He laughed grimly.

  “Now listen,” he said, “you can either take this from me or you can take it from the police. You girls had an appointment with Frank Patton tonight. Marjorie called up and left her telephone number. It was this number. The police will trace the number and come out here. Also, Margy telephoned a message Patton got just before he arrived at the Holliday Apartments, telling him to tell Thelma that she would be about twenty minutes late.

  “Both of you girls have won contests that Frank Patton put on; both of you have been chosen as having the most beautiful legs in a small town. One of you, at any rate, has been referred to in the newspapers as having lucky legs—probably both of you. It’s a line of publicity that Patton hands out to the local press.

  “Now, there was a girl in the bathroom at Frank Patton’s apartment who was having hysterics about her legs. She kept using the words ‘lucky legs.’

  “I saw Marjorie Clune leaving Frank Patton’s apartment house. She says she didn’t see him. That’s what she says. Perhaps she did and perhaps she didn’t. The police are going to be very interested in finding out. Their methods of finding out are going to be quite direct and not very pleasant.

  “I’m the only friend you kids have got in the whole world so far as this business is concerned. I’m trying to help you. I’ve had the experience and I have the knowledge. You won’t accept my help. You sit there and arch your eyebrows at each other and exclaim, ‘What? Us go to see Frank Patton? Ha, ha, ha! Don’t be silly.’

  “Then I come up to the apartment and find both of you girls in a lather of cleanliness. You’ve got bathtub hysteria. You can’t get into the bathtub quick enough. You’ve drawn two baths, and one of you has hardly jumped out of the bathtub before the other jumps in.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” demanded Marjorie Clune aggressively. “I guess we can take baths if we want them.”

  “Oh, certainly,” Mason remarked. “Except that the police will see the evidences of those baths this early in the evening and wonder if you didn’t have some reason for taking them.”

  “What reason could we possibly have for taking a bath that the police would be interested in?” Marjorie Clune demanded in that same haughty tone she had used previously.

  Perry Mason turned on her savagely.

  “All right,” he said, “if I’ve got to hand it to you, I’ll hand it to you. The police would say that you were washing off blood stains; washing blood off your stockings; washing off blood that had spattered on your legs when you stood over Frank Patton.”

  The girl recoiled as though he had struck her a physical blow.

  Perry Mason pulled his big boned frame from the chair, stood towering over the two young women.

  “My God!” he said, “have I got to pick on two women in order to get the truth from them? Why weren’t there any clothes in the bathroom? What did you do with the clothes you took off? And you, Marjorie Clune, what did you do with the pair of white shoes that you were wearing when you came from the apartment house?”

  Marjorie Clune stared at him with eyes that were wide and frightened. Her lips quivered.

  “Do … do the police know that?”

  “They’ll know plenty,” he told her. “Now, let’s come down to earth. I don’t know how much time we’ve got, but we might just as well face the issue frankly.”

  Thelma Bell spoke in even, expressionless tones.

  “Suppose we were there? What difference does it make? We certainly wouldn’t have killed him.”

  “No?” asked Perry Mason. “You wouldn’t have any motive, I suppose?”

  He turned back to Marjorie Clune.

  “How long had you been here before I arrived?” he asked.

  “Just a m-m-m-m-minute,” she quavered. “I didn’t take a c-c-c-cab. I came on the street car.”

  “You were in Frank Patton’s apartment, in the bathroom, having hysterics, talking about your lucky legs?”

  She shook her head mutely.

  “Look here,” said Thelma Bell quickly, “will the police know anything about Marjorie being there if the officer who saw her on the street doesn’t connect her in some way with the crime?”

  “Perhaps not,” Perry Mason said. “Why?”

  “Because,” said Thelma Bell, “I can wear that white coat with the fox fur collar. I can wear the little cap with the red button on it. I’ll swear they belong to me.”

  “That will just put you on the spot,” Perry Mason said. “The officer probably didn’t remember the face as much as he did the clothes. He’ll see the clothes and figure that you were the one he saw. He’ll identify you as being the one.”

