“Tell her to ask for Sergeant Mahoney,” Tragg said.

  “Ask for Sergeant Mahoney,” Mason went on. “Tell him to rush some radio officers out to her apartment, and break in the door if they have to.”

  Mason hung up. “Suppose there’s any use calling the Golden Horn?” he asked. “After all, Magard might not have telephoned.”

  “Better let me do it,” Tragg said.

  He waited for Mason to emerge from the booth, then Tragg entered and dialed the Golden Horn. Mason, standing outside the telephone booth, looked down and saw something white under the bench on which the telephone rested. He stooped down and picked it up.

  “What you got there?” Tragg asked.

  “Handkerchief,” Mason said. “Woman’s handkerchief. I’ll give it to the manager. There’s an initial on it.… The letter ‘D’ …”

  Lieutenant Tragg’s arm emerged from the telephone booth, beckoning Mason frantically. The lawyer hurried over. Tragg, with his hand over the mouthpiece, said, “Magard came in just now—according to what the girl says. He may have been there some time, and decided not to bother with a call. I’m having her put him on.… Hello, Magard. This is Lieutenant Tragg of headquarters. I left word for you to call headquarters. Why didn’t you do it? … Well, it’s funny you got in just as I was telephoning.”

  There was an interval during which the receiver made noises while Lieutenant Tragg winked at Mason.

  “Well,” the officer interrupted abruptly, “never mind all the explanations, I want to know where Esther Dilmeyer lives. She has an apartment somewhere, and I want to get there right away. … What’s that? … Well, get the safe open and look it up.”

  Tragg again pushed his hand over the mouthpiece. “I know he’s covering up something now,” he said. “He was pouring explanations and apologies into the telephone. That’s a sure sign. I think we’re on the right track.…” He jerked his hand away, said, “Yes. Hello. Isn’t she working for you? … Well, where can you find out? … You’re sure about that? … Now, listen, this is important, and I don’t want any run-around.… All right, all right, you haven’t any idea … Now, wait a minute. Does she have a social security number? … I see… Now listen, I may want to get you again. Don’t leave the place without leaving a telephone number where you can be called.”

  He hung up the telephone, turned to Mason, and said, “That’s damned strange.”

  “He doesn’t know where she lives?”

  “No. He says she claims a girl can be a hostess in a nightclub, and keep her self-respect only as long as no one knows her home address. Sounds goofy to me.”

  “Me too,” Mason said.

  “Anyway, that’s his story. He says she’d never give it to them, that she works on a commission basis, so he doesn’t consider her an employee.”

  The door from the manager’s apartment opened. The manager, wearing a house dress, came toward them. Her face, which had been given a generous application of rouge somewhat unevenly applied, was decorated in the unchanging smile of one who has made a practice of ingratiating herself with strangers. She said, “I…” and turned toward the door. The men followed her gaze. Through the plate glass they saw a slim-waisted young man run up the porch stairs, and jab a key into the lock of the door.

  The manager had time to say, “This is Coll now,” before the door opened. Tragg waited until the man was well on his way toward the elevator, noticing the half-running pace, the excited tension which seemed to grip him.

  “Puttin’ out a fire?” Tragg asked.

  The man apparently saw them for the first time, jerked to a standing stop, and stared.

  The manager said, ingratiatingly, “Mr. Coll, this is …”

  “Let me handle it,” Tragg interrupted, stepping forward and jerking back the lapel of his coat so that Coll could see his star.

  Coll’s reaction was instantaneous. He half turned back toward the big plate-glass door, as though about to run. By an effort, he caught himself and turned a white face to Tragg.

  Tragg was ominously silent, watching Coll’s countenance begin to twitch.

  Coll took a deep breath. Mason could see the hands clenched into fists. “Well, what is it?” he asked.

