“Of course, now I realize why she adopted that position.”

  “Why?” Mason asked.

  “Because she’s changed her appearance so much she’s become really beautiful, the way she was when Mr. Theilman first married her. Heaven knows what sacrifices she’s made in the way of diet, exercise and how much she spent for beauty treatments, but she looks fifteen years younger and—well, you saw her figure. You’d never have believed that—Well, I think she must have weighed a good hundred and sixty pounds—and of course she’s done things to her hair and—”

  “Never mind all that,” Mason said. “I want to know what happened after you telephoned me this morning.”

  “Mr. Theilman telephoned me.”

  “Telephoned you?”

  “When?”

  “Right after I telephoned you, almost as soon as I had hung up the phone.”

  “And what did he want?”

  “He wanted me to go to a beauty parlor, get some money from the safe, go to Las Vegas, meet Carlotta Theilman and wait for him.”

  “And where was he when he phoned?”

  “At Palmdale subdivision—about twenty-seven miles out of Bakersfield.”

  “What’s at Palmdale subdivision?”

  “A subdivision that went broke. He and Troy picked it up for a song.”

  “It’s property they are subdividing?”

  “Well, it’s a long story. There had been a subdivision there and the subdivision had gone kaput. Mr. Theilman bought it for a song and he feels that it’s going to be immensely valuable in a few years. The only trouble is they started the subdivision too soon.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “tell me some more about why you’re here.”

  “Mr. Theilman told me that he wanted to keep entirely out of sight. He said that he must have Carlotta’s proxy—I call her Carlotta. I shouldn’t. It’s Mrs. Carlotta Theilman, the first—”

  “Never mind the protocol,” Mason said. “She’s waiting and I’m waiting. Call her Carlotta or anything else, but tell me what happened.”

  “Well, he told me to come here and meet Carlotta. He said he was going to have to see her personally and that his wife wouldn’t like that. He said I had to help him, keep the secret and be prepared to swear I was with Carlotta all the time if it ever leaked out.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I asked him where he’d been and told him his wife was frantic. That seemed to puzzle him. He said that she shouldn’t be, that he’d made arrangements to let her know he was going to be gone for a few days on a business trip. He said he’d phone her later on, but in the meantime I wasn’t to tell anyone I’d heard from him.

  “He told me to go to the cash drawer in the safe and take enough money for expenses. He said I was to get myself dolled up and get up here to Las Vegas and meet Carlotta when she came in on the eleven-twenty train; that I was to tell her that he was going to come up here and join her, but I was to stay with her all the time.

  “While he didn’t say so in so many words, I knew he wanted to fix things so if the present Mrs. Theilman learned about it, he could show that the whole thing was a business matter.

  “On the other hand, I can see I’m going to have troubles because I see what that woman’s trying to do now. She’s made herself attractive and she’s preparing now to go into competition with the present Mrs. Theilman … Oh, Mr. Mason, it’s such a mixed-up business and I do so hope I can do the job right.”

  “You got yourself all prettied up for the occasion,” Mason said.

  “Yes, that was—Well, Mr. Theilman told me to and—Gosh, Mr. Mason, I get so tired of going around looking just plain efficient and, well, plain efficient. I—”

  “I know what you mean,” Mason said. “How often do you break away and get yourself glamoured up?”

  “This is the first time in two years that I’ve really gone all the way.”

  “Has Mr. Theilman ever seen you like this?”

  “Yes … of course … That’s why he told me to get myself prettied up and make myself as glamorous as possible.”

  Mason looked at her with exasperation. “Why do you insist on making yourself look so drab?”

  “I thought … I felt—That is, I think it’s expedient under the circumstances.”

  Mason said, “All right. We’ll get the rest of the explanation afterwards. I’ve been put to more trouble over your intrigue and lack of frankness … Why didn’t you telephone me and tell me you’d heard from Mr. Theilman and everything was all right?”

