“If I only had that reason which is sealing her lips, I could do it. Without that reason, I’d just be getting her in deeper than she is now. The public would think I’d given her a good story, but that she actually killed her husband in order to get the insurance.”

  “How much insurance?”

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars. Just about enough to cover the shortage in her husband’s accounts.”

  “In her favor? Or is the estate the beneficiary?”

  “She’s the beneficiary.”

  Drake said, “You’re in something of a dilemma now, Perry.”

  “Damned if I’m not,” Mason said. “The only satisfaction is that this is a preliminary hearing. If I can do something to shake the testimony of that Maynard woman I’ll know a lot better what to do by the time we get to the Superior Court.”

  “Are you going to try to have your client released on this preliminary hearing?”

  “No,” Mason said, “I’m going to let the Judge bind her over. I don’t dare put her on the stand; I don’t dare do a thing until I can get her to tell me exactly what did happen.”

  “You’re satisfied her alibi is faked?”

  “Sure, it’s faked,” Mason said. “The District Attorney has punctured that. However, I may be able to discredit that Maynard woman after we find out about the glasses. Notice that she doesn’t have any spare glasses, therefore we may be able to make a point I’m going to put on a defense just long enough to put Dr. Radcliff on the stand and see what he has to say.”

  Della Street moved up close to Mason, said, “Chief, I have one more contribution to the evidence.”

  “What?”

  “Mrs. Ingram uses the same scent her daughter does.”

  Mason digested that information. “I don’t see that it gets us anywhere, but it’s an interesting point. However, Clark Sellers says that it’s Myrtle Fargo’s handwriting on the envelope that contained the money.

  “She still swears she didn’t address that envelope with my name, send me money, or … Here comes the Judge.”

  Judge Keith returned to the Bench, said to Mason, “Any defense?”

  “Yes, Your Honor. I wish to call one witness.”

  The District Attorney’s face lighted with anticipation at the idea of an opportunity to cross-examine Mrs. Fargo, but Mason said, “Dr. Carlton B. Radcliff who is under subpoena by the defense. Will you please take the stand?”

  A choking, almost strangled cry sounded loud in the silence of the courtroom.

  Everyone turned to where Mrs. Maynard had started to get to her feet. “You can’t do that,” she shouted. “You can’t dredge out my private life and hold it up….”

  Judge Keith pounded his gavel.

  “Silence,” he roared. “Order in the court. Spectators will be silent The rights of the parties will be amply protected by respective counsel.”

  Mrs. Maynard swayed, was seized with a fit of coughing and then dropped back into her chair.

  Mason was frowning thoughtfully as he asked Dr. Radcliff the usual preliminary questions, then said, “You are a duly licensed and qualified optometrist, Doctor?”

  “I am. Yes, sir.”

  “And you are acquainted with Mrs. Newton Maynard, the witness who has recently testified?”

  “I am. Yes, sir.”

  “It is part of your business to prescribe, grind and fit lenses?”

  “It is. Yes, sir.”

  “Now did you see Mrs. Maynard on the twenty-first day of September of this year?”

  “I did not. No, sir.”

  “You did not?” Mason asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “On the twentieth?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I thought she delivered some glasses to you to be repaired?” Mason said.

  “She did. Yes, sir.”

  “When?”

  “On the twenty-second day of September.”

  “The twenty-second!” Mason exclaimed.

  Mason turned to the Judge. “I beg the indulgence of the Court. This witness is not exactly hostile, but he has refused to make statements on the ground that to do so would be betraying the interests of the patient, that he would only make such statements in answer to questions if he were subpoenaed and called to the witness stand.”

  “Very well,” Judge Keith said, leaning forward and showing his interest.

  “At what time on the twenty-second?” Mason asked.

  “At about eight o’clock in the morning.”

  “Was your place of business open at eight o’clock?”

  “No, sir, but I live over my store with a telephone extension from the store. She called me at eight o’clock and told me she had an emergency rush job and wanted to know how soon I could grind a pair of lenses.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her that I could not possibly have the lenses ground before the next day, and she asked me to have the glasses delivered to her home the moment they were ready.”

  “And this was at eight o’clock.”

  “Yes—within a minute or two. I had just started my breakfast I always eat breakfast at eight o’clock.”

  “And then she brought the glasses around to you personally?”

  “She did not. They came by messenger a few minutes later.”

  “Who was the messenger?”

  “A boy. I haven’t seen him before. He had the glasses wrapped up in a package.”

  “The new glasses were delivered to Mrs. Maynard when?”

  “On the twenty-third, as I had promised.”

  “As I understand it, then,” Mason went on triumphantly, “Mrs. Maynard had her glasses delivered to you soon after eight o’clock the morning of the twenty-second and did not receive them back until the next day. Therefore, if she didn’t carry a spare pair of glasses she couldn’t possibly have been wearing her glasses on the twenty-second. I think you may inquire, Mr. Burger.”

  “Just a minute,” the witness said. “I don’t know whether you are asking me a question, but it was not at all impossible for her to have been wearing her glasses on the twenty-second. These weren’t her glasses.”*

  “Weren’t her glasses!” Mason said, trying to conceal the disappointment in his voice.

