Lorraine Ferrell had been stretched out on a couch at the far side of the room. She was throwing back a light blanket as Mason entered.

  “Good morning, Mrs Ferrell,” Mason said.

  She gave him a generous glimpse of flashing legs as she threw back the blanket and swung around to a sitting position. Then she pulled her skirts down, smiled up at him and said, “It’s nice of you to come. I was trying to relax a bit and compose myself. Where’s the watchman?”

  Mason turned to look over his shoulder.

  “Just getting in the elevator,” he said.

  “That’s fine. Close the door. Come over here and sit down in that chair by the head of the couch.”

  She seemed perfectly at ease, thoroughly composed. Mason closed the door, walked over to the comfortable chair she had indicated.

  “These modern executives are rather good to themselves,” she said. “I found the blanket in a drawer in the coat closet there. I believe my husband was accustomed to a snug little siesta after lunch. I always knew that he wasn’t available on the telephone until after three o’clock.”

  Mason managed a somewhat noncommittal smile.

  She was studying him while she was talking, appraising him carefully.

  Mason, in turn, swept her with his lawyer-wise eyes, taking in the neat clothes, the large, expressive eyes, the full lips, the sweep of her neck and throat.

  Abruptly, she said, “How much of a hypocrite do I have to be with you, Mr Mason?”

  “Why not be yourself?”

  She laughed nervously. “You swept me with that one gaze and then turned your eyes away, as though you had me catalogued.”

  “A habit,” Mason said, smiling, and reaching for his cigarette case.

  “What’s a habit?”

  “That brief glance. Clients don’t like to be stared at and witnesses are sometimes disconcerted by a steady, direct gaze.”

  “Don’t you like to disconcert witnesses?”

  “Only hostile witnesses, and then only in court.”

  “I take it I’m not to be a hostile witness.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Can you size up people in a quick glance like that?”

  Mason said, “One can try.”

  “Successfully?”

  “It depends. A lawyer who does much trial work has to make snap judgments. The clerk calls out the name of a prospective juror. That person gets up front his seat in the courtroom, walks up to take his place in the jury box. You have an opportunity to watch him for six or seven seconds. In those six or seven seconds you have to reach a snap judgment as to his character, how he’s apt to react to testimony and argument, what kind of a person he is, whether he’s broad-minded or liberal-minded, whether he’s bigoted, good-natured or antagonistic.

  “Of course, you have an opportunity to supplement that first impression by asking him a few questions, but as a rule a man has steeled himself by the time you start questioning him so his appearance is more or less of a mask. He’s trying to convince you that he’s intelligent and important. He knows that he’s in the limelight and he has that natural tendency to put his best foot forward. He’s trying to convince himself he’s something of a judge. Your best opportunity to size him up is as he walks up to the jury box.”

  She laughed easily. “Do you want me to walk?”

  Mason suddenly turned and let his eyes lock with hers.

  “Yes.”

  Apparently his monosyllabic answer somewhat disconcerted her. Then she tossed her chin up, smiled, arose from the couch and walked the length of the office, away from Mason. Her walk indicated that she was conscious of her figure, of her hips. Abruptly she turned, smiled at Mason, walked slowly toward him and sat down again.

  She said, “My husband bored me to distraction.”

  “I gathered as much.”

  “I’m sorry that he had to go in such a mysterious and messy manner. As far as the conventions are concerned, I’ll show the proper grief. Actually, I feel as though a load had been lifted from my shoulders. Is that wicked?”

  “Do you really feel that way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s much better to be frank – with me.”

  “I thought it would be.”

  “You were in love with your husband when you married him?”

  She said, “Mr Mason, I made the greatest mistake a woman can ever make. I married for money. I suppose if I’d been less – well, shall we say, less desirable – it might have been all right. But I had a good many people to choose from. I don’t think I was really deeply in love with any of them, but one or two made quite an impression on me. Unfortunately, none of them had any money.

