Mason nodded acquiescence to Della Street, took the telephone from her, and said, “Hello.” He heard a thin, high-pitched voice saying in a crisp, meticulous accuracy of enunciation, “Mr. Mason, this is Elston A. Karr. I have given my address to your secretary. I presume she has made a note of it. Apparently a murder was committed in the flat below mine sometime last night. The place is crawling with police. For certain reasons which I cannot explain at the present time or over the telephone, I want to talk with an attorney. It’s about a matter about which I’ve been thinking for several days. I want to get it disposed of before police start messing into my private affairs. Can you come out here immediately? I am confined to a wheelchair and am unable to get to your office.”

  “Who was murdered?” Mason asked.

  “I don’t know. That matter is highly immaterial except as it will interfere with what I want to do.”

  Mason, conducting a psychological experiment, asked, “Do you think you’ll be suspected of complicity in this murder?”

  The man’s close-lipped accents said scornfully, “Certainly not.”

  “Then why all this hurry about seeing me?”

  “It’s a matter I’ll explain when you get here. It’s highly important. I am willing to pay any fee within reason. I want you personally, Mr. Mason. I would not be satisfied with any other attorney. But you’ll have to make up your mind quickly.”

  Mason turned to Della Street. “Tell Gertie not to touch those books on the library table. Okay, Mr. Karr, I’ll be right out. Just a minute. Della, you have the address?”

  “Yes.”

  Mason dropped the receiver into place. “Come on, Della. We’re going places.”

  Wenston smiled. “Glad you talked with him, Mr. Mason. He’th a card. I’ll not be going out with you. Sometimes we don’t get along too well. I fly him around and do errands for him, but we’re not too thick. Just a tip—don’t let him dominate you. He’ll try fast enough—and lose all respect for you as soon as he does it.

  “And, if you want another tip, remember he’s a deep one. He may seem simple enough, but he has an oriental angle of approach. You know, when he wants to go north, he starts to the east and circles back. He’s rented the flat in my name. You’ll see Wenston on the door.

  “Well, I’ll be on my way. Thank you for your courtesy in seeing me. Good morning.”

  Mason was putting on his hat as Wenston went out. He and Della caught the next elevator down, and crossed to the garage where Mason’s car was parked. The lawyer drove swiftly through the congestion of morning traffic, parking the car half a block from the address his client had given Della Street. Four or five cars were already parked in front of the two-flat stucco house, its cream-colored sides and red-tiled roof contrasting in architecture with the old-fashioned rambling frame house on the comer where the Gentries lived.

  As they walked rapidly along toward the flat, Della said, “That corner house certainly goes back.”

  Mason looked at it curiously. “A lot of those houses were put up around 1900. They were then the last word in luxurious mansions. Of course they seem hopelessly antiquated now. That’s because this section of the country is so young and styles have changed with such bewildering rapidity. Take some of the older parts of the country and old houses don’t look so much out of place. You’ll find lots of houses seventy-five to a hundred years old which don’t seem nearly as old as this place. This flat is the one we want, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. We ring the bell on the left. This one on the right says Robindale E. Hocksley.”

  Mason said, “Hope he doesn’t keep us standing here. It would be just our luck to have Lieutenant Tragg pop his head out of the door and . . .”

  Abruptly the door of the left-hand flat opened. A tall Chinese, clad in somber, dark clothes, said, “How-do? Mistah Mason? You please come in, velly quick please.”

  Mason and Della walked through the door the Chinese was holding open and climbed the stairs. The door was swung quietly shut behind them by the swift-moving Chinese.

  Nearing the head of the stairs Mason heard the sound of rubber-tired wheels rolling rapidly along the hardwood floor. The same high-pitched, reedy voice he had heard over the telephone said, “It’s all right, Johns. Don’t bother. I’ll make it.” Then a wheelchair shot through a curtained doorway. An emaciated hand applied a brake, and Mason found himself scrutinized by a pair of piercing gray eyes, deep-set beneath shaggy brows, in a face which seemed all skin and bones.

