“You’re damn right it’s dangerous. Keep your hands in your pockets. I want to see what’s up in that room.”

  “I don’t think Ferrell is going to like this – if he ever finds out about it.”

  Mason said, “No one likes it – and the police won’t like it. Keep your hands …”

  Addison stumbled, lurched forward, grabbed at the banister to save himself, then fell forward to brace himself on the stair threads.

  “That does it,” Mason said.

  “Does what?”

  “Fingerprints. I told you to keep your hands in your pockets.”

  “Bosh! Don’t be melodramatic, Mason. Who’s going to take my fingerprints?”

  “The police,” Mason said, leading the way up the stairs.

  The lawyer paused in the upper corridor, said, “The room is toward the back of the house. Let’s see, there are four doors to the left-hand side. I think we’ll try the third door.”

  The beam of Mason’s flashlight led the way down the corridor. He paused in front of the third door, hesitated a moment, then took a handkerchief from his pocket and held it in his hand as he turned the knob.

  The door swung back. An odour of death greeted their nostrils.

  The flashlight showed a sprawled figure lying on the floor, face up, one eye half closed, the other open, contemplating the ceiling of the room with a glassy stare.

  Addison recoiled as sharply as though Mason had punched him in the stomach.

  Mason didn’t even look back over his shoulder at the sound of motion, but said, “Take a look over my shoulder. Don’t touch anything. Who is it?”

  Addison moved reluctantly back so that he could peer over Mason’s shoulder into the room.

  “It’s Edgar Ferrell.”

  “Now you know why I wanted you to put your hands in your pockets,” Mason told him.

  Addison made a little whimpering noise.

  Mason pulled the door of the room shut, turned and carefully retraced his steps down the corridor.

  They went down the creaky staircase of the old house. Mason paused to rub his handkerchief over the knob on the inside of the door and the iron handle on the outside. Then he pulled the door shut.

  “After all,” Addison said, “it doesn’t make any difference whether we leave a print or two. We’ve got to notify the police that…”

  “Let’s talk that over,” Mason said, leading the way to the car.

  “What do you mean, we’ll talk that over?” Addison demanded. “It’s some sort of a crime, not to notify police when you find a body. I’m not a lawyer, but I know that much.”

  Mason started the car. “I said we’d talk it over.”

  “Well, start talking,” Mason said.

  Mason drove his car slowly along the narrow road, crossed the dry creek bed on the plank bridge and climbed the steep grade to the highway.

  “Go on,” Addison said nervously. “Start talking. But I warn you frankly, Mason, no matter what you say, I’m going to stop at the first telephone and notify the sheriff’s office.”

  Mason said, “From the way things look, I would say Ferrell had been dead for three or four days.”

  “So what?” Addison asked.

  “That,” Mason said, “would make it about Tuesday night. Tuesday night is the logical time for the thing to have happened. Ferrell started on his vacation. For some reason or other, he didn’t start out immediately on his fishing trip. He went to this house.”

  “Naturally,” Addison said testily. “You don’t need to be a lawyer or a detective to figure that one out.”

  Mason, having made his boulevard stop at the highway, moved out into the road, said, “And you were out here Tuesday night.”

  “No one knows that except you and me.”

  “You don’t intend to tell that to the police?”

  “I’m not that dumb.”

  Mason, easing the car through the gears, said, “Remember you picked Veronica up on Tuesday night.”

  “Veronica has nothing whatever to do with this, and this has nothing whatever to do with Veronica.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Mason said. “Show me exactly where you picked her up, Addison.”

  “She was on the right-hand side of the road, right over by this culvert, the one that you’re coming to.”

  Mason pulled the car over to the side of the road and stopped.

  “Will you please quit horsing around and get to where we can notify the police?” Addison demanded.

  Instead, Mason climbed out from behind the steering wheel and walked over to the culvert. After a moment Addison joined him.

  “I don’t think that house is over two hundred yards from here in an air line,” Mason said.