  Tragg took his time about answering. Both men studied Coll: A small-boned, slim-hipped individual whose coat was heavily padded at the shoulders. The even tan of his face indicated that he habitually went without a hat arid was much in the open. His hair, black and glossy, waved back from his forehead with a rippling regularity that suggested the touch of a professional hairdresser. Despite his five feet ten inches, the man weighed not much more than a hundred and thirty pounds.

  Tragg’s voice had the rasping belligerence of a police officer dealing with a law violator. “What’s the hurry?” he asked.

  “I wanted to get to bed.”

  “You certainly were steamed up about it.”

  “I …” The lips clamped into a thin line of silence.

  Tragg said, “We want some information.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You know an Esther Dilmeyer?”

  “What about her?”

  “We’re trying to locate her. We got a lead to you.”

  “That’s … that’s all you want?”

  “Right now,” Tragg said.

  The look of relief on Coll’s face was almost comic. He said, “Dilmeyer … Esther Dilmeyer.… Hostess at a nightclub, isn’t she?”

  “That’s right.”

  Coll took a notebook from his pocket, started to thumb the pages, but, seemingly realizing Tragg’s interest in the shaking hand which held the notebook, he abruptly closed it, put it back in his pocket, and said, “I remember now. The Molay Arms Apartments.”

  “What’s the apartment number?”

  Coll frowned as though concentrating. “Three-twenty-eight.”

  “When did you see her last?”

  “Why … why, I don’t know offhand.”

  “A week ago, an hour ago?”

  “Oh, probably yesterday sometime. She’s at the Golden Horn. I drop in there once in a while.”

  “Okay,” Tragg said, “go on to bed,” and to the manager, “We shan’t need you any more. Thanks for your co-operation.… The Molay Arms is on Jefferson Street, isn’t it, Coll?”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  Tragg nodded to Mason. “Come on, let’s go.”

  The Molay Arms Apartments was a little walk-up. Here again they encountered a locked door, a series of mailboxes and call bells. When there was no answer at Esther Dilmeyer’s bell, Tragg again summoned the manager, ordered her to follow them up to the apartment with a passkey. They climbed two flights of stairs and walked down a narrow, thinly carpeted corridor, redolent with stale smells, and the dank emanations which fill a poorly ventilated place where people are sleeping.

  Three-twenty-eight was on the southeast corner. A light showed over the transom. Tragg knocked, received no answer, and said to the manager, “Okay, open it up.”

  She hesitated a moment, then inserted a passkey. The door clicked back.

  The figure of a blond woman, dressed in a tweed skirt and jacket, light woolen stockings and rubber-soled golf shoes, lay sprawled near the door. The telephone had been knocked from a small spindly-legged stand to the floor. A box of chocolate creams was open on the table, and some wrapping paper in which the box had evidently been tied folded itself loosely around the edges of the box. The cover lay slightly to one side. On the cover was a chocolate-smudged card, saying, “These will make you feel better,” and signed with the initials, “M.F.” The chocolates were cradled in little paper cups. A blank space in the upper tray furnished the sole clue as to the number which had been eaten. Mason, making a swift survey, estimated that eight or ten were missing from the top layer of the box. The lower layer seemed untouched.

  Tragg bent over the woman, felt of her pulse, said to the manager of the apartment, “Go downstairs. Call Sergeant Mahoney at headquarters. Tell him Lieutenant Tragg has found the Dilmeyer girl and the candy, that she’s evidently been poisoned. Tell him to rush out fingerprint men and an ambulance.”

  Mason dropped to one knee to look down on the unconscious figure. “Should we straighten her out?” he asked.

  Tragg felt her pulse again.

  The face was slightly congested. Her breathing was slow and seemed labored. The skin was warm to the touch.

  Mason said, “Looks more like a drug than an active poison. Perhaps we can bring her out of it.”

  “We can try,” Tragg said. “Get her over on her back. Okay. See if you can find some towels, hot and cold. We’ll start with the cold.”

  Mason turned cold water into the washbowl, sopped a bath towel, wrung it out, and tossed it to Tragg. Tragg sponged off the woman’s face and neck, and started gently slapping her in the face with the cold towel. After a moment, he raised her blouse, pulled down the top of her skirt, and applied the cold towels directly to the bare skin over the pit of her stomach.

