“Don’t try to have this call traced.”

  “I won’t.”

  “It won’t do you any good if you do try.”

  “I tell you I won’t try.”

  “I want to talk with you. I must talk with you.”

  “Go ahead. You’re talking with me now,” Mason said.

  “Not this way. I want to be where our conversation can be absolutely confidential.”

  Mason said, “Do you want to come here?”

  “No. You’ll have to come to me.”

  “Where are you?”

  “You promise you won’t notify the police?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll come alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “How soon?”

  “As soon as I can make it. That’s on the understanding that you’re going to play absolutely fair with me and will make a frank statement.”

  She said, “Come to six-o-four East Hillgrade Avenue. Don’t park your car directly in front of the house. Leave it half a block down the hill. Don’t go to the front door. It will be locked, and I won’t answer the bell. Go around to the garage in the back of the house. Wait there until you see a light turned on in the house. When you see that light turned on, go in through the back door. It will be open and unlocked. Be certain you come alone and don’t try to tip the police off.”

  Mason said, “It will take me fifteen or twenty minutes to get there.”

  “That’s all right, only remember to do just as I told you.”

  Mason said, “That’s all very well, Mrs. Perlin, but I certainly can’t go chasing around at night simply on the strength of a telephone conversation with a woman who says she has something confidential to tell me.”

  “You understand who this is talking, don’t you?”

  “Mr. Hocksley’s housekeeper?”

  “Yes. I’m going to tell you the truth. I want someone in whom I can confide.”

  Mason, trying to draw her out, said, “That’s all rather vague, Mrs. Perlin.”

  She hesitated, then said slowly, “I shot him. I had a right to shoot him. I destroyed the body so it can never be found. And then I wondered if that was the wise thing to do. That made it look as though I were a criminal. That’s what I have to ask you about, whether I shouldn’t tell the whole truth. I was absolutely justified in what I did. No jury would ever convict me—not ever. Now, do you want to see me, or do I have to call some other lawyer?”

  “I want to see you,” Mason said. “You’re at that address on Hillgrade Avenue?”

  “I’ll meet you there—if you play fair. Otherwise you’ll never see me. Be sure you do just as I told you. Don’t come in as soon as you get there—and when you do come, come in through the back door. I have to do it that way so I can be certain you’re playing fair with me. You probably think I’m hard to get along with, but you’ll understand after I tell you the circumstances.”

  Mason said, “All right, I’ll be out,” and hung up the telephone.

  He looked at his watch to verify the time, then wrote the address 604 East Hillgrade Avenue on a sheet of paper, folded the paper, put it in an envelope, addressed the envelope to Lieutenant Tragg, sealed it, and placed it on the little table by the side of the bed, then he called the Drake Detective Agency. When he had Paul Drake on the line, he said, “Paul, I’m going places. It doesn’t sound any too good. There’s just a chance we’re dealing with a woman who is a homicidal paranoiac. In case you don’t hear from me within an hour, bust out to six-o-four East Hillgrade Avenue—and be damn sure you get in. Also be sure you have a gun in your hand when you go in, and you’d better have a couple of hard-boiled men with you.”

  “Why not let me pick up a couple of tough operatives and go out there with you, Perry?”

  “I don’t think it would do any good. She’s given me certain specific instructions. She’s evidently where she can check up on me to see if I’m following those instructions. I wouldn’t doubt if she’s planted right across the street waiting to see what I do.”

  “Okay, Perry, I’ll crash the joint in exactly one hour if I don’t hear from you.”

  Mason slid the receiver back into place, put on a light topcoat, pulled his hat down low over his eyes, and left his apartment. Walking to the garage where he kept his car, Mason was careful to avoid looking around, as though afraid someone might be shadowing him. He slid in behind the wheel of his car, warmed up the motor, nodded to the night attendant in the garage, and rolled out into the dark, all-but-deserted street.

  Following instructions to the letter, he left his car in the five-hundred block on Hillgrade Avenue and walked up the steep incline toward the intersection.

  Six hundred and four was the first house on the right, after he had passed the intersection. It was a typical Southern California bungalow, neat, cool, efficiently arranged, and without anything to differentiate it from thousands of other bungalows. The house seemed dark and deserted. Mason, however, had expected this. If Mrs. Perlin had decided to follow him, to make certain he wasn’t leading police to the place, it would normally take her some little time, after she had satisfied herself, to enter the house and turn on the lights. It was quite possible she’d deliberately keep him waiting. The fact that she had instructed him to wait until he saw the light and then go in through the back door convinced him that the woman herself would slip in through the front door, divest herself of hat and coat, and subsequently claim she had been in the house all the time.

  Mason, keeping to the shadows, moved around toward the garage at the back of the house. A moon in the last quarter furnished a faint yellowish light which enabled him to find his way down the side street and into the driveway which led to the garage. Beneath the deep shadows of a spreading pepper tree, the lawyer found an empty box which he improvised as a chair, and waited.

  He watched for a light to come on in the house. The luminous hands of Mason’s watch ticked through an interval of minutes without anything happening—fifteen minutes—twenty minutes.