  “That’s what I want him to do,” said Thelma Bell slowly.

  “Why?” asked Perry Mason.

  “Because,” she said, “I wasn’t anywhere near the place.”

  “Can you prove it?” Mason inquired.

  “Of course I can prove it,” she said savagely. “You don’t think I’d put myself in a spot like that unless I could prove it, do you? I want to give Marjorie a break, but I’m not foolish enough to get myself mixed up in a murder rap in order to do it. I’ll wear those clothes. The officers can identify me all they want to. The officer on the beat can swear I’m the one he saw coming from the apartment. Then I’ll prove to them that I wasn’t there.”

  “Where were you?” Perry Mason asked.

  “With a boy friend.”

  “Why did you go home so early?”

  “Because we had a fight.”

  “What about?”

  “Is it any of your business?”

  “Yes.”

  “About Frank Patton.”

  “What about Frank Patton.”

  “He didn’t like Frank Patton.”

  “Why? Was he jealous?”

  “No, he knew the way I felt toward Patton. He thought Patton was dragging me down hill.”

  “In what way?”

  “The contacts he was making for me.”

  “What, for instance?”

  “Modeling,” she said. “Artists, illustrators, and such stuff.”

  “Your boy friend didn’t like it?”

  “No.”

  “What’s his name?” Perry Mason wanted to know.

  “George Sanborne is his name.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “In the Gilroy Hotel—room 925.”

  “Listen,” said Perry Mason, “you wouldn’t try to kid me?”

  “Try to kid my lawyer? Don’t be silly.”

  “I’m not your lawyer,” he said. “I’m Marjorie Clune’s lawyer. But I want to give you a fair break.”

  She waved a hand toward the telephone.

  “There’s the telephone,” she said. “Go ring up George Sanborne. The number is Prospect 83945.”

  Perry Mason strode to the telephone, jerked the receiver from the hook.

  “Get me Prospect 83945,” he said when the exchange operator in the lobby asked for his number. And, as he spoke, he was aware of swift feminine whispers behind him.

  Perry Mason did not turn. He held the receiver against his ear, stood with his feet planted far apart and his chin thrust forward. There was the buzzing of the line, the click of a connection, and a feminine voice said, “Gilroy Hotel.”

  “Give me Mr. Sanborne in 925,” said Perry Mason.

  A moment later a masculine voice said, “Hello.”

  “Thelma Bell,” said Perry Mason, “was hurt in an automobile accident about an hour ago. She’s at the Emergency Hospital, and we find your name on a card in her purse. Do you know her?”

  “What’s that again?” asked the masculine voice.

  Perry Mason repeated his statement.

  “Say, what sort of a fake is this?” the masculine voice answered. “What do you think I am?”

  “We thought here at the hospital that perhaps you were a friend who’d be interested,” Mason said.

  “Hospital hell!” said the man’s voice. “I was out with Thelma Bell all the evening. I left her not more than half an hour ago. She wasn’t hurt in no automobile accident then.”

  “Thank you,” said Perry Mason, and hung up.

  He turned to face Marjorie Clune.

  “Look here, Marjorie,” he said, “we’re not going to do any talking now. You may think Thelma Bell is the closest friend you’ve got in the world, but there’s only one person who’s going to hear your real story—that’s your lawyer. Do you understand that?”

  She nodded her head.

  “If you say so,” she said.

  “I say so.”

  He turned to Thelma.

  “You’re a loyal friend,” he said, “but you won’t misunderstand me. Anything Marjorie Clune tells you can be dragged out of you in front of a grand jury or in a court room. Anything she tells me is a privileged communication, and no power on earth can unseal my lips.”

  “I understand,” said Thelma Bell, standing very erect and very white-faced.

  “Now, you’re willing to help Marjorie out on this thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get those things on,” he said. “Let’s see how you look.”

  She went to the closet and took down the coat. She put it on, fitted the hat into place.

