“Do you mean to say she’d let her sister in for that?” Della Street asked. “With Walter Prescott’s body lying upstairs all the time?”

  Mason shook his head and said, “That’s exactly it, Della, I don’t think she’d have done it if she’d known Walter’s body was upstairs in the bedroom.”

  “But she must have known it if she went up there to pack her things.”

  “She didn’t pack. She left that for Rita to do. And the body was in Walter’s bedroom, not hers.”

  “Well, after Rita came to the house, then what happened?”

  “That,” Mason said, “is something else. Of course, Rita might or might not have gone into Walter’s bedroom. Rosalind would have left the dress in her bedroom. Rita could have gone there and changed, then gone down and clipped the claws on the canary. Naturally, she was thinking more of registering with Mrs. Snoops than of what she was doing, so she clipped the right foot twice, without noticing that the right foot had been finished, while the left foot hadn’t.”

  “One thing, Chief,” Della Street said, as she stared at him through thought-slitted eyes: “Why do you say Rosalind Prescott said, ‘I’m going to Reno’?”

  Mason grinned and said, “That’s a break. I went down to talk with Karl Helmold about the canary. Rita Swaine had told him I sent her, but she’d given him the name of Mildred Owens and the address as General Delivery, Reno. You see, Della, she intended to leave the canary there temporarily, but to send for him later on. Perhaps she knew that her name was going to be in the papers. Perhaps she’d already picked the alias of Mildred Owens and wanted to have it so the canary could be sent to her under her alias without any trouble, and whenever she wrote for it.”

  Della Street, staring at him, said, “And that means you’re going to Reno?”

  He nodded. “We’re going.”

  “Going to try to beat the cops to it?”

  Again he nodded, “And it may be dangerous, Della. We’re playing with legal dynamite.”

  She scooped up a notebook, pencils, and said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Mason helped her into her coat. “Naturally,” he said, “it’s important as the devil no one knows where we’re going nor why we’re going. We’ll charter a special plane at the airport. Now, there’s just a chance Sergeant Holcomb may start looking for me, find me gone, put two and two together, and take a chance on calling the airport. So you ring up and engage the plane under your name.”

  “Why not use an assumed name?”

  “Because,” he told her, “I don’t want to do anything which would show a guilty intent. This is plenty warm right now. Before we get done with it, it’s going to be hot. I don’t want you to get your fingers burnt.”

  “Never mind my fingers,” she told him, “but you keep in the clear, Chief. Remember, you’re going to take a cruise around the world.”

  He nodded and said, “It’ll be fun, Della, but I’ll miss the action of a rough-and-tumble law business, at that.”

  “Don’t worry,” she told him, “you’ll have plenty of action—dances on the deck in the moonlight, the beach at Waikiki, Japan in Cherry Blossom Time, across the Yellow Sea, up the Whang Poo to Shanghai, the Paris of the Orient, with—”

  “You,” he charged, leveling an accusing forefinger at her, “have been reading steamship literature.”

  “And how!” she admitted. “In case you want to know, Chief, I took all the papers out of your top drawer and loaded it up with pamphlets on Bali, the Orient, Honolulu, India, and—”

  He circled her waist with his arm, swept her off her feet and around in a circle toward the door. “Come on, baggage,” he told her, “there’s work to be done.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE MOTOR ceased its monotonous, rhythmic roar. The nose of the plane tilted sharply forward. Della Street, her face pressed against the window, said, “So that’s Reno,eh?”

  Mason nodded. Together they watched the lights as the plane banked into a sharp turn and slid downward through the darkness. The sound of the wind through the struts became audible as a high-pitched, whining note. The pilot flattened out, gunned the motor, and throttled down to a perfect threepoint landing. Then the motor roared once more into a crescendo of noise as the plane taxied up to the airport.

  Della Street’s face was glowing with excitement as she stood in the doorway of the enclosed fuselage, and Mason extended his hand. Wind, thrown back by the idling propeller, whipped her skirts closely about her. She placed her hand in Mason’s and jumped lightly to the ground.

  “Any clues, Chief,” she asked, “or do we go it blind?”

  “We go it blind. Get a cab,” he told her. And to the pilot, “All right, get your ship fueled and ready to take off at a moment’s notice. Get something to eat and hold yourself available, with everything ready.”