  The District Attorney smiled broadly.

  “No, sir,” Dr. Radcliff said, “these were entirely different glasses.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. These were glasses for a person around sixty years old. They were not Mrs. Maynard’s prescription at all.”

  “Do you mean,” Mason asked, “that you know Mrs. Maynard’s prescription?”

  “I don’t know her prescription, but I know that these were not her glasses.”

  “How can you tell that if you don’t know what her prescription is?”

  “Because I can take one look at her eyes and the general construction of the glasses and tell that these are an entirely different prescription. She has the characteristic large pupil and very clear sclera, or white of eye, which is associated with shortsightedness, or myopia. These are of the opposite type of glasses and are for a person about sixty years old.”

  “You can tell a person’s age from the prescription of the glasses?”

  “Generally. You can, in fact, tell a lot about a person from his glasses. These glasses were probably for a person of Slavic descent. I would say they were for a man rather than a woman because of the nose measurement. There was rather a bulbous nose and …”

  “Will you kindly tell us,” Mason said, venting his irritation now that the triumph which had seemed in his grasp was slipping through his fingers, “how you can tell that a man was of Slavic descent simply by an inspection of his spectacles?”

  “Well, I can’t tell absolutely. I said probably,” the witness stated.

  “And what caused you to believe that he might be of Slavic descent?”

  “A great deal can be told by glasses,” Dr. Radcliff said. “There is not only the prescription of the lenses themselves, but there are the shape, style and construction of the frames. For instance, on the present glasses there was a very wide nose measurement which indicated a bulbous nose, there were very short ‘temples,’ as we call them, the side pieces holding the frame on the ears, approximately three and a half inches from the hinge to the beginning of the curve of the bow. That indicated a person with the type of skull usually found in persons of Slavic descent The average temple measurement is four, four and a half and even five inches. Other types have a greater distance from ears to eyes. Then in addition to that there were indications that the left ear was approximately half an inch higher than the right ear. Furthermore there were parallel scratches on the outside of the lenses indicating that the person who wore the glasses quite frequently took them off and placed them face downward on a desk. Ordinarily particles of grit will not scratch optical glass, but if the glasses are placed on a hard surface containing grit and particles of perhaps sand, the tendency will be for the lenses to be scratched. This is particularly true in the case of the present glasses which have an inside curvature of ten diopters giving an exceptionally deep dish, so that these glasses when placed on a table with the lenses down would be quite apt to receive scratches. The average inside curvature is six diopters.”

  “And you noticed all of these things from the glasses?”

  “Yes, sir. The glasses and the frames.”

  “Why did you take such a particular interest in them?” Mason asked.

  “Because that’s my business.”

  “And what did you do with these glasses?”

  “I replaced the lenses with fresh lenses and had them delivered by messenger on the morning of the twenty-third to Mrs. Maynard’s Los Angeles address.”

  “I guess that’s all,” Mason said.

  “That’s all,” the District Attorney announced, grinning broadly. “No questions.”

  “Any further testimony?” Judge Keith asked Mason.

  Mason shook his head. “Under the circumstances, Your Honor, we will probably not put in any further defense. We will have no objection to the Court making an order binding the defendant over. However, since it is near the hour of adjournment, I would like to have until tomorrow to give the matter consideration.”

  The District Attorney was on his feet. “We object to the matter going over for another day….”

  “I may decide tomorrow to put the defendant on the stand,” Mason interrupted.

  Hamilton Burger cleared his throat. “Under the circumstances, I will withdraw my objection. We will make no objection to an adjournment until tomorrow morning.”

  “Very well. Tomorrow at ten,” Judge Keith said. “Court’s adjourned.”

  Chapter 19

  Perry Mason, Paul Drake and Della Street sat in Mason’s office.

  “Where,” Drake asked, “do we go from here?”

  Mason, pacing the floor, said, “Hang it, Paul, we’re going at this case all backwards.”

  “How come?”

  “I’m going by what my client tells me and my client is lying—probably in order to protect her child.”

  “She’s lying about her alibi,” Della Street said. “That much is certain, but we don’t know she’s lying about …”

  “She’s lying about having sent me that money,” Mason interposed.

  Drake said, “Surely admitting that she had sent you the money wouldn’t compromise her. She’s in a position now where she needs your services. To have paid for them in advance would be all to the good so far as she’s concerned.”

  Mason shook his head impatiently and said, “That’s the trouble, Paul. We’re looking for reasons before we have the facts. Let’s try and get the facts and then we’ll learn the reasons.”

  “Well, what are the facts?”

  “The facts,” Mason said, “are all tied up in a crazy quilt of events and we’re going to have to analyze that crazy quilt in order to find out where the pieces of material came from. And when you remember that the material represents human emotions, human lives, human hates, human fears, you can begin to get an understanding of the problem.”

  “Where’s your starting point?” Della Street asked.

