Mason said, “When Holcomb drives in here he’s not going to see anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you ever tried looking at something in the dark, just after half a dozen flash bulbs backed by silvered reflectors have popped into your eyes?”

  Lando said, “I’ll be damned,” and his voice held admiration. He went into the service station, and started putting through calls.

  Chapter 22

  Mason, wearing Paul Drake’s black overcoat, met the car containing Drake’s men, gave them careful instructions, and assigned them to positions as carefully as a football coach working out a play.

  From the highway came the sound of brakes as a car swung into the driveway leading to the auto court. The long antenna and red spotlight characterized it as a police car.

  Mason said, “Okay, boys, this is it.”

  The car came to a stop as Drake’s men converged on it. Flash bulbs blazed into brilliance, blinding the eyes of the driver and his passenger.

  “Hey,” Sergeant Holcomb growled, “what’s the idea?”

  “Just a picture for the press, Lieutenant Tragg,” one of the men said.

  “It ain’t Lieutenant Tragg. It’s Sergeant Holcomb. Be sure you get that name right now, will you? H-O-L-C-O-M-B.”

  “Okay, we’ve got it,” one of the men said. “How about another picture?”

  Again flashlights popped.

  Mason, taking advantage of the dazzled eyes of the officer, moved forward to stand by the running board, holding the Speed Graphic in his hand. Sergeant Holcomb reached for the ignition switch, then the dash panel switch. “Is Mason really in there?”

  One of the men said, “He’s there. We checked the register. He’s with one of Drake’s men.”

  More flashlights blazed.

  “Say, wait a minute,” Holcomb protested, “you’re making this look like the Fourth of July.”

  “Here he comes!” one of the men shouted. “He’s seen the flash bulbs and he’s breaking cover. He knows we’ve located him now.”

  “Here he is,” Holcomb said to Goshen.

  The figure which came running out of the door of the cabin, attired in a tan overcoat and holding a hat in front of his face, ran up the gravel driveway directly toward the police car.

  The photographers deployed into a semicircle. Flashlights blazed into brilliance.

  The figure hesitated, stopped, turned, put on the hat, and with the dignity of surrender strode back toward the cabin.

  Cameramen ran along beside the figure snapping more pictures. Mason remained at the side of the police car.

  “Okay,” Sergeant Holcomb growled to the man at his side, “you seen him. That’s him, ain’t it?”

  There was a silence.

  “Well?” Holcomb asked.

  “That’s him,” Goshen said.

  Sergeant Holcomb chuckled, turned on the ignition, and backed the car. “Hope those pictures turn out good,” he called out. “So long, boys.”

  As the police car drove away, Mason said to the other operatives, “All right, boys, rush back and get those pictures developed. I want each man to keep track of his own pictures he took so we can identify them.”

  Mason watched them drive away, then went back into the cabin and grinned to Lando.

  “How did I do?” Lando asked.

  “Okay,” Mason said.

  “It was a lot of action there for a minute. Those flashlights certainly do blind a man.”

  “We’ll change overcoats now,” Mason said. “This black one isn’t quite as good a fit. The tan one, I think, will be more comfortable. The car from the Blade should be here…. Let’s see what this one is.”

  Headlights shone down the long driveway, as a car approached the cabin.

  Lando went to the door and looked out.

  A man’s voice said, “We’re from the Blade. We want to interview Mr. Mason.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lando asked.

  “Oh, let them come in,” Mason said. “If they’ve located me here they’re entitled to an interview. We can’t dodge them.”

  A newspaper reporter and a photographer entered the cabin.

  “Hello, Mr. Mason,” the reporter said.

  “Hello,” Mason said, grinning.

  “You’ve been leading the cops quite a chase, haven’t you?”

  The photographer raised his camera, a flash blazed into brilliance.

  Mason said, “I’m working on a case. I’m not letting everyone know where I am, but I’m not dodging the police. In fact, the police were here not over ten minutes ago. You want another picture? Sergeant Holcomb was out here—with Goshen.”

  They wanted more pictures and then asked Mason to pose in the doorway.

  “And also coming out of the cabin,” the photographer said.

  The photographer stood in the yard. Mason opened the door, emerged from the cabin, holding his hat slightly to one side of his face.

  “That’s swell,” the photographer said. “Looks as though you’d been trying to dodge a picture and I’d slipped around to the side and got a good one.”

  The reporter said, “We’d like to know more about this case, Mr. Mason, and …”

  “Sorry, I have no comment to make on the case.”

  The reporter looked at his watch. “I guess that does it. Come on, Jack, let’s rush these pictures back and get them developed. You say Holcomb was out here?”

  “That’s right. He’ll give you details on the phone.”

  Chapter 23

  At noon the next day, Mason, working casually and unconcernedly in his office, received word that Lieutenant Tragg was once more a visitor.

  Tragg followed on the heels of Gertie as she made the announcement.

  “Pardon me for not waiting in the outer office,” Tragg said, “but you have such a habit of slipping out of doors and things, and hiding in packing cases …”

  Mason, a stack of morning papers on his desk, said irritably, “Damn it, Tragg, I don’t know how that rumor got started.”

