“Go on,” Mason said.

  “Well, as you’re probably aware, Mr. Garvin has that private office of his fitted up so it’s almost an apartment. There’s a nice tile shower and dressing room. He has a little closet that is fixed up with an electric plate so he can warm up coffee and fix himself a snack whenever he doesn’t want to go out. He has a bar with an electric icebox. In fact, he sometimes uses the place as an apartment. I’ve known times, when he’s been expecting an important long distance call, that he’d stay right there in his office for twenty-four hours at a time.

  “Well, he came back from Las Vegas and I could see that he was terribly worked up about something. I hoped he’d get it off his chest and leave me at least part of the evening free, but not him. He is just as selfish as his son. He told me he was all dirty and sticky from the trip, and he was going to take a shower. So he popped into his dressing room and took a shower, and left me cooling my heels out there in the outer office until he came out all nicely fixed up with a clean suit out of his closet, and then he proceeded to jump on me.”

  “And you?” Mason asked.

  She said, “I told him I didn’t have to take that from anybody. I told him that when he gave me instructions I followed them, and that, as far as I was concerned, he could take his job and give it to somebody else.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said that suited him all right, and I went out of the office.”

  “What time was this?” Mason asked.

  “He got in early enough, about eight-forty-five I guess, and he kept me waiting while he was getting all cool and comfortable so he could pick on me.… I just kept getting madder and madder.”

  “Now wait a minute. What time did this interview take place?”

  “I guess it was a little after nine.”

  “And he told you he’d just got in from Las Vegas?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Did he drive in from Las Vegas or fly?”

  “I don’t know. He had his car with him but that doesn’t mean anything because he keeps four or five cars, and then whenever he wants he’ll pick up other cars from his son’s used-car lot.”

  “How long had he been in Las Vegas?”

  “Two days.”

  “May I ask what you intend to do now?”

  “What I intend to do now,” she said, “is do what I should have done a long time ago: devote myself to my stage career.”

  “I didn’t know you’d been on the stage.”

  “Well, I … I didn’t say I’d been on the stage, but I’ve had training for the stage. I’m being interviewed this morning for a bit part and I’m going to have to go right now, Mr. Mason. I’m sorry. I don’t have any hard feelings against you but I think I’ve received a raw deal.”

  “You’re finished at the office?” Mason asked.

  “Am I finished? I hope to tell the world I’m finished.… Now I don’t like to have to throw you out, but out you go. You’ve taken up too much of my time already.

  “Why don’t you ask Mr. Garvin what happened? He’ll tell you.”

  “I wanted to get your side of it.”

  “If I gave you my side,” she said, “you’d be here all morning. His low-down son rushed me off my feet, and then when he began to get tired of me he wished me off on his dad as a secretary. Then the first thing I knew Junior was making a whirlwind campaign for Stephanie Falkner. Then he goes to Chicago and marries some babe he’s hardly had a chance to know. She’s some cutie from Las Vegas who came drifting into his used-car lot—just by chance. He sold her a used car and she certainly sold him a bill of goods!

  “Believe me, he won’t have her six months before he’s trading her in on another model. That man doesn’t know what he wants.… Now come on. I’m awfully sorry but you’re going to have to leave. Be a sport and get out of here.”

  “You have a car?” Mason asked.

  “I’m getting a cab.”

  “Going out to …”

  “I’m going out to Hollywood, in case you’re interested.”

  Mason said, “I have a cab waiting downstairs. You can ride with us as far as my office. That’s right on your way and that will save you getting a cab here.”

  She looked him over and said, “Well, darned if you aren’t human after all. That’s a deal. Come on. Let’s go.”

  She bustled out of the apartment, closed and locked the door, hurried to the elevator, and almost ran to the cab.

  They drove to Mason’s office. Mason said to the cab driver, “Add a trip to Hollywood to what you have on the meter already, and tell me how much.”

  The cab driver made an estimate.

  “Here’s the fare and a tip,” Mason said. “Deliver the young lady where she wants to go.”

  The cab driver touched his cap. Mason and Della Street got out of the cab and had no more than crossed the sidewalk when Lieutenant Tragg of the Metropolitan Homicide Squad fell into step beside them.

  “Well, well,” he said. “So you’ve been out early-birding this morning. Catch any worms?”

  “Oh, we don’t call this early,” Mason said.

  “It isn’t.… I thought you were in the office, Miss Street.”

  “I was,” Della Street said.

  “You folks get around. You certainly do,” Tragg told them. “Well, let’s go up where we can talk.”

  “About what?” Mason asked.

  “Oh, about murder,” Tragg said. “It’s as good a subject as any, and it happens to be a subject in which we’re both interested, you on one side, I on the other.”

  They walked silently across to the elevator, rode up to Mason’s floor, walked down the corridor. Mason unlocked the door of his private office, offered Tragg a cigarette, seated himself, held a flame to the tip of the officer’s cigarette, nodded surreptitiously to Della Street, and settled back in his chair.