  “What in the world are you getting at?”

  “Suppose you go to the police. Your face is a mask of cherubic innocence. You’re surprised and shocked to learn of the death of your partner. Police ask you routine questions. They want to know if you knew about this place. You tell them that you were looking it over, intending to purchase it, and Ferrell was along, that Ferrell must have got the idea it would make a good place for him at about the time you were looking it over.”

  Addison nodded.

  “Then,” Mason said, “the police ask you if you were ever out here after that, and then what do you do?”

  Addison said, “I see no reason for telling them my private business.”

  “In other words, you’d tell them that you hadn’t been out here since then?”

  Addison nodded.

  “And there,” Mason said, “we come to the rub. If you say you were out here, you have some explaining to do. If you say you weren’t, and the police start checking the tyre marks out there in the mud and find that the treads correspond with the treads of your car and then get hold of Veronica and ask her where she was when you picked her up, they’ll prove that …”

  “That I was coining along this highway just like any other motorist,” Addison said. “I’d been out a hundred miles east of here on business.”

  “The point is,” Mason said, “there’s a plank bridge across this dry wash where it runs up to the road. There’s a steep grade. You came up in low gear. Sitting here at night, when it was quiet, Veronica could have heard your car from the time it left that old ranch house. She’d have heard the tyres on the plank bridge, heard the grind of your motor as you came up that grade in low gear, and you, yourself, admit you were driving slow and just shifting gears when you came abreast of Veronica.”

  Addison said nothing.

  “Now then,” Mason said, “we come to another thing. When you came to my office this afternoon, you were all worked up, cracking your knuckles, pacing the floor …”

  “Well, why wouldn’t I have been? I had enough on my mind …”

  “You’re a businessman,” Mason interrupted. “You’re accustomed to having a lot on your mind. You have responsibility. You have decisions to make. Hardly a day goes by but what you are confronted with some problem where you’d get a terrific headache if you made a wrong decision.”

  “For heaven’s sake, are you going to stand here talking around in circles? It’s cold. I’m going to get back in the car.”

  “What time,” Mason asked, “did Lorraine Ferrell get in touch with you and tell you she’d seen her husband’s automobile?”

  “How can I remember all those little things–?” Addison asked.

  “What time?” Mason said, his voice steady with calm persistence. “And remember Lorraine Ferrell will be asked the same question by the police.”

  “I don’t know. Probably right after lunch.”

  “I thought so,” Mason said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Mason said, “I mean that you were too worked up when you were talking with me to make your present story sound plausible. I mean that after Lorraine Ferrell told you about having seen her husband’s car, you realized the problem you were up against. You didn’t want to guess wrong – so you drove out here. You wouldn’t have driven directly to the ranch house this time, but you parked your car down the road somewhere, climbed down that embankment, walked through the willow bushes, across the dry stream bed, under the fence, and up to where you could watch the house from the willows. You didn’t see any sign of anyone moving. You became curious. You started to investigate, trying to find if Edgar Ferrell had been here. You…”

  “No, no!” Addison said, his voice in a panic.

  “You went up to the house,” Mason went on calmly and inexorably. “You made certain there was no one home. You tried the door. It opened. You went in. I don’t know how much looking around you did, but you found Ferrell’s body. Then was when you got in a panic and came dashing to my office.”

  “Mason, you don’t know what you’re saying!”

  “The hell I don’t,” Mason said, “and the point I’m getting at, Addison, is that if you knew that body was out there before you came to my office, you’ve left fingerprints all over the place. And if you’ve done that, you’ve written yourself a one-way ticket to the death cell in San Quentin Prison.”

  The light that came from the headlights of Mason’s parked automobile was sufficient to show the dismay on Addison’s face.

  “Now, then,” Mason said, “remember that you’re talking to your lawyer,” and started back for the car.

  Mason opened the door on the left-hand side, got in behind the steering wheel. Addison climbed in on the other side and slumped down in the seat.

