“Well,” Sergeant Holcomb said to the sheriff, “it’s your funeral. His methods are enough to give you gray hairs.”

  Sheriff Barnes tilted back the sombrero and ran his fingers through sweat-moistened hair. “I’ve got gray hairs now,” he said. “How about it, Mason, you going up?”

  “I’ll follow you,” Mason told him. “You know the way?”

  “Sure, I was up there nearly all day yesterday.”

  “How much has been touched?” Mason asked.

  “Not a thing. We’ve taken the body out, and cleaned out the remains of a string of fish, which had gone pretty bad. Of course, we took the parrot. Aside from that, we ain’t touched a thing, except to go over everything for fingerprints.”

  “Find any?” Mason asked.

  “Quite a few,” the sheriff admitted noncommittally.

  Sergeant Holcomb said abruptly, “Well, Sheriff, let’s get going. Mason can follow us.”

  The road crossed a ridge, debouched onto a plateau. Here and there were little clearings, cabins nestled back against the trees. Up near the upper end of the plateau, when they were within a few hundred feet of the stream which came roaring down from a mountain canyon, Sheriff Barnes abruptly signaled for a right-hand turn. He swung into a dirt road, carpeted with pine needles, which ran back to a cabin so skillfully blended with the trees that it seemed almost to be the work of nature rather than of man.

  Mason exclaimed, “Look at that cabin, Della! It certainly is a beautiful setting!”

  A bluejay, resenting their intrusion, launched himself downward from the top of one of the pine trees, screeching his raucous, “Thief … thief … thief.”

  Mason swung the car into the shaded area back of the cabin and parked it. Sheriff Barnes crossed over and said, “I’m going to ask you to be careful not to touch anything, Mr. Mason, and I think Miss Street had better wait outside.”

  Mason nodded acquiescence.

  A tall, rangy man who moved with the easy grace of a mountain dweller emerged from the shadows and touched his somewhat battered hat to the sheriff. “Everything’s okay, Sheriff,” he said.

  Sheriff Barnes took a key from his pocket, unlocked the padlock on the door, and said by way of introduction, “This is Fred Waner. He lives up here. I’ve had him guarding the cabin.”

  The sheriff opened the door. “Now, let’s try not to walk around any more than is necessary. You, Sergeant, know what to do.” Mason glanced into the mountain cabin with its big fireplace, plain pine table, hand-hewn rafters. A neatly made bed with snowy linen was in startling contrast to the seed-littered floor. Mud-stained rubber boots stood, sagging limply; above them was a jointed fly rod.

  Sergeant Holcomb said, “My advice, Sheriff, would be to let Mr. Mason look around without touching anything, and then leave. We can’t do anything as long as he’s here.”

  “Why not?” Sheriff Barnes said.

  Sergeant Holcomb flushed. “For various reasons. One of them is that before you get done, this man is going to be on the other side of the fence. He’s going to be opposing you, he’s going to be trying to tear down the case you’re building up against the murderer. The more you expose your methods to him, the more he has an opportunity to tear you to pieces on the witness stand.”

  Sheriff Barnes said doggedly, “That’s all right. If anybody’s going to be hung for murder on my say-so, I want it to be after a case is built up which can’t be torn down.”

  “I’d like to see as much as you care to show me,” Mason said to the sheriff. “I take it, that chalk outline on the floor represents where the body was found when it was first discovered.”

  “Yes, that’s right. The gun was found over there about ten feet away, where you’ll notice the outline in chalk.”

  “Is it possible that Mr. Sabin could have shot himself?” Mason asked.

  “Absolutely impossible according to the testimony of the doctors. What’s more, the gun had been wiped free of fingerprints. Sabin wasn’t wearing gloves. If he’d shot himself, he’d have left some fingerprints on the gun.”

  Mason, frowning thoughtfully, said, “Then the murderer didn’t even want it to look like suicide.”

  “How so?” the sheriff asked.

  “He could very easily have placed the gun nearer the body. He could have wiped off his own fingerprints, and pressed the weapon into the hand of the dead man.”