  There was no slightest sign of returning consciousness.

  “Want a hot one now?” Mason asked.

  “Yes, let’s try that.”

  Mason turned on the hot water, found a clean bath towel in the lower drawer of a cabinet, and got it steaming hot. He tossed it to Tragg, received in return the cold towel, and held that under the cold tap in the bathtub.

  For five minutes Tragg worked alternately with hot and cold towels.

  “No use,” he said. “That ambulance should be here.” He looked at the telephone and said, “I don’t want to touch that. Be careful about touching things, Mason, particularly that candy or the wrapping paper.”

  Mason nodded, shut off the water in the bathroom. Tragg got to his feet. Mason walked over to peer in the waste-basket. Then he opened the door of the clothes closet, and looked inside.

  There were half a dozen expensive-looking evening gowns with shoes to match. By comparison, the clothes for daytime wear seemed somewhat shabby and few in number.

  Tragg said impatiently, “I don’t know whether she got the call through to Mahoney or not. I guess we’d better go down and …” He broke off as a siren sounded.

  “This,” he said, “will be it. We’ll let them take the responsibility.”

  Mason said, “One thing I want, Tragg. I want to get my own doctor working on this.”

  “Why?”

  “Your emergency surgeons are all right, but she won’t get the complete care, particularly on follow-up treatment in an emergency hospital, that she will under my doctor. I want this woman taken to the Hastings Memorial Hospital, put in a private room, and I want Dr. Willmont to co-operate with whatever doctor is called in.”

  “Willmont, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s paying for it?”

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m interested.”

  Lieutenant Tragg indicated the note on the card. “I noticed the initials ‘M.F.’ on that card,” he said.

  “Well?”

  “Mildreth Faulkner.”

  Mason said, “Nuts. A person wouldn’t send another a box of poisoned candy, and then put a card in with the candy for the police to find.”

  “You can’t always tell,” Tragg said. “Rules don’t mean anything except on a general basis. And even then, they don’t mean anything when you’re dealing with crimes of women.”

  Mason said, “And, therefore, you think I don’t want her to die simply because I’m protecting the poisoner. A person who isn’t even a client, whom I don’t know and haven’t seen; but with whom I have an appointment in …” he glanced at his wrist watch, “exactly fifteen minutes.”

  Tragg laughed and said, “Well, when you put it that way, it does sound goofy. I guess there’s no objection to taking her to the Hastings Memorial Hospital—if you can get Dr. Willmont on the job.”

  “I can try,” Mason said. “I think there’s a telephone in the manager’s apartment.”

  He walked rapidly toward the stairs, met two white-garbed men carrying a stretcher in the corridor.

  “Down at the end of the corridor, boys,” Mason said. “Wait for me at the door of the apartment house. I’ll tell you where to take her.”

  Chapter 4

  Perry Mason latchkeyed the door of his private office. Della Street was sitting over by a corner of the desk, Mason’s desk telephone pulled over close to her.

  “Hello,” Mason said. “I’m about ten minutes late. Heard anything from our client?”

  “No.”

  Mason said, “I guess it was a stand-up after all. That cures me of night appointments at the office.”

  “How is Esther Dilmeyer?” Della asked.

  “She’s at the Hastings Memorial Hospital. I got hold of Dr. Willmont on the telephone. He’s rushing right out to meet her when she’s unloaded from the ambulance. Looks like some drug, but it’s too early to tell. Sometimes a drug which will induce sleep is given to cover the effects of some other poison. However. I’d say we got her in time, and she’ll pull through.”

  “Did you,” she asked, “throw a scare into Magard?”

  “I’ll say we did—that is, Lieutenant Tragg did.”

  “He sounded thoroughly subdued.”

  “Did he ring up?”

  “Yes. He called, said that he understood you had been at the Golden Horn with an officer looking for information, said he’d given the officer the information he wanted, and inquired if there was anything else he could do for you.”

