“How did you get this stuff?” Mason asked.

  “Ashton talked quite a bit to one of the nurses. She got a kick out of him. He was so bitterly vindictive and yet so bighearted. He’d heard Clammert was sick and broke, so he hobbled around, making a canvass of the hospitals until he found Clammert lying unconscious and near death. He dug down in bis pocket and did everything he could, hired specialists, got special nurses and haunted the bedside. He left instructions with the nurse to see that Clammert had everything money could buy. Of course, the nurse knew he was dying and the doctors knew it, but, naturally, they kidded Ashton along, telling him there was perhaps one chance in a million, and Ashton told them to take that chance.

  “But just to show you what a cantankerous cuss you’ve got for a client, he stipulated that when Clammert recovered consciousness, he was never to know who his benefactor had been. Ashton told the nurses they quarreled years ago and hadn’t seen each other since—and what do you think they quarreled about?”

  Mason said irritably, “I’ll bite, Little Peter Rabbit, what did Ruddy the Lame Fox and Goofy the Sleeping Beauty quarrel about?”

  The detective grinned and said, “A cat.”

  “A cat?” Mason exclaimed.

  “That’s right—a cat by the the name of Clinker—it was just a kitten then.”

  “Oh, hell,” Mason said disgustedly.

  “As near as I can figure out,” Drake went on, “from the time Ashton discovered his half-brother until Clammert died a couple of days later, Ashton had spent something like five hundred dollars in hospital and doctors’ bills. He paid everything out in cash. The nurse said he had a big sheaf of bills he carried in his wallet. Now, then, where the hell did Charles Ashton get that money?”

  Mason made a grimace. “Shucks, Paul, I didn’t want you to dig up facts that would put my client in a spot; I wanted you to dig up something that would put Sam Laxter in a spot.”

  “Well,” Drake remarked in his dry, expressionless voice, “they’re some of the pieces in the puzzle picture. I’m hired to get the pieces; you’re hired to put them together. If they’re going to make the wrong kind of picture when they’re put together, you can always lose some of the pieces so no one else can find them.”

  Mason chuckled, then said thoughtfully, “Why the devil did Ashton want it so Clammert could go to that safety deposit box?”

  “Well, the only thing I could think of,” Drake said, “was that if Clammert got well Ashton intended to give him money but didn’t intend to have any personal contact, so he arranged to give Clammert a key to a safety deposit box into which he’d put money from time to time and Clammert could take it out.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Mason said, “because Clammert would have to sign his name to get access to the box and the signature that Ashton turned in as being that of Clammert couldn’t have been made by Clammert because Clammert was unconscious.”

  “Okay,” Drake said, “you win. That’s what I meant when I said the facts were the pieces in the puzzle. I get them and you put them together.”

  “Did anyone using Clammert’s name ever go to the safety deposit boxes?” Mason asked.

  “No, Clammert’s never been near the box. Ashton went to it several times. He went to it yesterday, and he went to it today. While the clerks didn’t want to talk about it, I gathered the impression they thought Ashton had pulled out a wad of dough from those safety boxes either yesterday or today, or both.”

  “How do they know what a man takes out?”

  “Ordinarily they don’t, but one of the clerks saw Ashton stuffing currency into a satchel.”

  Perry Mason laughed. “In most cases,” he said “we can’t find out any facts at all until after we’ve gone through a lot of preliminary work. In this case they pour into our laps.”

  “Did your client tell you about the Koltsdorf diamonds?” Drake wanted to know.

  “Gosh,” Mason remarked, “I feel like the interlocutor at a minstrel show. No, Mr. Drake, Mr. Ashton did not tell me about the Koltsdorf diamonds. What about the Koltsdorf diamonds? … Now, Paul, that’s your cue to tell me about the Koltsdorf diamonds.”

  The detective chuckled. “The Koltsdorf diamonds are about the only jewels Peter Laxter ever fell for. Lord knows how he came by them. They were some of the stones smuggled out of Russia by the old aristocracy. Peter Laxter showed them to a few friends. They were large, brilliant diamonds.”