  “And now,” Mason asked, “do you still want to notify the police?”

  “No” Addison said, his voice thin with terror.

  Mason said, “Addison, I’m going to stick my neck out for you. I’m probably a fool for doing it, but that’s the only way you’re going to have a chance. We’re not going to notify the police about finding the body.”

  “But my fingerprints, my …”

  “Now, listen to me carefully,” Mason said. “You’re going to call up Lorraine Ferrell. You’re going to ask her if she’s heard anything more from Edgar. You’re going to mention very casually that Edgar may have had a deal on involving the country home he’s recently purchased, and that the reason you think so is because the agent told you Ferrell was very anxious to have the deal in such shape he could step into possession by last Tuesday morning.”

  Addison nodded. He was listening attentively.

  “You don’t think she knows anything about that deal?”

  “I’m satisfied she doesn’t, otherwise she’d have said something about it to me.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “you chat on with her just as though you assumed, of course, she knew all about it.”

  “The minute I mention that country home,” Addison said, “she’ll jump down my throat, wanting to go out there.”

  “That’s fine. You go out there with her.”

  “You mean go back there again?” Addison asked in dismay.

  “That’s right,” Mason said. “The sooner the better.”

  “But then what?”

  “Then you’ll discover the body. And as soon as the police get done with you, you and Lorraine Ferrell go to your department store and wait for me. Tell the night watchman to keep an eye out. I’ll come to the Broadway entrance and pound on the door.”

  “But, how is all this going to change the situation?”

  “When you go out with Lorraine Ferrell,” Mason said, “you’re going to go in that house with her and you’re going to take her around the lower floors before you go upstairs. You’ll be leaving fingerprints all over the place. Those will be natural, logical fingerprints, made in the presence of a witness.”

  “Well?” Addison asked.

  Mason said dryly, “So then, when the police find your fingerprints in that house, they can’t tell whether they were made at ten o’clock tonight, at eight o’clock tonight, or …”

  “Or what?” Addison asked as Mason paused thoughtfully.

  “Or last Tuesday night, when the murder was being committed,” Mason said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mason parked his car in the parking lot next to his office building, took the elevator, started down to his office, then paused as he passed the lighted door which said Drake Detective Agency.

  Drakes office was open twenty-four hours a day, and Drake himself usually stayed until late at night.

  Mason opened the door. The night girl at the switchboard looked up, and Mason said, “Drake in?”

  She nodded, gestured to Mason that he was to go in, plugged in a line under the red light on the switchboard and said, “Drake Detective Agency.”

  Mason walked through the latched gate, which the girl at the switchboard opened with an electric release, and down the narrow corridor to Drake’s office.

  Drake was talking on the phone as Mason entered.

  “It was just a tip, Sergeant,” Drake said into the telephone. “I can’t give you the source of my tips … No, it didn’t come from the victim. It came from information my operatives picked up … Hell, I know I’m dealing with the law, but you’re dealing with a detective agency. You might just as well put me out of business as take away my sources of information. How would you like it if I asked you to tell me about your stool pigeons … Well, I claim it is the same! … Perry Mason? I don’t know. Why don’t you try his office … Okay, if I get in touch with him, I’ll tell him you want him to call. Goodbye.”

  Drake hung up the phone and said, “What the hell was that stuff about the forged cheques, Perry?”

  “Why?” Mason asked.

  “That was Sergeant Holcomb calling up. They pinched a chap named Eric Hansell late this afternoon. He was offering a forged cheque for two thousand dollars, signed by John R Addison, the big department store man.

  “The bank probably would have cashed the cheque if it hadn’t been for my warning, but they looked the signature over and saw it had been traced. They tried to get in touch with Addison and he couldn’t be reached, so they called the Law. The cops came out and this fellow, Hansell, gave a fuzzy story, so they took him into custody and held him for further questioning. A while ago he broke down and told them he got the cheque from you.