  In the taxicab, Mason said, “We’ll cover the gambling places. I don’t know about Rosalind, but Rita Swaine doesn’t impress me as one who would stay in a hotel room—not in a city like Reno.”

  “What do we do when we locate her?” Della asked. “Try to shadow her?”

  Mason shook his head and said, “We put it up to her, cold turkey.”

  “Suppose she tells us to go jump in the lake?”

  “In that event,” Mason said, “we’ll get rough with her.”

  “How rough can you get, Chief?” Della asked, stealing a sidelong glance as she added demurely—“with a woman.”

  “Plenty,” he told her. “You only see me on my good behavior.”

  The cab driver turned and said, “Where do you want to go?”

  “The main stem,” Mason told him,

  “You mean Virginia Street?”

  “Wherever the night life is thickest.”

  The cab driver said proudly, “There’s life all over this city, brother, twenty-four hours a day. I’ll drive down Virginia once, then turn around and come back, and you can pick the place you want to get out at.”

  Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, the business district was crowded with people of various descriptions. Cowpunchers in high-heeled boots clump-clumped along the sidewalks. Men in shirt sleeves, without coats or neckties, rubbed elbows with men who might have served for fashion plates. An occasional couple in evening clothes sauntered from doorway to doorway, while women, evidently from ranches, went swinging past with the long, easy strides of those who live in the open.

  The driver passed under the arched sign bearing the illuminated legend in blazing letters:

  THE BIGGEST LITTLE CITY IN THE WORLD

  “Okay,” Mason told him, “drive back slowly. We’ll get out on the other side of the railroad track.”

  The cab driver ventured a suggestion. “If you folks wanted to get a license,” he said, “I could—”

  Della Street laughed and shook her head. “Why speak of love,” she asked, “when there’s work to be done?”

  She tucked her arm through Mason’s, and, together, they walked a block to the left, turned to the right, and started making a survey of the bars and gambling houses. The third place they entered was The Bank Club. Here, faro, roulette, wheels of fortune, craps, and twenty-one furnished the main attraction to the Goddess of Chance, each having its little circle of devotees ringed by curious spectators.

  Della Street clutched Mason’s arm. “There she is!” she exclaimed.

  “Where?” Mason asked.

  “Over at the Wheel of Fortune. See her with that good-looking beige wool coat over the brown print dress?”

  Mason nodded and said, “She’s changed her clothes since she was in the office.”

  “Of course she has. She must have come up here by plane. That couple is with her.”

  “You mean the ones over on the left?”

  “Yes.”

  Mason stood attentively watching the little knot of people who placed bets ranging from five cents to a dollar, while the wheel of fortune whirled its clattering course.

  The woman next to Rita Swaine was chestnut-haired, brown-eyed, alert and vivacious. She was wearing a black dress with a frill of white at the throat, and a saucy, tight-fitting black hat. While Mason was watching her, she won a fifty-cent bet placed on the ten-dollar bill. The attendant slid ten, fifty-cent pieces across the glass top of the table. The young woman threw back her head and laughed.

  “She’s not wearing any rings,” Mason observed speculatingly. “That may mean everything or nothing.”

  He shifted his eyes to the hatless young man who was with her, a man in the late twenties, slightly above the average height, with the broad shoulders, slim hips and easy grace of an athlete. Light glinted from his dark curly hair as his head moved. His eyes were black, smoldering with intense fires. The face was volatile and animated. On the whole, a man who, once seen, would be easily remembered, a man who would be quite capable of gathering a woman into his arms, regardless of spectators, husbands or consequences. Della Street said, under her breath, “And I’ll bet he’s a swell dancer.”

  Mason pushed past her, strode forward, and slid a silver dollar across the glass top so that it rested on the twenty-for-one. Rita Swaine, without looking up, silently moved over to give the newcomer room. The other young woman raised frank, speculative eyes, swept Mason’s face in interested appraisal, turned to the man at her side, and said something in an undertone. The wheel of fortune spun with a rapid whir which slowly resolved itself into individual sounds as the stiff leather tongue beat a fateful tattoo against the metal protuberances. Slowly, the wheel came almost to a stop. The leather tab hesitated for a moment, then, with one last faint slap, slid over into the twenty-for-one subdivision.