  “What about them?”

  “Some of this other stuff,” Drake said, “such as the currency, bonds, and all that, might have burnt up when the house was burned. It wouldn’t have been possible to find even a trace of them. But the Koltsdorf diamonds haven’t been found.”

  “Diamonds in the wreckage of a burnt house could hide pretty well,” Mason said dryly.

  “They’ve taken that wreckage to pieces with a fine-tooth comb, sifted ashes and done all sorts of things. But the diamonds can’t be located. A distinctive ruby ring which Peter Laxter always wore on his left hand was found on the body, but no diamonds.”

  “Tell me the rest of it,” Mason demanded. “Has Ashton shown up with those diamonds?”

  “No, not that I’ve been able to find out. But he’s done other peculiar things that are just as incriminating. For instance, shortly before the fire, Laxter had been dickering for a piece of property. He’d taken Ashton out with him to look the property over. A couple of days ago, Ashton called on the owner of that property and made an offer. The offer was for cash on the nail.”

  “It was refused?”

  “Temporarily, yes, but I think the deal’s still open.”

  Mason, frowning thoughtfully, said, “Looks like I’m stirring up a mare’s nest. Laxter might have cached his property and Ashton might have had an inside track. In that event he probably wouldn’t feel obligated to hand Sam Laxter the coin on a silver platter. Guess we’re due for a talk with Ashton.”

  Drake said tonelessly, “The two grandchildren have been pretty wild, particularly Sam. Oafley’s the quiet, unsociable sort. Sam went in for speedy automobiles, polo ponies, women, and all that sort of stuff.”

  “Where’d the money come from?”

  “From the old man.”

  “I thought the old man was a miser.”

  “He was tighter than a knot in a shoelace except with his grandchildren; he was very liberal with them.”

  “How much was he worth?”

  “No one knows. The inventory of the estate …”

  “Yes,” Mason said, “I checked over the inventory of the estate. Apparently the only things that were left were the frozen assets. The other stuff hasn’t been discovered yet.”

  “Unless Ashton discovered it,” Drake commented.

  “Let’s not talk about that,” Mason said. “I’m interested right now in cats.”

  “The day before the fire there was a hell of a fight out at the house. I can’t find out exactly what it was, but I think this nurse can tell us. I’ve talked with the servants. They froze up. I hadn’t got around to the nurse yet…. Here’s her apartment.”

  “What’s her name—Durfey?”

  “No—DeVoe—Edith DeVoe. According to the reports I get, she isn’t a bad looker. Frank Oafley was pretty much interested in her when she was taking care of the old man, and he’s been seeing her off and on since.”

  “Intentions honorable?” Mason asked.

  “Don’t ask me; I’m just a detective—not a censor of morals. Let’s go.”

  Mason paid off the cab. They rang a bell, and, when a buzzer had released the door catch, entered the outer door and walked down a long corridor to a ground floor apartment. A red-haired woman with quick, restless eyes, swift, nervous motions, and a well-modeled figure which was set off to advantage by her clothes, met them at the door of the apartment. Her face showed disappointment. “Oh,” she said, “I was expecting … Who are you?”

  Paul Drake bowed, and said, “I’m Paul Drake. This is Mr. Mason, Miss DeVoe.”

  “What is it you want?” she asked. Her speech was very rapid. The words seemed almost to run together.

  “We wanted to talk with you,” Mason said.

  “About some employment,” Paul Drake hastened to add. “You’re a nurse, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we wanted to talk with you about some work.”

  “What sort of a position?”

  “I think we could talk it over better if we stepped inside,” Drake ventured.

  She hesitated a moment, looked up and down the corridor, then stepped back from the door and said, “Very well, you may come in, but only for a few minutes.”

  The apartment was clean and well cared for as though she had just finished a careful housecleaning. Her hair was perfectly groomed. Her nails were well kept. She wore her clothes with the manner of one who is wearing her best.

