“And then what?”

  “And then she drove away,” Drake said, “and two of my men tagged along. A third one stayed behind.”

  “Stayed behind where?”

  “At the mart.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he had a hunch.”

  “About what?”

  “When your little sun-bathing friend drove away she didn’t have all of the procession with her. Part of the procession stayed behind, so one of my operatives played it smart and stayed behind too.”

  “And what did he find?”

  “He found men moving around talking with the cashiers, taking leather folders out of their hip pockets, opening them so the cashier could see the badges and the credentials, and then the cashier would go in to the till and bring out the little green confetti that your client had been scattering around, and the busy little men would produce billfolds and give the cashiers other bills in place of the ones Arlene Duvall had given them. Then they’d put Arlene’s bills in their pockets and walk out.”

  “And what about the men who were shadowing Arlene? Did they have any trouble?”

  “Not in the least. Arlene went down to a side road that winds around the back of the Remuda Golf Club, then she turned off on a dirt road, then she swung in on an all but deserted road that goes in back of the golf club, the same road that I scouted earlier in the day, the one where I found the jeep tracks.”

  “And what did she do there?”

  “Parked the trailer, made herself at home. Lit a gasoline lantern, hung it on a hook in the trailer, cheerfully started in making beds, putting food away, getting everything all shipshape.”

  “And your men stayed there to watch her?”

  “Well, not right there, Perry. They’re back out on the highway. There’s no way on earth she can get out of there with the trailer except by turning around and coming back out of that service road. My men’s instructions are to keep the trailer under surveillance. They phone in reports every hour.”

  “And what about the procession?” Mason asked.

  “Only one other man in sight. He’s parked down the road a ways from my men. There were three men in that car. One of the men is in the car at the wheel, waiting and watching to see that the trailer doesn’t come out. The other two men disappeared in the brush some place, presumably staked out where they can keep an eye on the door of the trailer so that every time cutie comes out they can follow and see where she goes and what she’s doing.”

  “Not much opportunity for privacy,” Mason said.

  “Hardly any,” Drake observed dryly. “Evidently they feel the situation is coming to a head, Perry. There’s an air of great tension as though every one of them is just waiting for something to happen—all except your client. She’s as serene as a house finch sitting on a new batch of eggs.”

  “Do these other men know that your operatives are on the job, Paul?”

  “Oh, sure. No chance to keep under cover on a job like that. My men got the license number of their car and they got theirs.”

  “What car is it?”

  “It’s an unlisted license. You know what that means.”

  Mason narrowed his eyes in thoughtful concentration.

  “What did you find out about the Mercantile Security job?” Mason asked.

  “Have a heart,” Drake told him. “We’ve just got a good start on that.”

  “I know, but I want to keep abreast of the situation.”

  “Ever hear of Jordan L. Ballard?” Drake asked.

  “Who’s he, Paul?”

  “He was the bank employee who was working with Duvall at the time the money disappeared.”

  “What about him?”

  “It was his duty to inspect that outgoing cash shipment. At the time he’d made a bet on a horse race and he was paying a lot more attention to the broadcast over a small portable radio than he was to what Duvall was doing.”

  “But,” Mason said, “even so, Paul, he couldn’t have got away with the money because he wasn’t in a position to touch it. Duvall was packing the money and—”

  “That’s right,” Drake interrupted, “but it seems Ballard lost his job because he’d been negligent. The bank officials didn’t think he was in on the deal although they couldn’t be sure, but they fired him on general principles—and, of course, under the circumstances Ballard couldn’t get another job anywhere in the banking business.”

  “What became of him, Paul?”

  “Well, as it turned out, it was the best thing that ever happened to Ballard. He was kicked around for a while and I guess he got pretty hungry. Finally he got a job in a service station. He saved some money. The owner of the service station got sick; Ballard bought him out. Then Ballard borrowed money, branched out and put in a big line of tires and accessories. After that he had an opportunity to buy the corner where the service station was located. He paid a few thousand dollars down and agreed to pay a thousand dollars a month. Then one of the big department stores, looking for an outlying branch, picked on that locality and now Ballard is still working, but apparently he doesn’t have to.”

  “Where is he?” Mason asked.

  “He runs a super service station at Tenth and Flossman.”

  Mason made a note of the address. “What else, Paul?”

  “Well, you probably know about it. Five thousand dollars of the stolen money was in numbered bills.”

  Mason nodded.

  “That was just a coincidence. It seems the police were working on a blackmailing deal at the time and—”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Mason said.

  Drake looked at him and said, “You seem to know quite a bit about it.”

  “Just the general facts,” Mason said.

  “Well, of course, the way the police figure it, Duvall was in quite a predicament. He got away with nearly four hundred thousand dollars. Five thousand dollars of those bills were ones on which the police had the numbers. Duvall doesn’t know which of the stolen bills are listed with the police.”

  Mason said, “Five out of four hundred. In other words, if he put his hand in the pile of cash and took out a bill there’d be one chance in eighty that he’d get hold of a bill of which the police had the number.”