  The man in the wheelchair gave the impression of boundless nervous energy. It was as though the strength which had been denied the body had gone into nervous vitality. So intense was the concentration in those gray eyes that the man seemed to entirely forget the amenities of the situation. Della Street he ignored, utterly and completely, devoting all of his attention to a study of the lawyer.

  It was a man who came hurrying from the room behind the curtained doorway who broke the tension. “Mr. Mason?”

  The lawyer nodded.

  The man came forward, smiling. Powerful shoulders pushed out a short, muscular arm. Thick, strong fingers grasped Mason’s hand. “I’m Blaine,” he said. “Johns Blaine.”

  Karr lowered the lids of his eyes. In that moment, so transparent and waxlike was his skin that he seemed almost as a corpse. Then his eyes slowly opened. The look of intense concentration had departed. There was a smile on his lips, and a kindly twinkle in his eyes. “Forgive me, Mr. Mason,” he said. “I need a good lawyer. I’ve heard a lot about you. I wanted to see if you measured up.”

  He raised his hand from the arm of the wheelchair and extended it. Mason folded gentle fingers about the hand, noticing that the skin was cold, that the bones seemed delicately fragile.

  “My secretary, Miss Street,” Mason introduced.

  The others acknowledged the introduction, then Karr said, “And my number one boy, Gow Loong.”

  Mason regarded the Chinese with undisguised interest. He had, somehow, more the air of a companion or partner than of a servant. His high forehead, the calm placidity of his countenance, the steady inscrutability of his dark eyes gave him a distinguished appearance.

  “Don’t get interested in him,” Karr warned, in his quick, nervous voice. “He’s too much like the Orient. You want to understand him, but can’t. A perpetual mystery. Arouses your curiosity and then slams the door in your face. We’ve got too confounded much to think about—too much to talk about. Glad you brought your secretary. She can take notes, and I won’t have to go over the thing twice. Makes me terribly impatient when I have to repeat things. What are you standing there for? Come on, let’s go in where we can sit down and be comfortable, and get this over with.”

  He grasped the big rubber tires of the wheelchair, spun it in a quick turn, lunged forward with his thin shoulders, and, mustering surprising strength, sent the chair shooting back through the curtained doorway at such speed that the others, following along behind, were hopelessly in the rear.

  The room beyond the curtained doorway was a well-furnished drawing room with hardwood floors, sumptuous Chinese rugs and furniture which had quite evidently been brought from the Orient. The dark wood of this furniture had been cunningly carved with a design in which the dragon motif predominated.

  Karr spun the wheelchair into a quick turn and stopped it instantly. He handled his chair with the deft, expert skill born of long practice. “Sit down. Sit down,” he said in his high-pitched, piping voice. “Don’t stand on formality, please. There isn’t any time. Mason, sit over here. Miss Street, if you’ll use that table for your writing. No! Wait a minute. There’s some nested tables over there. You can get one just the right height. Gow Loong, put that table over by her elbow. All set? Sit down, Johns. Damn it, you make me nervous, hovering around over me. I’m not going to break in two.”

  “What has happened?” Mason asked.

  Karr said, “Listen attentively, please. You got your notebook there, Miss Street? That’s fine. I’m right in the middle of a delicate matter. I won’t go into details right now, but I had a partner in China. A rough partnership it was, too. We were running guns up the Yangtze. Slice you up in fine pieces if they caught you. Death of a thousand cuts, they called it.

  “Well, anyway, my partner and I kept ’em supplied with guns. There was excitement in it, and money. I won’t go into that, though, not now. I’ll only say I’m doing something in connection with that old partnership—and I’ve got to keep under cover until it’s done. I can’t stand any notoriety—don’t want anyone to know of me. Far as anyone knows, Elston A. Karr was killed up the river.

  “I rented this apartment in the name of my stepson, Rodney Wenston. He signs all the checks, pays the rent, and all that. I don’t enter into the picture at all.

  “However, there are some of the boys who aren’t fooled easily. Don’t ever underestimate the Oriental. They’re slow but sure. Sometimes they aren’t so slow, either. Well, as I said, I’ve got to avoid any publicity. No one must see me here. I can’t be questioned.