  “Edgar Ferrell went about his courtship in a calm, methodical manner. There were times when he bored me terribly, but he was fair and frank. He told me that he would give me a generous allowance. He did. That was all, just an allowance, respectability and boredom.

  “At the time, I had no realization of how utterly, terribly boring it would be. I wouldn’t have minded if we’d fought bitterly. If he’d tried to beat me up, I might have loved him or else hated him enough to have carved his heart out. But he did neither. It was simply that steady, plodding, stolid respectability that got on my nerves so I wanted to scream.

  “And then, to make matters worse, some of the other suitors who had appealed to me emotionally, but who didn’t have any money, proceeded to go out in the business world and pile up some dough.”

  “Why didn’t you divorce him?”

  “In the first place, I didn’t have any grounds. In the second place, if I’d tried to divorce him without grounds, I’d have had a property settlement that wouldn’t have been at all satisfactory. And all the time, in his heavy, cumbersome way, he was trying to play around.

  “Good Lord, Mr Mason, if I’d only known. If I’d thought he had enough zest for life to be cheating a little bit, I probably could have whipped myself up to the point of finding something more romantic in him. But he was just a stolid, steady, dependable husband, not too bright, with absolutely no imagination, a ponderous dignity, a complete lack of humour, no spontaneity.”

  “And so,” Mason said, “being bored it was only natural for you to start playing around a little.”

  She stiffened suddenly. It might have been indignation, it might have been that she was putting herself on guard.

  “Didn’t you?” Mason asked casually, lighting a cigarette.

  “No,” she said. “I’d made my bed. I was lying in it, and in no other.”

  “Tempted?” Mason asked.

  “Of course I was tempted. Good Lord, I’m only human. I want romance. I want to be propositioned by people who say witty things, who go about it in a clever, dashing, romantic manner. I hate the humdrum, boring routine of married life, where a husband insists on taking his wife for granted. My husband had the mind of an accountant … Lord, how I’d like to talk with that ‘other woman’ who was to have shared his country estate. I wonder if my husband tried to gambol about as a lightheaded Lothario or whether the romantic approach was as sordidly commercial as his ‘courtship’ of me.”

  “Do you want a cigarette?” Mason asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then Lorraine Ferrell said, “Yes, as a wife I was true to Edgar Ferrell. As a widow I’m going to be true to myself.”

  “Thinking of marrying again?” Mason asked.

  “Definitely not. For your private information, Mr Mason, I have had a very large dose of matrimony. I can get along without it for a while. I have money – that is, I will have money. I’ll have freedom and independence. I want to cultivate witty, articulate people. I intend to travel and – well, to be frank, I intend to arouse the instinct of pursuit in the predatory male. Then I intend to perch myself on a lofty stool and look down with amused tolerance at anyone who makes a pass at me.

  “And, if I may mix a few metaphors, when some appealing knight comes tearing along on a beautiful white charger and wants to take me up in his arms and carry me off, I’m not going to resist too much if I don’t feel like it.”

  There was a dreamy expression on her face. Her eyes, raised above Mason’s head, contemplated the ceiling with a certain pleased anticipation, as though she were looking forward to the experiences she was describing. For the moment, she might have been talking to herself, utterly oblivious of the lawyer’s presence.

  “But,” she went on, “I’m not going to marry him, unless he has a certain quality that – well, it’s hard to describe, but I’ve found out that the big vice of all men is that when they know they can have a woman, they take her for granted. The man who can continue to court a woman after he’s once possessed her is a very, very rare individual. He is priceless.”

  “Perhaps you won’t ever find one,” Mason said.

  “Then I’ll have more fun searching in vain then marrying one of the wrong sort.”

  “Youth and beauty are transient.”

  “All the more reason to enjoy them fully while you have them. They’re no less transient when united in the holy bonds of wedlock. How did the conversation get off on this channel?”

  “I was merely asking questions.”

