“Bob was going out?”

  “Yes. You couldn’t expect him to give up everything and become just a stay-at-home because Carla was an invalid. No one expected that, and—well, you know how it is. I suppose he … well, he…”

  “Played around?” Mason asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Was the gun on the dresser when you were there earlier in the evening?”

  “No. And—well, a few of Carla’s things were gone. I didn’t notice them right at first, but I got to looking around and some of her medicines and a few of her clothes were gone.”

  “What do you think happened?” Mason asked.

  Words poured out in hysterical rapidity. “I think that she followed Bob out to Lynk’s place. I think Bob had my gun and killed him. I think Carla knows it. Good Heavens, I wish I knew where she was! I’m worried absolutely sick about her. It was bad enough for her to get out of bed and drive her car, but the shock of finding out about Bob, of knowing about the murder, of … it’s awful.”

  “Then you think she came back to the house?” Mason asked.

  “Yes.”

  “About when?”

  “I don’t know. I left there about quarter to one. That’s why I was a little late getting to your office for the one o’clock appointment. I arrived about twenty minutes to one, and wasted a good five minutes looking around and trying to find what had happened. Then I decided to rush to your office. Then you told me about Esther Dilmeyer being drugged and—and you said you were going out to see Lynk, and I thought—well, I tried to persuade myself it was all right.”

  “Then you had an idea Lynk was dead before I went out there?”

  “Well, I didn’t know. I knew the gun had been used.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because I looked at it, and found an empty shell in it.”

  “Then,” Mason said, “you got your fingerprints all over the gun?”

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  “And slipped it in the pocket of your coat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now you say you think Bob killed him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And that Carla knew about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that Carla came home and packed up some things and left?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think Bob came back with her?”

  “No. I think Bob must have just kept right on going. You know, I don’t think Bob would have nerve enough to face anything like that. I think he’d kill a man and then run away.”

  “Then,” Mason said dryly, “if we are to follow your reasoning to its logical conclusion, after Bob killed him, Carlotta got the gun with which the murder was committed.”

  She bit her lip and turned away so that he couldn’t see her face.

  “Is that right?” Mason asked.

  She said, “I g-g-guess so.”

  “That isn’t logical,” Mason said. “You know it.”

  “Well, what is logical?”

  “I don’t know, but I want to find out where I stand. You want me to represent your sister?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But not you?”

  “No. I can take care of myself.”

  Mason said, “Don’t be too sure. If that’s the murder weapon, it’s in your possession. It has your fingerprints on it.”

  “I tell you I can take care of myself. They can’t pin anything on me. I’m strong and healthy. They can question me, and it won’t hurt me. They can’t prove a thing.”

  “Where were you at midnight?”

  “I was … I was at my store in the office trying to figure things out so I could see just how much money I could raise in case we had to buy that stock.”

  “And you want me to represent your sister?”

  “Yes, please. I want you to stand back of her.”

  Mason said, “No one needs to know anything about her having gone out. If her husband killed him, that won’t involve her.”

  “You don’t understand. If you knew about her condition, if you could see her. This must have been a terrible strain. If they should start questioning her, or the newspaper men should get after her and ask her questions about Bob and about where she was, and about how she got the gun and those things—well, it would undo all the good that her treatment has accomplished. She’d either die, or her heart would be so bad it never would get better.”

  Mason said, “Who’s going to pay me for representing her?”

  “I am.”

  “If I’m representing her, I’ll be representing her alone.”

  “Of course.”

  “Her interests would come first.”

  “That’s what I want.”

  “If yours get in the way, you’d be in the position of an adverse party. I’d smash you just as quickly as I would a total stranger.”

  “That’s the way I want you to do.”

  “Did you ever hear of the paraffin test?” Mason asked abruptly.

  “The paraffin test? What are you talking about?”

  “For telling whether a person has fired a gun recently?”

  “What’s paraffin got to do with that?”

  “Whenever a gun’s fired, an invisible spray of powder particles backfire, and imbed themselves in the skin of a person’s hand. They’re microscopic particles, invisible to the naked eye, but they always fly back and are imbedded in the skin.

  “The Scientific Crime Detection Bureau has worked out a new technique for telling whether a person has fired a gun. They pour melted paraffin over the suspect’s hands, reinforce it with a thin layer of cotton, and then cover it with wax. After the paraffin has just about set, the whole thing is rolled back from the hand. The little bits of powder which buried themselves in the skin of the hand are caught by the paraffin and adhere to it when the mold is taken from the hand. A chemical reagent is poured on the paraffin. That reacts on the nitrates in the powder so that it brings about a chemical change that makes the specks visible to the naked eye.”

  “I see,” she said, her voice holding a slight quaver.

  Mason said, “If Carlotta didn’t fire that gun, it would be a lot better for her to go to the police right now and tell them her story, whatever it is. Then, before it’s too late, the police could subject her hands to a paraffin test and prove that she didn’t fire the gun. That would clear her.”

  “But… but … suppose she did?”

  “In that event,” Mason said, “with one shot fired out of the gun, with the police able to prove that the gun had been in her possession, with a paraffin test showing that she had recently fired the gun, and with the ballistics experts showing that the bullet which killed Harvey Lynk came from that gun, your sister would be headed for the gas chamber at San Quentin.