  “Well, this matter I want to talk to you about has to do with the old partnership. I didn’t start the ball rolling until I was certain any interest which might have been aroused by my having moved in here had quieted down. So I picked this particular time to go ahead, and then that murder happened downstairs. Puts me in the devil of a predicament. I suppose the newspapermen will describe the house and the tenants. Worst possible time it could have happened.”

  Mason asked, “Why not let this other matter wait?”

  “Because I’ve already started it,” Karr exclaimed irritably. “Dammit, Mason, I told you that already. I’ve started the ball rolling. I can’t stop it now. And the more of a mystery they make of that murder downstairs, the longer the thing drags out, the more notoriety I’ll get, and the more dangerous it is for me.”

  “Have the police been here yet?” Mason asked.

  “No. That’s why I was in such a hurry to get you. I want you to help me handle them.”

  Mason frowned. “How does it happen they haven’t been here before this?”

  Karr said, “Talked them out of it. Sent Johns and Gow Loong down to find out what it was all about. The police questioned them. Some lieutenant from the Homicide Squad down there. What’s his name, Johns?”

  “Tragg.”

  “That’s right, Tragg. Lieutenant Tragg. Know him, Mason?”

  “Yes.”

  Karr said, “They told Tragg I was sick, that he’d have to come up to interview me, that I didn’t know anything, anyway. That’s not true. I heard the shot, but that’s all I know about it.”

  Mason said, “Perhaps if you’d tell me why you felt it necessary to call me, we’d have a more satisfactory starting point.”

  Karr jerked his head into a sharp turn. His eyes were blazing now with the fire of that devastating, nervous energy which seemed to be too much for his frail body to hold. “How about this secretary of yours? All right?”

  “All right.”

  “You can vouch for her?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is important—important as the devil.”

  “She’s all right.”

  Karr said, “I don’t know what happened downstairs. I don’t give a damn. I’m confined to my wheelchair. I can’t get around. Have to be lifted in and out. Don’t have any opportunity to be neighborly. Don’t want to be neighborly. All I ask is to be left alone. Now this confounded murder comes along, and I suppose the newspaper reporters will start snooping around. One thing I can’t stand, Mason, is publicity. Don’t want any of it. Can’t have it.”

  “Why did you send for me?” Mason asked.

  “I’m coming to it. Don’t interrupt me. When I get started, let me go. And don’t make me repeat. It makes me nervous to have to repeat. Where was I? Oh, yes, publicity. I’ll tell you why I can’t stand any publicity. I’m hiding. They’re trying to murder me. Wouldn’t be surprised if this murder downstairs was because some hired assassin got his numbers mixed. I used the greatest care getting this flat. It’s an ideal location for what I want. But I made one mistake. I should have rented the lower flat as well, and put Gow Loong in there. But when I moved in, the lower flat was untenanted and had been for over a year. Neighborhood’s gone to hell, but they still want too much money for their rentals. I rented this place, moved in at night. . . .”

  “Why didn’t you take the lower apartment for yourself?” Mason asked. “The stairs must make a difference.”

  “Don’t make any difference at all,” Karr said. “Can’t go any place except in a wheelchair. Have no desire to go out of doors except to get a little sunlight. There’s a fine balcony here on the south and west side. I can get out there and get the sunlight. That’s why I like the place. No buildings over on the south side to shut off the sunlight. That big old-fashioned mansion over on the north literally blankets the north side, shuts off any cold north winds. I want it warm. My blood’s thin. Too long in the tropics. Too much dysentery. Too much malaria. Too much other stuff. Never mind. Don’t need to go into that now. How’d I get talking about stairs? Oh, yes, you asked me.”

  He raised his hand and pointed a long, bony finger at Mason. “I told you not to interrupt me. Let me talk.”

  Mason smiled. “There are certain things I have to know.”

  “All right, I’ll come to them. Wait until I’ve finished, and then ask me for anything I haven’t covered. What was I talking about?”

  “Publicity,” Johns Blaine said in the half second of silence which followed Karr’s request.

  “Murder,” corrected Gow Loong.

  Mason’s eyes shifted to the face of the Chinese, regarding him with keen interest. The one word which he had spoken had been without emphasis, without accent, and without hesitation. It was the one word of prompting which Karr needed.