  Mason said, “You can start any place, but so far as we’re concerned the start was when we walked into the Golden Goose. Now let’s begin piecing together what must have happened from that time on. In the first place this woman and her husband must have been in the Golden Goose. Somebody must have pointed me out to the woman but not to the husband. I’m willing to swear Arthman Fargo had no idea who I was when I called on him the next morning pretending to be looking for a good buy in real estate.”

  “Well,” Drake said, “it must have been Pierre who pointed you out. The more we find out about Pierre the more we realize he’s tied up in something which won’t stand investigation. He’s simply disappeared into thin air. He walked out of that night club shortly after you talked with him, and he’s never been back.”

  “All right, that’s a significant fact,” Mason said. “Now when this woman telephoned me she was terrified of something.”

  Drake nodded.

  “And,” Mason went on, “a short time after I’d talked with her and immediately after Pierre had been seen talking with me, a woman who was a complete and utter stranger approached us with a story about her baby having been stolen and placed out for adoption.”

  “Well,” Drake asked, “how the devil are you trying to get any connection between those two?”

  Mason, pacing back and forth across the floor, suddenly started snapping the fingers of his right hand. “There,” he said, “is the answer. There’s the key clue that I overlooked. That has to be it.”

  “I don’t get it,” Drake said.

  Mason said excitedly, “Paul, I want to find out about that old Helen Hampton blackmail case—you know the clipping that came in the envelope. I want to get the fingerprints…. No, wait a minute, there isn’t time. We don’t even know when it happened. I’m going to have to short-cut it…. Wait a minute now, let’s think fast. Let’s get this thing where we can nail it down. We can’t afford to fumble this one. Now let’s see.”

  Mason paused in pacing the floor to stand poised, thoughtful. “Helen Hampton, Helen Hampton,” he kept repeating aloud.

  “Those spectacles,” he said almost musingly. “Mrs. Maynard almost went through the floor when I brought up the matter of those spectacles…. And Arthman Fargo’s girl friend is a girl who works at the Golden Goose and was formerly the wife of Pierre….” Again Mason snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it,” he said triumphantly. “By George, I’ve got it.”

  “What have you got?” Drake asked.

  Mason whipped a notebook from his pocket. “This is the number of Celinda Gilson’s telephone, Della. Put through a call. Now when you have her on the line I want you to make your voice sound just as excited as you can. Make it appear that you’ve been running and that you’re out of breath, that you’re frightened and trying to rush through a message. Think you can do it?”

  “I can try,” Della Street said.

  Mason said, “Get Celinda Gilson on the line. Tell her that you’re a friend of Helen Hampton; that under the guise of testing her reactions, the police have given Helen a truth serum and that she’s talking. Then hang up the telephone with a little exclamation as though someone had either caught you at the phone or was approaching the phone and you had to get out.”

  “Good grief,” Della Street said, “I should have studied to be an actress.”

  “You are, and a darned good one,” Mason told her. “Come on, let’s run through this act once for effect.”

  Della Street said, “I should have some sort of a script.”

  “Type it out if you want,” Mason told her. “You’re going to have to pour these words into the telephone. It has to sound like an emergency. You can’t falter, you can’t stumble, you’re going to have to sound frightened to death.”

  “I don’t get it,” Paul Drake said. “What the devil are you trying to get at, Mason?”

  Mason grinned. “I’m trying to get the man with the glasses.”

  Della Street ratcheted paper into the typewriter, her fingers played a tune over the keyboard. Mason stood behind her, looking over her shoulder, nodding a couple of times, then said, “That’s okay, Della.”

  Della Street whipped the paper out of the typewriter, stood over by the telephone and ran through the hastily improvised script.

  “A weak point right here,” Mason said, with his pencil in hand, leaning over the script. “It doesn’t sound quite urgent enough.”

  He crossed out a couple of words, then a whole sentence, then made one short interlineation. “Let’s try that.”

  Della Street ran through it again.

  “Perfect,” Mason said, pointing to the telephone. “Put through the call.”

  They were tense and silent as Della Street’s fingers spun the dial of the phone.

  “If they only answer,” Mason said, half under his breath, “if they only answer.”

  Abruptly Della Street said into the telephone, “Hello. Celinda Gilson? … Never mind who this is. I’m a friend of Helen Hampton, more than a friend. I share things with her. We have no secrets. Get this, get it straight. They can’t see me at the telephone. No one must know I’m telephoning. Police came to the apartment. They made an excuse, I don’t know what it was, I was out of the room. They gave Helen a hypodermic. The poor sap took it, thought it was some sort of a reaction test. It’s sodium amytal—truth serum. She’s beginning to talk. I don’t know what she’s saying, but my God, she’s certainly talking. Sounds like she’s talking in her sleep but she’s pouring out a blue streak. I thought you should know. I—oh! …” Della Street lowered her voice to a half-whisper. “I’ve got to get out of here….”

  She gently slipped the receiver back on the hook.

  “That,” Mason said, “is fine,” and walking over to the coat closet grabbed his hat and whipped out of the door.

  Chapter 20

  Mason’s knuckles tapped gently on the door of Celinda Gilson’s apartment.

  “Who is it?” she called.