“Going to be there for a while?” Drake asked.

  “Probably not,” Mason said. “With you on the job, I don’t see why we should lose a lot of sleep.”

  Back in his office, Mason paced the floor, puffing away at his cigarette, his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his vest, his chin lowered, eyes fixed moodily on the carpet. All of the playboy spontaneity which had characterized him throughout the evening with Della Street had vanished.

  Della Street sat in the big leather chair, her heels pulled up, her arms clasping her knees and holding her skirts tightly against her legs. Her eyes followed Perry Mason with solicitous concern.

  The telephone sounded startlingly loud against the midnight silence of the office building.

  “It must be Paul Drake,” Della Street said.

  “No, Paul Drake would come in here—unless something important has happened, and he doesn’t dare to leave his own telephone.”

  He scooped up the receiver and said, “Hello.”

  A feminine voice said, “Mr. Perry Mason, the attorney?”

  “Yes speaking. Who is this talking?”

  “Long distance. San Francisco is calling you.”

  Mason frowned at the telephone and said, “And how did you know that my office hours were from six P.M. until two A.M.?”

  The long distance operator ignored the sally. Her voice was crisp and businesslike. “I tried your apartment, Mr. Mason, and then called the office. Just a moment, please. . . . Go ahead. We’re ready with your call to Mr. Mason.”

  A woman’s voice, sounding thin and frightened, said, “Mr. Mason, this is Miss Whittaker. Do you remember me, Marcia Whittaker?”

  “Certainly,” Mason said. “Where are you now?”

  “San Francisco.”

  “How did you get there? You were here around ten o’clock, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. I came up on a late plane. I’m calling from the airport now.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “what is it?”

  Her voice showed traces of hysteria. “I can’t do it,” she sobbed. “I can’t run away from it. I thought I could, but I can’t.”

  “Run away from what?” Mason asked.

  “From what happened.”

  Her voice became almost a whisper. “I can’t tell you—over the phone,” she said.

  Mason said, “Now listen carefully, Marcia, watch your answers. Does anyone know you’re in San Francisco?”

  “No.”

  “Have you quarreled with your boy friend?”

  “No. . . not a quarrel. . . . I can’t. . .”

  “Is he angry?”

  “No, no! Can’t you understand? He isn’t. . .”

  “And he won’t be angry?” Mason interrupted. “Never be angry again?”

  “That’s—that’s right.”

  “We’re representing Alden Leeds, you know,” Mason said.

  “Yes, I know. That’s why I’m calling you. I have. . . have something for you. . . and you can help me.”

  “But only if it helps Leeds.”

  “I understand.”

  “This thing you have—is it important?”

  “Very.”

  Mason thought rapidly. “You went to his apartment around ten-thirty tonight?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  Mason said, “Never mind that. Can you get a plane back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there any way I can get a key to your apartment?”

  “Yes, I keep my mailbox unlocked and there’s an extra key in the bottom of the mailbox.”

  Mason said, “Get back here just as quickly as you can. Is there a telephone in your flat?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s the number?”

  “Graymore six-nine-four-seven.”

  “All right,” Mason said. “Don’t tell anyone about this conversation with me, do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Be seeing you,” Mason said, and hung up.

  He turned to Della Street. “You probably got most of it,” he said, “from what I said at this end. Marcia Whittaker. It’s an even money bet that John Milicant has either committed suicide or been murdered. I’m inclined right now to the suicide angle.”

  Della Street, with calm competence, took a notebook from her purse. “I took down the schedule as Paul Drake read it off,” she said. “Do you want to know the people who came in during the evening?”

  “No,” Mason said, “they’re not important. Serle had dinner with him. A man who answers the description of Alden Leeds was in at ten-five. The girl was there at ten-twenty-one. The man left just before the girl came. That’s the picture. Whatever happened, happened late.

