“I didn’t know I was so unapproachable,” Conway protested.

  “You’re not! You’re not! Don’t misunderstand me. It’s only that you’ve always been impersonal … . I mean, you’ve kept things on a business basis. I know I’m speaking out of turn, but please, please don’t do anything as ridiculous as this woman suggests.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because it’s a trap.”

  “How do you know it’s a trap?”

  “It stands to reason if she had any information she wanted to give you, she could simply put it in an envelope, write your name on the envelope, put a stamp on the envelope, and drop it in the nearest mailbox.”

  Conway thought that over.

  “All of this mystery, all of this cloak-and-dagger stuff, it’s simply a trap.”

  Conway said gravely, “I can’t take any chances on passing up this information.”

  “You mean you’re going?”

  “I’m going,” he said doggedly. “You said something about her voice?”

  She nodded.

  “What about it?”

  “I’ve trained my ears to listen to voices over the telephone. I was a phone operator for two years. There’s something about her voice … and I—Tell me, do you have the feeling you’ve heard that voice before?”

  Conway frowned. “Now that you mention it, I do. There’s something in the tempo, in the spacing of the words more than in the tone.”

  Eva Kane nodded. “We know her,” she said. “She’s someone who has been in the office. You’ve talked with her. She’s disguising her voice in some way—the tone of it. But the tempo, the way she spaces the words can’t be changed. She’s someone we both know, and that makes me all the more suspicious. Why should she lie to you? I mean, why should she try to deceive you about her identity?”

  “Nevertheless, I’m going to go,” Conway announced. “The information is too valuable, too vital. I can’t afford to run the chance of passing up a bet of that sort.”

  Suddenly Eva Kane was back in character, an efficient, impersonal secretary.

  “Very well, Mr. Conway,” she said, and left the office.

  Conway checked his watch with a radio time signal, started his car precisely on the minute, and followed directions. He went through a light just as it was changing and left a car which seemed to be trying to follow him hopelessly snarled in traffic with an irate traffic officer blowing his whistle.

  After that, Conway drove in and out of traffic. At five minutes past six he was in the drugstore, waiting in the phone booth farthest from the door.

  At six-twelve the phone rang.

  Conway answered it.

  “Mr. Conway?” a crisply feminine voice asked.

  “Yes … . Is this—this isn’t Rosalind.”

  “Don’t ask questions. Rosalind must take precautions to get rid of the people who were shadowing her. Here are your directions. Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well. As soon as you hang up, leave the phone booth and the drugstore. Get in your own car. Drive to the Redfern Hotel. Park your car. Go to the lobby. Tell the clerk that your name is Gerald Boswell and that you’re expecting a message. The clerk will hand you an envelope. Thank him, but don’t tip him. Walk over to a secluded corner in the lobby and open the envelope. That envelope will give you your cue as to what you’re to do next.”

  She hung up without saying good-by.

  Conway left the phone booth, went at once to his car and drove directly to the Redfern Hotel.

  “Do you have: a message for Gerald Boswell?” he asked the clerk.

  For a moment, as the clerk hesitated, Conway was afraid he might be going to ask for some identification, but the hesitation was only momentary. The clerk pulled out a sheaf of envelopes and started going through them.

  “Boswell,” he said, repeating the name mechanically as he went through the envelopes. “Boswell. What’s the first name?”

  “Gerald.”

  “Oh, yes. Gerald Boswell.” The clerk handed Conway a long envelope, and for a moment Conway’s heart gave a sudden surge. The envelope was of heavy manila, well sealed, well filled. This could be the list of stockholders who had sent in their proxies, the list that would make all the difference in the world to him in his fight to retain the company management.

  Conway moved over to a corner of the lobby, sat down in one of the worn, overstuffed chairs as though waiting for someone to join him.

  Surreptitiously he sized up the other occupants of the lobby.

  There was a middle-aged woman immersed in her newspaper. There was a bored, seedy-looking man who was working a crossword puzzle; a younger woman who seemed to be waiting for someone and who apparently had not the slightest interest in anything other than the street door of the hotel lobby.

  Conway slipped his penknife from his pocket, slit open the envelope and slid out the contents.

  To his disgust, the envelope contained only pieces of old newspaper which had been cut to a size to fit into the envelope. Nor did these bits of newspaper clippings have any significance or continuity. The sections of newspaper had been cut crosswise and evidently used only to fill out the envelope.

  Folded in with these pieces of newspaper, however, was a key attached to an oval brass tag carrying the imprint of the Redfern Hotel and the number of the room, 729.

  His sense of prudence urged Conway to terminate the adventure then and there, but the mere thought of so doing gave him a feeling of frustration. The person who had dreamed up this plan had used applied psychology. Once persuaded to do a lot of unconventional things to avoid detection, Conway was conditioned for a step which he would never have considered if it had been put up to him at the start.

  Conway pushed the strips of newspaper back into the envelope, put the envelope into the container for waste- paper and moved over toward the elevators. After all, he would at least go up and knock on the door.

  The young woman who was operating the elevator seemed completely absorbed in her paperbacked novel. She gave Conway a passing glance, then lowered her eyes.

