Mason was ringing for the cage just as Paul Drake and a tall rangy blonde who might have been anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-two stepped out into the corridor.

  “You remember Anita Dorset?” Drake said.

  Mason raised his hat. Della bowed and smiled.

  The elevator flashed on a red light and the heavy doors slid smoothly back.

  Going down in the elevator, Drake said tentatively, “Even a sandwich, Perry … ”

  “Got the chocolate bars?” Mason interrupted.

  Drake nodded lugubriously.

  “Eat one of them, then.”

  “I hate to do it, Perry.”

  “Why?”

  “They spoil my appetite for dinner.”

  “If you spoil it you won’t keep talking about it,” Mason told him. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Anita Dorset’s eyes were smiling tolerantly as she saw the expression on Drake’s face.

  “Chocolate repeats on me, Perry,” he protested.

  “That’s swell. You can get twice the nourishment out of one bar. Save your appetite if you’d rather, Paul. You may. be able to eat after a couple of hours.”

  Drake sighed, took four chocolate bars from his pocket, offered one to each of the others. Della Street and Anita Dorset declined. Mason took the chocolate bar, opened it and thrust a piece of chocolate into his mouth as they crossed the street to the parking place where Mason had left his car.

  “Going in your car?” Drake said.

  “Uh huh.”

  “Aw, why not go in mine?” Drake asked, pleadingly. “If you’re in a hurry you’re going to scare me to death.”

  Mason, munching on the chocolate bar, shook his head. He strode on toward the parking place. Drake lugubriously tore away the upper portion of the wrapper on a chocolate bar, started to break off a piece, then slowly put it back in his pocket. “I can stick it out another half hour,” he said. “Maybe something will turn up.”

  Mason said, “Tell you what you do, Paul. Take your car and tag along behind me. You can take Miss Dorset, and … ”

  “Nothing doing,” Drake interrupted. “I’m not going to try to follow you through traffic. If you get pinched it’s your funeral. I’m not going to have any more … ”

  “All right. Meet me out at thirty-six ninety-one Lobland Avenue. We may get out there before you do. Climb in your car and tag along behind. I may have a job for you after you get out there.”

  Drake’s face lit up. “Okay, that’ll be fine. We’ll be there within five or ten minutes of the time you get there, and … ”

  “And if you stop for a hamburger sandwich on the way,” Mason said, “I’ll never give you another case as long as you live.”

  Drake’s face fell. “The damned mind reader,” he said bitterly to Anita Dorset. “A guy can’t even entertain a thought without that big hunk of cheese prying it out of his mind.”

  Mason whipped open the door on the left-hand side of his car. Della already had the door open on the right, and she jumped into the seat with a light, graceful motion.

  Mason had the motor running almost before he had slammed his door shut, and was backing and twisting the car as Drake resignedly climbed into his own car.

  The address on Lobland Avenue proved to be a modest, neatly kept bungalow with a roomy back yard, a vine-covered porch, and an air of quiet respectability.

  Mason said, “No use waiting for Paul, Della. He’ll be plodding along at a conservative legal rate of speed. Let’s take a look, huh?”

  “You mean go in?”

  “Sure. We’ll ring the bell.”

  “And what if she says she’s … ”

  “She probably won’t be. There aren’t any lights in the window. Let’s find out if anyone’s home.”

  Mason and Della Street walked up the wide cement walk which led to the porch. The porch was fenced in so that small children could play without danger of falling downstairs.

  “Guess you were right,” Della said. “This looks like it.”

  Mason said, ringing the bell, “It’s building up a very big theory on a very small fact, but somehow I think it’s right.”

  The bell sounded distant and muffled in the interior of the house. Mason rang again, then he and Della walked around to the back yard.

  In the light which filtered in from the street lamp, they saw that the back yard had been fitted up with swings, a sand pile, a playhouse, tend an imitation sailboat some ten feet long, equipped with a little cabin and a stubby mast.

