“To hell with them is right,” Della Street said, laughing. “Don’t get so worked up about it, Chief. You’re fifteen hundred miles from New Orleans now. You get your bag and I’ll get the car.”

  She flashed him a quick smile and ran toward the parking place. Mason secured his bag from a porter and was standing by the curb as she drove up. He tossed the bag in the back of the car, slid in the seat beside her and said, “Let’s make sure we aren’t wearing a tail, Della.”

  “Okay, you keep watch behind and I’ll cut around some of the side streets.”

  Mason turned so he could watch the road behind him. “How’s Vicki, Della?”

  “She bothers me, Chief.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. There’s something I can’t put my finger on.”

  “Anything more about the will?”

  Della Street said, “That will isn’t the same now as when you saw it.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “What’s different about it?”

  “At the end of the sentence,” Della Street said, “there is now a very perfect piece of punctuation, a nice round dot made with ink.”

  “How nice.”

  “Chief, what could they do in a situation like that?”

  “What could who do?”

  “Would that be forgery?”

  “Any mark that would be put on a document for the purpose of deceiving others and made after the document had been signed, would be an alteration of the document.”

  “Even a teeny-weeny dot no bigger than a fly speck?”

  “Even a dot half that big, provided it was a significant part of the document and was intended to be such.”

  “Well, it’s there now.”

  “Have you asked her about it?”

  “She said her sister put it there.”

  There was an interval of silence.

  Della Street said, “How are we coming, Chief?”

  “No one seems to be taking any undue interest in our driving, Della.”

  “How about it? Do we hit the main boulevard?”

  “Take one more swing, and then start traveling. I want to hear Vicki Braxton’s story about the period at the end of the will.”

  15

  VICTORIA BRAXTON, ATTIRED IN A NEATLY TAILORED SUIT, looking very efficient and businesslike, was waiting up for Perry Mason and Della Street in the well-furnished living room of the de luxe auto court where Della Street had registered.

  Mason lost no time with preliminaries.

  “I don’t know how much time we have,” he said, “but it may be a lot shorter than we hope for, so let’s hit the high spots.”

  “Can you tell me what happened in New Orleans?” she asked.

  Mason shook his head. “It’s too long to go into now.”

  She said, “I’d like to know. I’m very much interested in anything Nathan does.”

  “So are the police. We’ll talk about that after a while if we have time. Right now I want to know certain things.”

  “What?”

  “Exactly what happened in connection with Mrs. Bain’s death.”

  “Mr. Mason, I gave her the poison.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Nellie Conway put those tablets on the saucer. She said to me, ‘The first time Elizabeth wakes up after six o’clock in the morning she’s to have this medicine. Don’t give it to her before six but give it to her just as soon after six as she wakes up.’ ”

  “There were three tablets?”

  “Yes.”

  “Placed on a saucer by the side of the bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Well, that’s it, Mr. Mason. She wakened and I gave her the medicine. It must have been those tablets.”

  “To whom have you told this?”

  “To Miss Street and to you.”

  “Did you tell it to the officers?”

  “No, Mr. Mason, I didn’t, because at the time—well, when the officers were out there making an investigation, we were all excited, and at the time it never occurred to me that by any extreme possibility could I have been the one who administered the poison.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “What is?”

  “That you didn’t tell anyone. Don’t tell anyone, don’t mention it, don’t say anything to the police, don’t say anything to anyone.”

  “But, Mr. Mason, don’t you understand, it’s only through my testimony that they can really connect Nellie Conway with my sister’s death, and Nellie Conway, of course, is the connecting link that leads to Nathan Bain.”

  “For the moment,” Mason said, “we’ll let the police worry about their connecting links.”

  “Mr. Mason, I don’t think that’s right. I think I should tell them. Those tablets Nellie left in that saucer were poison.”

  “Don’t tell them.”

  “Will you please tell me why?”

  “No,” Mason said, “there isn’t time. Now tell me about that will.”

  “What about it?”

  “All about it. I don’t think your brother or your sister-in-law know about it.”

  “Does that make any difference?”

  “It might.”

  “Elizabeth didn’t want Georgiana—that’s Jim’s wife—to know anything about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it would have made her even more extravagant, just the idea that she’d maybe some day come into some of Elizabeth’s money.”

  “Is Georgiana that way?”

  “Terribly—and she’s always jumping at the wildest conclusions from the most trivial data. As it is now, she keeps poor Jim in debt all the time. Heaven knows how much they owe. If she knew about this will—I mean, if she had known about it—the way Elizabeth was injured and all—well, she’d have gone on another spending spree.”

  Mason digested that information thoughtfully. “Did you and Elizabeth discuss that?”

  “Yes.”

