked.

  “Ordinarily, Mr. Mason, I would consider that question involved Genevieve’s private affairs. But inasmuch as an investigation in connection with the Faulkner Estate will make the whole matter public, I see no reason for placing you to the inconvenience of getting your information through more devious channels. The business was immensely profitable.”

  “Isn’t it rather unusual for a real-estate business to make that much money under present conditions?”

  “Not at all. It was more than a real-estate business. The business was diversified. It administered various other businesses which had been previously used as investment outlets. Harrington Faulkner was a very good businessman, a very good businessman, indeed. Of course, he was unpopular. Personally, I didn’t approve of Mr. Faulkner’s business methods. I wouldn’t have employed them myself. I was representing Genevieve. I certainly was in no position to—well, shall we say, criticize the goose that was laying the golden eggs?”