  “You were right!” Della exclaimed.

  Mason, frowning at the back yard said, “Anything unusual about this setup, Della?”

  “Only that I’d like to be a kid and get turned loose on the swing.”

  “A lot of rather neat carpentering work, isn’t it?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “That would make quite an investment if a person hired a carpenter to do it.”

  “Well, a carpenter must have done it.”

  “Yes, but perhaps a carpenter who wasn’t hired at the regular union rate. Perhaps some handy man who was a roomer, or perhaps a close friend.”

  Della nodded. “That sailboat idea,” she said, “is definitely something new. I’ve never seen one of those before. I’ll bet the kids have a great time clambering around on it and pretending they’re pirates. There’re headlights out in front. That must be Paul Drake driving up.”

  Mason and Della Street moved around to the front of the house, saw Paul Drake and Anita Dorset get out of the car.

  Mason, talking in a low voice, said, “Paul, the back yard’s full of gadgets for kids, a fine imitation sailboat, swings, and stuff of that sort. There’s a house with lighted windows over there. You and Miss Dorset go on over and see what you can find out. If Mrs. Kennard ran a professional nursery and has suddenly given up the thing, put on a song and dance. Tell the neighbor that Anita Dorset wants to operate a similar nursery, and is very much interested in the carpenter who did the carpentering work on Mrs. Kennard’s place. See what you can find out about him.”

  “Why, Perry?”

  Mason said, “I think he might know where Mrs. Kennard is.”

  Drake said, “It’s worth a try. I suppose we don’t eat until we find her for you. Come on, Anita, let’s go.”

  Mason and Della Street watched while Drake and his companion moved over to the neighbor’s house, saw the open front door shed an oblong of golden radiance as a man came to the door. They couldn’t hear the conversation, but they could hear the man turn and call to his wife, after which the couple stood in the doorway and engaged in a long low-voiced conversation, following which Anita Dorset took a notebook from her purse and jotted down some data.

  The door closed. Drake and his companion came back to join Mason and Della Street.

  “Well?” Mason asked.

  “She ran a nursery up until the twenty-sixth of last month, then she disappeared—out like a light.”

  “No explanation?” Mason asked.

  “She telephoned this neighbor, asked her to please tell all the women who brought children that the nursery was closed because the woman who ran it had been exposed to smallpox, and was being placed in quarantine; that she didn’t want to do anything about it publicly, because that would make it hard for the children to get placed in other nurseries. It sounded fishy as hell, and the neighbor woman is all worked up over it. She did what was required of her, but she’s just dying to do a little investigating and gossiping. I think we can go back there and get an earful after … Well, later on.”

  “After what?” Mason asked.

  “Oh, nothing. Just later on, sometime.”

  Mason laughed. “You meant after dinner, Paul, and nearly betrayed yourself. Okay, what have you found out about the carpenter.”

  “Man by the name of Thurston. He roomed there for a while and then went to work in an assembly plant and moved out so he would be closer to his work.”

  “Get his address?”

  “Not yet, but I can. That should be easy—unless he’s trying to cover up.”

  Mason said, “All right, Paul, get this straight and get it fast. I want you to locate this man Thurston. From him, get the present address of Mrs. J. C. Kennard who lived here at this address. It isn’t going to be easy. You’ll have to find out what the situation is and then make up a good stall that will get you the information. The minute you get that, get in touch with me. And keep Thurston sewed up so he can’t get to thinking things over, and tip Mrs. Kennard off. That’s going to be a job. It may be a tough one.”

  “Where will you be?” Drake asked.

  “I’ll be at the residence of Jason Bartsler if I’m not at the office. Ring the office first. If I’m not there, ring Jason Bartsler’s residence and say that it’s very important that you speak to me. Tell them you’re a client, and I was drawing up some papers, that you have to give me some information about those papers right away.”

  “All right,” Drake said. “Now here comes the pay-off. When do you expect us to do all of this?”