  Drake sat down, relaxing comfortably, as though he intended to stay for hours.

  Mason sat on the arm of an overstuffed chair. He looked at the detective and frowned.

  “Now this employment may not be exactly the kind of a job you had in mind,” Drake said, “but there’s no harm talking it over. Would you mind telling me what your rates are by the day?”

  “Do you mean for two or three days, or….”

  “No, just one day.”

  “Ten dollars,” she said crisply.

  Drake took a billfold from his pocket. He extracted ten dollars but didn’t at once pass it over to the nurse.

  “I have one day’s employment,” he said. “It won’t take over an hour, but I’d be willing to pay for a full day.”

  She wet her lips with the tip of a nervous tongue, glanced swiftly from Mason to Drake. Her voice showed suspicion. “Just what is the nature of this employment?” she asked.

  “We wanted you to recall a few facts,” Drake said, folding the ten dollar bill about his fingers. “It would take perhaps ten or fifteen minutes for you to give us an outline, and then you could sit down and write out the facts you’d told us.”

  Her voice was distinctly guarded now.

  “Facts about what?”

  The detective’s glassy eyes watched her in expressionless appraisal. He pushed the ten dollar bill toward her. “We wanted to find out all you knew about Peter Laxter.”

  She gave a start, staring from face to face in quick alarm, and said, “You’re detectives!”

  Paul Drake’s face registered the expression of a golfer who had just dubbed an approach shot.

  “Let’s look at it this way,” he said. “We’re after certain information. We want to get the facts—we don’t want anything except facts. We’re not going to drag you into anything.”

  She shook her head vehemently. “No,” she said. “I was employed by Mr. Laxter as a nurse. It wouldn’t be ethical for me to divulge any of his secrets.”

  Perry Mason leaned forward and took a hand in the conversation. “The house was burned, Miss DeVoe?”

  “Yes, the house was burned.”

  “And you were in it at the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did the house burn—rather quickly?”

  “Quite quickly.”

  “Have any trouble getting out?”

  “I was awake at the time. I smelled smoke and thought at first it was just smoke from an incinerator. Then I decided to investigate. I put on a robe and opened the door. The south end of the house was all in flames then. I screamed, and, after a few minutes … Well, I guess perhaps I shouldn’t say anything more.”

  “You knew the house was insured?” Mason asked.

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Do you know whether the insurance has been paid?”

  “Why, I think it has. I think it’s been paid to Mr. Samuel Laxter. He’s the executor, isn’t he?”

  “Was there someone in that house you didn’t like?” Mason asked. “Someone who was particularly obnoxious to you?”

  “Why, whatever makes you ask such a question as that?”

  “Whenever a fire occurs,” Mason said slowly, “which might result in the loss of life and in which a person actually was killed, the authorities usually make an investigation. That investigation isn’t always completed at the time of the fire, but when it is made it’s always advisable for the witnesses to tell what they know.”

  She thought that over for several seconds, during which her eyes blinked rapidly.

  “You mean that if I shouldn’t make a statement I might be under suspicion of having set the fire to trap someone whom I didn’t like? Oh, but that’s too absurd!”

  “I’ll put it to you another way,” Mason said. “Was there someone in the house whom you did like?”

  “Just what do you mean by that?”

  “Simply this: You can’t be thrown with people for some time under the same roof without forming attachments, certain likes and dislikes. Let’s suppose, for example, there was some person whom you didn’t like and some person whom you did. We’re going to get the facts about that fire. We’re going to get them from someone. If we should get them from you, it might be better all around than if we happened to get them from the person whom you didn’t like, particularly if that person should try to fasten guilt upon the person you did like.”

  She seemed to stiffen in the chair. “You mean that Sam Laxter has accused Frank Oafley of setting that fire?”

  “Certainly not,” Mason said. “I am purposely refraining from making any statement of facts. I’m giving out no information. I came to get it.”