  “And,” Mason went on dryly, “the fact that Harvey J. Lynk was shot in the back isn’t going to help a self-defense plea any.”

  Mildreth Faulkner slowly walked across to where the gun reposed on the taboret by Mason’s chair. “I suppose I shouldn’t have got my fingerprints on it.”

  “That’s right,” Mason said.

  “Couldn’t we wipe them off?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  She grabbed up the gun, crossed over to her purse, took out a handkerchief, and started scrubbing vigorously away at the metal.

  Mason sat calmly at ease, sipping his Scotch and soda, watching her frantic motions.

  “Careful with that gun,” he warned. “You have your finger inside the trigger guard.”

  A siren sounded close at hand, rising to a scream, then fading to a low, moaning sound as a car pulled up at the curb outside.

  Mason said, “Unless I’m greatly mistaken, that will be Lieutenant Arthur Tragg of the Homicide Squad, and when he finds that gun absolutely devoid of fingerprints, he’ll…

  “Look out.…”

  Mason jumped up from the chair, lunged toward her, grabbed for her wrist—and was too late.

  The revolver roared into noise. The bullet, sailing through a plate-glass window, sent tinkling fragments of glass dropping to the cement porch.

  In the interval of startled silence which followed, the doorbell rang insistently. Knuckles pounded on the panels. Lieutenant Tragg called, “This is the police. Open up, or I’ll smash the door in.”

  “That,” Mason said calmly, “is the pay-off.” He walked back to his chair, settled down in the cushions, picked up the drink, and lit a fresh cigarette. “It’s your party now.”

  Mildreth Faulkner stood staring at the gun. “Good Heavens! I had no idea it was going off. My handkerchief caught on the hammer and pulled it back. My finger was on the trigger, and …”

  “Better let Lieutenant Tragg in,” Mason interrupted. “I think he’s getting ready to smash in a window.”

  She stooped and slid the gun along the floor under a davenport at the corner of the room.

  Mason tolerantly shook his head at her. “Naughty, naughty! Lieutenant Tragg won’t like that.”

  She went rapidly through the door to the reception hallway, started to run the last few steps, and opened the door. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Who did the shooting just now?” Lieutenant Tragg asked, pushing his way into the hallway. “And is that Perry Mason’s car out there? Is he here?”

  “Yes, he’s here.”

  “Who did the shooting?”

  “Why … er … was there shooting?”

  “Didn’t you hear the shot?”

  “Why, no. I can’t say that I did. I heard something that sounded like a backfire.”

  Lieutenant Tragg made a sound which was midway between a sniff and a snort, and walked on into the living room. “Well, Mason,” he said, “you certainly get around.”

  “Travel,” Mason told him, “is broadening. As you doubtless know, this is Miss Faulkner. Lieutenant Tragg, Miss Faulkner. You’ll find that Miss Faulkner has excellent taste in Scotch whiskey, and, for your further information, I’m not representing her.”

  Tragg stood staring down at Mason. “You’re not representing her?”

  “No.”

  “Then what the devil are you doing here?”

  Mason said, “Paying a social call and sipping a very delightful whiskey and soda.”

  “You fired that shot?”

  “No.”

  The lieutenant’s eyes moved rapidly around the room. He saw the hole in the plate-glass window, and walked across to examine it.

  “For Heaven sakes,” Mildreth exclaimed. “It’s a bullet hole in the glass! Then it was a shot. Someone must have shot at me, Mr. Mason.”

  “Through the window?” Tragg asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t hear it?”

  “No. I heard your car coming up. That is, I guess it was your car, and I thought there was a backfire. I had no idea it was a shot.”

  “I see,” Tragg observed calmly. “Then someone must have shot at you from outside.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, let’s see. Here’s a hole in the drapes, and here’s a hole in the glass. That gives us the line taken by the bullet. Now, sighting along that line, you can see that—Here. Pull that drape to one side. Now you can see my car parked at the curb. The line runs just in front of the car.”

  “That’s right, it does.”

  “Then someone must have stood directly in front of my car and fired the shot. He must have been standing on stilts some fifteen feet high.”

  “You didn’t shoot, did you?” she asked.

  Tragg ignored the question. “Furthermore,” he said, “by the time you’ve had as much experience with bullets as I have, you’ll be able to tell the direction in which they’re going when they go through glass. And there’s the odor of smokeless powder in the room. I’m afraid, Miss Faulkner, that I’ll have to look around.”

  “You can’t. I forbid you to do it.”

  “Well, I’m going to just the same.”

  “He can’t do it without a warrant, can he, Mr. Mason?”

  Tragg said, “Mason isn’t representing you.”

  “I know, but he can tell me that.”

  Mason sipped his Scotch and soda, puffed placidly at his cigarette, and said nothing. Lieutenant Tragg said, “You know, Miss Faulkner, we’re going to quit playing horse right now, and get down to brass tacks. If you’ll tell me who fired that shot and what was done with the gun, I won’t take you down to police headquarters, have you searched, and have detectives come out and go through the house.…

  “Wait a minute. You must have been standing about here. You heard me coming in the car. You must have fired that shot just as I was bringing my car to a stop. Now, figuring the angle of that shot … I was ringing the doorbell. Well, the natural place for you to have concealed the gun would have been under the cushions of this davenport.”