  It was inevitable that Rita Swaine should look up at the man who had just won twenty dollars. It was as she raised her eyes that Mason, scooping in his winnings, said, “Are you going to introduce your friends?”

  For a moment there was panic in Rita Swaine’s eyes, then she controlled herself, slid fifty cents over on the twenty-for-one, said, “Just in case this should repeat—Rossy, this is Perry Mason.”

  Mason half turned, to look down into brown eyes which were no longer laughing, into a pleading, upturned face. “I thought so,” Rosalind Prescott said simply. “I asked Jimmy if it wasn’t.”

  “And Mr. Driscoll,” Rita said.

  Mason shook hands, felt the impact of the black eyes on his, the long, firm fingers which circled his hand. The face itself was as watchfully expressionless as that of the gambler back of the faro deck.

  “How did you do it?” Rita Swaine asked.

  “It’s a secret,” Mason told her. “Where can we talk?”

  “Rossy’s room at the Riverside,” Rita said. “—Oh, there’s Miss Street. Good evening, Miss Street.”

  Della smiled. Mason introduced her to Rosalind Prescott and Jimmy Driscoll. As though they had been casual tourists, sauntering from place to place in search of entertainment, they strolled out of The Bank Club and walked to the Riverside Hotel.

  Mason dropped behind and said, “I’m sorry, Della, but you’re not going up with us. This thing is loaded with dynamite. Stay here in the lobby and keep one of the house phones in your hands. If anyone comes in who looks like an officer, and who asks for Rita Swaine or Rosalind Prescott, get a call through to the room and tip me off.”

  She nodded.

  “And don’t let the others know what you’re doing,” he warned.

  As they entered the lobby of the hotel, Della Street said, “Chief, if you’ll pardon me, I’ll run into the dining room and see if I can get a sandwich and a cup of coffee. I haven’t eaten anything, and I’ll have a terrific headache if I don’t get something.”

  Mason nodded, said casually, “Okay, Della. Come up when you get through. What’s your room number, Mrs. Prescott?”

  “Three thirty-one.”

  “Let’s go,” the lawyer said.

  It was Jimmy Driscoll who carefully closed and locked the bedroom door, after first making certain no one was loitering in the corridor. Then he opened his arms to Rita Swaine, and said, “Never mind, sweetheart, we’ll see it through together.”

  Mason walked across the room, sat on the bed, flung an elbow over the brass rail at the foot, crossed his long legs and said casually, “You folks don’t need to keep that up, you know.”

  “Keep what up?” Rita Swaine asked, spinning around to face him.

  “That phony love act,” Mason said, “Your sister might get jealous, Rita.”

  “What do you mean?” Rita Swaine demanded.

  “You know what I mean,” Mason told her, and then kept them waiting while he fished a cigarette case from his pocket, went through the motions of offering a cigarette to the others, selected one, sat back, lit it, and said, “After all, you know, I’m not Mrs. Snoops.”

  Driscoll said ominously, “I’m not certain that I like that crack, Mason.”

  Mason locked eyes with him. “No one asked you to, Driscoll.”

  “Well,” Driscoll said, “suppose you explain—or apologize.”

  “Bosh!” Mason said. “What do you people think you’re pulling?”

  Rosalind Prescott, standing very straight, said, “I think Mr. Mason’s right.”

  “Rossy!” Rita exclaimed.

  Driscoll didn’t take his eyes from the lawyer. “I don’t think he’s right,” he said, “and I don’t like his manner.”

  “You,” Mason told him, “can go to the devil! I suppose because you’re good-looking, women have been easy for you all your life. Now you’re in a jam and you find it a lot easier to hide behind petticoats than to come out in the open.”

  Driscoll started for Mason. The lawyer raised himself ominously from the bed. Rosalind Prescott, jumping forward, grabbed Driscoll’s arm, clung to it and said, “Jimmy, stop it! You hear me? Stop it!”

  Mason said, “Go ahead, you young fool. Start something. That’ll bring in the house detective, and then the cops. It’ll be about on a par with the bonehead moves you’ve made so far.”