  He nodded to the detective. “Come on, Paul,” he said.

  He got to his feet.

  Edith DeVoe jumped from her chair, almost ran between Mason and the door.

  “Wait a minute, I didn’t understand just what you wanted. I’ll give you all the information I have.”

  “We’d want to know quite a few things,” Mason said dubiously, as though hesitating about returning to his chair, “not only about the fire, but about the things which preceded it. I guess we’d better get the information somewhere else after all. We’d want to know all about the lives and personal habits of the people who lived in the house, and you, being a nurse … I guess perhaps we’d better leave you out of it.”

  “No, no, don’t do that! Come back here. I’ll tell you everything I know. After all, there’s nothing that’s confidential, and if you’re going to get the facts I’d prefer that you get them from me. If Sam has even intimated Frank Oafley had anything to do with that fire, it’s a dirty lie by which Sam hopes to save his own bacon!”

  Mason sighed, then, with apparent reluctance, returned to his chair, sat once more on the arm and said, “We’re willing to listen for a few minutes, Miss DeVoe, but you’ll have to make it snappy. Our time is valuable, and …”

  She broke into swift conversation: “I understand all that. I thought at the time there was something funny about the fire. I told Frank Oafley about it and he said I should keep quiet. I screamed and tried to arouse Mr. Laxter—that’s Peter Laxter—the old man. By that time the flames were all over that end of the house. I kept screaming, and groped my way up the stairs. It was hot there and smoky, but there weren’t any flames. The smoke bothered me a lot. Frank came after me and pulled me back. He said there was nothing I could do. We stood on the stairs and yelled, trying to arouse Mr. Laxter, but we didn’t get any answer. Lots of black smoke was rolling up the stairs. I looked back and saw some flames just breaking through the floor near the bottom of the stairs and I knew we had to get out. We went out through the north wing. I was almost suffocated with smoke. My eyes were red and bloodshot for two or three days.”

  “Where was Sam Laxter?”

  “I saw him before I saw Frank. He had on pajamas and a bathrobe, and he was yelling ‘Fire! Fire!’ He seemed to have lost his head.”

  “Where was the fire department?”

  “It didn’t get there until the place was almost gone. It was very isolated, you know—the house.”

  “A big house?”

  “It was too big!” she said vehemently. “There was too much work in it for the help they employed.”

  “What help was employed?”

  “There was Mrs. Pixley; a girl named Nora—I think her last name was Abbington—I can’t be certain; and then there was Jimmy Brandon—he was the chauffeur. Nora was sort of a general maid-of-all-work. She didn’t live at the place, but came every morning at seven and stayed until five in the afternoon. Mrs. Pixley did all the cooking.”

  “And Charles Ashton, the caretaker—was he there?”

  “Only occasionally. He kept the town house, you know. He’d drive in at times when Mr. Laxter would ask him. He’d been there the night of the fire.”

  “Where did Peter Laxter sleep?”

  “On the second floor, in the south wing.”

  “What time did the fire take place?”

  “Around one thirty in the morning. It must have been about quarter to two when I woke up. The house had been burning for some time then.”

  “Why were you employed? What was wrong with Mr. Laxter?”

  “He’d been in an automobile accident, you know, and it had left him quite nervous and upset. At times he couldn’t sleep and he had a dislike of drugs. He wouldn’t let the doctor give him anything to make him sleep. I’d been a masseuse, and I massaged him when he had those nervous fits. It relaxed him. A bath in a tub of hot water, with the water running over his body, then a massage, and he could relax and sleep. And he had some heart complications. Sometimes I had to give him hypodermics—heart stimulants, you know.”

  “Where was Winifred the night of the fire?”

  “She was asleep. We had some trouble getting her up. I thought for awhile the smoke had got her. Her door was locked. The boys nearly broke it down before they were able to wake her up.”

  “Where was she? In the north wing or the south wing?”

  “Neither. She was in the center of the house, on the east.”

  “How about the two boys—where did they sleep?”