  “Well, the Blade certainly had a scoop,” Tragg said. “Guess you had quite a time out there, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, so-so.”

  “You knew that Goshen identified you?”

  “Did he?”

  “Absolutely. He saw you walk and he saw you run.”

  Tragg settled himself comfortably in the chair. “Now look, Mason,” he said, “you have a lot at stake. Don’t let this two-timing little bitch get you into a position where your professional career is ruined.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “Well, then, come clean.”

  Mason said, “It’s just as I’ve told you, Tragg. You’re a square shooter, but there are people in the district attorney’s office who have been laying for me. They’d do anything on earth to get me.”

  “Well, they’ve got you now.”

  “Then let them prove it.”

  “They just might surprise you.”

  “On the other hand, I might surprise them. How did Sergeant Holcomb find out where I was last night?”

  “I don’t know,” Tragg said. “Frankly, that was what I wanted to ask you about. Holcomb claims it was the result of some damn fine detective work. I had an idea it might—just might, you understand, have been the result of a tipoff.”

  “The Blade had a clean scoop. You don’t suppose …”

  “No. Holcomb’s sore as hell at the Blade.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, they didn’t use pictures of him. They only had pictures of you giving an interview in the cottage after he’d left, and pictures of you coming out of the door trying to hold your hat in front of your face.”

  “I know exactly how he feels,” Mason said. “Only I don’t care about having my picture in the paper.”

  Tragg grinned. “Holcomb does.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You know damn well it’s so. He’s been all over town buying papers, and he’s intimating he made good on the job after I fell down.”

  Mason said, “That’s leading with his chin.”

  Tragg looked long and searchingly at Perry Mason. “There’s something about Holcomb’s account of that thing that doesn’t jibe.”

  “Is that particularly unusual?”

  “I’m not commenting about what he says about his detective work. I’m referring to what he says about the photographers.”

  “Oh?”

  “According to Holcomb there were photographers all over the place.”

  Mason lit a cigarette. “Well,” he said, “Sergeant Holcomb is a trained observer. He should know.”

  “But no reporters,” Tragg went on, “only photographers. Now when you stop to think of it, that’s peculiar.”

  Mason blew smoke at the ceiling.

  “Moreover, with that number of photographers every newspaper in town should have had a picture. Only the Blade carried the story.”

  “The trouble with Sergeant Holcomb,” Mason observed, his eyes following the spiral of smoke which eddied up from his cigarette, “is that he hypnotizes himself, because he always wants the facts to be his way. I don’t know whether you’ve ever noticed it, Lieutenant, but Sergeant Holcomb will get an idea, then he tries to make the facts fit that idea.”

  Tragg studied Mason with cautious, speculative eyes. He took a cigar from his pocket, bit off the end, lit the cigar, and said, “I’m sorry I can’t promise you immunity all the way through the D.A.’s office.”

  “I know,” Mason said.

  “The way things look now,” Tragg said, “they’ve already charged Lucille Barton with murder. They’ll rush her up for a preliminary, and hold everything else in abeyance.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Ready to close in on the others,” Tragg went on, “when the situation becomes a little more clarified, as it will at the preliminary hearing. You probably know you’re the one they’re laying for.”

  “I thought they’d take me in this morning,” Mason said. “In fact, I thought that was why you were coming here. I was getting my business cleaned up a bit and …”

  “There have been complicating circumstances,” Tragg said, grinning.

  “What are they?”

  “Hollister’s automobile, for one.”

  “No trace of Hollister?”

  “Not so far. It’s only due to luck we found the car. It could have stayed there for a month or two.”

  “No trace of Dudley Gates?”

  “Dudley Gates heard we were looking for him and telephoned us. He’s in Honolulu. He’d rushed over by plane on a business deal. He tells a straightforward story, but it deepens the mystery on Hollister. Gates was planning to go with Hollister on Monday afternoon, but he had to change his plans on a few minutes’ notice. He says he was supposed to go with Hollister, leaving at six o’clock Monday night, but that afternoon an urgent matter came up and he suddenly decided to fly to San Francisco, and then take a plane to Honolulu. He says he’d previously advised Hollister and Hollister had talked with him in San Francisco at about quarter of five. A check of Hollister’s phone records shows that’s right. He called Gates at the airport in San Francisco and had him paged. Gates said Hollister told him he was going to leave Santa del Barra within an hour.”

  “Very interesting,” Mason said.

  “That changes the whole setup. You can probably see it from the d.a.’s viewpoint.”

  “Anything else on Hollister’s movements that afternoon?”

  “At four-thirty Monday, when the housekeeper left the place, Hollister was just about ready to leave. His car was in the driveway. He told her six o’clock was the absolute deadline. We haven’t been able to locate him.”

  “What does the housekeeper look like?”

  “Not bad. About forty. She says he was playing around with Lucille and that Lucille had nicked him for furniture. Oriental rugs, an antique desk and a lot of other stuff.”

  “She evidently doesn’t like Lucille?”

  “Definitely not.”

  Mason nodded. “She wouldn’t. Which direction was the car headed when it was run off the grade, Lieutenant—upgrade or downgrade?”