  “These people stayed too long to have been standing in front of the door, knocking and waiting for an answer. It’s hardly likely that both Leeds and Marcia would have stumbled on a dead body and said nothing about it. . . . Come on, Della, we’re going to see Paul Drake.”

  They trooped back to Drake’s office. Drake was just struggling into his overcoat.

  “You again!” he said. “Why don’t you go on out and make whoopee?—In other words, why don’t you get the hell out of here and let working men get a decent night’s sleep?”

  Mason said, “Listen, Paul. You’re not going home.”

  “That’s what you think,” Drake said. “It’s after one.”

  Mason shook his head. “You’re going right back and sit at that desk,” he said. “You’re going to keep on the telephone, in direct communication with your men who are watching Conway’s apartment. If there’s anything unusual, any sign of activity, you’re to telephone me at Graymore six-nine-four-seven. You’re to memorize that number and not leave it hanging around on any slips of paper, and you’re to forget this whole business tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”

  Drake frowned. “What’s the matter, Perry?” he asked.

  Mason said, “Those are instructions, Paul. That’s all you need to know. You won’t want to know any more.”

  “Do I wait here all night?”

  “All night or until we telephone you.”

  Drake slipped out of his overcoat, said to the man behind the arch-shaped window, “Go down to the all-night drugstore and get me four bits’ worth of chewing gum.”

  Mason nodded to Della Street. “Come on, Della. We go within about three blocks of the place and walk the rest of the way.”

  Twenty minutes later, Mason’s groping fingers encountered a key in the bottom of the mailbox marked “Marcia Whittaker.” He latchkeyed the front door, switched on the stair lights, and noiselessly climbed the carpeted treads.

  “Just what I was afraid of,” Mason growled as he switched on lights in the flat and entered the bedroom.

  Everywhere were evidences of hurried flight. The imprints of a suitcase showed on the white counterpane of the bed. Clothes had been laid out and discarded. Drawers had been opened and ransacked.

  Mason glanced at Della Street. “How about it, Della,” he asked, “can you put this place in order?”

  “So the police won’t know she packed to skip out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t that suppressing evidence, Chief?”

  He said, “You’re acting under my instructions. If anything goes wrong. I take the rap.”

  “Nothing doing,” she said, slipping out of her coat. “We’re in it together. Go out in the other room and sit down. Let me have a free hand here.”

  “Okay,” Mason said. “Remember to keep your gloves on.”

  Thirty minutes later she joined him in the outer room. They sat together by the little fireplace talking in low tones and waiting for the phone to ring. Perry Mason’s hand unconsciously sought Della Street’s, gently imprisoned the fingers. “Gosh, Della,” he said, “I’m getting sentimental. It almost seems as though this place had been made for us.”

  She moved her other hand to gently stroke the back of his well-shaped, strong fingers. “Nix on it, Chief,” she said softly. “You could no more live a domestic life than you could fly. You’re a free-lance, happy-go-lucky, carefree, two-fisted fighter. You might like a home for about two weeks, and then it would bore you stiff. At the end of four months, you’d feel it was a prison.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “this is part of the first two weeks.”

  It seemed but a few minutes before they heard the click of a key in the lock. Mason glanced at his wrist watch. It was four-forty-five. Della Street, with a quick intake of breath, said, “I don’t want her to see me until I powder my nose,” and dashed for the bathroom.

  The door slowly swung back. Marcia Whittaker, looking as though she’d been seeing a steady procession of ghosts, came wearily into the room, lugging a Gladstone bag.

  She dropped the bag to the floor, came across the room, and held his arms with quivering fingers. “It’s so darn square of you!” she said.

  Mason patted her shoulder. “Nix,” he said. “Get that bag unpacked.”

  Della Street came out of the bathroom, smiling a cordial welcome.

  “My secretary,” Mason said. “Della Street, Marcia Whittaker. Give her a hand, Della, if you will please.”

  Mason returned to sit by the fireplace smoking in thoughtful silence until Marcia and Della returned.

