Mason glanced at Della Street, said, “Very well. Ten tomorrow morning.”

  She included Della Street in her smile, said, “I take it I can get out through this exit door to the corridor?”

  Mason nodded.

  Stephanie Falkner glided to the door, opened it, turned, said in a calm, cool voice to Perry Mason, “Until tomorrow. And please reach Mr. Garvin in the meantime.”

  Mason turned to Della Street as the exit door closed behind the young woman. “I don’t think I’d like to play poker with that young woman, Della.”

  “Well,” she asked, “what do you think you are playing?”

  “I’m damned if I know,” Mason told her. “I’m going down and talk to that new secretary of Garvin’s. Perhaps I can pry some information out of her.”

  “Chief, if she makes that sale, if Homer Garvin says it’s all right, would you try to do what she asks and act as liaison man in this murder case?”

  “I don’t know, Della. It would depend. I don’t think she needs to retain a lawyer for that.”

  “Chief, I’m frightened. The pit of my stomach is telling my brain to try to keep you out of this mess.”

  Mason smiled. “Well, I’ll go see Eva Elliott. Perhaps I can learn something from her. We’ll cross the other bridges when we come to them.”

  Chapter 2

  Eva Elliott, a tall, blue-eyed blonde with penciled eyebrows, was seated at her secretarial desk. She had moved this desk to the opposite side of the office from that occupied by her predecessor. It was in a corner which framed her blonde beauty against the dark mahogany paneling. Drapes on the windows had been carefully arranged so that the lighting made the corner seem to be part of a stage set.

  As Mason opened the door the phone rang.

  Eva Elliott flashed him a smile, picked up the telephone, held it close to her lips, and talked for a few minutes in a low voice. Mason was barely able to hear the words.

  “No, I can’t tell you when he’ll be in. I’m sorry. Yes, he’s out of town. May I take a message?

  “Thank you. Good-bye.”

  She hung up the receiver, turned to face Mason.

  “I’m Perry Mason,” the lawyer explained.

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, Mr. Mason, the lawyer!”

  “That’s right.”

  “Oh yes, Mr. Mason. I have a note for Mr. Garvin to get in touch with you just as soon as he comes in. Your secretary called, you know.”

  “Thanks,” Mason said. “I see you’ve moved your desk.”

  “No, I haven’t moved it, Mr. Mason.”

  “Marie had it over …”

  “Oh,” she said, “I moved it from where Marie had it. The light was all wrong.”

  “What do you hear from her?” Mason asked.

  “She has been in twice,” Eva Elliott said somewhat frigidly.

  “What’s her name now?” Mason asked. “I always think of her as Marie Arden.”

  “She married a man by the name of Lawton Barlow.”

  “Oh yes,” Mason said. “I remember. Tell me, Miss Elliott, where is Mr. Garvin?”

  “He’s away on a business trip.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “I—He wasn’t in the office all yesterday afternoon.”

  Mason regarded her with thoughtfully studious eyes. “Something unusual about it?” he asked.

  “Nothing unusual at all, Mr. Mason. Mr. Garvin, as you know, makes a great many business trips. He has a lot of diversified investments and he has properties that are widely scattered.”

  “I see,” Mason said. “I take it that you know I do all of his legal business?”

  “I’ve heard him speak of you.”

  “I’d like very much to get in touch with him.”

  “Mr. Mason, may I ask if this is something which has to do with Miss Falkner?”

  Mason’s face became expressionless. “Why?” he asked.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll put my cards on the table. I—Mr. Mason, it’s very important that we not be interrupted. Would you mind if I lock the office door? Then would you step into Mr. Garvin’s private office with me? We won’t be disturbed there.”

  “Certainly,” Mason said.

  She arose from behind the desk, walked with long-legged grace across to lock the door, then opened a door marked “Private.” Mason followed her into Garvin’s sumptuously furnished private office.

  She turned to face Mason, her hands and hips pressing against the edge of Garvin’s desk. Her pose was that of a movie star holding her chin up so as to present the best camera angle.

