“And he thinks you lead your clients right around the walls of the State prison,” Drake said.

  “Well, why not?”

  “You argue it with Holcomb.”

  “There’s no use arguing with that bird. He’s so thick-headed, you could push a stick of dynamite right up his nostrils, set it off, and the guy wouldn’t even sneeze. Well, I’ll go see him.”

  Mason left Drake’s office, got in his car, drove to police headquarters, found Sergeant Holcomb in his office, and knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” Holcomb called.

  Mason entered the room.

  Sergeant Holcomb, his heavy forehead corrugated in a frown, was chewing on a cigar. Across the battered table from him sat Eric Hansell, the insolent assurance now completely evaporated from his manner.

  “Hello, Mason,” Holcomb said. “Sit down.”

  Hansell said, “What the devil were you trying to do to me? What sort of a frame-up is this? Do you think you can …”

  “That’ll do,” Holcomb interrupted. “I’ll do the talking for a while, Hansell. Shut up!”

  The alacrity with which Hansell silenced his protests showed the extent to which the police cracked his shell of arrogant impudence.

  Sergeant Holcomb said, “Hansell was picked up trying to cash a two thousand dollar cheque supposedly signed by John Addison. The signature had been traced in pencil, then inked. We haven’t been able to get in touch with Addison. For a while Hansell cracked smart and wouldn’t tell anyone anything except what his friend, George Whittley Dundas, was going to do to the cops. We called Dundas. Dundas took a long listen on the wire, gulped a couple of times, then said that he had met an Eric Hansell, that he knew him slightly, that he had no connection with him, and considered it an outrage that Hansell would give him as reference. He said he’d only met the man once or twice in a bar.”

  “The damned rat!” Hansell exclaimed. “Trying to save himself…”

  “Shut up!” Holcomb snapped.

  Hansell made himself small. The coat with its padded shoulders seemed a size too big for him.

  Holcomb twisted the soggy cigar around in his mouth, his manner showing only too plainly an impatient desire to tear into someone over something.

  “So then what?” Mason asked.

  “So then, after Dundas turned Hansell down, Hansell told a different story. He said that he went to your office, that he had some business dealings with Addison, that you gave him this cheque as coming from Addison.”

  “What business dealings with Addison?” Mason asked.

  “He didn’t say.”

  “You booked him?” Mason asked.

  “Yes. A charge of forgery.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “why not check up on his fingerprints? That’s about the first thing to do, find out who the guy is. If he’s going around telling fairy stories and …”

  Hansell suddenly came up out of his chair. “You damn shyster! You …”

  Sergeant Holcomb leaned swiftly across the desk. His hand caught Hansell on the side of the jaw, a swinging, stinging blow.

  “Sit down and shut up!” Holcomb growled.

  “After all,” Mason went on calmly, as though there had been no interruption, “the first thing to find out is something about the man with whom we’re dealing.”

  Holcomb studied Mason with thoughtful eyes.

  “You haven’t denied the guy’s story yet.”

  “I haven’t heard his story.”

  “I’ve told it to you.”

  Mason turned to Hansell. “You were at my office?”

  “You know I was.”

  “And I gave you this cheque?”

  “You know you did!”

  “A cheque purporting to be signed by John Addison?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the cheque for?”

  “You know what it was for. Do you want me to tell?”

  “Of course I want you to tell,” Mason said. “That’s what I’m asking you the question for. If you got a cheque for two thousand dollars from John Addison, you certainly must have done something or planned to do something to earn it.”

  “Keep crowding me and I’ll tell!” Hansell threatened.

  “Damn it, I’m crowding you,” Mason said. “What was it?”

  Hansell said, “All right. I knew that Addison had retained you to …”

  Mason interrupted with raised eyebrows “You mean Addison was paying you money because you knew something about Addison and me?”

  “Well, why not?”