  “All right,” Mason said, “let’s have it. I want exact, detailed information. You can’t afford to indulge your emotions. Get right down to bedrock. You’ve cried before. You can cry afterward. Right now, you can’t cry.”

  She said, “I can take it now, Mr. Mason. It was a hell of a wallop. I should have expected it. Life’s done that to me ever since I was a kid.”

  “Forget that,” Mason said. “I want facts—all the facts—and I want them fast.”

  She said, “I didn’t give you a fair break the first time I saw you. I knew Louie Conway and John Milicant were the same. John’s sister is a hypocrite. She’s knocked around plenty in her time, but now she’s developed complexes and wants the family to amount to something. I’m a little tart, and I mustn’t be in the family—Oh, dear no!”

  “Skip all that,” Mason said. “Let’s get down to brass tacks. What happened to Louie? Tell me. . .”

  She stopped him with a gesture. “You have to know about this other,” she said. “Let me tell it first—then I’ll tell. . . tell the other.”

  “Go on,” Mason said.

  “Louie—John, is—was a good scout. He was too weak. I’m no tin angel myself. John liked good clothes, good cars. He hadn’t the training for a job. He couldn’t have held one down anyway. He went in for promoting. He liked horses, cards, dice, and gambling. . . . John wasn’t young any more. Things were getting harder for him.

  “I could understand him. His sister was figuring on marrying into a rich family. She wanted to keep the family background on the up and up, and make a nice impression on Alden Leeds. She had some dough, some settlement she got from a former husband. I don’t know how much. She told John he’d have to become respectable—no ponies, gambling, or promoting—until she’d got her hooks into Alden Leeds.

  “John wasn’t the kind who could do that. His sister put him on an allowance. He stayed straight for a week or two, and then went back to the old life, keeping his sister in the dark. He took the name of Louie Conway and started the Conway Appliance Company. That was where I met him. I was clerking at a cigar counter. John came in and shook me a couple of games of twenty-six. He was lucky with dice all right, and the game was on the square. I’ve knocked around a bit myself, and I saw to that. A couple of customers came in and pretty quick they were shooting craps.

  “John was rolling the dice. I was selling cigars. I saw the dice were crooked, but I didn’t say anything. If the suckers wanted to get trimmed, that was up to them. The way I figure it, a sucker is a sucker. If John hadn’t taken them, someone else would.

  “Well, John knew that I’d spotted the dice. He came back later, and said, ‘Sister, you’ve got a nice mouth.” I said, ‘Most men talk about my eyes.“He said, ‘I’m talking about your mouth. It stays closed at the right time. Here’s fifty bucks. Buy yourself some glad rags.’

  “I took a shine to him. I knew him as Louie Conway. We played around for a while. I was tired of living in little bedrooms and cheap furnished apartments with the furniture all battered up, and the thin mattresses having a ridge down the center.

  “Louie got serious—and told his sister. She blew up, said everything was fixed with Alden Leeds and that it would ruin the play to have John bring a cigar-counter girl into the family.

  “John wouldn’t give me up. He pretended to his sister that he had. She was suspicious. John started scheming, and then, one day, he came to me and said he’d used the Conway connection to get a stake out of Alden Leeds, and Leeds would never know that Conway and John Milicant were one and the same person. He told me I’d have to help him put it across, that then we’d get married, and he’d tell his sister to go jump in the lake.”

  “Did you know what the shakedown was?”

  “No, not then. I still don’t know.”

  “Go on,” Mason told her.

  “I didn’t want to do it. I’d never had a police record. I knew him well enough to know he was keeping himself in the background and pushing me out in front.”

  “You can skip that,” Mason said. “Hell, we don’t need a blueprint. You did it. Then what?”

  “Of course, I did it!” she blazed. “And why not? And don’t blame Louie too much either. Leeds is lousy with the dough. He can’t take it with him. It’s all right to talk about respectability if you’ve been educated so you can get by and be respectable, but when you have nothing back of you, you have to take things as they come.

