Della Street was seated on the running board of the automobile, making friends with some half-dozen chipmunks. The little animals came almost to her fingertips before turning to scamper away to the comparative safety of a dead pine log, where they chattered their spirits up before slowly creeping back, to approach within a matter of inches. Up in the pine tree above her head a bluejay, apparently thinking she was feeding the chipmunks, fluttered nervously from limb to limb, dropping ever lower, cocking his head from side to side, muttering low throaty squawks of protest at being excluded from the feast—a strange combination of impudence and diffidence.

  “Hello, Chief,” she said. “Who’s the new arrival?”

  “Waid, the secretary,” Mason replied. “He has something to tell them. That’s why they came up here to the cabin. They wanted to meet Waid where no newspaper men would be around … And Paul Drake’s telephoned he has something hot in San Molinas.”

  “How about Waid?” she asked. “Going to wait and see if he’ll talk, Chief?”

  “No. We’ll rush to San Molinas. Sergeant Holcomb will warn Waid not to tell me whatever it is he knows, but Charles Sabin will get it out of him later, and then we’ll find out. Come on, tell your friends good-by and let’s go.”

  He climbed in behind the steering wheel, started the car, and drove slowly down the driveway which led from the cabin. Once or twice he stopped to look overhead in the branches of the pine tree. “That bluejay,” he said, laughing, “is still following us. I wonder if there isn’t something I could find to feed him.”

  “There’s some peanut brittle in a bag in the glove compartment,” Della Street said. “You might break a peanut out of that.”

  “Let’s try,” Mason said.

  He opened the glove compartment, and Della pulled out a paper bag. “Here are a couple of loose peanuts in the bottom of the bag,” she told him, and poured them into Mason’s cupped hand.

  He stood on the running board, held his hands up above his head so that the bluejay could see the shelled peanuts. The jay fluttered noisily from branch to branch, swooped down until he was almost even with Mason’s shoulder, then, becoming frightened at his own temerity, zoomed upward with a startled squawk. Twice he repeated this maneuver. The third time, he perched on Mason’s hand long enough to grab one of the peanuts in his beak before jumping up, to flutter into the branches of the tree overhead.

  Mason, laughing, said, “Gosh, Della, I think I want to do this when I’m ready to retire. How nice it would be to have a cabin where you could make friends with …”

  “What is it, Chief?” she asked, as he broke off abruptly.

  Without answering her, Mason strode over to the pine tree in which the bluejay was perched. The jay, thinking he was being pursued, fled into the dark retreat of the forest, his startled squawk being superseded by cries of “Treason!” which merged into a more raucous and continuous vituperation of the man who had betrayed his confidence. Della Street, sliding across the seat, her feet pointed at the open door, gave herself impetus by a boost from the steering wheel, and slid to the ground with a quick flash of shapely legs. She ran across to where Mason was standing.

  “What is it, Chief?”

  Mason said, slowly, “That wire, Della.”

  “What about it … I don’t see any … Oh, yes …. Well, what is it, Chief?”

  “I don’t know,” Mason said. “It isn’t an aerial, but you can see the way it’s been concealed. It runs along the branch of that limb and is taped to the upper side of it. Then it hits the tree trunk, runs along the tree trunk until it comes to that other limb, goes up through that, runs into this tree, then crosses over to that grove … Drive the car outside and park it on the highway, Della. I’m going to take a look.”

  “What do you think it is, Chief?”

  “It looks,” he told her, “as though someone had been tapping Fremont Sabin’s telephone.”

  “Gosh, Chief!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t that something?”

  He nodded, but said nothing. He was already walking along under the trees, following the course of the wire so cleverly concealed as to be invisible to any save the most alert observer.

  Della Street parked the car on the highway, climbed through a fence, and took a short cut through the pine thicket to join him. A hundred yards away an unpainted cabin was so inconspicuous among the trees that it seemed as much a part of the scenery as the surrounding rocks.

  “I think that’s the place we’re looking for,” Mason said, “but we’ll trace the wire and find out.”