  Drake nodded.

  “And,” Mason said, “if that was spent in the ordinary course of business the chances are about one in a hundred that it would turn up in the hands of the police. Therefore there’s only about one chance in eight thousand that—”

  “Your figures are wrong,” Drake interposed. “The police make spot checks. They’ll go for two or three months without making a move, letting Arlene Duvall spend money. Then when they have her lulled into a false sense of security the police will suddenly put on a bunch of men, just like they’re doing tonight, and check every bill that is spent.”

  “They think the daughter has the money?”

  “Sure,” Drake said. “How else does she live without working? How does she buy cars, trailers, pay cash for everything?”

  “How about the income tax?” Mason asked. “Haven’t they tried to reach her through the income-tax people?”

  “Of course they have, but they can’t get to first base.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” Drake said, “there’s something in the background, Perry. The income-tax people simply state that her affairs are in order and let it go at that.”

  “That’s strange,” Mason said.

  Drake nodded.

  “Now there’s one other thing,” Drake went on, “that you should know. The police, of course, aren’t releasing any information, but the story is that the fellow who made the demand for the blackmail money wanted five thousand dollars in tens and twenties—and that stands to reason. Even if there wasn’t that kind of a rumor out you’d figure that was what would have happened.”

  “Yes, that sounds reasonable,” Mason said.

  “Now the big bulk of money that was in the shipment that was taken from the Mercantile Security was in hundred-dollar bills. Also, there were a hundred thousand-dollar bills. The rest of it was mostly in five hundreds and fifties and very few small bills. So, looking at it one way, if Arlene Duvall is smart she can spend the larger bills and be reasonably safe.”

  Mason’s eyes were cold. “You keep insisting it’s Arlene.”

  Drake grinned. “Be your age, Perry. Incidentally, Perry, a messenger boy brought in an envelope for you a short time ago.”

  “For me?”

  “That’s right. He said it was something you were to have before morning.”

  “How did he happen to bring it here?”

  “He didn’t say. He— It’s around here somewhere, just a typewritten envelope… oh yes, here it is.”

  Mason took the envelope from Drake, a plain stamped envelope.

  Mason regarded the typewritten address. “Evidently intended to mail this to me and then sent it up here instead. Well, we’ll see what it is. Probably some more grief.”

  Mason took out his penknife, opened the blade and slit open the edge of the envelope.

  Drake’s phone rang and Drake picked up the receiver, said, “Hello, yes… . Hey, wait a minute. Give me that again… .”

  Drake motioned warningly to Mason.

  Mason glanced at the contents of the envelope, then turned his back to Paul Drake, motioned to Della Street, and extracted from the envelope two pieces of currency, one a five-hundred-dollar bill, the other a thousand-dollar bill.

  There was a typewritten note in the envelope. Della Street moved over to read it as Perry Mason held it.

  The note read:

  I promised you’d have this by nine-thirty. I may not be able to get to your office tomorrow so I’m sending it now.

  The note was signed on the typewriter simply with an initial, a capital “A.”

  Mason glanced at Della Street, placed a warning finger to his lips, put the bills and note back into the envelope, slipped the envelope into his inside coat pocket and turned back to Paul Drake.

  Drake hung up the telephone as Mason turned and said, “Now here’s something, Perry. Ballard, the man I was telling you about, has been in touch with the police. He gave them some information this morning that seems to have triggered this whole flurry of activity.”

  “What was the information, Paul?” Mason asked.

  “My contact can’t find out, but he knows that it started the bank detail going around in circles. He thinks it was something damned important. And here’s the point, Perry—Ballard may be down at his service station right now. It seems he drops in about this time every night to check the day’s cash, close up the cash register and leave just enough money for the station to keep on operating through the night.”

  Mason said thoughtfully, “It would be swell if I knew what he’d told the police.” He glanced at Della Street, said abruptly, “Come on, Della. I’m going to drive you to your apartment.”

  He turned to Paul Drake, “Stay on the job until midnight if you can, Paul. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had more developments within the next few hours.”

  Mason drove Della Street to her apartment. “See you in the morning, Della.”

  “Chief, if you’re going to see Ballard and learn anything, let me know, will you?”

  “Not tonight. You’d better roll in and get some sleep.”

  “Meanie! I want to know—and don’t go carting all that cash around with you. You’d better let me keep it.”

  “Not a chance,” he told her. “This case has me worried. I never thought I’d get concerned over the mere fact that a client actually paid a retainer fee when she said she would.”

  “It’s the way she does things, Chief. Those big bills! It seems she’s trying to jockey you into some sort of a trap.”

  “Darned if it doesn’t,” Mason admitted.

  “Let me keep them.”

  “Then you’d be in the trap. No, I’ll handle this end of the deal. You get some sleep, Della.”

  She waved good night from the door of the apartment house and Mason drove to Tenth and Flossman, pulled in to the station in front of one of the gas pumps, said to the attendant, “Fill her up. Is Ballard around tonight?”

