“Well, we’ve seen it,” Drake said, “and in a few months the colour will leave that scar and you’ll hardly know it’s there.”

  “You can identify me?” she asked.

  “Well,” Drake said, smiling, “with that thumb and that appendectomy scar I think I can make a pretty good identification if I have to.”

  “That,” she said, “is all I want.”

  While she had been fumbling with her clothes, Della Street had swiftly opened Dorrie Ambler’s handbag, looked inside, snapped the bag shut and then catching Mason’s eye, nodded to him.

  “All right, Paul,” Mason said significantly, “I guess that’s all. You’re a witness. You can make the identification.”

  “Perhaps it would help,” Drake said, “if I knew what this was all about.”

  “It would help,” Dorrie Ambler said, “if I knew what it was all about. All I know is that either I have a double or I’m being groomed as a double for someone else and I’m – I’m afraid.”

  “How are you being groomed?” Mason asked.

  “I’ve been given these clothes to wear,” she said, flouncing the skirt up in such a way that it showed a neat pair of legs well up the thighs. “I’ve even been given the stockings, the shoes, skirt, jacket, blouse, underwear, everything, and told to wear them, and I’m following certain instructions.”

  Mason said, “Are there any cleaning marks on those clothes?”

  “I haven’t looked.”

  “It might be a good plan to look,” Mason said, “but it probably would take fluorescent light.”

  She said, “I – I’m doing something on my own, Mr Mason, and I’ll be back later on.”

  “Just what do you contemplate doing?” Mason asked.

  She shook her head. “You wouldn’t approve,” she said, “and therefore you wouldn’t let me do it, but I’m going to force the issue out into the open.”

  Abruptly she picked up her handbag, looked at her watch, turned to Mason and said, “I presume your secretary handles the collections.”

  Mason said to Della Street, “Make a ten-dollar charge, Della, and give Miss Ambler a receipt.”

  Della said, “This way, please,” and led the client out of the office.

  Mason and Drake exchanged glances.

  “You’ve got a man on the job?” Mason asked.

  “Jerry Nelson,” Drake said. “He’s one of the best in the business. It just happened he was in my office making a report on another assignment when Della came in with your note. I also have a second man in a car at the kerb … Boy, that’s a dish!”

  Mason nodded.

  “What do you suppose is eating her?” Drake asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mason said. “We’ll find out. Probably someone is grooming her for a double in a divorce action. Let me know just as soon as your men have a definite report.”

  “She’ll just go back to her apartment now,” Drake said.

  Mason shook his head. “I have a peculiar idea, Paul, she’s going someplace with a very definite plan of action, and she has a gun in her purse.”

  “The deuce she does!” Drake exclaimed.

  Mason nodded. “Gertie spotted it when she was in the outer office, and Della confirmed it by taking a peek in her purse while you were studying feminine anatomy.”

  “Well,” Drake said, “next time you have a client who wants to do a strip tease, be sure to call on me.”

  Della Street entered the office.

  “She’s gone?” Mason asked.

  Della Street nodded.

  “What about the gun?”

  “I didn’t have time to do more than just give it a quick look, but there aren’t any bullets in it.”

  “You mean it’s empty?” Mason asked.

  “No. The shells are in the gun. You can see them by looking down the cylinder, but there aren’t any bullets in the shells, just caps of blue paper at the end of the cartridge.”

  “Blank cartridges!” Mason exclaimed.

  “I guess that’s what they are,” Della Street said. “It’s a small pistol. It looks like a twenty-two calibre.”

  Drake gave a low whistle.

  “She gave you ten dollars and you gave her a receipt?” Mason asked Della Street.

  “For services rendered,” Della Street said. “Then she wanted to give me a hundred dollars as a retainer on future services. I told her I wasn’t authorized to accept that, that she’d have to talk with you; so she said never mind, she’d let it go, and hurried out of the office saying she had a time schedule that she had to meet.”

  “Well,” Mason said thoughtfully, “let’s hope that schedule doesn’t include a murder.”

  “We’re having her shadowed,” Paul Drake said. “She won’t lose my men. They’ll know where she goes and what she does.”

  “Of course,” Mason said thoughtfully, “she can’t commit a murder with blank cartridges, but something tells me your report from Jerry Nelson and his assistant is going to be somewhat out of the ordinary. Let me know as soon as you hear from your men, Paul.”

  Chapter Two

  It was shortly after one-thirty that afternoon when Paul Drake gave his code knock on the door of Mason’s private office.

  Mason nodded to Della Street. “Let Paul in, Della. He’ll have some news.”

  Della Street opened the door.

  Paul Drake said, “Hi, Beautiful,” and ushered a chunky, competent-looking man into the office.

  “This is Jerry Nelson, one of my operatives,” he said. “Jerry, this is Della Street, Mr Mason’s confidential secretary, and Perry Mason. Now I want you to tell these people what happened just as you told it to me.”

  Drake turned to Mason and said apologetically, “I got this over the telephone. It sounded so cockeyed I told Jerry to dash in and report personally. Now then, I’m turning him over to you all. Go ahead, Jerry.”

