Drake said, “When do I leave?”

  “Charter a plane. You can grab forty winks on the plane.”

  “Oh, not forty winks,” Drake protested sarcastically. “Twenty would be all I could possibly use. I don’t want to start getting too much sleep! Does Wenston know about this?”

  “He must.”

  “About the bullet wound?”

  “Probably. He flew Karr up there this afternoon. Karr was beginning to run a fever when I saw him last. His skin was dry and parched, and his face flushed.”

  “Who knows about what happened the night of the shooting?” Drake asked. “Anyone besides Karr?”

  “Yes,” Mason said. “One person anyway.”

  “Who?”

  Mason grinned. “The one who pulled the trigger.”

  Drake reached for the telephone, said to the switchboard operator, his voice low-pitched from sheer physical fatigue, “Get me the airport. I want to rent a good cabin plane for a rush trip to San Francisco.”

  Mason nodded to Della Street. “Okay, Della, let’s go tackle the other end of this case.”

  Driving out to Mrs. Gentrie’s, Mason said, “I should have had Steele spotted a long time ago.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Simple,” Mason said. “Remember when we were talking over the case, I said that the person in the house who was getting the messages must have been someone who had easy access to the dictionary, and who, for some reason, couldn’t very well be called to the telephone. Remember, Mrs. Gentrie told me right at the start that Steele had his room and was treated as one of the family, except that he didn’t have the privilege of using the telephone. There were too many people using it already. She has three children, all of whom are at the age of making dates of one kind or another. Whenever the phone rings, there’s a mad scramble to see which one gets there first. When anyone wants to call out, one of the children is nearly always using the phone. Remember what she said.”

  Della nodded.

  “Here I was,” Mason said whimsically, “looking for someone who couldn’t use the telephone, and I was thinking in terms of some physical handicap, such as a man who was deaf or crippled. It never occurred to me to consider the simplest possible solution—a man who was living at a place where he didn’t have the privilege of the telephone, yet who couldn’t put in a phone of his own without attracting too much attention.”

  “But why was Steele killed, if he was the one for whom the messages were intended?”

  Mason said, “We’re evidently dealing with the after-math of an old feud. There’s no other explanation which occurs to me at the moment. Of course, we haven’t all of the facts as yet.”

  “Then Karr must have killed him.”

  “Karr’s time’s too well accounted for,” Mason said. “And Wenston is out of it. Steele must have been killed at least two hours before we got there. There’s no question but what Karr’s been and still is a very sick man. That bullet hole in his leg, the loss of blood, the shot, and the general strain of events must have taken a lot out of him. He isn’t physically robust. Then, in addition, he’s had that arthritis in his legs. Evidently, he could walk, but it was a slow and painful process. We can leave him out so far as Steele is concerned.”

  “You think Karr went downstairs the night of the shooting?”

  Mason said, “That’s the only logical deduction. The burglar alarm was placed where he could hear it. He admits that he did hear it. He must have got up and walked slowly downstairs. He surprised someone at the safe, and got shot.”

  “Do you suppose Steele got the message you left in the tin before—before he was killed?”

  Mason said, “I don’t know. His death is going to complicate things somewhat.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “There are two persons involved. One of them is the person who sent the message, and the other the person who received it. Now, if we assume that Steele is the person who was receiving the messages, the question arises, Who was sending them? Let’s suppose, for the sake of the argument, that it was Sarah Perlin. Steele sees a can placed on the shelf after Sarah Perlin’s death. Therefore, he knows it must be a trap. For that reason, he won’t touch the can. On the other hand, if Sarah Perlin wasn’t the one who was sending the messages, Steele—conceding that he’s the person who was receiving them—would undoubtedly have grabbed that decoy can the first chance he had.”

  Della said, “I’m getting all topsy-turvy. I thought the person who had sent the message, and the person for whom it had been intended were the murderers. It looks now as though they were the victims. Now, what are we going to do?”

