“Get me a dictating machine,” Mason said to Della Street, “and then move over that tape recorder, Della.”

  When he had the tape recording machine and the dictating machine set up, Mason said to Della Street, “Unfasten those rubber bands, read as many numbers as you can within the next ten minutes into that tape recorder. I’ll do the same thing with the dictating machine here.”

  Mason snapped off the rubber bands, picked up the microphone and dictated, “L68519985B, L65810983B, L77582344B, G78342831A, I14877664A.”

  By the time he had finished with this last number, Della Street had the tape recording machine set up and started reading numbers from twenty-dollar bills.

  For ten minutes they dictated a steady stream of numbers. Then Mason said, “We can’t hope to get through with this whole bunch of bills in any reasonable time, Miss Wainwright. After all, Mr. Theilman will be expecting you to get back and—”

  “I was thinking of that,” she interrupted impatiently. “You have enough to establish the identity of quite a few of the bills and—I think—well, I’d like to close up the suitcase and go now if I may—that is, if you think it’s all right.”

  Mason nodded, snapped the rubber bands back into place on the last package of bills he had been holding in his hand, waited until Della Street had done the same with the bills she was holding, then fitted them back into the suitcase, closed the suitcase, snapped the lock into position and turned the key.

  “You say you have a cab waiting downstairs, Miss Wainwright?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “on your way.”

  As Janice Wainwright got to her feet, Mason said, “Now, there’s one precaution I’m going to take in the interests of safety for both of us.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My secretary, Della Street, is going with you,” Mason said. “She’ll see that you go down to the Union Depot and follow instructions exactly. She’ll be in a position to swear that from the time we closed the suitcase here in the office you didn’t reopen the suitcase, that you would have had no opportunity to have taken any of the money. And to make doubly certain you won’t have opened the suitcase, I’ll keep the key.”

  For a moment Janice hesitated, as though the idea didn’t appeal to her in the least. Then she said demurely, “Very well, Mr. Mason. Anything you say. If that’s the way you think it should be done, that’s the way I want to do it.”

  “That,” Mason said, “is the way I think it should be done.” He nodded to Della Street.

  Chapter Two

  It was quarter past twelve when Della Street returned to the office.

  “Everything okay?” Mason asked.

  She circled her thumb and forefinger, indicating that everything was all right.

  “You got the suitcase in the box?” Mason asked.

  “And mailed the key.”

  “The suitcase went in there and was locked up?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “And I took occasion to do a little snooping, just to be sure. I told her I wanted to see the envelope so that in case I had to report to you I could report everything was all right. So then she suggested that I be the one to mail the envelope and I took her up on it.”

  “The envelope was sealed?”

  “Sealed, stamped, and addressed to A. B. Vidal, General Delivery. Why, Chief? Why are you so suspicious of her?”

  “I’m not exactly suspicious of her,” Mason said, “I’m distrustful of the whole set of circumstances.”

  “Why?”

  “To begin with,” Mason said, “why should this mysterious blackmailer go to all the trouble of cutting these words out of newspapers? That must have taken quite some time and quite a bit of newspaper reading.”

  “But,” Della Street said, “in that way they can’t trace him through his handwriting or typewriting.”

  “Exactly,” Mason said. “So then he goes ahead and addresses an envelope to Morley Theilman on a type-wrriter and puts his return address on it, A. B. Vidal, General Delivery. Typewriting is as distinctive as handwriting. If our blackmailer was going to take chances with a typewriter on the envelope, why didn’t he go all the way and type the message?”

  Della Street said, “I’ll bet he went into a typewriter store and asked to look at a used machine and then, while apparently testing it, addressed the envelope.”

  “Then why didn’t he go all the way and type the message on that machine as well?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “Neither do I,” Mason said.

  Della Street frowned, then said, “Isn’t it axiomatic that crooks always manage to do something that traps them?”

  “Statistics seem to so indicate,” Mason said dryly, “but it’s unusual for a man to go out of his way to trap himself. You know, he could have cut Theilman’s name and address out of a telephone directory and pasted it on the envelope. Let’s see if Paul Drake’s in his office, Della. I just want to check on a couple of aspects of this problem.”

  Della Street regarded him curiously for a moment, then placed the call to the Drake Detective Agency, which was on the same floor of the building where Mason had his offices.

  “He’s just leaving for lunch,” Della Street said.

  “Ask” him to come down, will you, Della?”

  Della Street relayed the request and a moment later walked over to open the corridor door in response to Drake’s code knock.

  Paul Drake, tall, slow-moving, with long arms and legs, grinned at Mason, turned to Della Street, said, “Hi, Beautiful,” then turned back to the lawyer. “Whatever it is, Perry, I hope it doesn’t interfere with my lunch.”

  “It probably won’t,” Mason said. “How about staking an operative out at the post office?”

  “Where at the post office?”

  “At the General Delivery window. I want to get a line on a person who picks up a letter addressed to A. B. Vidal, General Delivery.”