  “Mr. Garvin is going to be furious with me if he knows I have said anything about it to you. However, you are a good judge of character and you don’t need to have me point out that Stephanie Falkner is a very shrewd, very scheming, very selfish individual.

  “Stephanie Falkner, as you probably know, was very friendly with Homer Garvin, Jr. Now Junior is carrying the torch for another girl, so Stephanie seems to be cultivating the father. Mr. Garvin is taking an interest in her. I don’t know exactly what her game is now, but I do know that it is something intended to be for the advantage of Stephanie Falkner.

  “I don’t want to play cat’s-paw for her and I know you don’t. So please don’t take any story she tells at face value.

  “Now I’d be fired if either of the Garvins knew that I had told you any of this. But I have a loyalty to them that is not going to be stifled by the dictates of expediency.

  “Now then, Mr. Mason, are you going to accept this confidence in the spirit in which it is offered, or are you going to tell Mr. Garvin what I said?”

  Mason smiled at her. “I’m going to accept it in the spirit in which it was offered.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and with a swift gesture moved out from the edge of the desk to extend both of her hands to Perry Mason. “I think you’re wonderful!”

  Mason left Garvin’s office, and telephoned Della Street.

  “Della,” he said, “do we have the address of Marie Arden, who is now Mrs. Lawton Barlow?”

  “I think so,” she said. “Just a minute. You want her phone number or her address?”

  “Her address,” Mason said.

  “Going calling?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Della Street gave him the address and said, “Give her my love.”

  “I will,” Mason said.

  He hailed a cab, gave the driver the address he had copied down in his notebook, then settled back against the cushions, narrowed his eyes in thoughtful concentration, and lit a cigarette.

  At length the cab driver slowed, turned down a side street, and pulled in at the curb.

  “This is the number,” the cab driver said.

  Mason asked him to wait and walked up to the house. Before he could ring the bell the door was flung open.

  “Gosh! Mr. Mason, but I’m glad to see you!” Marie Barlow exclaimed.

  “You’re looking fine,” Mason said.

  She laughed. “Don’t kid me. The baby’s due in nine weeks. I’m an elephant. I’m letting all the housework go and the place is a mess. Forgive the appearances. Sit down in that chair. It’s the most comfortable. Can I buy you a drink?”

  “No, thanks,” Mason said. “I’m trying to get some information about Homer Garvin.”

  “About what?”

  “To find out where I can reach him for one thing.”

  “He’s away?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you talked with Eva Elliott?”

  “I’ve talked with her.”

  “And you didn’t get what you wanted?”

  “I got virtually nothing,” Mason said.

  Marie Barlow laughed. “Well, then you’ll know the way I feel when I go up to the office. I tried it a couple of times and then decided to forget it.”

  “Did you see Homer?”

  “Neither time. I know he was busy once. The other time, I don’t think he was busy but she just wouldn’t ring.”

  “What’s the idea?”

  “I don’t know. Of course I was with Homer for twelve years. You get pretty close to a business and pretty close to a boss in that time. After Homer’s wife died, he really went all to pieces for a while. He was beginning to get back on his feet when I decided to take the matrimonial plunge. Believe me, Mr. Mason, I put it off for over three months just because I was afraid the job of having to reorganize the office on top of everything else would have a bad effect on Homer Garvin.

  “Actually he found out I was putting it off. Of course when I came out with that sparkler on my finger he wanted to know when the event was going to take place. One thing led to another and he began to suspect that I was holding off on his account. So he told me to go ahead and get married before he fired me. Gosh, Mr. Mason! He’s a wonderful guy!”

  “Was Stephanie Falkner in the picture while you were there?”

  She shook her head. “She came later. Eva Elliott was Junior’s light of love at the time but he was beginning to cool off. He goes overboard for long-legged models with poise and curves.

  “I believe Stephanie was just coming into the picture. Junior got his dad to put Eva Elliott in the office at a whale of a salary. She’s ornamental, unscrupulous, and conceited. I’m a cat and I don’t like her. Her sole secretarial training consists of a course in typing and in watching glamorous secretaries on the screen and on television.”

