As he swung the car down the ramp to the garage, the night attendant made an almost surreptitious motion with his hand, waving Mason back.

  Mason slammed on the brakes, brought the car to a stop, snapped it into reverse and started backing out.

  Before he was able to reach the street a man came running up the ramp and pulled up alongside the car door.

  “Perry Mason?” he asked jerking open the door of the car.

  “What do you want?” Mason asked.

  The man handed him a folded legal document. “Subpoena to appear before the grand jury at ten o’clock in the morning. This is a subpoena duces tecum. Bring any and all bills, money, or other legal tender that you have in your possession paid to you by Arlene Duvall. Good night.”

  The man slammed the car door shut, turned and walked back down the ramp. Mason took off the brake, kicked the oar out of reverse and eased down the ramp.

  The night attendant said, “I’ll take it, Mr. Mason,” and then in a low voice, “What was he? A process server?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I thought so. I tried to warn you but there was no way I could get out to head you off.”

  “It’s all right,” Mason said. “He was bound to get me sooner or later.”

  “Gosh, I’m sorry, Mr. Mason. But, I couldn’t leave the place, and anyway, he’d have become suspicious if—”

  The process server walked past them and started up the ramp.

  “Don’t be sore at me, Mr. Mason. I’m just doing a job.”

  “I’m not sore,” Mason told him, “but I wish you’d given me more notice.”

  “I didn’t have any more notice myself. Hamilton Burger, the district attorney, handed me that subpoena not over an hour ago and said, ‘Serve this tonight, and be damn certain you hand it to Mason personally.’ That’s all the notice I had.

  “Well, I’ll be shoving along. Glad you don’t have any hard feelings. Lots of ’em do. My partner had one to serve on… on another guy. I was glad I drew you. You’re a lawyer. You know how those things go. You ain’t going to get sore. It’s just part of my job.

  “Well, good night and thanks for being so decent, Mr. Mason.”

  The man walked up the ramp to the street.

  When he had gone the garage attendant said, “I was trying to think of some way I could tip you off, but I couldn’t figure anything that was worth a damn. He had a star as big as a dinner plate. If it hadn’t been for that I’d have socked him.”

  Mason said, “That’s all right, Mike. There was nothing you could do. Now I’m going to have to go out again.”

  Mason turned his car, drove slowly up the ramp to the street, then to a service station where he telephoned Paul Drake’s office.

  “Paul still there?” Mason asked the night switchboard operator when the call was put through.

  “Yes, he is, Mr. Mason. Shall I put you through?”

  “Please.”

  A moment later Drake came on the line and said, “I was just going to call you, Perry.”

  “What happened?”

  “That fellow Jordan L. Ballard I told you about.”

  “Oh yes,” Mason said. “I—” He caught himself abruptly.

  “You what?” Drake asked.

  “Tell me your news first,” Mason said.

  “The guy’s dead.”

  “What!” Mason exclaimed.

  “That’s right. If you haven’t talked with him you’re never going to talk with him now. It’s a shame, too, because he had some information that he gave the police and… well, hell, Perry, for all I know that; may have brought about the fatal result.”

  “What happened, Paul?”

  “It’s still happening. I can only give you the high spots. My contact down at police headquarters picked up the radio call and relayed it in.”

  “Okay, okay, give me what you have.”

  “Not too much. It seems that for some reason the district attorney’s office had the idea that Ballard might have some money he had received from Arlene Duvall. Evidently some sort of a tip went out, but no one knows where it came from.”

  “All right, what happened?”

  “Well the district attorney started serving subpoenas duces tecum on witnesses ordering them to appear before the grand jury and telling them to bring with them any money in the form of currency that they had received from Arlene Duvall.”

  “I’ll discuss that phase of the case with you later,” Mason said. “Right now give me the dope on Ballard. It may be very important.”

  “Well, this process server started out for Ballard’s house with a subpoena duces tecum. He got there and found the front door about half open. He rang the doorbell, got no answer, and then something made him suspicious. He went on in and found Ballard’s body lying sprawled on the kitchen floor. Apparently he’d been mixing a drink for some visitors at the time. There were three glasses, ice cubes and bottles on the kitchen sink. Apparently someone clouted him from behind. Then, after he fell over, the person made sure a very good job had been done by plunging a carving knife into Ballard’s body three or four times. He then went out and left the knife sticking in Ballard’s back.

  “Naturally police are swarming all over the place.”

  “Any fingerprints?” Mason asked.

  “Have a heart, Perry. The flash just came in this minute. I got what details are available. The police are out there working on the job now. Heaven knows what they’re finding or what they will find. Naturally they aren’t going to take me into their confidence. We can get some of the stuff from the newspapers, some of it from my contact at police headquarters, some of it we’ll have to guess at.

  “The reason I thought it would be important to you is that I felt the motive for his death might well be tied in with the information he had given the police—whatever It was about that Mercantile Security case.”