  Mason said, “While we’re at the Gentrie residence, I’ll make some excuse to get down in the cellar. If the can’s still there, it will be significant.”

  Della Street’s voice was filled with conviction as she declared, “The can will still be there. It’s dead open and shut. Mrs. Perlin must have been the one who was sending the messages, and Steele the one who was receiving them. They’ve both been killed. Even if we didn’t have an iron-clad case against those two, their deaths would prove it. You can see what happened. Mrs. Perlin was a spy. She was reporting to Steele. That was the reason Karr’s attempt to trap the real Hocksley failed.

  “Karr took the bullet in his leg, but that was all he needed to show him what was going on. With truly Oriental cunning, he tracked down the two persons who were responsible, and killed them.”

  Mason said, “There’s another angle that puzzles me. What became of the real Hocksley?”

  “The one who was in China?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you suppose he’s dead?”

  “There’s nothing to indicate it. Karr must have had some reason for taking that lower apartment under the name of Hocksley. He could have used any one of a thousand fictitious names, but instead of doing so, he has Johns Blaine make himself up so he looks like Hocksley, and then takes the name of Hocksley. That must be significant.”

  “Gosh, Chief, I wonder if Hocksley enters into the picture. After all, if he’s anywhere around and saw his name in the papers—well, you can see what would happen. Karr has managed to hide his identity by taking the flat under the name of Rodney Wenston, but this case is getting a lot of newspaper publicity. If Hocksley is anywhere in the country, he’ll see his name in the papers and—well, don’t you see? It makes sort of a sieve that sifts out everything except one particular-sized article. Karr has hidden himself from everyone except Hocksley, but Hocksley will read about what happened and come to that apartment just as certain as—but what am I doing, rattling along this way? Paul Drake’s coffee must have given me this talking jag.”

  Mason was frowning thoughtfully. He said, “Go ahead, Della, keep on talking. You’re doing fine.”

  She shook her head. “I absolutely refuse to solve cases for you. It’s a violation of my contract with the union.”

  “You’re not trying to solve the cases,” Mason said. “You’re simply giving me ideas.”

  “You don’t need anyone to give you ideas,” she said. “Or do you?”

  They laughed.

  Abruptly, she settled down against his shoulder with a little wriggling motion. “I’m getting my wires crossed,” she admitted. “In order to get anywhere in this world, a woman is supposed to be feminine and leave the thinking to the males. They like it better that way.”

  “You must have been taking lessons,” Mason said.

  She yawned sleepily. “I have. It’s a swell book. Sex Appeal for Secretaries, in two volumes. It says a well-trained secretary never argues with her boss.”

  “Can’t a boss argue with his secretary?”

  “It takes two to make an argument. Go ahead, Chief, and solve your mysteries. I’m supposed to stand by and hold your coat. Here I was, forgetting myself and trying to put it on, and—somehow, I don’t think it fits.”

  The rambling frame structure of the Gentrie residence was dark and somber, save for the dining room and kitchen, which were ablaze with light. Mason parked his car and climbed the long flight of stairs which led up from the street to the porch level.

  “Remember now,” he cautioned Della Street, “not to show too much interest in that can.”

  He tapped gently on the door with his knuckles.

  They heard the sound of quick steps from the inside of the house, then Mrs. Gentrie flung open the door. She pressed her finger to her lips for silence. “Please don’t make any more noise than possible,” she said. “I would prefer not to have my sister-in-law in on this. She’s never been very tolerant about the children.”

  Mason nodded.

  “Come in,” she invited.

  They filed into the house, and Mrs. Gentrie escorted them through the living room into the dining room. “I hate to ask you to talk in here,” she said in a low whisper, “but the living room is right under Rebecca’s bedroom. She wants to know everything that’s going on, and very definitely she isn’t fair to Junior. What’s more, that police lieutenant has been flattering her with a little attention, and it’s turned her head. If we talked over anything where she could hear it, Lieutenant Tragg would know all about it before noon. He flatters her, and she thinks he’s simply wonderful.”

