“How much have you found out about Hocksley?” Mason asked.

  “Not much. Hocksley’s a big, powerful man who walks with a decided limp. He’s very eccentric, and apparently interested primarily in being left absolutely alone.”

  “That makes two of them,” Mason said.

  “What?”

  “Tenants in the same building who didn’t want to have anything to do with neighbors.”

  “I gather it was a different situation with Hocksley, from what it was with Karr. Karr is a neurotic old crab. Hocksley was engaged in doing something he wanted kept an absolute secret. Hocksley worked at night, and slept during the daytime. The people who sold him the safe, the agent who rented him the house, the company that sold him his automobile all remember him more or less vaguely. But by putting the descriptions together, we have a pretty good picture of the man, about forty-eight or fifty with very broad shoulders and flaming red hair. His limp was quite noticeable—not the sort of limp you’d get from a stiffness in a leg, but the kind where one leg is shorter than the other.”

  Mason asked, “Any connection between Hocksley or his housekeeper and anyone over in the Gentrie house?”

  “No. The connection there is between Opal Sunley and Arthur Gentrie, Jr. That’s also something.”

  “What?”

  “Arthur Gentrie, the boy’s father, had been painting that night down in the cellar. I believe you’re the one who first noticed that someone who evidently didn’t know about that fresh paint had been groping for the garage door and had smeared paint on his fingertips. After you pointed this out to Tragg, he had the police look the automobiles over pretty carefully to see if they couldn’t find some trace of paint on the handles of the doors or on the steering wheels. They couldn’t find a thing, but over in Hocksley’s flat they found two fingerprints outlined in paint of exactly the same color as that used on the garage door.”

  “Where were those paint fingerprints?” Mason asked.

  Drake said, “On the desk telephone, and the desk telephone was on Hocksley’s desk, and Hocksley’s desk was in the room where the safe was located, and the telephone was right near the door of that room. Moreover, there’s a side door on the garage that Hocksley used to get in and out. That door opens into a little yard between the flat and the Gentrie house. It’s right near a side door leading to the Hocksley flat.”

  “Were the fingerprints clear enough so the police could do anything with them?”

  “Very clear. I think Tragg’s getting ready to do something there. He’s just waiting for the right time to strike.”

  “Meaning he . . .” Mason broke off as the door from the outer office opened, and the girl who had charge of the switchboard timidly entered.

  “I didn’t know whether to disturb you, Mr. Mason,” she said. “I told this woman you were in conference on an important matter, but she says that she wants to see you about the matter you’re talking over.”

  “Who is she?” Mason asked.

  “Her name is Gentrie, and there’s a young man with her, her son.”

  Mason glanced at Drake.

  Drake, consulting his notebook again, quoted: “He was in bed and asleep when the shot was fired. He came in, however, just about fifteen or twenty minutes before the shooting. He’d been out with Opal Sunley, the stenographer who handled Hocksley’s work.”

  “You’re certain?” Mason asked.

  “Uh huh.”

  “I understood he was refusing to divulge the name of the woman . . .”

  “Oh, sure,” Drake interrupted. “Some of that kid gallantry stuff, but Opal Sunley didn’t make any secret of it. She told the police right at the start. Young Gentrie didn’t rate the use of the family automobile, not for her, anyway. They were using streetcars. He took her to a movie, bought her a chocolate sundae afterwards, did a little mild necking in the park, and took her home about eleven-thirty. They said good night on the stairs for half an hour, and young Gentrie left about midnight. Evidently, he went right home and upstairs to bed.”

  “He must have moved pretty fast if he left her home at midnight and was in bed at quarter past,” Mason said. “How far from Hocksley’s place does she live?”

  “About twelve blocks. You can walk it in fifteen minutes if you’re young—and have just spent half an hour saying good night to your best girl.”

  Mason said to the girl in the doorway, “Show them in. I have an idea something is weighing on that young man’s mind.”