  “What do we do when we get there?” she asked.

  “It depends,” Mason told her. “You’d better stay back, Della, so you can get the sheriff, if the party gets rough.”

  “Let me stay with you, Chief,” she pleaded.

  “No,” he told her. “Stay back there. If you hear any commotion, beat it for Sabin’s cabin as fast as you can, and bring the sheriff.”

  Mason followed the wire to the place where it abruptly left the protection of the trees to loop itself around insulators just below the eaves of the unpainted cabin. At this point it had been arranged so that it looked very much like the aerial of a wireless set. Mason circled the cabin twice, keeping in the concealment of the dense shadows as much as possible.

  Della Street, anxiously watching him from a point some fifty yards distant, moved slowly toward him.

  “It’s all right,” he called to her. “We’re going to notify the sheriff.” He joined her and they walked back to the cabin where Fred Waner emerged apparently from nowhere to bar their way.

  “I want to see the sheriff again,” Mason told him.

  “All right. You wait here. I’ll tell the sheriff you’re here.”

  Waner went to the door of the cabin and called the sheriff. A moment later Sheriff Barnes came out to see what was wanted. When he saw Mason, his face clouded with suspicion. “I thought you’d gone,” he said pointedly.

  “I started,” Mason told him, “and came back. If you can step this way, Sheriff, I think I have something important to show you.”

  Sergeant Holcomb came to the door of the cabin to stand just behind the sheriff. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Something to show the sheriff,” Mason replied.

  Sergeant Holcomb said grimly, “Mason, if this is a trap to distract our attention, I’ll …”

  “I don’t care whether your attention’s distracted or not,” Mason interrupted. “I’m talking to the sheriff.”

  Sergeant Holcomb said to Waner, “Waner, you stay here with Mr. Waid. Don’t let him leave. Don’t let anyone talk with him. Don’t let him touch anything. Do you understand?”

  Waner nodded.

  “You can count on my co-operation, Sergeant,” Waid said with cold formality. “After all, you know, I’m not a criminal. I’m trying to co-operate with you.”

  “I understand that,” Holcomb said, “but whenever Perry Mason…”

  “What do you have to show us, Mason?” Sheriff Barnes interrupted.

  Mason said, “This way, please.”

  He led the way down the road to where the wire had been tapped under the telephone line. Sergeant Holcomb and the sheriff followed along a few steps behind. “See that?” he asked, pointing upward.

  “What?” the sheriff asked.

  “That wire.”

  “It’s a telephone wire,” Sergeant Holcomb snorted. “What the devil did you think it was, Mason?”

  “I’m not talking about that wire,” Mason said. “I’m talking about the one which leads off from it. See where it goes through that pine tree where the needles come over and …”

  “By George, you’re right!” the sheriff said. “There is a wire!”

  “All right,” Mason said, “now that you see where the wire is cut in, I’ll show you where it runs to,” and he led the way over to where he could point out the unpainted cabin, concealed in the trees.

  Sergeant Holcomb asked suspiciously, “How did you happen to notice that wire, Mason?”

  “I was feeding a bluejay,” Mason said. “He took a peanut from my hand, then hopped up in that tree and sat on the limb which carries the wire.”

  “I see,” Holcomb observed in a tone which showed his complete and utter disbelief, “and you just happened to see the wire while you were standing under the tree staring up at the bluejay to whom you’d just given a peanut. Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You wanted to see how he’d digest the peanut, I suppose?”

  “No, I had another peanut I was going to give him,” Mason said patiently. “I wanted him to come down and take it out of my hand.”

  Sergeant Holcomb said to Sheriff Barnes, “I don’t know what his game is, but if Perry Mason is walking down the road feeding peanuts to bluejays, you can gamble there’s something back of it. He knew darn well that wire was there, all the time. Otherwise, he’d never have found it.”

  Sheriff Barnes stared moodily at the cabin. “Keep away,” he said, as though entirely oblivious of their conversation. “I’m going into that cabin. Sergeant, if any shooting starts, I leave it to you to back me up.”