  “Then how can she handle Garvin’s business?” Mason asked.

  Marie said with feeling, “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Mason said, “I think Garvin may be in Las Vegas. Where would he be staying?”

  She thought for a minute and said, “Nine chances out of ten it would be the Double-O Motel. That’s one of the newer places. But surely Eva Elliott must know where he is.”

  “She said not.”

  Marie shook her head. “That was one thing about Homer. He would never be out of touch with the office; even when he didn’t want anyone else to know where he was he’d be in touch with me all the time so that I could reach him in case anything of real importance broke at this end.”

  “Well, Eva Elliott seemed completely in the dark,” Mason said. “Of course it may have been an act.”

  “May have been an act is right,” Marie said, laughing. “But don’t let me prejudice you, Mr. Mason. You know how it is after a girl gets married. She gets a whole new life of her own. If anybody had ever told me that I’d let myself get out of touch with Mr. Garvin this way, I’d have said he was crazy. But—well, I offered to stay there for a while helping Eva Elliott take over, but she wanted to be on her own, so I left and thought she’d be telephoning for help within the first twenty-four hours. She didn’t. I’ve never heard a squawk out of her.

  “So I went in a few days later, said I was uptown doing some shopping, and just dropped in to have a talk with Homer and see if I could help. The atmosphere was formal and icy. She said Mr. Garvin was in a conference.

  “Then the next time I went in was about two months later. She was frigidly polite. I hung around there for ten or fifteen minutes chatting. She didn’t ring Mr. Garvin’s phone to tell him I was there and naturally I didn’t want to make an issue of it. So I left. I felt that after all he could get in touch with me if he wanted me.”

  “Did he?” Mason asked.

  She blinked her eyes rapidly, shook her head.

  There was silence for several seconds. Suddenly she said, “Gosh! Mr. Mason, there must have been a hundred problems that came up on which they needed my help. I can understand why Eva Elliott didn’t call me. She’s a theatrical, stage-struck show horse, but for the life of me I can’t understand why Homer didn’t call up and ask me for information that I had at my finger tips. Eva Elliott would have had to dig that stuff out of the files, and even if she could have found it, she wouldn’t have known what to do with it.”

  “You never called Garvin on the phone?”

  “No, I didn’t. I—Well, I think it was up to him to have called me. I’m not going to put myself in the position of having that new secretary of his turn me down more than twice.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “give me a ring once in a while, and run in and say hello when you get in circulation again. Della and I will both be glad to see you.”

  “I most certainly will, Mr. Mason. Gosh! It was good to see you. Just like old times!”

  She stood in the doorway watching him wistfully as he walked down to the taxicab, and was still standing there as the cab made a U-turn and started back toward Mason’s office.

  Chapter 3

  “Find out anything?” Della Street asked, as Mason latch-keyed the door of his private office.

  “Uh-huh. I don’t know just how definite it is, but there’s certainly something sticky in the atmosphere around Garvin’s office. Just how long has it been since we’ve heard from him, Della?”

  “I can look up the charge books, and …”

  “Do that, will you?”

  Della Street went out to the outer office and was back within a matter of minutes. “It’s been something over a year.”

  “In other words, he hasn’t been in touch with me since he employed his new secretary,” Mason said.

  “He probably hasn’t had any reason to get in touch with you.”

  Mason pursed his lips. “A lot of changes seem to have taken place in Garvin coincidental with hiring that new secretary.

  “All right, Della, we’ll take a chance. It may be that he’s having someone else do his legal work. Ring the Double-O Motel at Las Vegas and ask if Homer H. Garvin is there. Tell him that it’s Perry Mason calling. Be sure they get the name of the person calling.”

  “Right away,” Della promised. “I’ll start Gertie working on the call.”

  Della Street walked out to the switchboard, gave her instructions to Gertie and came back to Mason’s office.