  “Seven,” he said.

  She moved the cage to the seventh floor, stopped it, let Conway out, and was dropping the cage back to the ground floor before Conway had more than oriented himself as to the sequence of numbers.

  The hotel had an aura of second-class semi-respectability. The place was clean but it was the cleanliness of sterilization. The carpets were thin. The light fixtures were cheap, and the illumination in the corridor was somewhat dim.

  Conway found Room 729 and tapped on the door.

  There was no answer.

  He waited and tapped again.

  The key in his hand was an invitation. The thought of inserting it in the door and entering the room was only a little less distasteful than that of putting the key in his pocket, returning to the elevator and leaving forever unsolved the mystery of the locked room and the possibility of obtaining the lists of stockholders who had sent in proxies.

  Jerry Conway fitted the key to the door. The spring lock clicked smoothly, and Conway pushed the door open.

  He found himself peering into the conventional sitting room of a two-room hotel suite. The door that he judged would lead to the bedroom was closed.

  “Anybody home?” Conway called.

  There was no sound.

  Conway closed the corridor door behind him, and gave the place a quick inspection. There was hope in his mind that this was part of an elaborate scheme to deliver the papers that he had been promised, a delivery that could be made in such a manner that he would have no contact with the person making the delivery.

  He found nothing in the sitting room and was thoughtfully contemplating the bedroom door, when the knob turned and a young woman wearing only a bra, panties and sheer stockings stepped out into the parlor, closing the bedroom door behind her. Apparently, she hadn’t even seen Conway. She was humming a little tune.

  Her hair was wrapped in a towel. Her face was a dark blob, which Conway soon recognized as a mud pack that extended down to her throat.

  The figure was exciting, and the underthings were thin, filmy wisps of black lace which seemed only to emphasize the warm pink of the smooth skin.

  Conway stood stock-still, startled and transfixed.

  Then abruptly she saw him. For a moment Conway thought she was going to scream. Her mouth opened. The mask of the mud pack kept him from seeing her features. He saw only eyes and the red of a wide-open mouth.

  “Now, listen! Let me explain,” Conway said, talking rapidly and moving toward the young woman. “I take it you’re not Rosalind?”

  The figure answered in a thick voice due to the hard mud pack. “I’m Rosalind’s roommate, Mildred. Who are you? How did you get in here?”

  She might have been twenty-six or twenty-seven, Conway judged. Her figure was full, and every seductive curve was visible.

  Standing there in the hotel suite confronting this young woman, Conway had a sense of complete unreality as though he were engaged in some amateur theatrical, playing a part that he didn’t fully understand, and confronted by an actress who was trying in an amateurish way to follow directions.

  “How did you get in?” she demanded in that same thick voice.

  “Rosalind gave me her key,” Conway said. “I was to meet her here. Now look, Mildred, quit being frightened. I won’t hurt you. Go get your clothes on. I’ll wait for Rosalind.”

  “But why should Rosalind have given you a key?” she asked. “I—That isn’t at all like Rosalind … . You can imagine how I feel coming in here half-nude and finding a strange man in the apartment. How do I know Rosalind gave you the key? Who are you, anyway?”

  “I’ve been in touch with Rosalind,” Conway said. “She has some papers for me. I was to pick them up here.”

  “Papers?” Mildred said. “Papers. Let me see.” She walked over to the desk with quick, purposeful steps, and again Conway had the feeling that he was watching an actress playing a part.

  She pulled back the lid of the desk, put her hand inside, and suddenly Conway heard the unmistakable click of a double-action revolver being cocked. Then he saw the black, round hole of a barrel held in a trembling hand, the young woman’s nervous finger pressing on the trigger.

  “Hey!” Conway said. “Don’t point that thing at me, you little fool! That may go off!”

  “Put your hands up,” she said.

  “For heaven’s sake,” Conway told her, “don’t be a fool! You’ve cocked that revolver, and the slightest pressure on the trigger will—Put that gun down! I’m not trying to hurt you!”

  She advanced toward him, the revolver now pointing at his middle.

  “Get your hands up,” she said, her voice taking on an edge of hysteria. “You’re going to jail!”

  The hand that held the revolver was distinctly trembling, her finger rested against the trigger.

  Conway waited while she advanced one more step, measured the distance, suddenly clamped his left hand over her wrist, grasped the gun with his right hand. Her hand was nerveless, and he had no difficulty forcing up the barrel of the revolver and at the same time pushing his thumb over the cocked hammer of the gun.

  Conway wrested the gun from her limp grip, carefully lowered the hammer, shoved the weapon in his pocket.

  “You little fool!” he said. “You could have killed me! Don’t you understand?”

  She moved back to the davenport, seated herself, and stared, apparently in abject terror.

  Conway stood over her. “Now, listen,” he said, “get a grip on yourself. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not here to make any trouble. I’m only trying to get some papers from Rosalind. Can’t you understand that?”

  “Don’t hurt me!” she said. “If you’ll promise not to kill me, I’ll do anything … . Don’t hurt me! My purse is in the desk. Everything I have is in it. Take it all. Only please don’t—Don’t … !”