  Mason smiled and said, “A lawyer gets paid for what he knows. But if you are trying to claim that Addison paid you for something you knew, you’re getting out of the frying pan and into the fire, young man. If you should by any chance establish your innocence on the charge of extortion!”

  There was a moment’s silence while that sank in.

  “So,” Mason went on, “if you’re going to try to lie out of it, you’d better be careful what you say.”

  Sergeant Holcomb chewed on his cigar. “Damned if I don’t think that’s it,” he said.

  “What?” Mason asked.

  “This guy was trying blackmail,” Holcomb said. “You didn’t have any way of combating it, so you trapped him so he’d get hooked on a forged cheque charge. Then he couldn’t explain the consideration for the cheque without laying himself wide open to a charge of blackmail. Since he wouldn’t dare to admit that, he can’t say a damn thing about why he got the cheque.”

  “Any evidence to support that, Sergeant?”

  “Just the way the thing looks.”

  Mason turned to Hansell. “Anything to that, Hansell?”

  Hansell swallowed twice.

  “Go on,” Holcomb growled. “Answer the question!”

  “No,” Hansell said.

  “So,” Mason went on urbanely, “what was the consideration for the cheque?”

  Hansell said, “I wanted someone to finance me in a business deal. I’d talked with Addison. Addison told me to see his lawyer. I outlined the business deal to Mason, and Mason said it looked good, that Addison would finance me to the tune of two thousand bucks. He gave me the cheque.”

  Mason smiled. “Just pulled the cheque out of a hat – just like that?”

  “Out of my hat!” Hansell said.

  Mason grinned.

  Holcomb said, “For the love of Mike, Hansell, what are you trying to do, crack wise? Out of your hat! What the hell!”

  Hansell twisted his position.

  “Go on,” Mason said, “tell us about the hat.”

  “You go to hell!”

  “What about the hat?” Holcomb asked.

  “Nothing. It was just a crack.”

  “That’s your story?” Mason asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s all of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What,” Mason asked suavely, “was the business deal?”

  “It involved backing a manufacturer who was going to put out some stuff that Addison was going to sell in his department store.”

  “Who was the manufacturer?” Mason asked.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “What was the article?”

  “That’s confidential.”

  “Did you tell me when we had the interview?”

  “You know I did.”

  “You told Addison?”

  “Yes.”

  Mason grinned at Sergeant Holcomb and said, “Why not look the guy up?”

  Sergeant Holcomb called the identification bureau, said, “I sent in some fingerprints a couple of hours ago. What do you have on them? There’s a man by the name of Hansell … Well, I’ll hold the phone. Take a look. If you have them classified, I want to … Okay, I’ll wait.”

  Holcomb shifted his eyes from Mason to Hansell, then back again, said grumblingly, “Damned if I don’t think it’s a fast one! It looks like a swell way of getting rid of a blackmailer to me …”

  No one said anything for some ten seconds. Then Holcomb said into the telephone, “Okay, what is it?”

  He listened intently for several seconds, then pulled a pencil and paper toward him, made notes, said, “Okay, I’ve got it. When was the date of the second arrest –? Okay. Thanks, Mac.”

  He hung up and pushed the phone to one side. He took the soggy cigar from his mouth, banged it into a spittoon, and said to Hansell, “So that’s right!”

  Hansell said nothing.

  Sergeant Holcomb said, “You’ve got a hell of a record, Mr Hansell, alias Hanover, alias Handwig.”

  Hansell looked down at the table.

  “But,” Holcomb went on, turning to glower at Mason, “it’s just like I thought. It’s blackmail. He hasn’t done any pen work in his life. Everything’s been extortion and attempted extortion. There never has been any forgery. Now you want me to believe he went to a bank and tried to push a forged cheque for two grand through the window.”

  “Well, he did, didn’t he?” Mason asked.

  “Damned if he didn’t,” Holcomb admitted dubiously. “He did, for a fact.”

  “His bank or Addison’s bank?”

