“Where’s the car now?” Della Street asked. “A lot might depend on what station the radio indicator was on.”

  “The police have the car. They’re making a belated search for fingerprints.”

  “Finding any?”

  “They’re not telling.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Now,” Mason said, “I think we’re ready to talk with Mrs Doxey. I want to find out how it happened she told Mrs Claffin about Sybil Harlan having retained me to throw a monkey wrench in the machinery.”

  “That was a mean thing to do,” Della Street said, “right when Mrs Harlan thought her husband was going to stand back of her, right when she thought Mrs Claffin had been put in her place.”

  Mason nodded.

  “Chief, suppose Mrs Harlan is telling the truth. Someone must have been concealed in that house, waiting for Lutts. After all, you know, Lutts was a pretty smooth operator, and there undoubtedly were people who didn’t like him.”

  “Let’s look at the sheer mechanics of the thing,” Mason said. “The murderer fired at least two shots; one of them went into Lutts’ chest at a distance of about eighteen to twenty inches, the other one missed him and went into the wall. What would be the sequence of those shots?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mason said, “After having shot Lutts in the heart at a distance of eighteen to twenty inches, the murderer would hardly have fired a second shot into the wall just for practice.”

  She nodded.

  “Therefore,” Mason said, “we have to assume the first shot was fired at Lutts and it missed him.”

  Again Della Street nodded.

  “So,” Mason said, “we try to reconstruct the conditions under which that first shot was fired. In all probability, Lutts had his back turned.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I think it’s logical. I don’t think his murderer would have pulled a gun, aimed and fired, if Lutts had been standing facing the murderer.”

  “Well, he certainly was facing the murderer when the second shot was fired.”

  “Exactly,” Mason said. “Which indicates that the first shot was fired when he had his back turned. Then that shot was a miss. Lutts must have whirled at the sound of the shot. He saw the murderer standing there, holding a gun. He could have done either one of two things. He could have tried to run away or he could have charged toward the murderer. Apparently he charged.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Either he charged toward the murderer or the murderer charged toward him,” Mason said. “The first shot wouldn’t have been a miss at twenty inches. Therefore, the distance between the murderer and the victim must have been shortened materially between the time the first shot was fired and the time the second shot was fired.”

  “That’s right,” Della Street said.

  “So either Lutts was charging the murderer or the murderer was charging Lutts. Now then, at eighteen to twenty inches – and mind you, that’s twenty inches from the end of the gun to the chest of the victim – Lutts would have been trying to do something to protect himself.”

  Mason took a tape measure from his pocket, said, “Get out, will you, Della? I want to try an experiment. Here, hold the gun.”

  “It’s empty?”

  “It’s empty. It was only loaded with blanks in the first place.”

  Della Street took the gun.

  “Point it at me.”

  She pointed the gun.

  “Now stretch it out just as far as you can reach with your hand.”

  She pushed the gun out at arm’s length. Mason took a steel tape measure from his pocket, measured off twenty inches.

  “See what I mean?” he said. “At this distance, I’d be knocking the gun out of your hand.”

  “Unless I jerked my hand out of the way.”

  “That would be pretty hard to do with a gun. Now, hold the gun closer to you.”

  She crooked her elbow slightly.

  “Closer,” Mason said. “Hold the gun right up against your body. Lower it to your hip. Remember, the course of the fatal bullet was upward. The murderer shot from the hip.”

  She put the gun up against her hip. Mason measured off twenty inches from the gun to his chest.

  “At this distance,” he said, “I could break your jaw before you could pull the trigger.”

  “You might break my jaw and I might pull the trigger at the same time.”

  “That,” Mason said, “is the thought I’m trying to explore.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “So now,” Mason said, “we go talk with Mrs Herbert Doxey. But first we telephone Paul Drake and find out which one of the possible suspects knew nothing about shooting a gun. Our murderer, whoever he was, must have missed that first shot at a distance of hardly more than ten feet.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Mason stopped his car in front of the California type bungalow, opened the door of the car.

  “Hold it,” Della Street said. “I’m coming across to your side.” She slid from the right side across under the steering wheel, with a tantalizing flash of shapely legs, and then was standing on the sidewalk, shaking her skirts down and placing her purse under her arm as she walked up to the door with Perry Mason.

  Mason rang the doorbell.

  The woman who answered it was red-haired, blue eyed, about thirty, with high cheekbones and a mouth which, despite an attempt to change the lines with lipstick, remained a thin straight line.

  “Good afternoon.”

  “Mrs Doxey?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Perry Mason.”

  “I thought you were. I’ve seen your picture.”

  “This is Miss Street, my secretary. May we come in for a moment?”

  “Herbert isn’t here.”

  “I wanted to talk with you.”

  “I’m rather upset these days, Mr Mason. The–”

  “I don’t want to intrude on your grief,” Mason said, “but I consider it rather important.”

  “It isn’t only my grief, it’s my housekeeping. I’ve let things go pretty much. Come in.”

