“Me,” Mason said gruffly.

  “Well, don’t be so coy. The door’s unlocked, and …”

  Mason pushed open the door and entered the apartment.

  Celinda Gilson, standing nude in front of the full-length mirror, turned to face him.

  The smile on her face froze into a look of horror. “Damn you!” she exclaimed, and with one swift step reached the chair over the back of which was draped a robe. She flung the robe around herself and, with eyes blazing, said, “You’ve got a crust to come in here this way…. I’m dressing.”

  “You invited me in,” Mason said.

  “Well, I thought you were someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “None of your business.”

  Mason walked over to the overstuffed chair, from the back of which she had taken the robe, settled himself comfortably and took the cigarette case from his pocket. “Have one?” he asked.

  “Say, what do you think I am?”

  “A very attractive young woman,” Mason said.

  “You’re not even getting to first base.”

  “First base doesn’t interest me at all,” Mason said.

  “What does?”

  “Home plate.”

  “You’re playing on the wrong diamond.”

  Mason lit a cigarette. “Just on the wrong team. Sure you won’t have one?”

  “Look, will you tell me just what you’re after?”

  Mason said, “Since you want to talk baseball, I’m going to let you keep on pitching until I find the one I like and then I’m going to knock it over the fence for a home run.”

  “I’m not going to pitch.”

  “Oh yes you are,” Mason said, crossing his long legs. “You have to.”

  “Will you kindly tell me just what in hell you think you’re doing here?”

  “I’m hiding out.”

  “Hiding out?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who from?”

  “Believe it or not,” Mason said, “I’m hiding from the police.”

  “You are?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, you came to the wrong place to hide.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well I do. Probably you don’t realize it, Mr. Mason, but you’ve just put yourself completely in my power.”

  “Have I?”

  “You know you have.”

  “How?”

  “By telling me you’re hiding from the police. All I have to do is to walk over to that telephone, pick it up, ask for police headquarters, and I’ll be the fair-haired baby.”

  “Go ahead,” Mason invited.

  “Well, don’t think I won’t.”

  “I don’t know what’s stopping you. Go right ahead.”

  “It’s just that I hate to be a rat.”

  “I know,” Mason told her. “You’re not accustomed to calling the police.”

  “Why are you hiding out? What do the police have against you?”

  Mason said, “I tried to pull a fast one and my foot slipped.”

  “What?”

  “I had a brain storm that I thought would pay off. It didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I took too long a chance. I had private detectives get in touch with a girl from whom I wanted to get some information and they pulled a fast one.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Helen Hampton. We waited until we caught her driving a car and accused her of drunken driving. She indignantly denied it. We told her we were state police in plain clothes and wanted a sample of her blood. Since she was cold sober she agreed to take any kind of a test we wanted. That gave us the chance to do what we wanted.”

  She was watching him with eyes that were filled with puzzled curiosity. “What did you want?”

  “We gave an injection of sodium amytal,” Mason said, “on the pretense of taking some of her blood, and—well you know sodium amytal. It’s a truth serum.”

  “Why, you—you …”

  “Exactly,” Mason said. “It was tricky but I simply had to have the truth.”

  Her eyes were cold with caution now. “Did you get it?”

  “Get it?” Mason said scornfully. “We got it in the neck. She was just beginning to talk when one of her close friends, a roommate, I guess, who was a pretty smart little cookie, sneaked down the hall and telephoned. We caught her at it and she put it to us right on the line, said she was telephoning the police.”

  “So what happened?”

  “What do you suppose happened?” Mason said. “We cleared out. We couldn’t stand a rap like that. It’s put me in one hell of a position. I’ve pulled a lot of fast ones but this is about the most desperate chance I ever took.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Because I thought her testimony would give us the key clue we’re after in this murder case.”

  “Helen Hampton? What does she know about it?”

  “From the way she was talking before the blow-off,” Mason said, “I think she knows plenty.”

  “And you want me to believe that with something like that happening you didn’t stick it out until the last minute?”

  “Oh, we stayed as long as we dared,” Mason said. “She was getting pretty sleepy at the last. I guess we gave her a little too much. However, I got a clue which I can work on if I can only keep out of the way of the police.”

  Celinda Gilson regarded him thoughtfully. “You can’t stay here.”

  “Be a sport,” Mason said. “I could hole up here.”

  “You mean stay here permanently?”

  “Until the thing blows over. Until I can …”

  “Why you’re just as crazy as …”

  “After all,” Mason interrupted, “you have some interest in this.”

  “I have an interest in what? … Say, what do you think you’re trying to pull? What kind of a bluff is this?”

  Mason merely smiled and blew out cigarette smoke.

  Abruptly she said, “Look, there’s somebody else coming up here. I’ve got to head him off.”

  She started for the telephone.

  Mason grabbed her wrist.

  “Let me go,” she said, struggling with him. “I’ll scream, I’ll call the police, I’ll …”

  “That’s exactly what you’re trying to do now,” Mason told her. “If you get to that telephone you’ll call the police and …”

  “No, no. I swear I won’t. Honestly. In fact I may give you a break. I might be able to put you up here for a while, but I can’t let this other person know that you’re in the apartment. I …”

  “No telephone,” Mason said. “Meet him at the door and tell him you’re busy.”