  Mason moved restlessly. He’d have to reach Paul Drake soon or there would be complications.

  Mason eased himself off the box, tiptoed toward the house. A vague, disquieting thought intruded itself upon his mind. If this should be some elaborate hoax, some runaround by which Mason was to be placed on a spot, what could put him in a more embarrassing position than to be caught prowling around the back yard of a house at nearly two o’clock in the morning. After all, he’d been unusually credulous, too credulous in fact. It had been because of some quality in that voice, as well as because he’d been aroused out of sound slumber. Her voice had held a note of well-modulated poise which had, somehow, impressed Mason with its sincerity.

  He looked at his watch again and reluctantly determined he’d have to go telephone Paul Drake, and call off his vigil. Quite evidently, she had anticipated he might do something like that, and had determined to keep him waiting until. . .

  A light was switched on in the house.

  Mason could see the beam pouring through an unshaded window. It splashed across a strip of lawn, and against an ornamental hedge. At the same time, Mason became acutely conscious that this all might be some clever trap. A voice on the telephone—Mason sent to the back yard of a strange house. Then they had only to put through a telephone call to the occupant of that house. When he switched on the light to answer the phone, Mason would come up to try the back door. Anyone would be legally justified in shooting him as a burglar.

  There was a vast difference between making a rendezvous over the phone with a reassuringly calm voice and actually waiting in the midnight chill of a strange back yard.

  Mason decided to let the back door determine the issue. If it turned out to be unlocked, he would go in, come what may. Otherwise, he’d return home and say nothing.

  He tiptoed up the walk, paused for a moment as he encountered the back steps, then felt his way up, opened a screen door, winced inwardly at the creak of a rusty spring, stepped across a linoleum-covered surface, and tentatively tried the knob of the back door.

  It opened readily enough.

  Mason gently pushed the door. He could see the faint gleam of a reflected light trickling through from some room down a corridor. He took a cautious step forward—and the light was suddenly switched off, leaving the entire interior of the house in darkness. His eyes accustomed by now to this darkness, Mason could find no clue to indicate in which room the light had been turned on and then off again.

  Standing in the midst of a darkness which had suddenly become a baffling barrier to further progress, smelling those peculiar homey smells which invariably attach themselves to a kitchen, Mason waited for some development that would give him a cue on which to proceed.

  Abruptly the break he had been waiting for came. He heard the gasping intake of a sobbing breath, then the sound of light feet coming groping down a corridor. The steps were coming toward him. From the kitchen there might be a swinging door. . . .

  He heard hinges creak cautiously. A door was pushed back. For a fleeting instant, he had the feeling that someone was standing on the threshold of a swinging door, listening. Then the door swung back, and Mason realized someone was groping toward him, looking either for him or for the back door.

  Mason moved back a cautious step, his left hand groping for the light switch which he realized must be on the wall in the vicinity of the back door. The person in the room was groping blindly. Mason heard this person stumble against a table, and took advantage of the noise to turn toward the back door so he could see more clearly the location of his objective. His foot kicked a chair. He heard a quick startled intake of breath, then a woman’s voice saying quickly, “Who’s there? Who is it? Speak up or I’ll shoot.”

  Mason said, “I’ve come to keep my appointment.”

  He realized then that she was no longer coming toward him, but was backing away under cover of the darkness, moving quickly, trying not to make any noise, yet he could distinctly hear the sound of groping motion. His fingers, sliding along the wall, found the buttom of the light switch. He pushed it.

  It was a light on the screened porch, but the illumination from it, seeping through the open door and into the kitchen, gave sufficient light so that they could see each other.

  She was evidently young. Her body held the lithe lines of resilient youth. It was impossible to see the expression on her face, but he could see the arm which was stretched out in front, and the ominous glint of metal in the hand, which was extended toward him.

  Mason said, “Don’t be foolish. Put down the gun.”

  The hand didn’t so much as waver. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

  “I’m here to keep an appointment.”

  “With whom?”

  “With the woman who made it. Are you she?”

  “I most certainly am not. Stand to one side and let me out.”

  “You don’t live here?”

  She hesitated a moment, then said, “No.”

  Mason stood to one side. “Go ahead,” he said.

  She came toward him cautiously. Light coming through the doorway struck her face. He could see deep brown eyes, a rather short, pert nose, light golden hair which fluffed out from under the rolled-up brim of a small hat perched jauntily on one side of her head. She was rather tall, and her short skirt disclosed legs which had a long graceful sweep from knee to ankle.

  “Just keep back out of the way,” she warned, holding the gun on him as she came forward.

  “Why the artillery?” Mason asked, trying to trap her into conversation.

  She did not deign to answer his question, simply kept moving forward with that slow, wary approach as though she were stalking him.

  “Don’t get nervous and pull the trigger on that gun,” Mason said apprehensively.

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Then look out for that chair in front of you,” he warned. “You’ll hit that, the gun will go off, and . . .”