  “I was told not to tell a soul, Mr. Mason. I told Mr. Theilman about having been to see you. I confessed the whole thing and I told him that you were so nice to me, that you’d only taken a dollar and—Well, Mr. Theilman said to take two hundred and fifty dollars and told me to give that to you, and to tell you to send a bill to him for any expenses that you’d been to.

  “Here.” Janice Wainwright opened her purse, took out a roll of bills around which an elastic had been fastened, thrust it into Mason’s hands, said, “I hope you’ll forgive me, Mr. Mason.”

  Mason turned to Della Street, grinned and said, “I guess the one I have to forgive is myself. My damned curiosity … All right, you go pick up Mrs. Theilman at the casino and have a good time … Now, you told Mr. Theilman that his wife was worried about him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said he couldn’t understand it because he’d arranged for her to have a message that he was going to be away for several days on a business deal. He seemed very much concerned about that. He promised me that he’d get in touch with her very shortly, and I assume that he did so.”

  “Is there a phone up there in that subdivision, the place you refer to as the Palmdale subdivision?”

  “No, not right there. The nearest one is at a service station about two miles down the road.”

  Mason said, “Well, you go ahead and—”

  A dry, husky voice from behind Mason’s shoulder said, “Of course I don’t like to interrupt, but if you’re entirely finished, Mr. Mason, I—”

  Mason whirled. “Lieutenant Tragg!” he exclaimed.

  Tragg smiled and raised his hat to Della Street. “How do you do, Della?”

  Janice Wainwright looked from one to the other.

  “Lieutenant Tragg, Los Angeles Homicide,” Mason said. “What are you doing here?”

  Tragg smiled and said, “Permit me to introduce my companion, Lieutenant Sophia, of the Las Vegas police force.

  “And now, answering your question, Mr. Mason, I am here to interrogate Janice Wainwright in connection with the murder of her employer, Morley L. Theilman.”

  Chapter Ten

  Janice Wainwright swayed slightly; her face grew white with emotion.

  “Mr. Theilman … dead!”

  “Murdered,” Lt. Tragg supplemented.

  “Why, he couldn’t be. He was alive and well when I—”

  “Just a minute, Janice,” Mason cut in. “Until we know more of the peculiar circumstances in this case, in view of what has happened, I don’t want you to make any statement whatever. No statement at all, do you understand?”

  “I don’t know whether she understands or not,” Lt. Sophia said, “but we understand. You’re not in your own bailiwick now, Mr. Mason. You’re in the State of Nevada. You’re not an attorney here and you’re not admitted to practice before the Nevada courts. You just keep out of it.”

  The police officer interposed his shoulder between Mason and Janice Wainwright.

  “Don’t answer any questions,” Mason said. “Don’t—”

  Lt. Sophia’s shoulder pushed into Mason’s chest. The officer grabbed Janice Wainwright’s arm. “Come on, Janice,” he said. “You’re going places.”

  Lt. Tragg said, “Sorry, Perry, but that’s the way it is,” and the two officers hurried Janice Wainwright out of the door of the depot and into a waiting police car.

  Outside the depot the train rumbled noisily as the pullmans started gathering speed.

  Della Street looked at Perry Mason with dismay on her face.

  “Well,” Mason said, “now we’ll go down to the casino and break the news to Mrs. Carlotta Theilman.”

  “Provided,” Della Street reminded him, “she doesn’t have a good-looking man in tow … Gosh, Chief, what does this mean?”

  “It means,” Mason said, “that Janice Wainwright has been put into a virtually indefensible position, unless we can get busy and find some means of corroborating her story.

  “I’m going down to the casino. You get on that telephone, call Paul Drake and tell him to find out everything he can about Theilman’s murder—when the body was discovered, where it was discovered and all about it. I’m going down and see what I can find out from Mrs. Carlotta Theilman before the officers know she’s in town.”

  Mason left the depot, hurried down the street to the Double Take Casino.

  The lawyer opened the door and went in. His ears were assailed by the sound of hundreds of slot machines grinding away, and occasionally a voice saying, “Number seventeen just hit the jackpot! Number seventeen, another jackpot!”