  She led the way into a comfortable, spacious living-room.

  Mason looked around at the artistic furnishings appreciatively.

  “It’s big,” she said. “Too big for just us two, now that Daddy is gone. I don’t know what we’ll do. He lived with us, you know.”

  “Yes, I know,” Mason said.

  “Sit down, please.”

  After they were seated Mason said, “I’ll come directly to the point, Mrs Doxey.”

  “That’s what I like people to do.”

  “You and your father were very close?”

  “In a way. We understood each other and respected each other. Daddy didn’t confide very much in anyone.”

  “You knew that he had sold his stock in the Sylvan Glade Development Company?”

  “I know it now.”

  “And you knew it on the third, the date that Mr Lutts died?”

  She hesitated for a moment, then said, “Yes I knew it on the third.”

  “On the afternoon of the third?”

  “On the evening of the third.”

  “When?”

  “After he failed to show up for dinner – usually, he was very prompt. He wanted dinner at a certain hour – that was one of Daddy’s peculiarities. People kept telephoning about stock.”

  “Do you have servants?”

  “A servant who helps with housework – part time.”

  “And as a rule, dinner was right on time?”

  “Right to the minute.”

  “So when he didn’t show up you thought it was rather unusual?”

  “It was very unusual. I may say it was unique. It was his custom either to be here or give us ample notice by telephone.”

  “So I take it, you discussed with your husband what might have been keeping him, when he didn’t show up on the evening of the third.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it was then your husband told you about the transfer of stock?”

  “Yes.”

  “And told you I had bought the stock?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now then,” Mason said, “your husband also told you that I was acting in a representative capacity?”

  “He thought you were.”

  “And he told you the name of my client?”

  “No, he didn’t know.”

  “He didn’t know?”

  She shook her head.

  “You asked him about it?”

  “Of course. We speculated as to just who it might be. Herbert thought it might be either Cleve Rector or Ezekiel Elkins. He wouldn’t have put it past either one of them to have manipulated things in that way, so that trouble could have been stirred up.”

  “I see,” Mason said. “Eventually, you found out the identity of my client?”

  “No, I don’t know to this day who it was. I don’t think any announcement has ever been made, has it?”

  “But you’ve learned from your husband, informally and off the record, who that client is?”

  She tightened her lips and shook her head.

  “Do you know Mrs Claffin?”

  “I’ve met her.”

  “More than once?”

  “Yes.”

  “Several times?”

  “Three or four.”

  “Are you just on speaking terms, or are you close friends?”

  “Just speaking terms.”

  Mason hesitated for a moment.

  “Why are you asking me these things, Mr Mason?”

  “Because I’m trying to clarify a matter which may be of some importance.”

  She remained silent.

  “Did you at any time speculate with Mrs Claffin as to the identity of my client?”

  “No.”

  “Did you discuss with Mrs Claffin the fact that I had bought stock in the company?”

  “No, I haven’t seen her since you bought the stock.”

  Mason exchanged glances with Della Street. “Well, thank you,” he said. “I was just trying to find out something about Mrs Claffin and her attitude.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you at all, Mr Mason.”

  She was obviously waiting for him to take his departure. Abruptly, the front door opened, a cheery voice sang out, “Hello, honeybunch.”

  Mrs Doxey got up. “We have company, Herbert.”

  “I saw a car parked out front – didn’t know whether it was someone who had parked or – Why, hello, Mr Mason. What are you doing here? And Miss Street. It’s a pleasure.”

  Mason said, “I was trying to find out something about what had happened after the directors’ meeting on the third.”

  Doxey lost much of his cordiality. “My wife doesn’t know anything about the business.”

  “So she was telling me. Now, Mr Lutts evidently had a shrewd suspicion as to who my client was when I put across that stock deal.”

  “He did. He knew who it was, but he didn’t tell me. I’ve already explained that.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “That afternoon – after the directors’ meeting. We went over to the restaurant and had a couple of hamburgers. You know all that, Mason. I’ve told you all this.”

  “Did he discuss my buying that stock with you?”

  “We didn’t talk about anything else – what did you think we’d be talking about?”

  “And at that time he made some speculation as to the identity of my client?”

  “Of course. That was what interested us. That was the sixty-four dollar question, but there weren’t any answers, I was inclined to think it was Elkins. Daddy Lutts thought it had to be an outsider. Then some idea came to him, and Daddy Lutts went to make a phone call. He learned something he didn’t see fit to pass on to me.”

  “Do you know Mrs Claffin?”

  “Of course, I know Mrs Claffin.”

  “You’ve met her several times?”

  “What the hell is this – some sort of a cross-examination? I know her, yes. What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Did you ever talk with her about my buying the stock?”

  “I haven’t seen her for – Enny Harlan is her business agent, and nearly all my dealings with her were through him.”

  “How about telephone conversations?”

  “Sure, I’ve had telephone conversations with Harlan.”