  “That’s right,” Karr said. “It’s murder. I’m a wanted man, Mr. Mason. There are people who want to know where I am. If they find out, I’m finished. In my condition, I can’t move around rapidly. I took a lot of trouble getting into this place unobserved. Johns Blaine rented it, and moved in. He and Gow Loong smuggled me in under cover of darkness. No one has ever seen me. That’s the beauty of the place. That balcony out there gets the sunlight, but it can’t be seen from any direction. There isn’t any other house which can command a view. That’s the advantage of that deep gully along there—‘barranca’ they call it in this country. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t think they’d ever rent the lower part of the house. Too many people are afraid there’s going to be an earthquake, and the whole thing will slide down into the gully—barranca.

  “There may be better places out here in Hollywood, but we didn’t have time to look around too much. They were after me. They were pretty hot on my trail, if you want to know the truth. A man who has to move around in a wheelchair isn’t exactly what you’d call inconspicuous. Johns did a good job in the limited time he had. It’s a satisfactory place. But I can’t stand any investigation. I don’t want to talk with the police. I don’t want them to talk with me. I can’t see any newspaper reporters.”

  “What do you know,” Mason asked, “and what happened?”

  “A man moved in down in the lower flat about a week after I’d rented this place,” Karr said. “I haven’t ever seen him. He’s never seen me. His name’s Hocksley. Guess you saw it on the mailbox—didn’t you?”

  Mason nodded.

  “I don’t know what he does. I think he’s connected with the studios, some sort of a writer. Damned irregular habits. I can hear him dictating sometimes at night. Always seems to dictate at night. Don’t know what he does during the daytime. Guess he sleeps.”

  “Does he dictate to a stenographer?” Mason asked.

  “No. To a dictating machine. That’s the way it sounds, and I think that’s right. Has a girl who comes in every day and pounds the typewriter. He seems to keep her busy. She’s the one who discovered the murder.”

  “She comes in each day?” Mason asked.

  “Yes.”

  “He lives down there alone?”

  “No, he doesn’t. He has a housekeeper. What’s her name, Gow Loong?”

  “Salah Pahlin.”

  “That’s right, Sarah Perlin. Never can remember names. That’s an odd name, anyway. I’ve never seen her. Johns has seen her. Tell him what she looks like, Johns.”

  Blaine said very tersely, “Fifty-five, tall, angular, dark eyes, thin gray hair, keeps it combed tightly back, flat-footed, doesn’t try to make herself look attractive. She lives in the place, has the back bedroom, I think. About five-foot-four or five, weighs a hundred ten or a hundred and fifteen. Is there to work, and that’s all, closemouthed, does the cooking, takes care of the place, doesn’t do washing, evidently a good cook. There’s lots of baking. You can smell it up here. Doesn’t seem to do much frying.”

  Karr held up his hand. “That’s enough,” he said. “Gives Mason the picture. He doesn’t have to know too much about her. Just wants a description—doesn’t want to know what brand of toothpaste she uses. She’s disappeared.”

  Abruptly, the sound of the buzzer on the door interrupted Karr’s speech.

  Mason said, “That’ll be the police.”

  Karr said, “Keep me out of it, Mason. You’ve got to keep me out of it.”

  Mason said impatiently, “You’ve spouted out a lot of rapid conversation, but you haven’t got anywhere. That’s because you wouldn’t let me interrupt you and ask questions. Gow Loong, go to the door. If that’s Tragg, keep him down there for a minute or two. Karr, tell me exactly what happened.”

  Karr frowned irritably. “Don’t interrupt me. I . . .”

  “Shut up,” Mason said. “Answer my question. What happened?”

  Johns Blaine stared at Mason in sudden consternation, said, “Mr. Karr gets nervous when he’s interrupted, Mr. Mason. He . . .”

  “Shut up,” Karr said to Blaine, and to Mason, “Last night about half past twelve, a shot. After that, some moving around downstairs. I didn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t. I could have yelled, that’s all. I didn’t try yelling. Wouldn’t have done any good, anyway.”