  Mason said, “That may or may not explain something.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Mason said, “There are some things about your story I don’t like.”

  “What?”

  “To begin with, when you came to my office you told me that your sister had sent you there, that you were to retain me and I was to draw a will.”

  “Well, what’s wrong with that?”

  “Then, when somebody telephoned and asked for ‘Vicki,’ you were surprised. You said only your intimates called you Vicki and no one knew you were there.”

  “Oh, you mean my brother and sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, they didn’t know I was there. Only Elizabeth knew where I was, and I knew that Elizabeth wouldn’t telephone me. But Jim knew I’d asked Nellie Conway where your office was—and he thought I might have gone up there to ask you something about her case or the settlement.

  “They were, of course, trying frantically to get me. He tried half a dozen places and then he tried your office, just on a blind chance.”

  “All right, let’s put our cards on the table. Why didn’t your brother and sister know you were there?”

  “For the very reason I’ve been telling you, Mr. Mason. They weren’t to know anything about the will. Elizabeth discussed it with me.”

  “When?”

  “When she woke up about … oh, I guess it was about five o’clock in the morning.”

  “All right. Tell me what happened.”

  “Well, you understand, she woke up first sometime about three o’clock. We all went in there and talked with her. It wasn’t much of a talk. Just greetings and generalities. She kissed us and told us how glad she was to see us.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then she went right back to sleep. We left Nellie Conway in charge and we all went into the other room to lie down for a while. I slept an hour or an hour and a half, and then I came back and told Nellie I was wide awake and could take over.”

  “Then what?”

  “That was when she put the tablets on the saucer and told me to give them to Elizabeth whenever she woke up at any time after six a.m.”

  “Where had the tablets been before then?”

  “In a little box in the pocket of her uniform—anyway, that’s where she got them when I first saw them.”

  “Why didn’t Nellie Conway leave them in the box and simply tell you that—?”

  “Apparently she was afraid I’d forget them. She took the saucer out from under the glass that had the water in it, and put the tablets right there in plain sight by the side of the bed.”

  “How far from Elizabeth?”

  “Why, right by the side of the bed. Not over … oh, a couple of feet perhaps.”

  “How far from you?”

  “I was sitting right near there. They couldn’t have been over three or four feet from me.”

  “How far from the door of the room?”

  “The door of the room was right by the stand. It wasn’t over … oh, eighteen inches or two feet from the door of the room.”

  “I just wanted to get it straight,” Mason said. “Now, what happened after that?”

  “Well, Elizabeth was sleeping. She wakened about five o’clock and that was when she started to talk with me. Then was when she made out the will.”

  “Then what?”

  “I was thinking I’d give her the medicine—I guess it was about twenty minutes to six—but she went back to sleep again. She didn’t wake up until around a quarter to seven, and then I gave her the medicine with some coffee.”

  “Tell me a little more about what happened when you were talking.”

  “She talked to me I guess for half an hour, Mr. Mason, telling me about what she’d been going through, about the fact that Nathan had been trying to kill her, that she had been talking with Nellie Conway about you, and that she wanted you to be her lawyer, that she wanted you to go out and tell Nathan Bain that he was all finished, that she intended to file suit for divorce, and that she wanted to make a will disinheriting Nathan.”

  “Did she say anything about her grounds for divorce, about what proof she had?”

  “She didn’t go into details, but she told me she had documentary proof.”

  “Documentary proof?” Mason asked sharply.

  “That’s right.”

  “She was intending to get a divorce because he’d been trying to kill her, wasn’t she?”

  “I don’t know—I presume so.”

  “And she had documentary proof?”

  “That’s what she said. I think it related to infidelity.”

  “Where did she keep it?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “go on. What happened?”

  “Well, she told me that she wanted to have you come out and prepare a will for her to sign, and she asked me to go and see you. She asked for her check book and told me it was in her purse in a bureau drawer. I brought it to her and she wrote out that check for you.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we had some discussion about the fact that she was really afraid of Nathan and she felt that before you could draw up a will and have her sign it, something might happen to her.”

  “That was rather melodramatic, wasn’t it?” Mason asked.

  “Not in the light of subsequent events,” Miss Braxton said sharply.

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  “Well, I told her I didn’t think it was necessary. I told her I could go to see you and tell you what she wanted, and that you could probably be out there before noon with a will ready for her to sign. She said that she thought it would be better to execute a will first and have Nathan know that no matter what happened she wasn’t going to let him have a cent of her money. She said she’d been thinking it over and had come to that conclusion, and that that was the thing to do.”

  “So what did she do?”

  “She took a piece of paper and wrote out that will.”

  “Let me take another look at that will.”

  “But you’ve seen it, Mr. Mason.”