  “That’s the way John found life, and that’s the way I found it. I suppose some women think I’m cheap and flashy, but. . . well, John thought I was swell, and I thought he was swell. . . . Anyhow, I was to go to his apartment at ten-thirty, and in the morning we were to get married, and be on our way. And . . . and I went up there about ten-twenty. I had a key. I walked on in, calling to John. I didn’t get any answer. I looked around the place. Things had been turned topsy-turvy. I was frightened and I ran into the bathroom. John was in there on the floor with the handle of a carving knife st-st-sticking . . . sticking. . .” She broke into tears, shook her head, and dropped down into a chair. “I c-c-can’t do it,” she said. “I c-c-can’t.”

  “Take it easy, Marcia,” Mason told her. “I know how you feel, but you’re loaded with dynamite. If you found John had been murdered and didn’t notify the police, you’re in a fix, and, now that you’ve told us, if we don’t notify the police, we’re in a fix. You’re not our client. Alden Leeds is our client. This isn’t a privileged communication. We’re going off the deep end for you.”

  Marcia Whittaker took a quivering breath, and said, “I go nuts every time I think of it. . . . I knew what they were searching for. They didn’t find it.”

  “How do you know they didn’t find it?” Mason asked.

  “Because I have it,” she said.

  Mason’s eyes narrowed.

  “Louie wasn’t a fool,” she said. “He knew that his apartment might be searched. He had to have this stuff where he could get at it at any time. He left it with me.”

  “What?”

  “Papers.”

  “What kind of papers? What would they buy?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I know that it got Louie twenty grand, and he said it was going to get him another twenty grand, maybe another eighty grand, before he’d let go of them.”

  Mason, frowning thoughtfully, said, “Where did John get these papers?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Mason said, “All right, Marcia. Where is the stuff?”

  “I have it.”

  “Get it.”

  “If I do, what do I get?”

  Mason said, “Are you holding an auction?”

  She said, “Don’t think I’m going to take the rap on this. Alden Leeds has dough. He can see me through. He’s the only one who can.”

  “What’s the proposition?” Mason asked.

  “I give Alden Leeds the papers if he agrees to stand by me.”

  Mason thought for a moment, then said, “Suppose it should appear that Alden Leeds was in that apartment just before you were?”

  She thought that over silently, then shook her head, and said, “No.”

  “I think he was,” Mason said. “That puts you both on a spot. The natural way for you to get out is to try to pin the murder on him. The natural way for him to get out is to try to pin it on you.”

  “If he does that,” she threatened, “I’Il . . . I’ll. . .”

  “What?” Mason asked.

  “I’m not exactly a fool,” she said, after a moment.

  “That trip to San Francisco sounds like it,” Mason said.

  “I came back, didn’t I?”

  Mason said, “Don’t forget, Marcia, we’re acting as Leeds’ lawyers. We’re cold-blooded about it.”

  “I know,” she told him, “but I can trust you.”

  “What are these papers?” Mason asked.

  “Mostly photographs,” she said.

  “Photographs of what?” Mason asked.

  “Of old saloons, of a dance hall in Dawson City, of hotel registers, and a photostatic copy of a marriage license.”

  “Who got married?” Mason asked.

  “Emily Milicant and a Bill Hogarty.”

  “Who signed the hotel registers?”

  “Bill Hogarty.”

  Glancing across at Della Street, Mason said, “They may not be worth much.”

  “Louie got twenty grand as a starter, and there was more to follow.”

  “All right,” Mason said. “Give me the papers.”

  She got up from the chair, and walked into the bedroom. They heard the door close, and a lock click. Della Street exchanged glances with Perry Mason.

  Mason said, “There’s something Alden Leeds wanted to cover up. The documents were only the blackmailer’s card of introduction.”

  “How do you figure that, Chief?”

  “Because Leeds paid twenty thousand, and didn’t get possession of the documents.”

  “Where does that put us, Chief?” she asked.