  Driscoll said with quivering lips, “I don’t have to take this from you, you know.”

  “The hell you don’t,” Mason said easily, “You just think you don’t. You’ll take it and like it. Sit down!”

  “Please, Jimmy,” Rosalind Prescott pleaded.

  Rita Swaine, staring across at the lawyer, said, “Why are you talking like that?”

  “You should know. There are two reasons. One of them is that I don’t like to be double-crossed by clients.”

  “No one tried to double-cross you,” she said.

  “Oh, certainly not,” Mason observed sarcastically. “When you told me that you were the one Mrs. Snoops saw with Jimmy, you weren’t trying to play me for a sucker. You were just giving your imagination a few indoor calisthenics.” He turned moodily to survey Rosalind Prescott and said, “I think you’ll tell the truth.”

  “Shut up, Rossy,” Driscoll warned in a low voice. “This is serious.”

  Mason appraised him with hostile eyes and said, “It’d be different if you could get away with it, but you can’t get away with it. You didn’t get away with it with me, and, in the long run, you won’t get away with it with the district attorney. But, trying to get away with it is playing right into his hands. Why the devil didn’t you folks tell me the truth in the first place, and let me tell you what to do? But no, you had to go on the amateur hour, and try and dress the window so it would look all nice and pretty. So Rosalind skips out and leaves her dress where Rita can put it on. Rita catches the canary, goes up to the window so as to make sure Mrs. Snoops can see her, and finishes clipping the canary’s claws. Where she makes her mistake is in being too excited to notice that the claws on the right foot have already been clipped once. It’s the left foot which was left unfinished. But Rita painstakingly cuts the right claws twice, and leaves one of the left claws untouched.”

  Rita Swaine said indignantly, “Why, I never—”

  “You’re right, Mr. Mason,” Rosalind Prescott announced.

  Mason shifted his eyes to her and said, “I think I’m going to like you. Tell me what happened, and tell it fast. We may not have much time. Your sister left a wide back trail. I followed it, and someone else may follow it.”

  Driscoll took a deep breath and started to say something. Mason said, “Shut up, Driscoll.”

  Rosalind Prescott said, “I fought with my husband.He was going to divorce me. He found a letter Jimmy had written. The letter was capable of two interpretations. He chose the worst. He left the house to go see a lawyer. I became panic-striken and did the worst possible thing. I telephoned for Jimmy, to tell him what had happened, and to tell him I was leaving. Then Jimmy got hotheaded and came tearing out to the house. And, to cap the climax, carried a gun, with some fanciful idea of protecting me from Walter. Walter’d threatened to kill me if I tried to claim any share of his business.”

  “You’d told Driscoll that?” Mason asked.

  “Yes, over the telephone.”

  “Okay,” Mason said, “remember it. Driscoll thought you were in actual danger. You probably were in actual danger. He carried a gun only for the purpose of protecting you. Now go ahead.”

  “Jimmy came out there. We were in the solarium. I tried to talk things over sensibly with him. Jimmy—well, Jimmy lost his head and took me in his arms, and I—”

  “Yes, I know,” Mason said. “Mrs. Snoops described the scene to me.”

  “How did it sound when she described it?”

  “Passionate,” Mason said tersely.

  She met his eyes frankly and said, “All right, it was.”

  Mason nodded. “Good girl. Go ahead.”

  “Jimmy told me I must leave, and he was going to get plane reservations. Then there was this automobile accident. Jimmy ran out and helped lift the man out of the coupe and put him in the van. Then he came back, and I suddenly realized he might be called as a witness; that the man who was driving the van might come back and try to get his name and address, and Jimmy’s car was standing outside, parked down on the side street. So I told Jimmy he must leave at once, that I’d pack and go later. Jimmy didn’t want to go. I insisted. So then Jimmy told me that I must take his gun, for protection, in case Walter should come back. I told him I didn’t want a gun, and would never use one, but he insisted—I must have one somewhere in the house where I could get it if I had to. So I took the gun and hid it back of the drawer in the desk, where I knew Walter would never find it. I never did intend to use it, not even as a last resort. I just took it in order to make Jimmy feel better and so he’d quit arguing and get out of there. He’s obstinate at times—and this was one of the times.”