  “That’s logical,” the sheriff said.

  “And,” Mason went on, “the murderer must have wanted the officers to find the gun.”

  “Baloney,” Sergeant Holcomb said. “The murderer simply didn’t want the officers to find the gun on him. That’s the way all clever murderers do. As soon as they commit a crime, they drop the rod. They don’t even keep it with them long enough to find some place to hide it. The gun can hang them. They shoot it and drop it.”

  “All right,” Mason said, smiling, “you win. They shoot it and drop it. What else, Sheriff?”

  “The parrot cage was over here on the floor,” the sheriff said, “and the door was propped open with a little stick so the parrot could walk out whenever he wanted to.”

  “Or walk in, whenever it had been out?” Mason asked.

  “Well, yes. That’s a thought.”

  “And how long do you think the parrot had been here without food or water, Sheriff?”

  “He’d had plenty of food. The water had dried up in the pan. See that agateware pan over there? Well, that had evidently been left pretty well filled with water, but the water had dried out—what the parrot hadn’t had to drink. You can see little spots of rust on the bottom which show where the last few drops evaporated.”

  “The body then,” Mason said, “must have been here for some time before it was discovered.”

  “The murder,” Sheriff Barnes asserted, “took place some time on Tuesday, the sixth of September. It took place probably right around eleven o’clock in the morning.”

  “How do you figure that?” Mason asked. “Or do you object to telling me?”

  “Not at all,” the sheriff said. “The fishing season in this entire district opened on September sixth. The Fish and Game Commission wanted to have an area for fall fishing which hadn’t been all fished out. So they picked out certain streams which they kept closed until later on in the season. This was one of the last. The season opened here on September sixth.

  “Now then, Sabin was a funny chap. He had places that he went and things that he did, and we haven’t found out all of ’em yet. We know some of them. He had a trailer and he’d drive around at trailer camps, sit and whittle and talk with people, just finding out that way what was going on in the world. Sometimes he’d take an old suit of shiny clothes and go prowl around libraries for a week or two …”

  “Yes, I read all about that in the newspaper,” Mason interrupted.

  “Well,” the sheriff went on, “he told his son and Richard Waid, his secretary, that he was going to be home on Monday the fifth to pick up his fishing things. He’d been away on a little trip. They don’t know just where, but he surprised them by coming home on Friday the second. He took his fishing tackle, picked up his parrot, and came up here. It seems he was putting across a big deal in New York, and had told his secretary to charter a plane and be ready to fly East when he gave the word. The secretary waited at the airport all Monday afternoon. He had a plane in readiness. About ten o’clock on the night of the fifth, the call came through. Waid says that Sabin seemed in wonderful spirits. He said everything was okay, that Waid was to jump in his plane and get to New York at once.”

  “He was talking from the cabin here?” Mason asked.

  “No, he wasn’t. He told Waid the telephone here had gone dead so he’d had to go to a pay station. He didn’t say where, and Waid didn’t think to ask him. Of course, at the time, it didn’t seem particularly important. Waid was in a hurry to get started to New York.”

  “You’ve talked with Waid?” Mason asked.

  “On the long distance telephone,” the sheriff said. “He was still in New York.”

  “Did he tell the nature of the business?” Mason asked.

  “No, he said it was something important and highly confidential. That was all he’d say.”

  “Waid, I take it, had a chartered plane?” Mason asked.

  The sheriff grinned and said, “It looks as though Waid may have cut a corner there. Steve Watkins, who’s the son of Sabin’s wife by a former marriage, is quite a flyer. He’s got a fast plane and likes to fly around the country. I take it Sabin didn’t care much for Steve and wouldn’t have liked it if he’d known Waid was going to fly back to New York with Steve; but Steve wanted to make the trip and needed the money, so Waid arranged to pay him the charter price and Steve Watkins flew him back.”

  “What time did they leave?”

  “At ten minutes past ten, the night of Monday the fifth,” the sheriff said. “Just to make sure, I checked up with the records of the airport.”

  “And what time did Sabin call Waid?”