  He calmly walked over to the davenport and started raising the cushions.

  “You can’t do that,” she said, grabbing his arm.

  Tragg pushed her to one side. “Don’t act up, sister,” he warned, “or I’ll have the place crawling with cops inside of twenty minutes.”

  “But you can’t. You … Oh …”

  Tragg dropped to his knees, placed his head down close to the floor, peered under the davenport, and said, “Oh-oh!”

  Mason heard the grind of a car motor coming up the steep incline of a cross street. He carefully pinched out his cigarette, dropped it in the ash tray, stretched, yawned, and said, “Well, if the lieutenant will pardon me …”

  “The lieutenant won’t pardon you,” Tragg said, sliding his left arm under the davenport.

  “Meaning you’re going to try to hold me?” Mason asked.

  “Meaning I’m going to find out what you have to say about this before you go anywhere,” Tragg said.

  The car was coming closer now.

  Mason said, “Sergeant Holcomb never liked to have me present when he was trying to get a statement from a suspect. He always thought that I was a disturbing influence. Funny thing about me that way. When I’m in the room, I simply can’t keep from advising a person about constitutional rights, warning about traps, and so forth.”

  Tragg said, “You win. Get the hell out of here.”

  Mason smiled reassuringly at Mildreth Faulkner. “Be seeing you. Don’t bother to let me out. I know the way.”

  As Mason turned from the living room into the corridor, Lieutenant Tragg said, “All right, Miss Faulkner. Tell me about the gun. Why did you fire it?”

  “It was an accident.”

  Mason opened the front door.

  “Were you perhaps taking a shot at Mason, or was he trying to take the gun away from you, or …”

  Mason gently closed the door behind him, and stepped out to the porch.

  A coupe had stopped just behind Tragg’s sedan. A woman was getting out of it. Mason held up his hand, motioning for her to stop, and walked rapidly toward the car.

  The woman said, in a rather flat voice, “What’s the matter? What’s …”

  “You Mrs. Lawley?” Mason asked in an undertone.

  “Yes. I’m Mildreth Faulkner’s sister. What’s …”

  Mason said, “Get in your car, turn around, and drive back down the road until I catch up with you. Make it snappy. Be quiet about it. The police are in there, and …”

  She caught her breath. “You’re Perry Mason, the lawyer?”

  “Yes. Your sister wants me to represent you.”

  “To represent me? For Heaven sakes, what for?”

  “I don’t know,” Mason said, “but unless you want to be dragged down to police headquarters while they try to find out, you’d better turn that car around and get started.”

  He walked over to his own car, switched on the engine, made an excessive amount of noise, backing, turning, clashing gears, and racing his motor. When Carlotta Lawley had her car safely turned around and was headed back down the grade, Mason snapped his car into gear, ran rapidly along behind her, and, some two hundred yards from the house, drove up alongside, and signaled her to stop.

  “Were you,” he asked, “going home?”

  “Why, I … you see, I …”

  Mason said, “Don’t go home. Go to the Clearmount Hotel, register as Mrs. Charles X. Dunkurk of San Diego. Be sure you spell it D-u-n-k-u-r-k. Go to your room, get into bed and stay there. Don’t go out, don’t read the papers, don’t listen to the radio. Simply stay there until I come to see you, and that won’t be until sometime tomorrow—or rather later on today.”

  “You mean I’ll have to wait there …”

  “Yes,” Mason said. “I don’t want to attract attention by coming in to call on you at three or four o’clock in the morning. I have some work to do between now and the time I see you.”

  “And you don’t want to talk with me now—to ask me any questions, to …”

  “I do not,” Mason interrupted. “I have more important things to do right now, and I want to get you under cover.”

  “I… my husband …”

  “Forget him,” Mason said, “and get started for the Clearmount Hotel. You know where it is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, get going. Lieutenant Tragg isn’t a fool. He’s all excited now about finding a gun in Mildreth’s possession, but it won’t be long before he realizes that I made an awful lot of noise backing my car and turning around.”

  Without another word, Carlotta Lawley slipped her car into gear and shot ahead.

  Chapter 6

  Left alone with Mildreth Faulkner, Tragg waited until the sound of Mason’s car had died away in the distance, watched her eyes fight back the expression of panic and become defiant. There was nothing of the quitter about her. She stood, with her chin up, fighting for control. Excitement brought added sparkle to her eyes, color to her cheeks. She was, Tragg admitted, a beautiful woman, quite evidently accustomed to masculine deference—and she was trapped. It remained only for him to close the jaws of that trap.

  Because he had her so thoroughly in his power, and because she was so naïvely unaware of the danger of dealing with an experienced police detective, he hesitated for a moment, then, putting admiration of her courage aside, he said abruptly, “Miss Faulkner, I’m going to ask you two questions. The answers to those two questions will determine our whole future relationship. If you tell me the truth, I may be able to help you.”