  “You have it with you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  With obvious reluctance she opened her purse and handed the will to the lawyer.

  Mason looked at it carefully, then moved over to study it under the light.

  “There’s a period after the last word now,” he said.

  Victoria said nothing.

  “When you came to my office,” Mason said, “there was no period at the end of the will. I pointed that out to you.”

  “I know you did.”

  “So then you took a fountain pen and added a period,” Mason said. “In order to try and gild the lily you’ve probably put your neck in a noose. They’ll have a spectroscopic analysis made of the ink on that period. If they have any idea that—”

  “You’re thinking that they’ll show it was made with a different ink and a different fountain pen?” she asked. “Well, you don’t need to worry about that, Mr. Mason. That period was made with Elizabeth’s fountain pen and it’s the same pen that wrote the will.”

  “When did you do it?” Mason asked.

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “Who did?”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “Do you,” Mason asked, “know any more funny stories?”

  She said, “I’m going to tell you the truth, Mr. Mason. I was very much disturbed about that period not being at the end of the sentence. After you pointed it out to me, I realized that if anything happened—and then, of course, something did happen; I received word that Elizabeth had been poisoned. I dashed out there in a taxicab just as fast as I could get there, and I went right into the room. Elizabeth was very, very ill. She was suffering excruciating agony but she was conscious. I told everyone to get out and leave me alone for a few minutes, and then I said, ‘Elizabeth, Mr. Mason says you neglected to put a period at the end of that will,’ and I took the fountain pen and handed it to her.”

  “Did she reach for it?”

  “Well, I … she was very sick at the time.”

  “Did she reach to take the fountain pen when you handed it to her?”

  “I put it into her hand.”

  “And then what did you do?”

  “I held the will close to her so she could make a dot at the proper place.”

  “Did she raise her head from the pillow?”

  “No.”

  “How did she see where to make the dot then?”

  “I guided her hand.”

  “I see,” Mason said dryly.

  “But she knew what was being done.”

  “I like the way you say that,” Mason said. “In place of saying she knew what she was doing, you say that she knew what was being done.”

  “Well, she knew what she was doing, then.”

  Mason said, “You still aren’t telling me the truth about that will.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that the story you told isn’t the right story.”

  “Why, Mr. Mason, how can you say that?”

  “You’re talking to a lawyer. Let’s cut out the kid stuff and try the truth for a change.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “That will wasn’t finished when you brought it to my office, and you know it.”

  “Well, it certainly … it certainly is finished now.”

  “Why did Elizabeth Bain break off in the middle of making that will?”

  Victoria Braxton hesitated. Her eyes moved around the room as though seeking some means of escape.

  “Go ahead,” Mason said remorselessly.

  “If you must know,” she blurted, “Elizabeth was writing the will when Georgiana opened the door and looked in the room to see what she could do—that is, to see if there was any way that she could help.”

  “That’s better,” Mason said. “What happened?”

  “Elizabeth didn’t want Georgiana to know she was making a will, so she whipped the piece of paper down under the bedclothes. Georgiana asked how everything was coming and if we were getting along all right, and I told her yes, to go back and go to sleep.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then she went back into her room. Elizabeth waited a few moments, lying there with her eyes closed, and then suddenly I realized she’d gone to sleep. So I took the fountain pen from her fingers, but the will was under the bedclothes and I couldn’t find it without waking her up. I decided I’d wait until I gave her the medicine and then get the will. I thought she’d entirely finished with it, because of something she said … she’d quit writing for a good minute or two before Georgiana opened the door.”

  “And when did you get the will?”

  “Well, when I gave her the medicine, she took it with water but she wanted some coffee right after that, so I rang the bell and asked the housekeeper for some coffee. At about that time the day nurse came on and she said she’d give her the coffee. I only had time to fish the will out from under the bedclothes. Elizabeth saw what I was doing and smiled and nodded and said, ‘It’s all right, Vicki.’ So I knew that she felt she’d finished it. Now that’s the real honest-to-God truth, Mr. Mason.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “Because I was afraid you might think that … well, that you might think the will really hadn’t been finished.”

  “And no one else was in the room from the time Nellie Conway put those tablets on the saucer?”

  “No.”

  Mason said, “We’re going to drive you to the airport. I want you to take the first available plane for Honolulu. I want you to send a wire from the plane to the district attorney that certain business matters in connection with your sister’s affairs have made it necessary for you to rush to Honolulu, that you will keep in touch with him, and that he can count on your co-operation, but that there are business affairs of such serious nature that your attorney advised you to make a personal trip to Honolulu at once.”

  “But what affairs?”

  “Your sister owned property in Honolulu, didn’t she?”

  “Yes. Lots of it. We were staying at one of her cottages there. She has a whole string of them.”