  “He’d cut your heart out.”

  “Like that?”

  “Like that.”

  Mason said, “I’ll watch the number you dial. If it’s a police call I’ll jerk the phone out by the roots.”

  “Fair enough, fair enough,” she said.

  She started for the phone, Mason following her. Then halfway to the telephone she stopped and said thoughtfully, “Say, that sounds fishy.”

  “What does?”

  “That story about you giving Helen a shot of truth serum. You wouldn’t have been that desperate. And she wouldn’t have fallen for it. You … Say, how the hell did you know her name was Helen Hampton? Whose mail have you been reading? You …”

  Knuckles tapped on the door.

  She glanced at Mason like a trapped animal.

  Mason got up, crossed the room with two quick strides and jerked the door open.

  Medford D. Carlin stood on the threshold, a fatuous grin on his face which changed into an expression of startled surprise as his eyes blinked recognition.

  His right hand swung toward his hip pocket and Mason hit him flush on the point of the jaw.

  Chapter 21

  Mason pulled down the wall bed, jerked off the sheets, tore them into strips, calmly fashioned a gag for the unconscious figure whom he had dragged in from the corridor. He then tied the hands, arms and feet with the strips of torn sheeting, taking great pains to make certain that there was no slack, and that the man was bound securely.

  Celinda Gilson stood over at the far corner of the apartment biting her knuckles. Twice she started to speak, caught herself both times before saying a word.

  Mason arose from the carpet, brushing dust from the knees of his trousers.

  “Just what do you think all this is going to get you?” she asked.

  Mason grinned. “How do I know? I might win a murder case.”

  “Don’t be a fool. This has nothing to do with that murder case. His bitchy wife killed him, and you know it.”

  Mason contemplatively regarded the trussed-up figure that was beginning to twitch with returning consciousness. “And just where does this fit into the picture?”

  “It’s another picture altogether.”

  “Or,” Mason said thoughtfully, “it could be another frame.”

  On the floor, Carlin, regaining consciousness, gave a smothered moan which came as a strangled, inarticulate noise from behind the gag. He opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times, then suddenly started struggling.

  Mason watched him with a casual, detached interest until he saw that none of the knots were slipping, then he turned back to Celinda Gilson.

  “Of course,” he said, “you mustn’t expect Carlin to stand by you. He’s smart. He’s left himself an out all the way along the line. Pretty smart chap, Carlin.”

  On the floor, Carlin tried to talk. The result was an inarticulate gurgling of sounds behind the gag.

  Mason walked over to the telephone, picked up the receiver, dialed “Operator” and said, “Get me police headquarters, will you please?”

  That did it.

  Celinda was over at his side, her arms around his neck. “Please, Mr. Mason, please! For God’s sake! Give a girl a break, can’t you? You …”

  “Get some clothes on,” Mason said over his shoulder. “While you’re dressing you can decide whether you want to talk.”

  She said, “I haven’t done anything, Mr. Mason. Only—well, a girl has to live.”

  “Was it a good living?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not,” Mason said. “You’re good-natured and you’re friendly. They used you and probably only gave you enough to get by.”

  “I suppose that was all I wanted.”

  “Better get dressed.”

  The figure on the floor made gurgling, inarticulate sounds, rolled his head from side to side in a gesture of negation.

  “He’ll kill me if I talk,” she said.

  “Suit yourself,” Mason told her. “Right now you have a break. He has a gag on and can’t talk. If you tell your story first it may be that you can get Lieutenant Tragg to buy it.”

  “Who’s Lieutenant Tragg?”

  “Homicide. You met him the other day.”

  “I tell you this has nothing to do with the murder.”

  “Which one?” Mason asked.

  “Why—the only one, of course.”

  Again Carlin struggled with the strips of torn sheeting.

  “Don’t be silly,” Mason said. “There were two.”

  “Two what?”

  “Two murders.”

  “I know, but one was—one was …”

  “What?”

  “Fargo,” she said.

  “Naturally,” Mason told her.

  “No, no. I mean …”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing, I guess.”

  “Better get some clothes on,” Mason said.

  She started for the closet, then suddenly turned. “All right,” she said, “you win. It wasn’t murder, it was a baby racket. A switch on the old shakedown.”

  Carlin on the floor raised his legs and pounded his heels down hard.

  Mason walked over, prodded him in the short ribs with the toe of his foot, said, “Don’t interrupt when a lady is talking, Carlin. I’ll have to kick the wind out of you if you aren’t polite! Go ahead, Celinda, what were you saying?”

  “A modification of the old baby racket,” she said. “Carlin got babies—illegitimate babies. I don’t even know how he handled his source of supply, but he apparently had a swell contact. He’d wait until the new parents had become very much attached to the child. Then he’d see that they got word that the real mother was employed at the Golden Goose.

  “That was about all he had to do. Once people have taken a child and have become really attached to it they have an irresistible desire to get a look at the mother, particularly if they think they can steal a look without being detected.