  The phone rang. Mason nodded to Della Street. She picked up the receiver, said, “Hello.… Yes, he is.… Just a moment, Mr. Garvin.”

  “On the line,” she said.

  Mason picked up his telephone. “Hello, Homer, this is Perry.”

  The voice that came over the line sounded guarded. “Oh yes. Hello, Perry.”

  “Are you where you can talk?” Mason asked.

  “Only to a very limited extent,” Garvin said.

  Mason said, “I have had a visit from a tall brunette with gray eyes who has a forty per cent interest in a company in which you’re interested. She’s been approached by certain interests that have something to do with …”

  “Hold it!” Garvin said. “Don’t go any further. I’ll call you back. Where can I reach you in … in an hour?”

  “I’ll wait here at the office,” Mason said.

  “Wait there for an hour, and I’ll give you a ring. Goodbye.”

  Garvin hung up the telephone.

  “Well,” Mason said, “that gives me an hour to work on this brief. That’ll be after five. Ask Gertie if she’d mind staying for …”

  “Gertie has a date tonight,” Della Street said. “I’ll be glad to stay, Chief.”

  Mason said, “There’s so darn much mystery about this.… Oh well, Garvin probably was talking from a phone in the lobby or something of that sort. We’ll hold everything until we hear from him.”

  Mason plunged back into the lawbooks, his powers of concentration such that the other matter was absolutely dismissed from his mind. He was to all intents and purposes oblivious of the passing time.

  Della Street saw that the office closed at five o’clock, then went out and sat at the switchboard until twenty minutes past five when the Garvin call came through.

  Mason picked up the receiver, heard the long distance operator say, “Your party is on the line,” then heard the sound of coins being dropped in the coin box.

  “What the thunder?” Mason said as soon as he heard Garvin’s voice on the line. “Why didn’t you call collect? You have an account here, you know.”

  “I know,” Garvin said. “Can you tell me generally what this is all about, Perry? Be careful not to mention names.”

  “Well, the young woman that I spoke to you about has received an offer. A mysterious Mr. X, who may be a representative of interests having headquarters where you are now, is going to talk with her tomorrow.

  “She felt that it might be well for you and her to take concerted action. Any separate action would simply result in leaving the other party out on the end of a limb.”

  “I see,” Garvin said.

  “I hope I didn’t disturb you,” Mason went on. “I had the devil of a time locating you.”

  “That’s all right.… How did you locate me, Perry?”

  “Through Marie Arden—Marie Barlow.”

  “But I didn’t tell her where I was.”

  “She knew where you would be staying in Las Vegas.”

  “Well, why the devil didn’t you call my office? Why go get some secretary who hasn’t been with me for a year and …”

  “Hold everything!” Mason said. “I talked with your secretary, Eva Elliott. She couldn’t give me any information.”

  “She what!”

  “Couldn’t tell me where you were.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Garvin said. “I’ve been in touch with Eva. I always keep in touch with the office.”

  “Well, perhaps your call came through after I talked with her,” Mason said. “I was down there about … oh, I don’t know … around two-thirty, or two-forty-five, and she said she couldn’t tell me a thing.”

  “I talked with her at eleven-thirty and again at one-forty-five in the afternoon.”

  “Well, she may have felt I wasn’t entitled to the information,” Mason said. “Don’t get worked up about it.”

  “Worked up about it!” Garvin exclaimed. “Why, I—Oh well, I guess you’re right, Mason. Now look, can you get the name of the party with whom this woman is dealing?”

  “So far she’s referred to him as a mysterious Mr. X.”

  “I’ve an idea who this fellow is,” Garvin said. “He’s tried to keep under cover. He’s dangerous.

  “Now here’s what I want you to do, Mason. I want that woman protected. Tell her that you’re representing my fifteen per cent until I can get on the job personally. Find out who this party is who has been in touch with her, get his name and address, and the minute you get them, communicate them to me. Simply ring up the Double-O here and, if I’m not in, ask for Lucille. Give her the name and address.”