  “Addison’s bank,” Holcomb said. “The bank of which the cheque was drawn. Hansell had papers with him vouching for his identity, driving licence, Social Security card, letter of identification from a banker. He wanted the dough.”

  Mason yawned. “Got a record, has he?”

  “Half as long as your arm,” Holcomb said. “All blackmail. Damn it, Mason, it looks to me as though you pulled a fast one on this bird and are trying to pull a fast one on us.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t like having this guy in on this forgery business. It sounds like blackmail to me.”

  “Okay,” Mason said, “let Hansell talk. Let him tell you what the cheque was for. If it’s blackmail, let’s nail him on that.”

  “I’ve already told you,” Hansell mumbled.

  “No you haven’t,” Mason said. “You haven’t mentioned names. You haven’t mentioned anything except generalities. Who is the manufacturer? Who was …”

  “All right,” Hansell blurted, “I’ll come clean. I called on Mr Addison. I told him I wanted a loan for two thousand dollars. I told him I needed the money, and Addison told me that if I’d call at Mr Mason’s office I could pick up the cheque.”

  Mason said, “Addison didn’t give you the cheque himself?”

  “No, he told me to get it through you.”

  Mason said smilingly, “You went to Addison and asked him for a loan and Addison told you to come to my office to get the cheque.”

  Hansell thought things over for a minute, then said, “You let me talk with Mr Addison on the telephone and I’ll prove it.”

  “This story you’ve just told?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then your other story was false?”

  “Well … yes.”

  Mason said to Holcomb, “Well, there you are, Sergeant. He admits now that that was a lie. The way it looks to me, the guy’s trying to play something smart here. He felt that if he could cash a cheque purporting to be signed by Addison and drawn in his favour for two thousand dollars, that he could have something on Addison. I think it’s all part of a blackmailing build-up.”

  “That sounds crazy to me,” Holcomb said.

  “Well, after all,” Mason told him, “this man keeps lying about the cheque. It’s either forgery or the first step in a blackmailing setup.”

  Sergeant Holcomb said, “It’s a hell of a way to deal with a blackmailer. I don’t think I like it.”

  “I don’t give a damn whether you like it or not,” Mason said irritably. “You drag me down here on the word of a crook. The fellow has a criminal record as long as your arm. He admits now that the story he told about me giving him the cheque was a lie. This is where I came in.”

  Mason pushed back his chair.

  Hansell looked up with concentrated venom in his eyes. “You’re damn smart, Mr Perry Mason,” he said savagely, “and you’ll regret the day you ever tried to pull a fast one like this!”

  “I’m pulling a fast one?” Mason asked, his hand on the doorknob.

  “You know you are.”

  “But,” Mason said, “I thought you just told Sergeant Holcomb that your dealing was with Addison, that your story about me was all a fairy tale.”

  Hansell said nothing.

  “If you want to get any statement from Addison,” Mason said, “you’d better talk with Addison before this man gets a chance to talk with Addison on the phone.”

  “You can’t do that to me!” Hansell said, half getting up from the chair. “I’m entitled to talk with Addison on the phone. After all, it’s his signature on the cheque.”

  Mason said, “I understand the signature on the cheque was traced.”

  Sergeant Holcomb said, “I don’t like it.”

  “Even supposing your suspicions are true,” Mason said, “I take it the police department isn’t anxious to have blackmailers running around loose, trying to practise extortion on reputable businessmen.”

  “If you’d have come clean on the thing,” Holcomb said, “I’d have collared this guy and given him a face massage for what he was trying to pull. The way it is now, I’m damned if I know where I stand.”

  Mason turned to Hansell, said in a fatherly voice, “What was it, Hansell, blackmail?”

  “You go to hell!”

  “Sergeant Holcomb will get the truth out of you,” Mason warned. “He’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  “I said you could go to hell.”

  “Okay,” Mason said cheerfully, and turned back to the door.