  She turned her head slightly in the direction indicated, and Mason’s long arms shot out. His left hand clamped down over her right wrist. He felt her muscles bunch into tension. His fingers squeezed the strength out of her wrist. When he felt her fingers grow limp, he took the revolver from her hand, and slipped it into the side pocket of his coat.

  The realization that she was disarmed gave her the strength of panic. She jerked her arm, trying to free her hand. When Mason held tight, she raised her right leg high, and kicked out at him hard, driving the heel of her shoe toward the pit of his stomach.

  Mason swung to one side, jerking on her wrist as he moved. He threw her off balance and toward him. Then as she lowered her leg to keep from falling, Mason grabbed her around the waist with his left hand, circled her shoulders with his right, pinning her arms to her sides. “Now let’s be sensible,” he said.

  He could feel the resistance drain out of her. The slender body crushed up against his grew limp.

  “No kicking now,” Mason warned, and relaxed his grip·

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “My name’s Mason. I’m a lawyer. You didn’t telephone me?”

  “You’re—you’re Perry Mason?”

  “Yes.”

  She clung to his arm. There was something of desperation in that grip. He could feel the tremor of tortured nerves in the tips of her fingers. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “You’re the one who telephoned for me?” Mason asked.

  “No.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I . . . I came here—to meet someone.”

  “Whom?”

  “It doesn’t make any difference. I think now it was a trap. I want to get out. Can’t we leave here?”

  Mason said, “I was to meet someone here. Suppose you tell me who you are?”

  “I’m Opal Sunley—the one who called the police yesterday morning.”

  “Whom were you going to meet here?”

  “Mrs. Perlin.”

  “So was I,” Mason said. “Suppose we wait together? I think perhaps she wanted to see us both together. She told me she was going to make a confession.”

  “She won’t make it now,” the girl said.

  “Why not?”

  Mason could feel her trembling. It was more than mere nervousness. It was trembling of one who’s in the grip of a fear which threatens momentarily to become blind panic.

  “Go on,” Mason said. “Where is she?”

  The girl’s fingers were digging into his arm. “She’s—she’s in the bedroom. She’s dead.”

  Mason said, “Let’s look.”

  “No, no! You go alone!”

  “I’m not leaving you at the moment. You’ll have to come along.”

  “I can’t. I can’t face it. I can’t go back there!”

  Mason slid his arm around her waist. “Come on,” he said. “Buck up. It’s something you’ve got to do. The quicker you start, the easier it will be.”

  He accompanied his words with a gentle pressure, urging her toward the door at the other end of the kitchen. He opened this door, and struck a match. The flickering flame showed him a light switch. He pushed it. The room blazed with a light which seemed dazzling. The furniture was of that nondescript variety which robbed the room of personality. He knew then that this was merely a house, cheaply furnished, and rented furnished.

  “Where is she?” Mason asked.

  “Down . . . the corridor.”

  The dining room had two doors. One of them opened into a corridor, the other into a living room. The corridor then ran the length of the house to broaden into a reception room by the front door. Mason switched on a light in the hallway. On the right were two doors which apparently led to bedrooms with a bath in between. Mason moved cautiously along this hallway.

  “Which bedroom?” he asked.

  “The front.”

  Mason kept gently urging her forward. He opened the door of the bedroom, pushed a light switch, and paused, surveying the interior. Opal Sunley jerked back away from the door.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t! I won’t! Don’t try to make me!”

  “Okay,” Mason said, “take it easy.”

  The woman who lay sprawled on the floor in front of the dressing table had quite evidently fallen from the padded bench. She was dressed for the street, even to her hat, which had been pushed to one side of her head when she fell. She was lying on her left side, her left arm stretching out, her left hand clutching at the carpet. The fingers were short, stubby, and competent. The nails were close-cut, uncolored. The right arm lay across the body. The fingers of the right hand still clutched the handle of a grim snub-nosed revolver. She had evidently been shot once, just slightly to one side of the left breast.

  Mason walked across the room, bent over, and placed his forefinger on the woman’s left wrist.

  The young woman in the doorway stood staring as though torn between a desire to run screaming from the house, and an urge to see every move that was made.

  Mason straightened from his examination. “All right,” he said, “we’ll have to notify the police.”

  “No, no, no!” she cried. “You mustn’t! You can’t!”

  “Why not?”

  “It. . . They wouldn’t understand. It. . .”

  “Wouldn’t understand what?”

  “How I happened to be here.”

  “How did you happen to be here?”

  “She telephoned me, and told me to come.”

  “She telephoned me, and told me to come,” Mason said.

  “She—she said she had something she wanted to confess.”

  “When did she telephone you?” Mason asked.

  “About an hour ago. Perhaps not quite that long.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Told me to come to the front door, walk in, switch on the lights, and wait for her in case she wasn’t here.”

  “Did she say where she was, or what she was doing?”

  “She was keeping an eye on someone. I didn’t get all there was to it. She didn’t talk with me herself.”

  “She didn’t?”

  “No. . . . Let’s get out of here. I can’t talk here. I can’t. . .”

  “Wait a minute,” Mason said. “Do you know this person?”