  There would be an interlude of a few seconds, then the voice would drone out, “Another jackpot. This one for a hundred and twenty-five dollars on a double. Another jackpot on seventy-four and seventy-five.”

  Mason looked around the place and, after covering the slot machines, moved over to the roulette tables, walked around as quietly and as inconspicuously as possible.

  After the lawyer had been there some five minutes, Della Street joined him. “Get Paul all right?” Mason asked.

  “Yes. It was news to him. He’s putting out men on the job. They’ve evidently kept it pretty quiet, or else the murder has just been discovered … Where’s Carlotta?”

  “I don’t see her,” Mason said. “She’s apparently not in here.”

  They walked around, looking the place over. Mason approached a guard, said, “I’m looking for a woman who came in here about ten minutes ago, maybe twenty minutes ago. She’s thirty-five, perhaps, but looks to be about thirty. She—”

  The guard said, “All women who are thirty-five look to be about thirty in this joint.”

  Mason grinned.

  Della Street said, “She was all in red and was carrying a fur scarf over her arm. She had a very good figure—like this.” Della gestured.

  The guard said, “Oh, that woman! She came in here, played the nickel slot machine, hit a twenty-dollar jackpot on the third play, was paid off, and then a police officer stepped in, asked her if she’d mind going with him—and that’s it, she went.”

  Mason thanked the guard and he and Della Street walked out to the pavement.

  “Now what?” Della Street asked.

  “As the officer so aptly pointed out,” Mason said, “technically I am not an attorney in the State of Nevada. I have not been admitted to practice here.”

  “And so,” Della asked, “we do what?”

  “We get a local attorney out of bed,” Mason said, “and get her on the job. I know a woman attorney here who has more on the ball than most of the men I know of. She’s sheer dynamite and she has enough sex appeal so that she can put her stuff across with the police where a man would fall on his face. Let me call her.”

  “You certainly do have a wide circle of feminine acquaintances,” Della Street said. “Is this woman hard to describe?”

  “This woman,” Mason said, “isn’t hard to describe, Della. She’s beautiful and she’s dynamite.”

  Mason vanished into a phone booth, emerged some three minutes later and said, “I’m to call back in ten minutes. She’ll find out what’s what.”

  Under those circumstances,” Della Street said, “it might be advisable for us to tempt the goddess of fortune. We certainly wouldn’t want to have it said we came to Las Vegas, Nevada, without staking something on the wheel of chance.”

  “Let us stake,” Mason said. “Here’s a silver-dollar machine that looks very hospitable, Della. Let me show you.”

  The lawyer put in a dollar, pulled the lever down, and the machine promptly clicked out sixteen silver dollars.

  “You see?” Mason said. “It’s that easy.”

  “My, my,” Della Street said, “how long has this been going on? To think that I am wasting my time in a law office.”

  Mason, holding the silver dollars in his hand, played twice more on a slot machine, then moved over to the roulette table, dropped all but the last of his dollars unsuccessfully, then a bet on number twenty-seven paid off. As Mason was raking in the money, he looked up to see Della Street looking over his shoulder.

  “Is this your lucky day?” she asked.

  Mason grinned, slipped the silver dollars into his pocket, said, “I’ll tell you in a few seconds, Della.” The lawyer vanished into the phone booth, came out and shook his head. “This is not our lucky day,” he said.

  “You mean she’s talked?”

  “I don’t know,” Mason said, “but they’ve played it smart. They got her to sign a waiver of extradition and sirened their way out to the airport. Probably just about this time they’re taking off on an airplane, where Lieutenant Sophia, Lieutenant Tragg and our client are having a nice tete-a-tete.”

  “And Carlotta Theilman?” Della Street asked.

  “Carlotta,” Mason said, “by this time has undoubtedly told the police everything she knows.”

  “Well,” Della Street said, “I guess that means we return to the airport and our chartered plane.”