  “What did she say when she knew Junior had been arrested?” Mason asked in a low voice.

  “She doesn’t know yet. I just didn’t feel up to telling her. I didn’t know when you’d come, and I knew that she’d sit up and keep up an interminable chatter.”

  “What happened?” Mason asked. “Tell me in exact detail.”

  Mrs. Gentrie said, “Well, of course, I expected it. Lieutenant Tragg dropped in about dinner time. And Junior wasn’t here. His father said Junior had complained of not feeling well about three o’clock in the afternoon, and he’d told the boy to go on home. Naturally, he was surprised and irritated to find Junior wasn’t here.”

  Mason nodded.

  “What did Tragg say to that?”

  “I think Lieutenant Tragg was very angry—not with us exactly, but with himself. He thought he should have done something about Junior earlier. He put men on watch at the house, and instructed the telephone company to disconnect our telephone. We were held here during the evening as virtual prisoners. Of course, the other children had to learn about it.”

  “Was Steele here?”

  “No. He’s out several nights each week. I just can’t size that boy up. He seems lonely. He’s certainly attractive enough, but I don’t think he has any girl friends. He just seems to enjoy sitting around with the family.”

  “How about Rebecca?” Mason asked.

  “Fortunately, she didn’t come in until after Tragg had left. There is only one thing she really cares for besides crossword puzzles and photography, and that’s opera. She had a crossword-club dinner meeting, and it’s also her opera night.”

  “What time did Junior finally arrive?”

  “Almost eleven o’clock.”

  “Did Tragg ask him any questions?”

  “No. He took him into custody. Then he took away the men who had been watching the place, and a short time after that the telephone rang. It was the telephone company to say that our telephone had been temporarily out of order, that service was now restored. I called your office right away. Of course, no one answered. I didn’t think anyone would. Then I called Mr. Drake’s agency, and it must have been nearly midnight when I got in touch with him. He told me he thought he’d be in touch with you later on, and if I’d wait up he’d pass the message on.”

  Mason said, “But if Tragg had men watching the house, Steele must have been stopped when he came in.”

  She said, “Yes—that’s right, if he came in before Junior.”

  Mason said, “I’d like to know just where Tragg had his men stationed, and whether those men knew Steele by sight. I wonder if we could wake Steele up to ask him a couple of questions.”

  “Oh, I’d hesitate to do that,” Mrs. Gentrie said. “After all, you know, he’s a roomer.”

  “There’s a door which leads to his room from here?”

  She pointed toward a door which opened from the hallway leading from the dining room to the foot of the stairs. “He has his own private exit and his own bath,” she said. “We rent him the room, then, of course, he can come in here whenever he wants to. We try to treat our roomers as one of the family—except on telephone service. We have so many telephone calls, because of the children and . . .”

  “I understand,” Mason said. “How about knocking on his door?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t,” Mrs. Gentrie said.

  Mason said thoughtfully, “Well, after all, it’s rather important.”

  Mrs. Gentrie said, “I’d rather you’d just take a peek inside. I’d prefer almost anything than to have Rebecca come down now with all of her questions and—you know, if she got the idea I knew Junior wasn’t in his room when that shot was fired she’d tell lieutenant Tragg. Oh, Mr. Mason, please tell me that Junior didn’t do it. That’s the thing that’s been torturing me. You know how it is with a young boy, when he becomes infatuated with an older woman with more worldly experience. If she’s inclined to play him along, she can make a terrible fool of him. And all through this thing, Junior has acted so queerly. He just drew himself up very straight and erect and whitefaced when Lieutenant Tragg placed him under arrest. He didn’t say a word.”

  Mason said, “I want to see if Steele keeps his door locked. That may have some bearing on the whole thing.”

  He crossed the dining room to the hallway, turned the knob of the door gently. It swung open on well-oiled, noiseless hinges. He looked inside, swung the door wider open so that light from the dining room illuminated the bedroom.