  “Good enough,” he said. “Got any white shoes?”

  “No,” she said.

  “He probably won’t remember the shoes anyway,” Perry Mason said. “What I want you to do is to get out of the apartment and walk around on the other side of the street. Some time tonight you’ll see a police car drive up here. You can probably tell it by the license. If you can’t, you can tell it by the kind of a car it is. It’ll either be a car from the homicide squad, and, in that event, three or four broad-shouldered men who look like cops in plain clothes will get out of it; or else it’ll be a radio car. In that event, it’ll be a light roadster or coupé, and there’ll be two men in it. One of them will get out and the other one will stay in the car to keep track of the radio calls.”

  “I think I can spot it all right,” she said. “What am I supposed to do then?”

  “As soon as you see the men head for this apartment building,” Perry Mason said, “you’ll come walking across the street as though you had just returned from an errand somewhere. You can say you’ve been to the drug store for some aspirin, or any other kind of a stall that you want to make. Walk right into the arms of the police. They’ll start asking you questions. Don’t tell them that you’ve got an alibi too soon. Pretend that you’re all confused. Answer the questions in a way that’ll arouse their suspicions. Get angry with them and tell them that you don’t have to tell anybody where you were and what you were doing.

  “If the officer on the beat saw anything particularly suspicious about the way Margy acted, he’ll have turned in her description. The probabilities are it’ll be a description not so much of the girl as of the clothes. She saw his uniform and that threw her into a panic. She stopped and turned her back to him, looking in the display windows. It probably registered with him at the time, but he was going on another job with this woman who had pulled him in to see what was happening in the apartment, and he didn’t pay too much attention to her. But after he got in Patton’s apartment and found those telephone messages in there, with Margy’s name and Thelma Bell’s name, he’s going to start thinking back, trying to see if he remembers seeing any woman who acted as though she’d been mixed up in a murder. He’s pretty likely to remember the coat and the hat.

  “Now, that’s going to put you right square on the spot. It isn’t going to be pleasant. It’s going to mean notoriety, and it’s going to mean a lot of things. The question is, Can you do it?”

  “I can,” she said, “and I will.”

  Perry Mason turned to Marjorie.

  “Go through this apartment,” he said. “Pick out anything in here that belongs to you. Put it in a suitcase. Beat it out of here just as quick as you can. Go to a hotel somewhere. Register under your own name, but do it in a way that won’t make you too easy to find—what’s your middle name?”

  “Frances,” she said.

  “All right,” he said, “register as M. Frances Clune, also remember not to give your address as Cloverdale. You’re here in the city now. Figure that you’re a resident of the city, and put that as your address. Here’s one of my business cards. The telephone number is on there, Broadway 39251. Call up my office, ask for Miss Street—she’s my secretary—she’ll know who you are. Don’t mention any names over the telephone, simply say that you talked with me earlier in the day, and that I asked you to leave your address. Tell her the hotel that you’re registered at. Then lock yourself in your room. Don’t go out at all; don’t get away from the telephone. Be where I can reach you at any hour of the day or night. Have your meals sent into your room. Don’t try to communicate with me unless something happens. If the police should find you, put on your best expression of baby-faced innocence and don’t answer a single question, except as to whether you’ve got an attorney. Tell them that I’m your attorney. Demand that you be allowed to communicate with me.”

  She nodded slowly, her eyes fastened steadily upon him.

  “You understand all that?”

  “I think so.”

  “Get started then,” said Perry Mason. “And remember that no matter what happens, you aren’t to make any statement to any one until you have talked with me. You aren’t even to answer questions. You won’t even tell them who you are or where you came from. The minute any one puts you under arrest, you demand to be placed in communication with your attorney. Show them the card. Demand that you be allowed to telephone me. If they let you telephone me, I’ll talk with you over the telephone and tell you not to say anything. If they don’t let you telephone me, get sulky. Tell them that if they won’t do what you want them to do, you won’t do what they want you to do; that if they won’t let you telephone me, you won’t answer the questions they ask. And every time they ask you a question and you refuse to answer, use that same formula, that you won’t answer questions unless they let you call me. You understand?”