  Mason glanced at Della Street and winked. “Take your own time, Paul.”

  “What?” Drake exclaimed incredulously.

  “Sure,” Mason said, “just so you do it before dinner.”

  Chapter 18

  CARL FRETCH answered the doorbell when Mason rang at Jason Bartsler’s residence.

  “Good evening,” Mason said.

  Carl Fretch put on a suave, polished, sophisticated manner. “Good evening,” he said with a voice that was well modulated. “Was Mr. Bartsler expecting you?”

  “He should have been,” Mason said.

  Carl Fretch maintained that air of aloof detachment, that utter boredom with the routine affairs of life which went with the part he was playing with himself. And he was careful to make it clear how unimpressed he was with’ the importance of his visitors.

  “Won’t you come in?” he asked with courteous politeness, but no enthusiasm. “Just be seated for a few moments, if you will, please,” he added impersonally, and then vanished through the door into the other part of the house.

  Della Street held her hands up and flexed the fingers. She pulled back her lips so that Mason could see her teeth. “If I could only get my hands on that lad,” she said.

  Mason grinned.

  “Of all the insufferable little beasts,” Della said. “I’d just like to see him put in some position where that pose of his would be punctured. He … ”

  The door opened. “Mr. Bartsler will be glad to see you,” Carl said in the voice of one who grants a very great favor. “I explained to him,” he added self-righteously, “that it seemed to be very important.”

  “You’re so good to us,” Della Street spat at him sarcastically.

  Carl Fretch raised his eyebrows with slow affectation. “Not at all,” he said in a drawl which might have been an attempt at being a man of the world, or might have been studied insolence.

  Mason and Della Street went through the door, through the room beyond and into the library which Jason Bartsler had fitted up as an office.

  “Good evening,” Mason said.

  “Hello, Mason. How do you do, Miss Street. Sit down. What’s the cause of this visit?”

  Mason said, “I’m calling on behalf of Diana Regis.”

  “What about her?”

  “I think you can give me some help.”

  “In what?”

  “In bringing about a dismissal of this charge against her.”

  “I’m afraid not, Mason. The evidence looks pretty black. There are a few things you don’t know yet, things that I’ve learned confidentially from the prosecuting officers in connection with their questions. I’m not at liberty to divulge them, but I will say that you’re rowing upstream against a pretty swift current. I don’t think you can make it, Mason.”

  Mason offered Della Street a cigarette. Bartsler declined one and took a cigar from his humidor. Mason, in turn, declined one of Bartsler’s cigars, and lit his own and Della’s cigarette.

  Mason inhaled deeply on the cigarette, stretched his long legs out in front of him, crossed his ankles and smiled at Bartsler. He said, “A nice homey matronly heavy-set woman with a limp. What do you know about her?”

  It was plainly not a question Bartsler had anticipated. He showed surprise that seemed puzzled as he studied Mason thoughtfully.

  “Nothing.”

  “Think again.”

  “I don’t need to. I know nothing about any such woman.”

  Mason said, “Perhaps I can refresh your memory, Bartsler.”

  “I think you’d better.”

  “We’ll go back to the night Diana Regis had her experience with your stepson. When she returned in the taxicab there was a woman waiting to see you, a woman who gave her name, but Diana didn’t remember it … ”

  “Oh, wait a minute,” Bartsler said. “Now I get it. Yes, some woman who wanted to see me on a crazy mining deal.”

  Mason frowned. Bartsler’s voice had just exactly the right degree of sudden recollection. If the man was acting it was a consummate piece of acting.

  “Well,” Bartsler asked, “what do you want? What does she have to do with it?”

  “She may have a lot to do with it, Bartsler. Suppose you tell me exactly what she wanted to see you about.”

  “About a mine.”

  “Can’t we do better than that?”

  There could be no mistaking the flush which darkened Bartsler’s features, nor the anger in his eyes.