  “Can it wait until after lunch?” Drake asked.

  “It can, but I don’t think it should,” Mason said. “Here’s the telephone. Get an operative on the job.”

  “Well,” Drake said, “I was thinking of saving you a little money.”

  “How come?”

  “I’ve worked with the postal inspectors a couple of times,” Drake said, “and I think they’d do me a favor. They could save you the cost of one operative. You see, you can’t cover a place absolutely with one operative.

  A man can stand on his feet and lounge around only so long, and operatives, being human beings, have to powder their noses and report occasionally on the telephone.

  “Now, if it’s all right for us to take a postal inspector into our confidence, I know I can fix it up so that I could just have one man waiting outside the building where he wouldn’t attract attention and the minute anyone showed up at a window and asked for mail addressed to A. B. Vidal, he would be stalled until my man could get a signal and be on the job.” Mason nodded. “How long would it take a letter mailed in a post office box at the Union Depot to get delivered to General Delivery, Paul?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Drake said, “but I’d guess it wouldn’t take very long.”

  Mason said, “Go to lunch, then drive down to the post office, contact your friend the postal inspector, tell him that I’m working on something that I don’t fully understand. It may tie in with a postal crime and it may not. I just don’t know. We want to find out about A. B. Vidal.”

  “That’s a cinch,” Drake said. “Tell you what I’ll do, Perry. I’ll get my man on the phone and he’ll spot the letter as it comes in. He’ll call my office the minute the letter comes in and then I’ll have an operative down there and we’ll pick up Vidal. Now, after we get him, what do you want done with him?”

  “I want to find out who he is, where he goes, what he does, and everything you can about him—whether he’s driving his own car or a rented car; whether he’s using a taxi and, above all, I want to find out where I can put my finger on him in case I want him.”

  “Can do,” Drake said. “It’ll take a couple of men to do a job like that.”

  “Use a couple of men, then,” Mason said. “And telephone your friend the inspector.”

  Drake looked at his watch, said, “As a matter of fact he doesn’t go to lunch until one o’clock. I’ll give him a ring right now, take him out to lunch and get his co-operation.”

  “Remember,” Mason said, “I want to check that envelope before it’s delivered. Be sure you don’t eat so much lunch that the letter is put in the General Delivery, Vidal comes and gets it and goes out, and—”

  “Leave it to me,” Drake said. “After I’ve talked with my friend for five minutes, he’ll ring up the post office and put a stop order on the delivery.

  Regardless of when it comes in, it won’t get delivered until my men get on the job … There’s one thing, though, Perry. He’ll want to know the minute we find we’re working on something involving a violation of the postal laws.”

  “Okay,” Mason said, “we’ll go that far with him—that is, I think we will. You can tell him that the minute you know there’s been a violation of the postal laws, you’ll let him know.”

  “Meaning that you may not tell me?” Drake asked.

  “Meaning you can promise him that much,” Mason said, “and no more.”

  Drake stretched, yawned, said, “Okay. On my way, Perry. Forget about it. Everything will be okay. Tomorrow morning we’ll give you all the answers.”

  Chapter Three

  Mason, entering the office with the morning newspaper under his arm, grinned at Della Street, tossed his hat onto the bust of Blackstone which frowned austerely from the top of a filing cabinet, said, “What’s new, Della?”

  “Your friend, Janice Wainwright, would like to talk with you just as soon as you come in. She seems very upset.”

  “Oh, yes,” Mason said, “the letter. What about it? Have we a report on A. B. Vidal?”

  “We have not,” Della Street said. “Paul Drake kept two men on the job until the General Delivery window-closed, then he put them on again this morning. He’s been tipped off in confidence that the letter to A. B. Vidal is waiting in General Delivery—an envelope which apparently contains some heavy object, such as a key.”

  Mason nodded, said, “Janice leave a telephone number?”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t the office number where she works. Shall I call her?”

  “Go ahead. Let’s see what she wants.”

  A few moments later Della Street nodded to Perry Mason, who picked up the phone and said, “Yes, Miss Wainwright. This is Mason. What’s the trouble?”

  “Oh, Mr. Mason,” she said, “I’m so glad you called. Mr. Theilman seems to have disappeared. The police have been asking me questions and I just—well, I didn’t give them any answers that would help. I … I just don’t know what to do.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “steady down. Now, let’s get this thing in order. You say he’s disappeared?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well … of course I don’t know, but his wife does. She notified the police.”

  “And what caused her to notify the police?”

  “Well, he telephoned from Bakersfield last night. He’d been up there on business. He telephoned about eight o’clock and said she could expect him at eleven or eleven-thirty—just to go to bed and go to sleep, not to wait up for him. Well, when he hadn’t shown up by three, she telephoned the police and asked them to check with the highway patrol and see if there’d been any accident. The police did that and told her that there was none that involved her husband.

  “So she was very much relieved and went back to bed and went to sleep. However, at seven o’clock when he hadn’t shown up she became worried again and called the business associate with whom he had been in conference in Bakersfield.”