  Mason chuckled. “What did you tell him?”

  “I thanked him and told him it would be all right.”

  Mason looked at his watch. “Well, I guess we’ll be on our way and charge this to experience.… Wait a minute. Here’s someone coming.”

  They could hear the rapid click-clack … click-clack … click-clack of heels in the corridor.

  Mason opened the door.

  Mildreth Faulkner said, “Thank you so much for waiting, Mr. Mason. I’m sorry I was late. I just couldn’t make it any sooner.”

  Mason looked her over carefully, said, “Come in. Miss Faulkner, my secretary, Miss Street. This chair please. You’re breathless and excited. How about a cigarette?”

  “No, thanks. I have to work fast, Mr. Mason.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  She said, “It’s a long story. I hardly know where to begin.”

  “Well, begin right in the middle,” Mason said, “and keep moving.”

  She laughed. “It’s this way: My sister Carlotta and I started the Faulkner Flower Shops. That was before Carla was married. We each had half of the stock except a small block of five shares which we gave to one of our employees to qualify her so there’d be three on the board of directors.

  “Harry Peavis is a big competitor. He controls the bulk of the retail flower business here. I’ve always liked him. He’s rather naïve in some respects, but a shrewd businessman, hard-boiled, occasionally somewhat tactless, and with a great deal of native ability.”

  “Where does he come into the picture?” Mason asked.

  “He managed to pick up the five shares of stock which had been given to our employee.”

  Mason frowned. “Why? Does he want to pry into your business?”

  “I thought so at the time. When he handed over the stock for transfer, he joked about being a silent partner, but I think there’s something far more sinister back of it.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “My sister married a little over a year ago—about eighteen months ago.”

  “Whom did she marry?”

  “Robert C. Lawley.”

  “What does he do?” Mason asked.

  She made a little gesture which was more expressive than words, and said, “He manages my sister’s money.”

  “Is that enough to keep him busy?”

  “It was when there was more of it.”

  Mason smiled. “I take it things haven’t gone so well under his management.”

  “No.”

  “What does your sister say to that?”

  She said, “Carla developed heart trouble about a year ago. She didn’t go to a doctor as soon as she should have. She kept on in a mad round of activity, and by the time she had to give in to it, she was pretty far gone. The doctor says it will take a long time before he can bring her back to normal. In the meantime, she isn’t to be excited, or worried.”

  “She knows the true state of her finances?” Mason asked.

  Mildreth Faulkner said, with feeling, “I hope to God she does.”

  “But you’ve never asked her?”

  “We don’t talk about her husband,” she said. “I never did like him. Carla thought I was prejudiced.”

  “She loves him?”

  “Crazy about him. He’s smart enough to keep her that way. A little flattery and those little attentions which women crave are all that’s necessary. You know how it is with a man when the wife has the money. It’s a shame more men can’t learn that lesson, but it seems that only the ones who are in a position to profit financially ever do it.”

  “I take it you didn’t approve of the match in the first place.”

  “I certainly did not. I always thought Bob was a weak sister, a fortune hunter, and a fourflusher.”

  “And I take it he knows that?”

  “He does. Oh, we’ve tried to be civilized about the thing. We’ve gotten along all right. Occasionally, before Carla’s heart got bad, we’d go on week-end trips together, and Bob would be so nice to me that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Then Carla would look at me as much as to say, ‘Can’t you see how perfectly swell he is, Millie?’ ”

  “And what would you do?” Mason asked.

  She said, “I’d try to be just as oily and smooth as he was, but I was burning up inside. I don’t mind a man who’s frankly on the make, but I do hate mealy-mouthed hypocrisy.”

  Mason said, “Well, that’s the background. What comes next?”

  “Bob has Carla’s complete confidence. When her heart went bad, Bob started managing all of her affairs. When she’d ask questions, he told her it was no time to bother with business details, that things were going simply grand.”

  “And you didn’t believe that?”