  “Thanks a lot, Paul,” Mason said. “Keep on the job. Find out everything you can about it. I’ll call you back in an hour.”

  Mason hung up, drove to a newspaper office and prevailed upon a friendly employee to open up the morgue of clippings and spent half an hour reading contemporary accounts of the theft of the big cash shipment from the Mercantile Security.

  At the end of that time he called Paul Drake again. “Anything new yet, Paul?”

  “Not much. Wait a minute, here’s a call coming in on the other line. Hold on a minute, Perry.”

  Mason hung on to the telephone for some three minutes, then heard Paul Drake’s voice again. “Hello, Perry. You on there?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I guess the fat’s in the fire.”

  “What happened?”

  “Your little girl friend is mixed in this thing up to her cute little eyebrows.”

  “All right, give.”

  “It’s a long story. I only have the high lights.”

  “Give me those high lights.”

  “Okay. I had two of my men out there at the golf club. One of them stayed with the car. The other one started to walk over to the service station on the boulevard to telephone in a report to me. He walked over the golf course for a short cut and while he was cutting across the edge of the fairway he noticed a figure ahead of him, running along rather lightly but covering territory. He decided he’d get up close and take a look without letting her know he was behind. It turned out to be Arlene Duvall.”

  “All alone?”

  “All alone. Apparently she’d managed somehow to ditch the police shadows.”

  “Okay, what happened?”

  “My man did some fast thinking. He followed Arlene Duvall out to the highway. That all-night service station on the boulevard is about a block from the golf club. She went there and made a telephone call.

  “My man went out in the street and tried to flag down a passing car. It was quite a job at that time of night because few of them wanted to stop, but finally one of them did. My man identified himself, showed his credentials and asked the driver if he wanted to make twenty bucks. The man said he did, so my operative told him to park at the curb and when Arlene left there to follow—it was that simple.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “First she got a taxi. That’s what she was phoning for.”

  “Then what?”

  “The taxi took her out to Ballard’s house.

  “Now when she arrived some other fellow was there. A car was parked in the driveway and my man heard voices, men’s voices. Arlene heard them, too. She didn’t want to go in.”

  “So what did she do?”

  “Evidently this upset her plans. She returned to the taxi and paid it off. Then she walked around to the back of the house and waited.

  “My man could see someone was in the living room. He got a glimpse of him but couldn’t recognize him. The guy went to the living-room window and lowered and raised the roller shade—evidently a signal to someone, the way it looks now. He pulled the shade down about two feet, then after four or five seconds, rolled it back.”

  “Your man get a good look at this fellow?” Mason asked, his voice carefully controlled so as to betray no emotion.

  “Apparently not. The drapes were drawn tight. This guy just popped through the drapes, let them fall back into position, signaled with the window shade and then popped back through the drapes.

  “Then, after only a few minutes the man came out, got in the parked car and drove away. My man had assumed all along that it was Ballard’s car because there was only one car, but apparently it was this other guy’s. That’s where my man fell down on the job, Perry. I’ve tried to din into their minds that they should never take anything for granted, but because this car was parked in the driveway, because there wasn’t any other car, he assumed it was Ballard’s car and didn’t take the license number.”

  “Go on,” Mason said.

  “Well, right after this man came out and drove away, Arlene went in.”

  “How did she go in?” Mason asked.

  “That’s it, Perry. That’s the bad part of it. She went in through a back window.”

  “The devil!”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then what?”

  “She was in there about five minutes and then she came out through the front door in a devil of a hurry. She was almost running. She didn’t close the door behind her.”

  “She was walking fast?”

  “Running would be more like it.”

  “Your man followed her?”

  “He followed her for about seven blocks. He should have left his car and followed her on foot, but you never know what to do in a situation like that. Well, somehow she got the idea she was being tailed and she ditched him.”

  “How did she do that?”

  “It’s easy enough at night if you know you’re being tailed and someone is following you in a car.”

  “Just what did she do?”

  “Simply walked up to one of the houses as though she was going to ring the front doorbell. But she didn’t ring the front doorbell. She didn’t go up to the front door at all. She abruptly circled around to the back of the house. When she got in the back yard she must have taken the alley and… well, no one knows where she went after that.”

  “Your man tried circling around?”

  “He tried every trick known to the trade. That’s why he was so late sending in his report. He didn’t want to leave the place. He spent five or ten minutes circling the block. Then he increased his circle and covered a group of six blocks.”

  “All without picking up a trail?”

  “Not a sign of a trail.”

  “No chance she actually went in a house somewhere, Paul?”

  “I don’t think so. My man says the house was dark and well, if she’d been going in she’d have gone to the front door. She started boldly right up the steps to the front porch, then suddenly circled and ran around to the back.”

  “Your man feels she knew she was being tailed?”

  “That’s right. The way she acted, the fact that she started to run when she started around to the back porch—it’s an old dodge, Perry, but there’s not much way of countering it.”

  Mason said, “I want to think this over, Paul. What’s your man’s name?”