  The phone on Sergeant Holcomb’s desk rang. Holcomb scooped up the receiver, said, “Yeah, hello, Holcomb talking … Hold on, Mason … Hey, Mason …!”

  Mason, out in the corridor, turned back just before the door clicked shut, caught the knob of the door, said, “What is it, Sergeant?”

  “It’s something you might be interested in,” Holcomb said. “Damn it, I think you are.”

  “What is it?” Mason asked.

  “This is a call from Homicide,” Holcomb said. “They knew I’d been trying to get in touch with Addison. Now, according to a report that just came in from police radio, Edgar Z Ferrell, Addison’s partner in the Treasure Chest Department Store, has been found dead in an old abandoned ranch house about twenty miles out in the country. Evidently the guy was murdered, shot by someone who lay in ambush outside the house and popped a bullet through the window.”

  Mason raised his eyebrows, said, “Any idea when the murder was committed?”

  “Just a minute,” Holcomb said.

  He withdrew his hand from the mouthpiece of the telephone, said, “When was the shot fired? … They think Tuesday evening … Okay, stick on the line a minute, will you?”

  Holcomb’s broad palm once more covered the telephone. “Probably on Tuesday night.”

  Mason nodded sagely, looked at Hansell. “Where were you Tuesday night?” he asked.

  Hansell came all the way up out of the chair. “My God, if you think you’re going to frame this on me! You dirty two-timing, slick shyster … I …”

  “Tut, tut,” Mason said, “such language, Hansell. Of course, I don’t know anything about your past, but if you have been making a living by blackmail I’d advise you to cut it out and get into something honest for a change – provided, of course, you can clear yourself on this murder charge.”

  “I’m not up on no murder rap!” Hansell screamed. “I was framed into passing a phoney cheque when I tried to make a shakedown and …”

  Sergeant Holcomb banged the phone back on its cradle.

  Mason said, “I’m very shocked to hear of Ferrell’s murder. I didn’t know him but I have had business dealings from time to time with John Racer Addison. I presume he’ll be very much upset about it. I guess I’d better get back to my office.”

  Sergeant Holcomb gave no indication of having heard him. He was regarding Hansell thoughtfully. “You know anything about that murder?” he asked.

  Hansell almost screamed, his voice was so harsh with rage and nervousness. “For God’s sake, are you going to let that damn mouthpiece not only put the words in your mouth but stick the thoughts in your mind? Are you …”

  Sergeant Holcomb leaned across the desk, took a long, powerful swing and slammed his fist full into Hansell’s face. “I don’t let blackmailers talk that way to me,” he said.

  Mason quietly pulled the door closed behind him as he stepped out into the corridor.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The night watchman at the department store was waiting at the front door.

  Mason showed him his business card through the heavy plate glass. The watchman nodded, opened the door, said, “Mrs Ferrell is expecting you.”

  “And Mr Addison,’ Mason said, smiling.

  The watchman shook his head. “Mr Addison isn’t here yet. The police wanted him.”

  “Wanted him?“’ Mason asked.

  “Wanted him to do something for them.”

  “What?”

  “Well, sir, I guess you understand what’s happened. It seems there’s been a bit of an accident and it seems there’s something about the gun that the police wanted Mr Addison to explain. If you’ll pardon me, I think Mrs Ferrell will give you the details.”

  “Let’s go.” Mason said.

  The watchman led the way through long aisles of counters covered with dust cloths, took an elevator to the fifth floor, led the way to a sumptuous suite of offices. Lights were on in an office marked MR ADDISON, and also in an adjoining office marked on the frosted glass MR FERRELL.

  The night watchman stepped forward, tapped perfunctorily on the door, opened it a crack and said, “Mr Perry Mason.”

  “Come right in, Mr Mason,” a woman’s voice answered, a voice that was well modulated, yet resonant with rich overtones.

  Mason pushed open the door and entered.