  “Shut up!” Conway snapped. “I’ve tried to explain to you! Can’t you understand? Can’t you listen?”

  “Just don’t kill me!” she pleaded. “I’ll do anything you say if you just won’t kill me.”

  Conway abruptly reached a decision.

  “I’m leaving,” he said. “Don’t go near that telephone for five minutes after I leave. Don’t tell anyone that I was here, no one except Rosalind. Do you understand that?”

  She simply sat there, her face a wooden mask.

  Conway strode to the door, jerked it open, slammed it shut, sprinted down the corridor to the red light that marked the stairwell. He pushed open the door, ran down two flights of stairs to the fifth floor, then hurried over to the elevator and pressed the button.

  It seemed an age before the elevator came up, then the door slid open and Conway stepped inside, conscious of his rapid breathing, his pounding heart.

  The girl who was operating the elevator shifted her gum to the other side of her face. She held her book in her right hand. Her left hand manipulated the control which dropped the elevator to the ground floor. She didn’t even look at his face, but said, “You must have walked down two floors.”

  Conway, mentally cursing his clumsiness, said nothing. The elevator girl kept her eyes lowered, raising them only for one swift glance.

  Conway didn’t dare to leave the key to Room 729 on the clerk’s desk. Walking when he wanted to run, the revolver in his hip pocket, Conway moved rapidly across the lobby, out of the door of the hotel, and then hurried down the street to the place where he had parked his car.

  He jumped inside, started the motor and adjusted himself behind the steering wheel. He became increasingly conscious of the bulge in his hip pocket.

  He withdrew the 38-caliber revolver, started to put it in the glove compartment, then just as a matter of precaution, swung open the cylinder.

  There were five loaded cartridges in the cylinder, and one empty cartridge case bearing the imprint of the firing pin in the soft percussion cap.

  Conway snapped the cylinder back into place, smelled the muzzle of the gun.

  The odor of freshly burnt powder clung to the barrel.

  In a sudden panic, Conway pushed the gun into the glove compartment, started the car, and drove away from the curb fast.

  When he came to a service station where there was a telephone booth, he parked the car and looked up the number of Perry Mason, Attorney at Law.

  The directory gave the number of Mason’s office. There was no residence phone, but a night number was listed.

  Conway called the night number.

  A voice came on the line and said, “This is a recorded message. If you are calling the office of Mr. Perry Mason on a matter of major importance, you may call at the office of the Drake Detective Agency, state your name, address, and business, and Mr. Mason will be contacted at the earliest possible moment.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The unlisted telephone in Perry Mason’s apartment jangled sharply.

  Only two persons in the world had that number. One was Della Street, Perry Mason’s confidential secretary. The other was Paul Drake, head of the Drake Detective Agency.

  Mason, who had been on the point of going out, picked up the receiver.

  Paul Drake’s voice came over the wire. “Perry! I have a problem that you may want to work on.”

  “What is it?”

  “Have you followed the fight for proxies in the California & Texas Global Development & Exploration Company?”

  “I know there is a fight on,” Mason said. “I’ve seen ads in the paper for the last week.”

  “Jerry Conway, president of the company, is waiting on another telephone. He’s calling from a pay station. He’s pretty well worked up, thinks he’s been framed, and wants to see you at once.”

  “What kind of frame?” Mason asked. “Some sort of badger game, attempted bribery, or—?”

  “He doesn’t know,” Drake said, “but he has a revolver in his possession and the weapon has been freshly fired. Of course, I’ve just hit the high spots on the phone with him, but he’s got a story that’s sufficiently out of the ordinary so you should be interested, and he says he has money enough to pay any fee within reason. He wants action!”

  “A revolver!” Mason said.

  “That’s right.”

  “How did he get it?”

  “He says he took it away from a woman.”

  “Where?”

  “In a hotel room.”

  “Did he take her there?”

  “He says not. He says he had a key to the room, and she came in and pulled this gun on him, that she had a nervous trigger finger, and he took the gun away from her. It wasn’t until after he had left the place, that he noticed the gun had been freshly fired and now he’s afraid he’s being put on the spot.”

  “That’s a hell of a story I” Mason said.

  “That’s the way it impresses me,” Drake told him. “The point is that if the guy is going to be picked up and he’s relying on a story as phony as that, somebody should instruct him to at least tell a lie that will sound plausible.”

  Mason said, “They have to think up their own lies, Paul.”

  “I know,” Paul retorted, “but you could point out where this one is full of holes,”

  “Can he hear your side of this conversation?”

  “No.”

  “Ask him if it’s worth a thousand dollars for a retainer,” Mason said. “If it is, I’ll come up.”

  “Hold the phone,” Drake said. “He’s on the other line.”

  A moment later Drake’s voice came back on the wire. “Hello, Perry?”

  “Uh-huh,” Mason said.

  “Conway says it’s worth two thousand. He’s scared stiff. He thinks he’s led with his chin.”

  “Okay,” Mason said. “Tell him to go on up to your office and make out his check for a thousand bucks. Get a couple of good men to stand by in case I need them. I’m on my way up.”