  “Horace Mundy.”

  “Does he know me?”

  “I don’t think you’ve ever met him personally. He’s seen your picture, of course, and he knows that I’m working on this thing for you.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “Of course, he doesn’t know anything as yet about Ballard’s death, Perry, so he wasn’t in too big a hurry to phone in a report. He knew his partner would be worried—”

  “Never mind that. Where is he?”

  “Back at the service station on the boulevard by the golf club. Since he’d had this driver make a flat twenty-dollar rate, he had the driver take him back there so as to save taxi fare and then phoned in his report.”

  “Okay,” Mason said. “I’m going out there to talk with him.”

  “I’ll let him know you’re on your way over. Any instructions?”

  “Keep on the job, Paul.”

  “Okay. I’m sitting here swigging coffee and sweating it out.”

  “That’s fine. Keep an ear to the ground. Find out everything you possibly can on Ballard’s murder. No chance it could have been suicide?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “All right. Find out everything you can. I’ll call you after a while.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “I’m going out to see Mundy. I want to talk with him. One other thing,” Mason said, “what are the chances of getting Mundy to forget what he saw?”

  “I’ve been worrying about that, Perry.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought you might ask that.”

  “Well, what are the chances?”

  “Not good.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a license.”

  “Well?”

  “Remember,” Drake said, “Mundy was caught in a jam. He didn’t have a car. He needed one. He offered that motorist twenty bucks to pilot him around. The motorist was getting a great kick out of it, playing cops and robbers and having a wonderful time. Remember Mundy had identified himself. When Mundy let the guy go the motorist took the twenty bucks all right, but said he wouldn’t have missed the experience for anything.”

  “Of course,” Mason said, “the motorist doesn’t know Ballard is dead.”

  “So what? He’ll find it out. He’ll remember the address.”

  “I was thinking about the time element. Can you wait a day before you tell the police?”

  “Have a heart, Perry,” Drake said. “I’ll have to tell them at least as soon as the information about Ballard’s death is announced publicly.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Mason said, “you’re representing a client. You don’t have to tell the police all you know. You—”

  “This is a murder case,” Drake interposed, “and remember -that Mr. John Q. Citizen was dragged into it by my man. By tomorrow morning, after he’s read the newspapers, he’ll be singing like a skylark and if I haven’t chirped by that time they’ll go after my license.

  “It isn’t as though we could put this thing in our pocket, button the pocket and forget about it, Perry. It’s going to come out and I don’t dare wait until the police are told about it by someone else. As soon as there’s an official notification on Ballard I’ve got to be the one to call them.”

  “And give them Mundy’s name?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then they’ll interview Mundy.”

  “Of course.”

  “How much time do I have?” Mason asked.

  “I can’t guarantee more than an hour or two, Perry.”

  “Stick around,” Mason said. “I’ll call you back.”

  Chapter 5

  Perry Mason drove his car past the entrance to the Remuda Golf Club.

  The long, rambling clubhouse was illuminated by rather weak floodlights. Aside from those floodlights the club grounds were in darkness. The building on the hill seemed a moonlit mirage, floating on a cloud of darkness.

  At the boulevard was a lighted service station and along the boulevard there was still considerable traffic.

  Mason made the boulevard stop, turned to the right, and then swung his car into the back entrance of the service station, driving over by the water faucets and rest rooms.

  He turned off the headlights, switched on the dome light, lit a cigarette, then clicked off the dome light.

  A few moments later a man approached the car.

  “Your name Mason?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” Mason nodded.

  “I don’t think I’ve met you.”

  “Are you Paul Drake’s man?”

  The man didn’t answer the question immediately but said, “In this business we have to play them close to our chest.”

  Mason took out his wallet, presented the man with one of his business cards, showed him his driving license.

  “Okay,” the man said. “My name’s Mundy.”

  He took a leather folder from his pocket, presented his own credentials.

  “Want to get in?” Mason asked, opening the door.

  The detective slid into the car on the seat beside Mason.

  Mason said, “I may be rather short on time. Paul Drake gave me most of the details. I want to get a few more from you. Did you at any time see the person in the house so you could recognize him?”

  “You mean the man who was in there when Arlene Duvall’s cab drove up?”

  “That’s right.” Mundy shook his head. “I can describe him generally, and that’s all. I never did see his face.”

  “When did you see him?” Mason asked. “When he left the place?”

  “That’s right. When he went out the front door and got in his car. I saw him once before that.”

  “Where?”

  “He pulled back the drapes on the big window, then lowered the shade. You know what I mean—the roller curtain shade over the top of the window.”

  “Go on,” Mason said, his voice without expression.

  “Well, I don’t know what he was doing. He pulled the shade down—oh, maybe eighteen inches or two feet—and then stopped. I couldn’t figure what he had in mind. I thought perhaps he was going to pull the shade all the way down. But he didn’t. He stood there for a minute and then put the shade back up. It must have been some sort of a signal.”