  The attendant indicated a man who was in at the desk checking a roll of adding-machine paper on which there was a list of figures.

  Mason walked in, waited until the man looked up, and said, “Mr. Ballard?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m Perry Mason.”

  “The lawyer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about you. Sure glad to meet you. What brings you out here?”

  “I was interested in finding out a few facts concerning a matter you probably don’t care to talk about.”

  “You mean that Mercantile Security job?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m not embarrassed about that—not any more. They gave me a raw deal, but it sure turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The only thing is that I can’t see where it’s any of your business.”

  “A lawyer has lots of business.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “May I ask you a couple of questions about it?”

  “Why?”

  “Certain information might make a lot of difference to a client of mine.”

  “Then I’d have to know who the client was.”

  “You know I can’t tell you that Now look, how about that bet you made? Were you in the habit of playing the horses?”

  “Depends on what you’d call a habit.”

  “But this occasion was unusual?”

  “I’ll say it was! I had a hot tip and I cleaned up.”

  “Your horse won, eh?”

  “I’ll say he won! Paid off twenty-two seventy-five on a two-dollar bet, and I had a hundred bucks right on his nose.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Mason said.

  “I won the bet,” Ballard went on. “And it cost me my job. For a while I thought I was all finished, but I worked out of it all right. Now I’m fairly well fixed. If I’d kept on at the bank I’d have still been in the same old treadmill.”

  “I’d like to talk with you about what happened that day,” Mason said.

  “Why?”

  “Well, I’d like to get the picture in my own mind.”

  “It isn’t much of a picture. Look up the old newspapers and you’ll have the whole story—that is, almost all of the story.”

  Mason jerked his thumb toward the gasoline pump and said, “I’m having my car filled up. Are we in any hurry?”

  “No,” Ballard said, sizing up Mason and pushing back a paper on which he had been copying figures.

  The man stood up and Mason saw that he was rather short-legged, although he had broad shoulders and a good head. He was perhaps fifty-five years old, with steady gray eyes and bushy eyebrows. His hair was shot with gray, and there was about him the incisive air of one who is accustomed to dealing in figures, where a result is either right or it’s wrong, where there is no such thing as an approximation but only an answer.

  Mason, lowering his eyes to the pad of paper on which the figures were written, noted that each figure had been written with copperplate accuracy.

  “I’m just getting ready to close up,” Ballard said. “I try to take cash by ten o’clock every night. I leave just enough money for the boys to use in making change. The stick-ups take place around midnight. I don’t leave anything for the stick-up artists to work on. When that information gets around they don’t bother us so much.”

  “I see. Want to tell me about the Mercantile Security?”

  “I’d have to know a bit about why you wanted the information.”

  “I want to find out who really was guilty.”

  “You don’t think it was Duvall?”

  “The law thinks so.”

  “But you don’t?”

  “I haven’t anything to think on as yet—I’m trying to keep my mind open.”

  “I see.”

  “Perhaps if we didn’t talk about the money we could talk about Duvall. What sort of a chap was he?”

  “There’s a question.”

  “Where’s the answer?”

  “There isn’t any.”

  “Why?”

  “You can’t classify him. You can’t label the guy.”

  “Could you try?”

  “Well, he was a quiet, cheerful sort of a chap. He had a lot of friends and he was all wrapped up in his daughter. His wife had died when the girl was ten years old, and Colton Duvall had made a career out of raising the girl, being both a father and mother. And if you ask me, that’s an impossible job.”

  “Didn’t turn out so well?” Mason asked.

  “That depends on what you mean by well. Duvall had ideas. He claimed people could never be thoroughly at ease unless they were really natural. He thought that all of the conventional gambits of politeness and etiquette were a species of hypocrisy.”

  “Why?” Mason asked.

  “He said that people should be thoroughly natural and their conduct would then reflect their personalities instead of conforming to some ritual or convention that had been laid down in a book.”

  “A little cracked?” Mason asked.

  “Not cracked. The guy was plausible as could be. Listening to him you’d find yourself nodding your head when you should have been telling him straight out that that was no way to raise a daughter.”

  “Did the daughter like him?”

  “Worshiped the ground he walked on.”

  “What about the money? Did Duvall get it?”

  “I don’t see how he could have. When you come right down to it I don’t see how anyone could have.”

  “Mind telling me why?”

  “Because of the various factors, all the checks and precautions. It was just an impossibility.”

  “Yet it happened?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “Duvall couldn’t have done it?”

  “No one could have done it. It was like watching a magician on the stage. He does things that couldn’t possibly happen, yet you sit there and see them happening.”

  “Perhaps if you’d tell me what did happen I might suggest a solution,” Mason ventured.

  Ballard hesitated, then said, “It was about two o’clock in the afternoon. In those days there was a big Government payroll at Santa Ana, and we had to ship enormous quantities of cash to take care of it. They had an aviation center there and a huge personnel. Also our Santa Ana branch did quite a business. We’d be moving cash back and forth two or three times a month.