  Chapter 6

  Mrs. Gentrie entered Mason’s private office with Junior trailing along behind her, very much as though he were being led.

  Mrs. Gentrie’s attitude was one of parental indignation.

  “Mr. Mason,” she said, “you’ll have to help us. It’s about Junior.”

  Mason looked at the young man’s sullen features, and said, “Don’t tell me anything in confidence, Mrs. Gentrie, because, in a way, I’m not a free agent. It’s quite possible I won’t be able to help you.”

  “Well, I’ve got to talk with someone, and I don’t know anyone else to whom I can turn. This thing has been preying on my mind ever since I heard what Junior said to the police. I thought at first my duty was to back up my son in a chivalrous attempt to protect some young woman’s good name. Then, when I began to think of how serious it might be because—well, because perhaps that murder is linked with—well, I can’t keep quiet any longer.”

  “What’s eating you?” Junior demanded. “What’s got into you, Ma?”

  She kept looking anxiously at the lawyer. “Don’t you think I’m doing the right thing, Mr. Mason?”

  “Go ahead,” Mason said. “I’ve warned you.”

  Young Gentrie spoke up to say, “You folks go ahead and talk about me all you please, but nothing anyone can do is going to change my position, or make me change my story. I want that definitely and finally understood.”

  Mrs. Gentrie said, “I wish you’d try to impress on my son the importance of telling the truth, Mr. Mason.”

  “Have you,” Mason asked the young man, “been taking liberties with the truth, Junior? Perhaps just fudging the least little bit?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Gentrie said sullenly.

  “Arthur, I know that you have. I tell you I heard that shot and got up. I looked in your room. You weren’t in your bed. You hadn’t been in your room.”

  “Then you looked in before midnight. I got into my room at midnight, or just ten or fifteen minutes after.”

  “I looked at the clock. It was thirty-five minutes past twelve.”

  “You read it wrong. It was thirty-five minutes past eleven, and you thought it was thirty-five minutes past twelve. You didn’t have your glasses on, did you?”

  Mrs. Gentrie said, “I didn’t have my glasses on, but I didn’t make a mistake in the time. I’m certain I didn’t. And everybody else says that was when the shot was fired.”

  “What do you mean, everybody else?”

  “Well, the other people in the house, all of them.”

  Junior said, “Well, if you ask me, that fellow Steele is a phoney. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw a loaded truck. Look at the way he’s always hanging around Rebecca, helping her with her crossword puzzles, stringing her along. What’s he really want, anyway? He isn’t supposed to be one of the family. He’s supposed to have a room rented, and that’s all. You know as well as I do Aunt Rebecca’s full of prunes, and she keeps her tongue rattling against the roof of her mouth all the time. It’s impossible to have any secrets around her. She spills everything she knows.”

  “Junior, that’s not a nice way to talk about your Aunt Rebecca.”

  Junior went on hotly, “The other night I was looking for my dictionary and couldn’t find it, and came downstairs to see if she had it, and she was telling him a whole lot of stuff about me. She hasn’t any right to do that.”

  “You’re altogether too sensitive,” Mrs. Gentrie said. “She probably wasn’t talking about you at all.”

  “The heck she wasn’t. I heard the whole business, all about how you were worried about me having an infatuation for an older woman. She said . . .” Junior’s voice suddenly choked up. His face changed color. “She said altogether too darn much,” he finished.

  Mrs. Gentrie said, “Mr. Mason isn’t interested in our family squabbles, Junior. I came here because . . .”

  “I’m old enough now to get out and get a job. I don’t need to work in Dad’s store. I’m worth the wages I’m getting from him and more. I can support myself. I’m a man now.”

  Mrs. Gentrie turned to the lawyer, “I’m so worried,” she said. “Junior wasn’t in his room when that shot was fired. He keeps insisting that he was, but I know he wasn’t. Now, I understand that the police have found some fingerprints over in Hocksley’s flat, and I . . . well, I just wish Junior would tell the truth. That’s all. So I’d know what to expect.”