  “Any speculation with him as to who my client might be?”

  “Some on his part, none on mine. He tried to pump me for information, and I told him I didn’t have any.”

  “In other words,” Mason said, “you haven’t told anyone that I was representing any particular party.”

  “I don’t like the idea of you coming in here and asking my wife a lot of questions and then asking me a lot of questions,” Doxey said.

  “You’re the secretary of the company,” Mason told him. “I’m a stockholder. I have a right to know.”

  “You don’t want to know because you’re a stockholder in the company. You want to know because you’re representing Mrs Harlan in a murder case.”

  “All right. But the fact still remains that you’re the secretary of a company in which I’m a stockholder.”

  “All right, so what.”

  “I want to know if you communicated any ideas you might have had concerning the identity of my client to Enright Harlan or to Mrs Claffin?”

  “The answer to that is no. Now, I take it that’s all you wanted to find out.”

  “That’s all,” Mason said.

  Mrs Doxey said, “Herbert, Mr Mason has been very nice and very considerate. There’s no need to be nasty about it.”

  “I’m running this,” Doxey said.

  “All right,” Mason told him. “Thank you very much.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Doxey said sarcastically, and escorted them to the door.

  “After all,” Della Street asked Mason when they were back in the car, driving to the office, “does it make any great difference?”

  “It may.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know yet, but Doxey certainly changed his attitude.”

  “Yes. You’ve made an enemy out of him now, Chief.”

  “That’s right. That’s what interests me. Why did he blow up?”

  “He just didn’t like the idea of being questioned. Just because Enright Harlan says Mrs Claffin got the information from some person doesn’t mean that that’s where she really got it.”

  Mason parked his car. He and Della took the elevator and stopped in at Drake’s office before going down the corridor to Mason’s office.

  “Hi, Paul,” Mason said. “How was La Jolla?”

  “Oh, fine,” Drake said sarcastically. “I was down there for all of fifteen minutes, I guess, and then I got your message to come back.”

  “Well,” Mason told him, “it turned out that the case I had down there wasn’t terribly important after all.”

  “Yes,” Drake said dryly, “I read about it. The taxicab driver blew up on the witness stand and couldn’t identify anyone, so there was really no need of my going in the first place.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Mason told him. “The case you were sent down to La Jolla to work on had nothing to do with the taxi driver.”

  “Oh, I know, I know,” Drake said. “Just one of those coincidences. Isn’t it funny how they’ll trap you, Perry? It wouldn’t be any trouble at all to reach an entirely erroneous conclusion in a matter of that sort, just judging from circumstantial evidence.”

  “Never mind all that,” Mason told him. “What have you all found out about the people on that list I gave you, Paul?”

  “Well,” Drake said, “at four-thirty on the afternoon of the third, Herbert Doxey was at home with his wife. He’d been there since shortly before four o’clock. He was taking a sun bath in a screen enclosure in the back yard. He’s got a sunburned back to prove it, too. Enright Harlan and Roxy Claffin were together.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, they were out at Roxy’s house. Roxy answered the telephone. She was talking on the phone a little before four o’clock and she was talking again at four-fifteen. Enright Harlan got there a little before four-thirty. They had an appointment for a little after five o’clock with an attorney named Arthur Nebitt Hagan, and they left Roxy’s place shortly after four-thirty.

  “Now then, you come to Neffs, and, believe it or not, Neffs was at the Sunbelt Detective Agency, hiring a detective to shadow certain people. It was his theory that your client had to be one of half a dozen possible individuals, and he wanted to find out who.

  “Cleve Rector was closeted with Jim Bantry of the Bantry Construction and Paving Company.”

  “At four-thirty?” Mason asked.

  “Well, there we run into a little trouble. Apparently, he left Bantry at around four o’clock. He says that he stopped in at a bar for a cocktail and then went to his office, getting there around five o’clock.”

  “You can’t verify his story as to where he was between four and five o’clock?” Mason asked.

  “Well, we know he was at the contractors at four and we know he was at his office at five, and we know the driving time between the two is about twenty-five minutes. He couldn’t have gotten into very much mischief in that time. Of course, when you come right down to it, Perry, we don’t have the type of evidence that would give him an alibi.”

  “I don’t want to give him an alibi,” Mason said. “Let him furnish his own alibi. I just want to know how much evidence he can bring to bear.”

  “Well, apparently that’s it. He gave the name of a bar where he stopped in for a cocktail. The guy who was tending bar at the time was busy. Rector’s picture doesn’t mean a damn thing to him. Rector may have been there, or he may not as far as the bartender is concerned.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “that leaves Ezekiel Elkins. What about him?”

  “Now then,” Drake said, “I’ve been saving that choice titbit until the last. There is something very, very mysterious about Ezekiel Elkins. He’s not talking.”

  “Not with anybody?”

  “Not with any of my men. We’ve used all of the known tricks on him, and he’s not talking. Incidentally, Mr Elkins has a nice black eye.”