  “Sergeant Holcomb always smells a rat whenever you’re in a case. Mentioning the name of Perry Mason to him shoots his blood pressure up over two hundred.”

  “I’ll give him a ring,” Mason said easily. “Get hold of half a dozen operatives, Paul, and have them lined up and ready to go to work in about two hours.”

  “What’s happening?”

  Mason settled himself in a chair and said, “Well, Paul, it’s rather tricky. It’s like this …”

  Drake held up a protesting palm. “Nix it, Perry. I don’t want to hear it. In dealing with you, the less I know, the better off I am.”

  “I thought that might be a good idea myself,” Mason said. “You friendly with the sheriff?”

  “So-so. Why?”

  “You might drop around to the sheriff’s office. You’re working on a case, a case involving Edgar Z Ferrell. He’s a partner of John Addison in the Treasure Chest Department Store on Broadway.”

  Drake’s eyes narrowed. “What do I do?”

  “You’re working for me,” Mason said. “Here’s the story. Tuesday noon, Edgar Ferrell took off on a vacation. He was driving an automobile loaded with camp things, sleeping bags, fishing tackle, baggage, a gasoline stove, and a tent. The back end and the trunk were pretty well filled up. In order to get more room, he’d taken the cushion out of the rear seat and left it in his garage.

  “And, this afternoon,” Mason went on, “his wife, Lorraine Ferrell, saw Edgar’s automobile on the street. She just saw it flash past and thinks a woman was driving it. She couldn’t be certain.

  “So,” Mason said, his face a mask of innocence, “you’re checking on the case. You want to check hospitals, you want to find out if there’s been any report of an accident, or if any unidentified bodies are lying around loose. You know, Ferrell might have been the victim of a holdup. Someone might have taken his car, robbed Ferrell, and then conked him over the head.”

  “How soon?” Drake asked.

  “Better get started during the next five or ten minutes,” Mason said. “Give me the phone. I’ll call Holcomb.”

  “Well,” Drake said, “at least that will be a load off my mind. Holcomb will know I passed on his message.”

  Mason called police headquarters, got Sergeant Holcomb on the line, and said quite casually, “Perry Mason talking, Sergeant. I dropped in to see Paul Drake, and he tells me you want me to call you up.”

  Holcomb said, “Every time you get mixed into a case, Mason, there’s something screwy about it.”

  “What’s the case and what’s screwy?” Mason asked.

  “I have a man in my office who was caught trying to pass a forged cheque. He says you know all about the cheque.”

  “Are you sure the cheque’s forged?”

  “It’s forged. The signature’s been traced. It’s the signature of John Addison, the department store man,” Holcomb said.

  “What does Addison say about it?”

  “To date, we haven’t been able to get in touch with him. The bank caught the forgery because the Drake Detective Agency had notified all banks earlier in the day to be on the lookout for forged cheques signed with India ink and drawn on accounts of prominent men.”

  Mason winked across the desk at Paul Drake and said, “What does Drake say about it? Where did he get his tip?”

  “He doesn’t say,” Holcomb said, “but we know that a big percentage of his business is your work. So, when this chap said you knew about the cheque – well, I thought we’d better investigate.”

  Mason said, “I’ll come up and look him over and talk with you.”

  There was surprise in Holcomb’s voice. “When?”

  “Right now.”

  “Okay,” Holcomb told him. “Hell, I thought you’d try to stall out of it.”

  Mason hung up the phone. Drake said, “Holcomb doesn’t like the ground you walk on, Mason.”

  “There are some damn good cops,” Mason replied. “It just happens that Holcomb doesn’t come within that classification. Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide is a square shooter and a smart man. Holcomb is a moron who will frame a prisoner if he thinks the man is guilty. He actually doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong. He simply thinks he’s aiding the cause of justice, that there’s a loophole in the evidence and it’s up to him, as a good, clever cop, to plug that loophole.”