  “Well?” Mason asked.

  “George Casselman,” Lieutenant Tragg said.

  “What about him?”

  “Dead.”

  “How did he die?”

  “A contact shot with a .38 caliber revolver.”

  “When?”

  “Sometime last night.”

  “Where?”

  “In the apartment where I understand you saw him sometime around eight o’clock.”

  “Indeed,” Mason said. “How did you get that information?”

  “That,” Tragg told him, grinning, “is a professional secret. I’m keeping the extent of my information to myself. In that way you won’t know how much I know or how little I know. It gives me all the advantage in asking questions.”

  “Assuming that I would be inclined to depart from the truth in my answers,” Mason said.

  “That’s what I’m assuming,” Tragg told him. “Not that you’d lie, Mason, but you have a diabolically clever way of giving answers that don’t answer. Now you saw Casselman last night. What did you see him about?”

  “A business deal.”

  “What sort of a business deal?”

  “One that involved a client’s affairs.”

  “There you go again,” Tragg said. “I want to know what you were discussing.”

  “My client’s affairs are always kept private,” Mason said. “There’s a code of legal ethics dealing with the matter.”

  “Makes it very convenient for you in a murder case, doesn’t it?”

  “At times,” Mason admitted.

  Tragg studied him thoughtfully. “Now Casselman had some other appointments last night.”

  “Did he?”

  “Do you know with whom?”

  “I know other people were going to see him—that is, Casselman was expecting them.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you there, Lieutenant.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t help me?”

  “I mean just that. I can’t help you.”

  “That could mean a lot of things. Either that you don’t know or that you can’t tell.”

  “There’s still a third possibility,” Mason said. “Hearsay evidence is no good in a court of law. When I say that I can’t help you, it might mean that I had only some hearsay evidence, and that would be of no help at all.”

  “You see what I mean?” Tragg said, turning to Della Street. “What kind of an answer is that?”

  Tragg turned back to the lawyer.

  “Now I wanted to see you this morning before you’d had a chance to talk with any of your clients,” Tragg said. “I’m sorry that didn’t work out. I think perhaps Miss Street’s efficiency may have had something to do with that. However, Mason, we police aren’t entirely dumb. After I found out that you didn’t arrive at the office at your usual time and that Miss Street had stepped out on a matter of some urgency, I put two and two together and so I waited. When you drove up in the taxicab, you were getting just a little careless. You should have paid off the cab a block from the office and walked the rest of the way. As it is now, I have the number of the cab, and as soon as I call the dispatcher, the cab driver will be asked to report to us. Then we’ll know just where you went with the eab and gradually we’ll piece that cab trip together and perhaps find some very interesting stuff.”

  “Doubtless you will,” Mason said. “I’m glad you called my attention to a mistake in my technique, Tragg.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Tragg said. “I knew from the expression on your face, that as soon as you saw me you were mentally kicking yourself for not walking that last block.

  “I suppose you’d have done it anyway if it hadn’t been for this cute blonde in the car with you. She’d have thought it a little strange if you’d stopped the cab a block from your office.

  “Now then, that brings up the next pertinent question: Who was this blonde and why didn’t she get out when you got out?”

  “The blonde,” Mason said, “was named Eva Elliott. She lives in Apartment 317 at the Monadnock Apartments. Her telephone number is Pacific 7-2481. She was formerly employed as a secretary for Homer Horatio Garvin, a client of mine, and was on her way to Hollywood to try out for a bit part. The young woman is more than mildly interested in a theatrical career.”

  “Well,” Tragg said, “thanks for the information. I can cross that off.”

  “What do you mean, you can cross that off?”

  “It doesn’t have very much connection with the murder,” Tragg said, “or you wouldn’t have told me all of that. Now where else did you go with the cab?”

  “That,” Mason said, “is a matter I don’t think I’m in a position to discuss at the moment.”

  “I see, I see,” Tragg said. “Now this Eva Elliott had been secretary to Homer Garvin?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Homer Garvin is a client of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did he last consult you?”

  “I take care of all his legal business, I believe,” Mason said. “Sometimes I will have quite a bit of work for him, and then at other times things will go along for months at a time without my hearing from him.”

  Tragg turned again to Della Street. “Just listen to this fellow, Miss Street. Lots of interrogators would get sidetracked and forget what the question was about by the time they’d digested an answer like that. Now, let’s see, didn’t my question have to do with when Garvin had last consulted your employer? I’m afraid you’ll have to help me from getting lost in a maze of words, Miss Street.”

  “As it happened,” Mason said, “I was the one who was trying to get in touch with Garvin. I was trying to get in touch with him Monday afternoon and I am still trying to get in touch with him.”

  Tragg thought that over, then said, “You were trying to get in touch with him Monday afternoon?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’re still trying to get in touch with him?”

  “Right.”

  “Now,” Tragg said, “would you go further and say that you had not seen Garvin between the time you first tried to get in touch with him Monday and the present time when you are still trying to get in touch with him?”