  “Waid says it wasn’t more than ten minutes before he took off. He thinks it was right around ten o’clock.”

  “He recognized Sabin’s voice?” Mason asked.

  “Yes, and said Sabin seemed very pleased about something. He told Waid he’d closed the deal and to start at once. He said there’d been a little delay because the telephone here was out of order. He’d had to drive down to a pay station, but he said he was driving right back to the cabin and would be at the cabin for two or three days, that in case Waid encountered any difficulties he was to telephone.”

  “And Waid didn’t telephone?”

  “No, because everything went through like clockwork, and Sabin had only told him to telephone in case something went wrong.”

  Mason said thoughtfully. “Well, let’s see then. He was alive at ten o’clock on the evening of Monday, September fifth. Did anyone else see him or talk with him after that?”

  “No,” the sheriff said. “That’s the last time we actually know he was alive. From there on, we have to figure evidence. The fishing season opened on Tuesday the sixth. Over there’s an alarm clock which had run down. It stopped at two forty-seven. The alarm was set at five-thirty.”

  “The alarm run down too?” Mason asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  The telephone bell shattered the silence. The sheriff said, “Excuse me,” and scooped up the receiver. He listened a moment, then said, “All right, hold the line,” and turned to Mason. “It’s for you,” he said.

  Mason took the receiver and heard Paul Drake’s voice at the other end of the line. “Hello, Perry. I took a chance on calling you there. Are you where you can talk?”

  “No,” Mason said.

  “But you can listen all right?”

  “Yes. Go ahead. What is it?”

  “I think I’ve found your murderer—at any rate, I’ve got a lead on that profane parrot, and a swell description of the man that bought him.”

  “Where?”

  “At San Molinas.”

  “Keep talking,” Mason told him.

  “A man by the name of Arthur Gibbs runs a pet shop in San Molinas. It’s known as the Fifth Avenue Pet Shop. On Friday the second, a seedy-looking chap came in to buy a parrot in a hurry. Gibbs remembers it, because the man didn’t seem to care anything about the parrot except its appearance. Gibbs sold him this profane parrot. He thinks the man didn’t know about its habit of cussing … I think you’d better talk with Gibbs, Mason.”

  “Any details?” Mason asked.

  “I’ve got a swell description.”

  “Does it fit anyone?” Mason inquired.

  “No one so far as I can tell,” Drake said. “… Tell you what I’ll do, Perry. I’ll go to the Plaza Hotel and wait in the lobby. You get down here as soon as you can. If it’s after five-thirty, I’ll arrange with Gibbs to wait.”

  Mason said, “That’ll be fine,” and hung up the telephone to face the coldly suspicious eyes of Sergeant Holcomb.

  Sheriff Barnes, apparently not noticing the interruption, said, “When we broke in here, we found a creel filled with fish. We boxed it up in an airtight container and sent it to the police laboratory in the city. They report that the creel contained a limit of fish which had been cleaned and wrapped in leaves but hadn’t been given a final washing. We’ve found the remains of his breakfast—a couple of eggs and some bacon rinds. We’ve found the remains of his lunch—canned beans. The body was clothed in slippers, slacks, and a light sweater. That leather coat there was on the back of the chair. Those are his fishing boots over there with mud on them. There’s his fly rod and flies on the table, just as he’d left them when he came in.

  “Now, I figure he was killed right around eleven o’clock on the morning of Tuesday the sixth. Would you like to know how I figure it?”

  “Very much indeed,” Mason said.

  Sergeant Holcomb turned on his heel and walked away, showing his silent disgust.

  Sheriff Barnes said, “Well, I ain’t had much experience in murder cases, but I know how to figure probabilities. I’ve been in the forest service, and I’ve worked cattle, and I know how to read trail. I don’t know whether the same kind of reasoning will work in a murder case or not, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t. Anyway, here’s the way I figure it. Sabin got up at five-thirty because that’s when the alarm went off. He had breakfast of bacon and eggs. He went out fishing. He caught a limit. He got back here, and he was tired and hungry. He didn’t even bother to wash the fish and put them in the icebox. He took off his boots, chucked the creel of fish over there, went out into the kitchen and cooked himself some canned beans. There was some coffee in the pot—probably still left from breakfast. He warmed that up.