  “You mean the fingerprints which were outlined in the paint?” Mason asked.

  She nodded.

  Junior said, “I tell you I was in bed.”

  Mrs. Gentrie said, by way of explanation, “He’d been out with that stenographer, Opal Sunley, and he swears he took her home about midnight. I’m afraid, Mr. Mason, that he’s just doing it to—well, to give her sort of an alibi. Now you look here, Junior. You were just coming up the stairs to your room when that shot was fired, weren’t you? You took your flashlight and went sneaking down the stairs.”

  Junior said, “I thought you said I wasn’t in my room.”

  “You weren’t when I looked in there. The bed wasn’t even so much as wrinkled. But I’d heard someone sneaking along the corridor and on the stairs.”

  “I tell you, you didn’t have your glasses on, and you made a mistake in the time.”

  “But everybody says the shot was at twelve-thirty-five.”

  “Phooey,” Junior said. “Because you didn’t have your glasses on and . . .”

  “Then you think the shot was fired at eleven-thirty-five?” Mrs. Gentrie interrupted.

  “Why, sure, if I wasn’t in my room . . . no, wait a minute. . . . Yes, sure, that’s right. The shot was fired at eleven-thirty-five.”

  She said, “Arthur, you’re stalling for time. You’re trying to think whether you can give her a good alibi for eleven-thirty-five.”

  Arthur jumped to his feet. “Oh, let me alone,” he cried. “You make me tired! You’re always twisting everything I do so as to make it seem I’m trying to think of Opal. Can’t you leave her out of it ever?”

  Mrs. Gentrie glanced at Mason.

  Mason, without raising his voice, but putting the timbre of authority into his command, said, “Sit down, Arthur. I want to talk with you.”

  Arthur’s eyes met the lawyer’s. The young man hesitated for a moment, then seated himself somewhat tentatively on the edge of a chair.

  Mason said, “This is your first murder case. I’ve seen dozens of them. I don’t know very much about Miss Sunley. I’ve seen enough to know that you’re trying to protect her. Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to you that the most certain way to turn the limelight of pitiless, hostile publicity on her would be to twist the truth to try to keep her out of it.”

  Arthur Gentrie was interested despite himself. “I don’t get you,” he said.

  “You start suppressing or distorting facts to keep Opal Sunley out of that case,” Mason said, “and you’ll find that you’ve not only dragged her in, but have painted her with a crimson brush doing it.”

  “What’s that crimson-brush crack?” Arthur Gentrie asked, suddenly belligerent.

  Mason said, “Nice young men don’t tell lies in murder cases for nice young women. Do you get me?”

  “I’m not certain that I do.”

  “You make a good impression. The public would look on you as a nice young man. They would consider that the motivation which would cause you to lie to protect a woman would have to be more powerful and more compelling and, frankly, a little more sinister than the ordinary attraction which a nice young woman would or should have for you.

  “Now, I’m not going to argue with you. I’m not going to plead with you. I’ve told you facts. If you want to drag Opal Sunley into this thing, if you want to smear her reputation, if you want the newspapers to treat her as an older woman who was leading a young boy around by the nose . . .”

  Gentrie came up out of the chair as though he had been a fighter springing for an antagonist at the sound of the gong. “No, you don’t,” he shouted. “You can’t. . .”

  Mason held up his hand, palm outward. Aside from that, he made no move. “Hurts, doesn’t it?” he said. “It hurts because you know it’s the truth. Now, what have you to tell me?”

  “Nothing.”

  Mason said, “All right, go on home. Get out. I told you I wasn’t going to argue with you, and I wasn’t going to plead with you. I’ve told you. There’s truth in what I’ve told you, and truth is an acid which burns through every falsehood. The only thing it won’t touch is the pure gold of unvarnished truth. My words are going to eat into your consciousness until they’ve cut through the falsehood and got down to the real truth. Then you’re going to make a clean breast of things, either to your mother or to me. And after that you’re going to feel better. Now, I’m busy. I haven’t time to discuss things further. Good-by.”