  Quietly, calmly, he approached the door of the cabin, pounded with peremptory knuckles, then lowering his shoulder, smashed his weight against the door. At his third lunge the door gave way and shot backward on its hinges. Sheriff Barnes stepped into the half darkness of the interior to find that Perry Mason was right on his heels, while Sergeant Holcomb was behind Mason, holding his gun in readiness.

  “It’s all right,” the sheriff called, “there’s no one here … You, Mason, shouldn’t have taken chances like that.”

  Mason made no reply. He was staring in frowning contemplation at the array of paraphernalia on the inside of the room. What looked like half of a piece of baggage proved to be a radio amplifier. The whole outfit had been neatly tailored so that, when it was fitted together, it was impossible to distinguish between it and any ordinary piece of baggage. There were headphones, elaborate recording devices, a pencil and pad of paper. A partially smoked cigarette was lying on the edge of a pine table. The cigarette, apparently forgotten, had charred through the wood of the table top. A fine layer of dust had settled over it, as well as over everything else in the room.

  “Evidently,” the sheriff said, “he ain’t been here for quite a spell. But when he left, he lit out in a hurry. He even forgot his cigarette.”

  “How did you know this was here?” Sergeant Holcomb demanded of Perry Mason, his voice harsh in its implied accusation.

  Mason shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

  Sheriff Barnes stopped him as he started to walk out. “Say, just a minute, Mason,” he said in a quiet tone which was, nevertheless, charged with authority.

  Mason stopped.

  “Did you know this line had been tapped, Mason?”

  “Frankly, Sheriff, I didn’t.”

  “How did you discover it?”

  “Just as I told you.”

  Sheriff Barnes still appeared dubious. Sergeant Holcomb made no attempt to disguise the contemptuous disbelief on his face.

  “Did you,” Sheriff Barnes asked, “know that Fremont C. Sabin had been back of an attempt to expose organized vice and graft in the Metropolitan Police?”

  “Good heavens, no!” Mason said.

  Sergeant Holcomb, his face almost a brick-red, said, “I didn’t give you that information to be bandied around, Sheriff.”

  Barnes said, without taking his eyes from Mason, “I’m not bandying it around. You’ve probably read, Mason, of the confidential advices which the Grand Jury have been receiving, advices which have caused it to start an inquiry against some persons who are prominent politically.”

  “I’ve heard something about it,” Mason admitted cautiously.

  “And you knew that some private citizen was back of this campaign to get information?”

  “I’d heard something of the sort.”

  “Did you have any idea that that person was Fremont C. Sabin?”

  Mason said, “Sheriff, I can assure you I didn’t have any idea who the person was.”

  “That’s all,” Sheriff Barnes said. “I just wanted to be sure, Mason.”

  “Thanks,” Mason said, and walked out, leaving them alone in the cabin.

  CHAPTER THREE

  PAUL DRAKE was waiting for Mason in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel in San Molinas. He looked at his watch and said, “You’re late, Perry, but Gibbs is waiting for us.”

  Mason said, “Before we go around there, Paul, has anybody else been trying to get in touch with Gibbs?”

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “Do you know?”

  “No I don’t. I hung around there until about an hour ago and then came over here to wait in the hotel. I’ve been rather expecting you to drive in any time during the last hour.”

  Mason said, “I was delayed up there because we found that Sabin’s line was tapped.”

  “His line was tapped?”

  “Yes. The line into the cabin. The tapping plant may not have been used lately. On the other hand, someone may have been listening in on your conversation with me. Here’s something else. Sabin is the man who’s been furnishing finances to the citizens’ committee which has been investigating vice conditions and transmitting information on graft to the Grand Jury.”

  Drake gave a low whistle. “If that’s the case,” he said, “there were probably anywhere from a hundred to a hundred and fifty people who would have murdered him without batting an eyelash.”

  “Well, that angle’s up to the police. It’s too big for us to cover,” Mason said.