  Mason smiled and said, “Sit down, Nelson, and let’s have the story.”

  Nelson said, “I know you people are going to think I’m a little screwy but I’m going to tell you exactly what happened.

  “Paul Drake told me there was a woman in your office that you wanted shadowed; that I was to pick her up in the elevator; that another operative would be waiting with a car in front of the entrance; that there would be a vacant taxicab waiting just in case anything went wrong. I gathered it was an important job of tailing so I wanted to be on my toes. Drake said we weren’t to let her out of our sight no matter what happened.”

  Mason nodded.

  “Okay,” Nelson said. “This young woman left the office. She was above five feet three, somewhere in her early twenties, had chestnut hair, hazel eyes. She wore a green and brown plaid suit and a green blouse–”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Mason said, “we know all about her appearance.”

  “I know, I know,” Drake interrupted, “but get this thing straight, Perry. We want to be sure of our facts.”

  “All right, go ahead,” Mason said.

  “Well, anyway,” Nelson said, “I got aboard the elevator with this young woman. My partner was waiting out in front.

  “She wanted a cab. The cab that we were holding at the kerb had its flag down and she tried to get that. The driver pointed to his flag and she started to argue with him but just then another Yellow came along and she flagged it down.

  “I was still playing it cautious because we didn’t know what was going to happen. The only orders we had were to see that she didn’t get out of our sight, and to spare no expense – so I jumped in the cab that we had waiting at the kerb, and my buddy pulled out in his car and both of us followed the cab which had been taken by the girl.

  “What’s more, we had the number on the cab ahead and a twenty-dollar bill got my cab driver to radio in to the dispatcher and ask him where this cab was going as soon as he got a report.

  “The report came in in about two minutes. The cab driver said he was headed for the airport.

  “So both of us tagged along behind and sure enough she went right to the airport without any attempt to shake off any shadows or even paying the slightest attention to what was happening behind her.

  “Those cab drivers get pretty sharp in watching traffic and I felt the cab driver might be keeping an eye out behind, so I had my cab drop back and the other operative moved in close behind. Then after a while the other operative dropped back and my cab moved up. Between us we kept her in sight all the way.”

  “All the way where?” Mason asked.

  “To the airport.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then she just stuck around.”

  “How long?”

  “Over an hour,” the operative said. “She was waiting for something and I guess I was maybe dumb that I didn’t pick up what it was, but because I thought she might be trying something shifty I kept my eye on her and didn’t try to look around too much at the scenery.”

  “What are you getting at?” Mason said.

  “Well, I’d better tell you just the way it happened. You see, when two operatives are working on a case that way, one of them has to be in charge, and because of seniority I was the one to call the shots on this deal. I probably should have had my colleague keeping a look around the place but, as I say, I thought this babe might be trying something shifty so we were keeping our eyes on her.”

  “What happened?” Mason asked.

  “All of a sudden she jumped up, ran over to the news stand, shouted, ‘This isn’t a stick-up,’ pulled a revolver out of her handbag and fired three shots.

  “It was so darned sudden and so completely, utterly senseless that it caught me flat-footed.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Mason said. “You said that she said, ‘This isn’t a stick-up’?”

  “That’s right. I was within ten feet of her and I heard her distinctly.”

  “Go on,” Mason said. “What happened? Did you grab her?”

  “Not me. I was like everyone else. People stood there just frozen in their tracks. It was one of the darnedest sights I ever saw, just as though you had been watching a motion picture and all of a sudden the thing stopped and the picture froze on the screen.

  “One minute everybody was hurrying around, bustling here and there; people sitting waiting for planes, people buying tickets, people moving back and forth; and then wham! Everything stopped and people just stood in their tracks.”

  “And what about the young woman?”

  “The young woman didn’t stand in her tracks,” Nelson said. “She brandished the gun, whirled, and made for the ladies’ rest room.

  “Now, as far as I’m concerned there’s a brand-new crime angle. You have a lot of guards around an airport, and police on duty, but there was no police woman immediately available.

  “So here’s a babe with a gun, barricaded in the women’s rest room, and who’s going after her?”

  “You?” Mason asked, his eyes twinkling.

  “Not me,” Nelson said. “Facing a crazy woman with a gun is one thing, and facing irate women who have been disturbed in a rest room is another, and when you add the two together you’ve got too many risks for any mere man. I just stood around where I could watch the door of the rest room.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Well, a couple of cops came running up and held a conference and seemed to be as perplexed about the situation as I was. Then they evidently decided to go through with it and started for the rest room. About that time the door opened and this babe came walking out, just as cool as you please.”

  “With a gun?”

  “I’m telling you,” Nelson said, “she came out just as cool as a cucumber – just like any normal woman who had been powdering her nose and was emerging to take a look at the bulletin board and see just when her plane was scheduled to depart.”

  “What happened?” Mason asked.