  Gentrie, who had quite evidently braced himself when he was taken to the lawyer’s office for resistance against cajoleries and blandishments, appeared somewhat dazed by this abrupt dismissal. He said, “Why, I haven’t told any . . .”

  Mason said, “I’m sorry, Gentrie. I haven’t the time to waste. Don’t bother to say anything more until you’ve had a chance to think over what I’ve said. Good afternoon, Mrs. Gentrie. Let me know if you want to see me again.”

  Her eyes were troubled but grateful. “Thank you, Mr. Mason. Come, Arthur.”

  Arthur hung back at the door, then suddenly squared his shoulders, pushed up his chin, and marched out, jerking the door behind him. He would have slammed it violently had it not been for the automatic door check.

  Mason grinned across at Della Street. “Hot-headed youth on the rampage.”

  Della Street said, “I thought he was going to hit you when you said what you did about Opal Sunley.”

  “He was trying to make himself think so, too. At his age, it was what he considered the manly thing. Sometimes, Della, I don’t know but what hot-blooded, impetuous youth which has no time for weighing disadvantages against advantages, or consequences against acts, is a darn sight better than what we are pleased to call the mature outlook.”

  Her eyes smiled at him. “Obey that impulse, eh?”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  She was laughing now. “Well, it’s a good idea. More the philosophy one would expect to hear in a taxicab driving home than in a law office. How about that code message?”

  Mason said, “You would bring my nose back to the grindstone. Well, I’ll bite. What about the code?”

  “Given it any thought?”

  “Lots of thought, probably too much.”

  “Look, Chief, if it’s a cipher, couldn’t you read it? There are nine words in the message, and I’ve always understood any cipher can be solved if there’s a long enough message.”

  Mason said, “I guess that’s right, but I don’t think it’s an ordinary cipher in which letters are transposed.”

  “Why not?”

  “Let’s analyze this. There are nine words. Five of them begin with the letter c. The letter c is in every single word at least once.”

  “Wouldn’t that indicate it was either e or a?”

  “I’m afraid you’re missing the most significant thing about the whole message, Della.”

  She studied the typewritten copy of the message which Mason pushed across to her. After an interval of silence, she said, “I’m afraid I don’t get it.”

  “Look again. It’s relatively simple.”

  “You mean that there are no short words in it?”

  “That’s one thing,” Mason said. “The shortest word in there has five letters. The longest has six. That’s an interesting peculiarity of the message. Nine words. Three of them have five letters, and the other six have six letters. But there’s something that’s far more significant than that.”

  “What?”

  “Give up?” he asked banteringly.

  She nodded.

  “The last fourteen letters of the alphabet aren’t represented there at all,” he said. “The entire message is composed of words made up from the first twelve letters of the alphabet.”

  Della Street frowned, stared down at the typewriting, then said thoughtfully, “That’s right. What does it mean?”

  Mason said, “I’ll tell you one other significant thing. Every word contains either the letter a or the letter b.”

  “I don’t see that that’s as important as the frequency with which the letter c occurs.”

  “Perhaps not, unless we also consider positions. Every word has either a or b in it, but neither a nor b appears at the first of the word or at the ending. They’re always either the second or third letter from the end of the word.”

  There followed an interval while she checked his conclusions, then nodded again.

  Mason said, “That empty can is significant in a good many ways. I’m wondering whether Tragg has overlooked some of those things, or is just sitting tight and awaiting developments.”

  “What, for instance?” Della asked.

  “That can conveyed a message to some person,” Mason said. “That means two persons were concerned in the crime. That, in turn, means that the someone who put the can there must have had easy access to the basement. It also means that the person for whom the message was intended must have had easy access to the basement. Yet it also means that those two persons didn’t have access to each other.”