  “You’re the boss,” Drake said. “We’ll go down and talk with Gibbs. He has a swell description of the man who bought the parrot.”

  “He’s certain about the parrot?”

  “Yes,” Drake said. “I’ll let you talk with him, but it’s a cinch. He says the man looked a little seedy,” Drake continued, “but then, Perry, that’s about what you could expect. If any of the vice interests had decided to bump Sabin off, they’d have hired a down-and-outer to do the job, or else would have had a mobster put on the act.”

  “Would this man know the fellow who bought the parrot if he saw him again?”

  “I’ll say he would.”

  “Okay,” Mason said, “let’s go.”

  Della Street was waiting in the car at the curb, with the motor running. She said, “Hello, Paul,” and handed Mason a newspaper. “Here’s the latest afternoon newspaper, Chief, just in from the city. Do you want me to drive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is it, Paul?” she asked.

  “Straight down this street for three blocks, then turn to the right for two blocks, and swing to the left. It’s on a side street, halfway in the block. You should be able to find a parking place in front.”

  “Okay,” she said, and snapped the car into gear. As she slid the big machine out into traffic, Mason opened the newspaper and said, “There probably won’t be anything much in here.”

  “How do they fix the time of death so accurately,” Drake asked, “if they didn’t find the body for so long?”

  “It’s quite a story,” Mason told him. “Depends on some deduction by the sheriff. He’s rather a level-headed chap. I’ll tell you about it when we have more time.”

  He skimmed through the contents of the paper while Della Street drove with swift competency to the pet store.

  Mason and Drake alighted. “Want me to stay here, Chief?” Della asked.

  “You’d better,” Drake said. “You’re parked in front of a fireplug. Keep the motor running. We probably won’t be long.”

  Mason handed her the newspaper. “Brush up on current events while we learn about parrots; and quit eating that peanut brittle. It’ll spoil your appetite for dinner.”

  She chuckled. “I was getting along fine until you made me think of that candy; but you’re going to have to buy Paul and me dinner on the expense account, Chief, so my loss of appetite may be a blessing in disguise.”

  They were grinning as they entered the pet store.

  Arthur Gibbs was a thin, bald-headed individual with eyes the color of a faded blue shirt which had been left too long on the clothesline. “Hello,” he said in a calm, well-modulated voice. “I was just getting ready to close up. I’d about given you up.”

  “This is Perry Mason,” Paul Drake introduced.

  Mason extended his hand. Gibbs gave him a bony, long-fingered hand which seemed completely lacking in initiative. As Mason released it, he said, “I suppose you want to know about that parrot.”

  Mason nodded.

  “Well, it’s just like I told you,” Gibbs said to Paul Drake.

  “Never mind what you told me,” Paul Drake said. “I want Mr. Mason to get it firsthand. Just go ahead and tell him about it.”

  “Well, we sold this parrot on the …”

  “Before you go into that,” Drake interrupted, “tell Mr. Mason how you identify the parrot.”

  “Well,” Gibbs said, “of course, I’m just acting on an assumption there. You’re asking me about a parrot that cussed whenever it wanted something to eat. I trained a parrot to do that stunt.”

  “What was the idea?” Mason asked.

  “It’s just a stunt,” Gibbs explained. “Occasionally, you’ll find people who think it’s smart to have a parrot that cusses. Usually they get tired of them before they’ve had them a long while, but when they first hear a bird swear, it’s quite a novelty.”

  “And you deliberately train them to swear?” Mason asked.

  “Sure. Sometimes a bird will pick up an expression or a sentence just from hearing it once, but for the most part, you have to drill sounds into ’em. Of course, we don’t train them to do any real lurid cussing; just a few ‘damns’ and ‘hells’ do the trick. People get such a kick out of hearing a parrot cut loose with a good salty line of talk instead of the usual stereotyped ‘Polly wants-a-cracker,’ they’ll buy a bird on the spot.”

  “All right When did you sell this bird?”