  “Well, the officers hadn’t seen her when she fired the gun so they didn’t recognize her when she came out. She walked right past them and it wasn’t until one of the bystanders yelled, ‘There she is!’ that one of the officers turned.

  “By that time three or four of the bystanders were pointing their fingers and yelling, ‘That’s her! Grab her!’ and then everybody started to run.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “You’ve never seen anything like it,” Nelson said. “This woman stood there with the most utterly bewildered expression on her face, looking around to see what it was all about.

  “One of the officers came up and grabbed her and for a moment she was startled, then she was indignant and demanded to know what it was all about. Then a crowd gathered and a lot of people started talking all at once.”

  “What about the gun?” Mason asked.

  “The gun had been left in the rest room. A woman came out and handed the officer the gun. It had slid across the floor and scared this woman to death. The officers asked our woman if she’d mind if they looked in her handbag and she told them to go ahead. Naturally they couldn’t search her but they did look in her handbag. Then one of the officers opened the gun and looked at it and seemed more puzzled than ever. He said something to his companion, and the other fellow looked at the gun.

  “Now, I don’t think anyone there heard what the officers said except me. I was right up at the officer’s elbow and I heard him say, ‘They’re blanks’.”

  “How many shots were fired?” Mason asked.

  “Three.”

  “Then what?” Mason asked.

  “All of a sudden this woman smiled at the officer, said, ‘All right, let’s get it over with. I just wanted a little excitement. I wanted to see what would happen’.”

  “And she admitted firing the shots?”

  “She admitted firing the shots,” Nelson said. “Well, that was all there was to it. The officers took her into custody. They gave her an opportunity to go to Headquarters in a private police car. We tried to tag along, but you know the way the officers handle things when they are arresting a woman.”

  “What do you mean?” Mason asked.

  “They play it safe,” Nelson said. “A woman is always in a position to claim that officers made advances and all that sort of stuff, so whenever they arrest a woman they use their radio telephone to telephone Headquarters, giving the time and location, and stating that they are on their way in with a woman prisoner. Then the dispatcher notes the time and the place and then as soon as the officers get to the place where they’re booking the prisoner they check in on time and place.

  “The idea is to show that considering the distance traversed, there was absolutely no time for amorous dalliance. So when they have a woman prisoner they’re taking in, they really cover the ground.

  “They didn’t use the red light and siren but they were driving just too damned fast for us to keep up. I got my colleague and we tried our best. We followed the car for … oh, I guess three or four miles, and then they pulled through a signal just as it was changing and we lost them.”

  “So what did you do?” Mason asked.

  “So I telephoned to Drake and told him generally what had happened, and Drake told me to come on in and report to him in person.”

  Mason looked at Drake.

  “That’s it,” Drake said. “That’s what happened.”

  Mason looked at his watch. “Well,” he said, “under those circumstances I assume that our client will be asking for an attorney and we’ll be hearing from her within the next few minutes.”

  Drake said, “Evidently she had this thing all planned, Perry, and she was just coming to you to get you retained in advance. I thought you should know.”

  “I certainly should,” Mason said.

  Drake said to Nelson, “Well, Jerry, I guess that covers the situation. We’ve done all the damage we can do.”

  “The point is, Mr Mason,” Nelson said, “if anything happens I’m in an embarrassing position.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The officers took my name and address. I had to give them one of my cards. My associate saw what was happening and managed to duck out of the way, but I was standing right there and one of the bystanders said to the officer, ‘This man was standing right by me and he saw the whole thing,’ so the officer turned to me and said, ‘What’s your name?’ and I didn’t dare to stall around any because I knew that they’d get me sooner or later and if they found I was a private detective and had been a little reluctant about giving them the information they wanted, they’d have put two and two together and figured right away I was on a case. So I just acted as any ordinary citizen would and gave the officer my name and address.”

  “Did he check it in any way?”

  “Yes. He asked to see my driver’s licence.”

  “So he has your name and address.”

  “Right.”

  “And if you were called as a witness you’d have to testify to the things that you’ve told me here.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “if you’re called as a witness you’ll have to tell the truth. But I want you to remember that she said that it was not a stick-up.”

  “That’s the thing I can’t understand,” Nelson said. “She walked over toward the news stand, opened her purse, caught the eye of the girl behind the counter at the news stand, jerked out the gun, said, ‘This isn’t a stick-up’ and then bang! bang! bang! Then she turned and dashed into the women’s room.”

  “But you can swear if you have to that she said it was not a stick-up.”

  “Very definitely. But I guess I’m about the only one that heard it because she said isn’t and I’ll just bet about half of the people – in fact, I guess all of the people – who were around, would swear that she said, ‘This is a stick-up.’”

  “Well, that isn’t might be rather important,” Mason said, “in view of the fact that there were only blank cartridges in the gun … You heard one of the officers say that they were blanks?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay,” Mason said, “I guess that’s all there is to it.”

  Nelson got up and shook hands. “I’m mighty glad to meet you, Mr Mason. I’m sorry that I may be a witness against you – that is, against your side of the case.”