  “I don’t like your tone, and I don’t like that approach, Mason. As it happens, I’m telling you exactly what she wanted to see me about.”

  “Rather an unusual hour for a woman to call on you with reference to the sale of a mine, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s what I thought,” Bartsler said. “I couldn’t understand why Frank Glenmore let her in to see me. Of course she had a very plausible story about how she worked during the day and couldn’t possibly get in except in the evening; that she hadn’t intended to sell this mine until recently, and then she had been told that I sometimes bought up mines of this sort, and all of that stuff. But tell me, Mason, why do you think she is of any particular importance ? I take it it’s because she saw Diana Regis getting out of the taxicab and loaned Diana money with which to pay off the cab driver. There certainly can’t be any question about that, and I can’t see that it has any bearing whatever on the case. The money she advanced was returned to her.”

  Mason asked very casually, “Remember her name?”

  “Yes, it was Kennard, and she had what is known as a prospect rather than a mine. In other words, there was a showing of rather good ore, but nothing had been blocked out, and taken by and large, it certainly wasn’t the type of mining deal that I’m interested in at all.”

  Mason studied Bartsler and smoked thoughtfully. His face might have been carved from granite. “Your visitor, Mrs. J. C. Kennard, resides at thirty-six ninety-one Lobland Avenue,” he said. “Up to the date that she called on you, she had rather an interesting and somewhat unusual business. Perhaps we should call it a profession.”

  “What was it?” Bartsler asked, “and how do you happen to know so much about her?”

  Mason said, “She ran a nursery for children of various ages. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Does it!” Bartsler all but shouted. “You mean she might have been in a position to know something about my grandson? She … ”

  “There is every reason to believe that she had your grandson in her custody,” Mason went on. “And following her visit to you, she has skipped out. Now then, suppose we quit beating around the bush and … ”

  Bartsler’s hand shot out to the table, his thumb frantically jabbed a bell button. In another room could be heard the sound of a buzzer. “You’re damn right we’ll find out,” he said angrily.

  A moment later, Frank Glenmore thrust his head into the room, saw the visitors, smiled a greeting. “Good evening, Miss Street. Good evening, Mr. Mason. What was it, Jason?”

  Bartsler said, “Come in here, Frank, and sit down.”

  Something in the tone of his voice caused Glenmore to give the man a somewhat quizzical glance.

  “You remember Mrs. Kennard who called on us two or three nights ago?” Jason asked without preliminary.

  “Yes. Rather heavy set. Let’s see, I believe she had a slight limp. Her property was in that district that has been so intensively prospected of late … ”

  “What did she tell you she wanted to talk with me about?” Bartsler asked.

  Glenmore’s eyebrows elevated. “Why, about selling you her mine, of course.”

  “And you were present when she talked with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “All of the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did she talk about? What did we discuss?”

  “Why, her mine, of course. She brought samples which she showed you, and there was a chain of title, location notices and things of that sort. And … ”

  “And you were present during die entire interview?”

  “Yes.”

  “And who showed her out when she left?”

  “We both did.”

  Bartsler said to Mason, “Owing to the shortage of servants, we are just running things on a hand to mouth basis. I trust you see what I’m getting at?”

  Mason nodded.

  “May I ask what this is all about?” Glenmore asked, his tone giving every indication of puzzled curiosity.

  Bartsler said, “Mason seems to think that Mrs. Kennard might know something about my grandson.”

  “About your … What?” Glenmore asked.

  “Grandson,” Bartsler said, regarding his associate with narrowed eyes. “There is some reason to believe that several months after my son died his wife had a baby. It came out in court today.”

  “Why … why! … Good heavens, Jason, you never told me … why, that’s been almost three years! A grandson!”

  “And this grandson was concealed from me.”

  “Concealed! Couldn’t you have secured a court order?”

  “In fact, Robert’s widow denied that there ever had been a child. Only today, on the witness stand did she admit it.”