  “Who’s that?” Mason asked.

  “Cole B. Troy. He and Mr. Theilman have some business interest together in the vicinity of Bakersfield—some real estate deals they’re putting across.”

  “And what did Mr. Troy say?”

  “He said Mr. Theilman left about nine o’clock; that he said something about phoning Mrs. Theilman, and had made a call while they were having dinner.”

  “And then?” Mason asked.

  “Well, then Mrs. Theilman called the police again and when I opened up the office at eight this morning there was a detective there who asked me some questions about whether Mr. Theilman had any appointments this morning, whether I expected him in, and if I knew anything that could have caused him to remain away from home.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Mason said, “that’s just a little unusual. Ordinarily they’d give a wife a little reassurance and wait for a while before they did anything, or simply put out a bulletin on missing persons. Sending a detective to a man’s office isn’t exactly routine procedure. Did he say why he was there?”

  “Simply that Mr. Theilman seemed to have disappeared between Bakersfield and his home last night, and they wanted to know something about him.”

  Mason’s eyes narrowed. “A plain-clothes officer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “A detective?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “And you haven’t heard anything from Theilman?” Mason asked.

  “No.”

  “When was the last time you heard from him?”

  “Two-thirty yesterday afternoon.”

  “And what happened then?”

  “He phoned that he wouldn’t be back in the office any more, that he had to drive to Bakersfield, that he was going to be in conference with Cole Troy, that I could reach him there if anything of any great importance turned up, but he didn’t think it would. He thought everything was under control.”

  “He’d asked you about the suitcase?”

  “Oh, yes, as soon as I got back to the office.”

  “And about you leaving it in the locker?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “And he seemed to be somewhat relieved after he found out what you had done?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, you didn’t tell him anything about stopping here, or anything about that?”

  “Heavens, no! I wouldn’t let him know that for worlds—I can try to protect him, Mr. Mason, but I … well, I simply couldn’t interfere in his business affairs.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “be very, very careful that you don’t lie to any officers who ask you questions. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to tell them everything you know. Simply be careful that you don’t lie. Say that you are not in a position to discuss Mr. Theilman’s business affairs, that he left the office early yesterday, and that was the last you saw of him.

  “Now, if they ask you if anything unusual happened yesterday, tell them that Mr. Theilman’s business was frequently unusual and there were all sorts of things that happened yesterday, but they are things that you don’t feel free to discuss without his consent.

  “Now, remember that. Leave yourself a margin of safety so that if anything happens and you have to testify as to exactly what happened, you don’t make yourself out a liar. Keep in the role of a confidential secretary who is protecting the interests of her employer. You understand that?”

  “I understand, Mr. Mason.”

  “All right,” Mason told her. “If you hear anything more, ring me up, and if it’s after office hours and this office is closed, ring up the Drake Detective Agency. They have offices here in the building and Paul Drake does my work. Leave a message for Paul Drake.”

  “The Drake Detective Agency?”

  “That’s right. They have a twenty-four-hour service.”

  “Heavens, Mr. Mason, they don’t know anything about … about my coming to see you, do they?”

  “No,” Mason said. “They are doing some investigative work for me, that’s all. Now, let me ask you one more thing. Had you ever heard of A. B. Vidal before his name came up in connection with this mysterious business deal?”

  “No.”

  “Mr. Theilman had never had any dealings with him that you know of?”

  “No.”

  “All right,” Mason said. “Sit tight and be careful you don’t lie. Where are you now? The number we called isn’t the office number.”

  “I know it isn’t. After the officer called, I became panic-stricken. I was afraid to stay there in the office until I’d talked with you. So I closed up the office and hurried back to my apartment.”

  “Go back to the office,” Mason instructed. “Act as naturally as possible. Don’t lie to the police. On the other hand, don’t tell them anything about this suitcase or the letter. Tell the police you’ll need specific authorization from your boss before you tell them anything.”

  “This detective said Mrs. Theilman had said it would be all right for me to tell them anything I knew—in a business way.”

  “Are you working for Mrs. Theilman?”

  “No.”

  “All right, then. Do as I’ve told you.”

  “Yes, Mr. Mason.”

  “But don’t lie,” Mason warned again.

  Mason dropped the telephone back in the cradle, looked at Della Street thoughtfully, said, “Get Paul Drake for me, Della.”

  A few moments later Drake’s code knock sounded on the office door.

  “How’s everything coming, Paul?” Mason asked.

  “So-so,” Drake said. “We’re sitting on the deal at the post office. There’s a letter there for A. B. Vidal. I guess Della told you. I reported to her.”

  “All right,” Mason said. “What do you know about the locker system down at the Union Depot?”

  “Quite a bit,” Drake said. “Why?”

  “I want to look in a locker.”

  “That can be arranged very easily, if all you want to do is look. If you want to search anything that’s on the inside, the situation is different.”

  “You know the people that run the lockers?”

  “That’s right. They have a troubleshooter and I’ve done him a favor once or twice before.”