  Mason grinned.

  Tragg shook his head. “A man has to watch you all the time, Mason. It’s not what you say, but what you don’t say. Now for your information, I know that Homer Garvin saw George Casselman last night.”

  “That he saw George Casselman last night?” Mason exclaimed.

  Tragg nodded. “Now then, let me ask you a personal question.”

  “What?”

  “Did you go to Casselman’s apartments last night, then wait out by the back stairs, pick up a young woman and take her away in your car?

  “A witness thinks you did. The light wasn’t too good, but this witness saw you well enough to recognize you.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Now then, could it be possible that some young woman pushed a gun up against Casselman’s breadbasket, pulled the trigger, then rang you on the telephone and said, ‘Oh, Mr. Mason, come at once. Something terrible has happened!’? Could it further be possible that you asked her what had happened, and she told you that she and Casselman had had a difference of opinion, that in order to frighten him she had pulled out a gun, that Casselman grabbed her and struggled for the gun, and in the struggle, much to her surprise, she heard the roar of an explosion and then Casselman fell back on the floor?

  “And under those circumstances, could it have been possible that you suggested to her that it would be highly inadvisable to go out the front door, but that you would come to the service entrance and escort her out the back door and down to your automobile, and that in the meantime she was to say nothing about what had happened?”

  Mason gave the matter thoughtful consideration. “You mean that I would advise her to say nothing to the police about what had happened?”

  “I’m considering that as a possibility.”

  “Not to report the body?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Wouldn’t that be rather unprofessional on my part?”

  “It depends on how you look at it,” Tragg said. “A legal code of ethics can be interpreted in many different ways. It’s a well-known fact that your interpretation of a code of ethics is all in favor of your client. You wouldn’t want your client to do anything that would incriminate her, no matter what the law on the subject might be.”

  Mason deliberated for a moment. “I take it you mean that my obligation not to betray a client would control all of the other rules of ethics?”

  “Something like that.”

  “It’s an interesting possibility,” Mason admitted.

  “You haven’t answered the question.”

  “Then I’ll answer it now. The answer is no.”

  “You wouldn’t kid me?”

  “No.”

  “When did you first learn Casselman was dead?”

  “Miss Street heard it on the radio this morning.”

  “And told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Early.”

  “How early?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “And you went right out to start a cover-up?”

  “I went right out to try to get in touch with a client.”

  “Garvin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to tell him Casselman was dead. I thought it might change some of his plans.”

  “See Garvin?”

  “No.”

  “Talk with him?”

  “No.”

  “Well thanks, Mason. I wanted to ask. I was instructed to interview you.”

  “I’m always glad to co-operate with the police,” Mason said.

  Tragg drew his extended forefinger across his throat. “If everyone co-operated like you do, Mason, the D.A. wouldn’t have a thing to worry about.”

  “No?”

  “No, we’d never catch anyone, so he wouldn’t have to try any cases.… Well, I thought I’d give you an opportunity to come clean.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You have had an opportunity to come clean, you know. By the same sign, if you’ve tried to gum up the works, you’ve done it after knowing what we’re looking for. That’s bad.

  “Now we’re looking for Garvin. If you get in touch with him, tell him to call Homicide and ask for me. Tell him it’s rather important.”

  Tragg got up from his chair, stretched, yawned, said, “Thanks a lot for all the help you’ve given me, Mason. Not conscious help of course, but unconscious help. I can assure you it’s been considerable.

  “By the way, just checking through the records, we note that Homer Garvin had himself appointed a deputy sheriff so he could carry a gun—a special deputy.… You know the pitch—personal protection. Large sums of money late at night, and all that sort of thing. He’s quite an operator, I understand. Carries quite a bit of cash with him.… You wouldn’t happen to know where Garvin’s gun is now, would you?”

  “What gun?”

  “The one Mr. Garvin usually carries with him.”

  “Wouldn’t it be in Mr. Garvin’s possession?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sure I don’t know,” Tragg said. “But,” he announced purposefully, “we intend to find out and you can gamble on that, Mr. Mason. Well, good morning. I won’t detain you any longer. I know that you’re busy. And after all, now that I’ve been here you’ll probably have some telephoning to do.”

  “You haven’t tapped the line, have you?” Mason asked.

  “No, no, no,” Tragg said. “We wouldn’t go that far. Well, I’ll be seeing you, Counselor. Bye now.”

  Tragg left the office.

  Mason said to Della Street, “Get Marie Barlow on the phone, Della.”

  “Marie Barlow … ? Oh, Marie Arden. I can’t get used to her married name.”

  Della Street called the switchboard and a moment later said, “Here’s Marie on the phone.”

  “Marie,” Mason said, “this may be rather important. A lot of things have happened since I saw you last. Garvin may call you. If he does, I want you to tell him to get in touch with me at once, and tell him that he had better be a little careful how he does it because police are looking for him.”

  “Good heavens! The police!”

  “That’s right.”