  “So people would come to the Golden Goose and Carlin would tip off Pierre. Pierre would handle things very smoothly. There’d be just a little flicker of a signal when he was hovering around the table, and shortly after that Helen Hampton would come over to sell cigars and cigarettes. Then she’d break down, start crying, and sob out her story about having had her baby stolen and being Japanese.”

  “How much Japanese blood has she?”

  “Don’t be silly. She’s no more Japanese than you are, but she has those peculiar high cheekbones and dark eyes and—well, the rest of it was just good clever make-up. If you’d take a good look at her under a bright light you’d find that she’d done some very clever work slanting the eyes.”

  “Then what?” Mason asked.

  “Then the suckers are fed just enough information so they realize that they’ve got Helen’s supposedly stolen baby. They think the adoption papers are illegal, and from then on it’s a smooth shakedown.”

  “Didn’t the parents ever want to let the child go when they heard the story about the Japanese ancestry?”

  “Only once that I ever heard of. You see it was a carefully engineered story. Just a mere fraction of Japanese blood. No one would ever have known it or need ever to know it. But it made a bulletproof scheme. The new parents couldn’t go to court with the person they thought was the real mother because then the child’s future would be forever blasted. The way the new parents looked at it, Helen would give testimony that would show the child was part Japanese, and after that—well, you know how it would be. People wouldn’t want their sons to marry a girl who was part Eurasian, and nice girls wouldn’t want to marry a boy who had a similar mixture of blood in his veins. It was all handled so cleverly no one ever, ever suspected a shakedown.”

  “But they paid money?”

  “Sure they paid money—but the big money came after the slip-up.”

  “You said they slipped up once. What happened that time?”

  “They picked the wrong man. Four years ago Carlin tried to pull it on the Fargos.”

  “The Fargos!”

  “Yes. The Fargos’ boy is adopted. Three years ago they tried to blackmail Fargo, but he got wise. Instead of tipping off the police, Fargo forced Carlin to take him into partnership, and they’ve worked together ever since.

  “Fargo, pretending to be a private detective masquerading as a real estate man, would start snooping around their neighborhood asking questions about the adopted child, and the parents would become convinced that the mother knew that they had her baby. From then on Fargo and Carlin would whipsaw the new parents for as much as the tariff could bear, and a lot of it went for fictitious lawyers and detectives who, the parents thought, were working for them.”

  “And Mrs. Fargo?”

  “Doesn’t know anything about it. When Fargo discovered what the game was, he kept his mouth shut. She still thinks the boy has Japanese blood. That’s one of the holds he had over her.”

  “So that’s it!” Mason burst out. “That’s why she won’t talk! But she must have known Fargo was mixed up with Carlin.”

  Celinda shrugged. “I guess she knew he was in some racket, but she didn’t know what it was all about.” Then her eyes narrowed. “Or maybe she found out! Now if you’re looking for a nice hot motive for Myrt killing her husband …”

  “I’m not,” said Mason grimly. “Were you really Fargo’s girl friend, or just an accomplice in the racket?”

  “I started out being an accomplice,” she said, “and then—oh hell, I guess I’m a pushover.”

  “And were you in Fargo’s house on the morning of the twenty-second of September?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Weren’t you in that upstairs bedroom that he didn’t dare to open when I was in the house?”

  “Are you nuts?”

  “Weren’t you?”

  “No,” she said, “and what’s more I don’t want to hear any more of that kind of talk. I don’t know what you’re trying to pin on me, but I don’t like it. I’m going to put some clothes on.”

  Chapter 22

  Lieutenant Tragg said, “What the hell’s coming off here?”

  Mason indicated the tied, gagged man on the floor and said, “Another corpse.”

  “This one looks like a live corpse to me,” Tragg said.

  Mason went over and untied the piece of sheeting which held the gag in place.

  Carlin spat out the piece of damp cloth and said to Mason, “You son of a bitch!”

  “Who is it?” Tragg asked.

  “Our esteemed friend, Mr. Medford D. Carlin,” Mason said.

  “So I suppose you want me to be surprised,” Tragg said.

  “Aren’t you?”

  Tragg merely grinned. After a moment Tragg said, “Well, I know a lot about you, Mr. Carlin, if you are Mr. Carlin.”

  “Take his fingerprints,” Mason suggested.

  “Oh thank you so much,” Tragg said with heavy sarcasm. “I’d never have thought of that if you hadn’t suggested it.”

  Carlin said, “You haven’t a damn thing on me. I have a record, that’s all.”

  “I’ll bet you have a record,” Tragg said, “and while you’re making explanations, who was the charred corpse that was so conveniently found in the bedroom?”

  “How would I know? Ask Mason. He seems to be masterminding the whole thing.”

  “How does this girl fit in the picture?” Tragg asked, jerking his thumb toward Celinda Gilson.

  “How do you fit into the picture, Celinda?” Mason asked her.

  “I don’t fit,” she said.

  “How’d you like to take a little ride?” Mason asked.

  “That’s a hell of a return for my hospitality.”