  “The next thing he’d have done was to have given the fish a good washing and put them in the icebox. He was murdered right after lunch and before he’d had a chance to do that. I fixed the time at around eleven o’clock.”

  “Why not later?” Mason asked.

  “Oh, yes,” the sheriff said, “I overlooked that. The sun gets on the cabin here about half past ten or eleven and it starts to get warm. It’s off the cabin by four o’clock in the afternoon, and it gets cold right away. During the middle of the day it’s hot. During the nights it’s cold. So I figured he was murdered after it had warmed up and before it had cooled off, but not during the middle of the day when it was real hot. If it had been real cold, he’d have had his coat on and would have lit the fire over there in the fireplace. You see, it’s all laid. If it had been real hot, he wouldn’t have been wearing his sweater.”

  “Nice going,” Mason said approvingly. “Have you made any experiments to find out how long it takes the alarm clock to run down after it’s wound up?”

  “I wired the factory,” the sheriff said. “They say from around thirty to thirty-six hours, depending on the condition of the clock and how long it’s been used.

  “Now, here’s another thing, Mr. Mason. Whoever killed Sabin was a kindhearted, considerate sort of a guy. Anyway, that’s the way I figure it.”

  He tilted back his hat and scratched the thick hair back of his ears in a characteristic gesture. “Now, you may think it sounds kind of funny for a man to say that about a murderer, but that’s the way I figure it just the same. This man had something against Sabin. He wanted to kill him, but he didn’t want to kill the parrot. He figured it was apt to be some time before Sabin’s body was discovered, and he arranged so the parrot wouldn’t starve to death in the meantime.

  “Now that makes it look as though the murderer had some powerful reason for wanting Sabin out of the way. It wasn’t robbery and it wasn’t just sheer cussedness. The murderer was kindhearted… if you get what I mean.”

  “I think I do,” Mason said with a smile. “And thank you very much, Sheriff. I won’t intrude on you and Sergeant Holcomb longer. I think I understand the situation. I’ll walk around the outside of the cabin a couple of times and give it the once-over. I certainly appreciate your courtesy and …”

  He broke off as someone knocked on the cabin door.

  Sheriff Barnes opened the door. A blond, studious-appearing young man in the early thirties peered owlishly from behind horn-rimmed spectacles. “Sheriff Barnes?” he inquired.

  “You’re Waid?” the sheriff asked.

  “Yes.”

  Sheriff Barnes shook hands. “This is Sergeant Holcomb,” he said, “and this is Mr. Mason.”

  Waid shook hands with each in turn. “I’ve followed your instructions to the letter, Sheriff,” he said. “I got off the plane at Las Vegas. I traveled under an assumed name. I’ve ditched all the newspaper reporters and …”

  “Just a minute,” Sergeant Holcomb interrupted. “Don’t do any talking right now, Waid. Mr. Mason is a lawyer, not an officer. He’s just leaving.”

  Waid suddenly turned to regard Perry Mason with wide eyes. “You’re Perry Mason, the lawyer,” he said. “Pardon me for not recognizing the name. I’ve read of your cases, Mr. Mason. I was particularly interested in that one where you acquitted …”

  “Mason is leaving,” Sergeant Holcomb interrupted, “and we’d prefer that you didn’t talk with anyone, Waid, until you tell us your story.”

  Waid lapsed into silence with an amused smile flickering at the corners of his mouth.

  Mason said, “I’ll talk with you some other time, Waid. I’m representing Charles Sabin. Does he know you’re here?”

  Sergeant Holcomb stepped firmly forward. “That,” he said, “is all. There’s the door, Mason. Don’t let us detain you.”

  “I won’t,” Mason assured him with a grin. “The atmosphere here is just a trifle stuffy—or don’t you think so, Sergeant?”

  Sergeant Holcomb’s only retort was to slam the door as Mason stepped out into the glare of the mountain sunlight.