  “There’s no one here,” he said.

  Mrs. Gentrie got to her feet. “Why, good heavens, it’s well after three o’clock. Of course, he does stay out rather late at times, but I never knew him to be as late as this.”

  Mason said, “However, because he has his own private exit and entrance, he could come and go very easily without you hearing him, couldn’t he?”

  She said, “Yes, I suppose so.”

  Mason swung the door tentatively back and forth. “These hinges,” he said, “seem to have been freshly oiled.”

  “Well, I declare to goodness,” Mrs. Gentrie observed, examining the hinges. “They certainly have!”

  “You didn’t oil them?”

  She shook her head.

  “Could they have been oiled for some time without you noticing it?”

  “Rebecca does the dusting and cleaning up in here. She certainly should have noticed—but she didn’t say anything. Hester cleans and dusts the outside. She might not have noticed. She isn’t particularly perceptive.”

  Mason said, “Steele was in an admirable position then to leave this room, cross the kitchen, go down the cellar stairs, cross through the garage, and go over to the flat next door.”

  “Why . . . why, I guess he could have if he’d wanted to.”

  Mason went on, “There’s a door leading from the cellar into the garage, then a door from the garage leading into the yard, and a few feet beyond that a side door to Hocksley’s flat. Is that right?”

  She nodded and said, “But I can’t understand . . . Surely, Mr. Mason . . .”

  Mason said, “Let’s just step inside this room for a moment. I want to look around a bit.”

  “I’m afraid he wouldn’t like it if he should come in.”

  “I think I can take the responsibility for that,” Mason said. “It’s rather important to find out why Mr. Steele isn’t in now, why the hinges on his door have been oiled.”

  “You mean that he . . .”

  “I’m not making any accusations just yet. If we’re going to clear Junior, we must find out exactly what happened the night of the shooting.”

  They entered Steele’s room, and Mason started a keeneyed search.

  Mrs. Gentrie said, “I thought I heard him come in about half-past two or three o’clock this afternoon. He seemed to be in very much of a hurry, rushing around. I’m quite sure it must have been Mr. Steele. He didn’t say anything to us, however. Usually he looks in on us just to pass the time of day when he comes home in the afternoon that way.”

  “Does he come home frequently during the middle of the afternoon?”

  “Sometimes. Very seldom during the morning, but occasionally he comes in the afternoon.”

  Mason opened a closet door, looked inside at the array of clothes. “Do you know how he was dressed?” he asked.

  Mrs. Gentrie indicated a light gray checked suit. “Why, that’s the suit he was wearing this morning.”

  “Is it indeed?”

  “Yes, he must have come and changed to a heavier suit. I notice his tweed is missing.”

  Mason moved over to the light checked suit and calmly started going through the pockets.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Gentrie said, “I . . . do you think it’s all right to do that?”

  Mason said, “I think we’ve got to find out everything we can about him.”

  “I know, but isn’t that rather—well. . .”

  Mason said, “I think it will be all right.” He glanced significantly at Della Street and said, “Get Mrs. Gentrie to show you where he keeps his linen, Della.”

  Della, distracting Mrs. Gentrie’s attention, said, “I suppose in this drawer . . .” She stopped at the expression on Mason’s face as the lawyer pulled a telegram from a side pocket of the coat Steele had discarded.

  “Well, well, what’s this?” Mason said.

  “Really,” Mrs. Gentrie protested as Mason unfolded the yellow oblong of paper. “I’d prefer that you didn’t read that.”

  Mason, however, already had the telegram opened and was reading the message. “Well,” he said, “this is something. It’s a telegram sent to Steele at the office of the architect and says, ‘Man named Carr Luceman accidentally shot self when cat knocked gun off table. Luceman’s address thirteen-o-nine Delington Avenue, San Francisco. Grab plane investigate.’ And it’s signed K. Anamata.”