  “We’ve done all the good we can do here,” Mason said. And then, after a moment, added, “And just about all the damage.”

  The lawyer hailed a taxicab. “The airport,” he said. Then, feeling his pockets, laughed and said, “Any objection to taking your pay in silver dollars?”

  “Up here,” the cabdriver said, “I’ll take my pay in anything except promissory notes. I’d even take your I.O.U. You don’t remember me. I took you from the airport to the depot. You gave me a twenty then. That establishes a good line of credit as far as you’re concerned.”

  “Which reminds me you have a fee in your pocket,” Della Street said.

  “That’s right,” Mason observed, taking the roll of bills from his coat pocket and unsnapping the elastic. “I believe I should turn this over to the bookkeeping department. It can be entered on the credit side of the ledger along with the one dollar we received for retainer.

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars,” Mason counted. “Twelve twenties and a ten.”

  Mason put the currency back in his pocket, said to the cabdriver, “Say, do you know where Police Headquarters are here?”

  “Sure,” the driver said.

  “All right,” Mason said, “never mind the airport, drive down to Police Headquarters. Get a place where you can see the entrance, park the car and wait.”

  Della Street glanced inquiringly at Mason, then settled back against the cushions.

  The cabdriver turned around inquiringly. “All right for me to ask what business you have at Police Headquarters?”

  “I’m a lawyer,” Mason said. “I want to interview a witness.”

  “Oh, that’s different. Just wanted to know,” the driver said. After a few minutes the driver slid the cab in against the curb. “How’s this?” he asked.

  “This is okay,” Mason said. “Shut off the motor and wait.”

  They waited for twenty minutes before Carlotta Theilman emerged from the police station. An officer looked up and down the street.

  “All right,” Mason said to the cabdriver, “put on your lights, slide up to the entrance as though you’re vacant.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then leave it to me,” Mason said.

  The cabdriver started the motor, slid up to the entrance to the police station. Mrs. Theilman, seeing the cab coming, turned and gave her hand to the officer who had escorted her to the door.

  The officer smiled and stepped back inside.

  The cab came to a halt. Mrs. Theilman stepped forward.

  Mason opened the door and raised his hat. “Permit me, Mrs. Theilman,” he said. “Right inside.”

  For a moment she drew back, then laughed and said, “My, you startled me, Mr. Mason. You—Were you waiting here?”

  “Just driving by,” Mason said breezily. “Get in.”

  The officer who had stepped inside the station looked back just as Mason finished assisting Mrs. Theilman into the cab. The officer opened the door and started for the cab.

  Mason slammed the cab door, said to the driver, “Step on it, buddy. Straight down the street.”

  A few blocks farther down the street Mason said, “Stop at the first motel that has a vacancy sign.”

  The lawyer turned to Mrs. Theilman. “I don’t want to intrude on your feelings at this time, Mrs. Theilman, but there are some things I must know.”

  She said, “People have been intruding on my feelings for the last four years, Mr. Mason. Sometimes I don’t think I have any feelings left. I guess tonight is the finish. I’m just numb, that’s all.”

  The cabdriver said, “Here’s a motel.”

  “Fine,” Mason said, “turn in here.”

  The lawyer said to Della Street, “Explain the circumstances at the desk. Give them some money, whatever is necessary.”

  The lawyer handed the cabdriver fifteen silver dollars. “Will this cover it this far?” he asked.

  The cabdriver grinned and touched his cap.

  “All right,” Mason said, “we’re square this far, now just put it on waiting time.”

  A few moments later, when they were ensconced in the comfortable parlor room of a suite, Mason said, “Would you mind telling us just what happened, Mrs. Theilman?”

  “Beginning when?”

  “Quite a ways back,” Mason said.

  “Well,” Carlotta said, “I don’t care particularly about talking about the breakup of my marriage. It’s simply that I was such a fool. I don’t know why a woman will let her man go under circumstances of that sort. I guess one’s pride gets hurt first. I know in my case I was hurt because I couldn’t compete.