  “It’s hard to tell from the tracks. There’s a wide place there, then the drop. The tracks are very faint and almost at right angles with the road. But the car must have been driven up from Santa del Barra.

  “Someone pulled the usual stunt of locking the car in low gear, easing it off the road over to the edge, then jerking open the hand throttle and jumping from the running board to the ground.”

  “Then, of course, you’re looking on all of the steep turns and sharp drops farther up the grade?”

  “Up the grade?”

  “That’s right. If someone had wanted to dispose of something in the car, and then wanted to dispose of the car, he’d find the place to run the car over the cliff, and he’d naturally dispose of the object after he’d located the place.”

  “Then it would be down the grade. The car must have been driven up from Santa del Barra.”

  “That’s right. The driver would first spot the place to dispose of the car.”

  Tragg thought that over.

  “But the heavy object would have to be disposed of while he still had the car.”

  Tragg arose hurriedly. “I’d better be going.”

  “Well, drop in any time,” Mason said.

  Tragg shook hands. “Thanks, I will.”

  When he had left the office Mason looked at Della Street over the circling wisp of cigarette smoke.

  She said, “You virtually promised him you’d make Sergeant Holcomb wish he hadn’t boasted about that identification, chief.”

  “Did you get that impression, Della?”

  “Well, in a way, yes.”

  “Then Tragg must have got it.”

  Della frowned as she studied Mason’s face. “He likes you, doesn’t he?—I mean personally, not officially.”

  “He should,” Mason said.

  Chapter 24

  At noon on Sunday, the ninth, Paul Drake called up Perry Mason on the unlisted telephone at the lawyer’s apartment. “News for you, Perry.”

  “Okay,” Mason said, stretching himself out luxuriously in the reclining chair, and propping the telephone to his ear, “let’s have it.”

  “They’ve discovered Hollister’s body.”

  “Where?”

  “About a mile and a half up the grade from where Hollister’s car was found.”

  “Well, well,” Mason said, “that’s very interesting.”

  “And he too had been shot in the head, but with a .45 caliber automatic.”

  “Death instantaneous I suppose?”

  “Practically.”

  “Where was the body?”

  “It had been thrown over a cliff and someone had gone down, rolled the body against the steep face of the bank and pushed dirt over it, a rather effective but very hasty burial.”

  Mason said, “Now get this, Paul. It’s important. Was there anything unusual about that body—its position?”

  “Yes. It was wrapped in canvas and trussed up with the knees pulled up across the chest, the head drawn forward, and the shoulders tied to the knees.”

  “Anything to show time?”

  “Hollister’s smashed wrist watch had stopped at 5:55. The clock on the dash of the car at 6:21. Police think Hollister must have been shot by a hitchhiker who drove the car up a side road, went through Hollister’s pockets and tied him in a bundle so he could be rolled down the cliff. Then twenty-six minutes later got rid of the car. Hollister usually carried a good roll. There wasn’t a dime in the pockets.

  “But, of course, the police aren’t at all certain. Because of his connection with Lucille Barton, they’re moving very slowly.”

  “In other words, the police are pretty badly confused?”

  “Well, they’re starting to clarify the situation. They’re filing a complaint charging Lucille Barton with murder, and they’ll hold a preliminary hearing just as soon as they can rush it through.”

  “That’s fine,” Mason said. “How did they happen to find the body, Paul?”

  “Well, Lieutenant Tragg evidently doped it out. He felt that Hollister’s car had been ditched by someone who had wanted to conceal the body of the owner, that the car had been taken up the grade from Santa del Barra, then turned around and headed back down. He felt certain the body must have been ditched above the place where the car turned around, so he found a wide place in the road where it was possible to make a turn, then started looking for steep cliffs. Starting from there, he began to look for freshly dug ground and—well, he found it—incidentally he’s taking a lot of kudos for some damn good detective work.”

  “I’m glad of that,” Mason said. “He’s certainly entitled to it. Didn’t say anything about how he happened to get that hunch, did he, Paul?”

  “No, it was just clever detective work on his part.”

  “I see,” Mason said. “And what else did they find other than the body?”

  “Nothing. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If Hollister was starting out on a trip, he’d have had …”

  “Oh, you mean baggage?”

  “Yes.”

  Drake was silent for a few seconds, then said, “It’s a good point, Perry. I don’t think there was any.”

  “Well, thanks a lot for calling, Paul. I don’t think they’ll try to arrest anyone else until after Lucille Barton’s preliminary. You should see a lot of action there, Paul.”

  “Heaven help us both if I don’t,” Drake said wearily as he hung up the telephone.

  Chapter 25

  Perry Mason, surveying the crowded courtroom, walked over to engage in a whispered conference with Paul Drake and Della Street.

  “Hamilton Burger, the district attorney, is going to take charge of the preliminary personally,” Mason said in a low voice. “That means he’s gunning for me. He …”

  The door from the judge’s chambers opened and Judge Osborn walked into the courtroom and took his place on the bench.

  “People versus Lucille Barton,” he said. “This is the time fixed for the preliminary hearing. Are you ready, gentlemen?”