  “I understand,” she said.

  Perry Mason strode to the door. As he passed Thelma Bell, he patted her on the shoulder.

  “Good kid,” he said.

  He stepped out into the corridor and heard the door close behind him and the bolt click into position.

  Chapter 7

  J. R. Bradbury was seated in the lobby of the Hotel Mapleton when Perry Mason pushed his way through the door.

  Bradbury looked cool, capable, and efficient, in a suit of gray tweeds which matched the gray of his eyes. He wore a gray shirt, a gray tie flecked with red, gray woolen socks and black and white sport shoes. He was puffing meditatively at a cigar, when his quick eyes lit on Perry Mason’s figure.

  Bradbury got to his feet and pushed his way toward Mason.

  “Tell me about it,” he said quickly and eagerly. “How did it happen? Have you found Marjorie? What can you do for her? What—?”

  “Take it easy,” said Perry Mason. “Let’s go where we can talk. How about your room?”

  Bradbury nodded, turned toward the elevator, then paused suddenly.

  “There’s a swell little speakeasy around the corner,” he said. “We can get something to eat there, and we can get a drink. I need it, I haven’t got anything in my room.”

  “You lead the way,” Perry Mason said.

  Bradbury pushed his way through the swinging doors of the lobby, waited a moment for Mason on the sidewalk, caught the lawyer’s arm with his hand and said, “Are there any clews that don’t point toward Marjorie?”

  “Shut up,” Perry Mason said. “Let’s wait until we can get where we can talk, and if we can’t get privacy in this speakeasy, we aren’t going to talk there.”

  “Don’t worry,” Bradbury said, “we can get a quiet booth. It’s very exclusive. I got a card from the bell captain of the hotel.”

  He rounded the corner, paused before a door, and pushed a button. A panel slid back, a pair of beady black eyes surveyed Bradbury, then the face vanished. There was a sound of a bolt clicking back, and the door opened.

  “Right on upstairs,” said Bradbury.

  Perry Mason led the way up the carpeted stairs. A head waiter bowed a welcome.

  “We want a booth,” Mason said.

  “Just the two of you?” the waiter inquired.

  Mason nodded.

  The waiter hesitated for a moment. Then at the steady insistence of Perry Mason’s eyes, turned and led the way across a small dining-room in which tables had been crowded, across a small square of waxed dance floor, and down a carpeted corridor. He pulled back a curtain and Perry Mason went in and sat down at a table. Bradbury sat opposite him.

  “I want some good red wine and some hot French bread with lots of butter,” Perry Mason said, “and that’s all.”

  “I’ll have a rye highball,” Bradbury told the waiter. “In fact, you’d better bring a pint of rye, some ice, and a couple of bottles of ginger ale. Mr. Mason will probably have a highball when he finishes his wine.”

  “Not me,” said Perry Mason, “wine and French bread, that’s all.”

  “Make it one bottle of ginger ale then,” Bradbury told the waiter.

  As the curtain clicked back into place, Bradbury looked at Mason and raised his eyebrows.

  Perry Mason leaned forward with his elbows on the table, and spoke in a low, confidential, yet rapid voice.

  “I located Marjorie Clune. I went out there. She’s mixed up in it; I don’t know just how badly. There was a friend of hers there, a girl named Thelma Bell. Thelma Bell is in the clear; she’s got an alibi, she’s going to help Marjorie Clune out.

  “I didn’t get Marjorie’s complete story. I got the story she told me, but it wasn’t the complete story. I didn’t dare to get the complete story in front of Thelma Bell, and I didn’t dare to take Marjorie Clune into another room to talk with her, because I was afraid Thelma would think we were planning some sort of a double-cross. Thelma is going to shoot square with Marjorie. I can’t tell you all the details. It’s one of those cases where the less you know the better off you’ll be.”