  “Very personal and direct questions.”

  “It’s something of a personal and direct matter.”

  “All right, let’s talk about the murder for a while.”

  “It wasn’t suicide?” Mason asked.

  “Apparently not. It was murder. Police have reconstructed the crime. There was no electricity in the farmhouse. Edgar used oil lights on the lower floor. He had a gasoline lantern he used to give him light when he went to the upper floor.

  “He had just filled the lantern. He went upstairs to a bedroom where he’d left his suitcases. The shades were drawn on the lower floor but there were no shades on the bedroom windows.

  “He entered that room with the lantern. Someone who had been waiting down by an automobile took careful aim with a .38 calibre revolver and shot him. Reconstructing the line of the shot from the hole in the glass and the height Edgar’s head must have been above the floor, police have the exact line of the shot and the place where the murderer stood, right by automobile tracks which had been left in mud. And it hasn’t rained since Monday night.”

  “Did the gasoline lantern burn out?” Mason asked.

  She frowned. “No, it must have been turned out. It was nearly full. But that’s the only way it could have happened, the killing, I mean. The murderer couldn’t have seen into that room either day or night unless Edgar had been standing there with the lantern lit.”

  “You had no idea your husband had this country place?”

  “No idea in the world. When I heard about it, I was absolutely, utterly incredulous. It simply shows that even such a confirmed stickin-the-mud as Edgar Ferrell has latent masculine instincts.”

  “You think it was a love nest?”

  She looked at him and laughed.

  “Any proof?” Mason asked.

  “The police are getting proof. They’ve found fingerprints, apparently a woman’s prints, all over the place.”

  “Have you any idea who the woman was?”

  She shook her head. “It’s absolutely beyond me. I have an idea, however, it’s some employee in the store. I told the police if they’d take the fingerprints of every one of the employees, I felt certain they’d find the person they want …”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because I know Edgar. Edgar wouldn’t have known how to go about playing around. He wouldn’t have had the initiative or the verve. He’d have been as awkward as an old spavined horse trying to gambol around in pasture, come springtime. It must have been some babe here in the store who had an opportunity to make the grade by slipping past the fire lines when no one was looking.”

  Mason studied the tip of his cigarette. “You mean she fell in love with your husband?”

  Lorraine Ferrell’s laugh was rich and throaty. “Mr Mason, please!”

  “Then what did she want?”

  “What do you suppose she wanted? The same thing I wanted. Money.”

  Mason said, “Then she wouldn’t continue to be an employee in the store.”

  “You’re right, Mr Mason, absolutely right.”

  Her smile was beatific. “Then,” she went on, “we can narrow our search and expedite matters. I think all the police have to do is to look for some good-looking, attractive young woman who was working here, and who quit her job.”

  “I believe setting a young woman up in an apartment is the accepted procedure, is it not?” Mason asked.

  She said demurely, “I wouldn’t know.”

  “One would hardly expect a young woman, no matter how ambitious or how well-paid, to go out and live in an old farmhouse where there were no conveniences, no electricity.”

  She frowned. “That’s right.”

  Mason said, “Let’s just follow that reasoning through to its logical conclusion. If no young woman would live there, then it must have been a meeting place.”

  Lorraine Ferrell’s brows came together. She said, “You’re being terribly logical about it, Mr Mason, and … darn it, you’re right. It looks as if it must mean an affair with a married woman, someone who could only get away on occasion, someone who didn’t dare to be seen around town. That must have been it.”

  “So,” Mason said, “we have a peculiar series of contradictory clues.”

  Lorraine Ferrell crossed her knees, hugged the upper knee with her clasped palms, thoughtfully regarded the pattern of the carpet, said, “You’re building this thing up one step at a time. I suppose the next step will be the irate husband.”

  Mason took up the conversation. “Who followed his erring wife to the rural love nest, who stayed outside to watch, who saw his wife’s lover standing near the window of an upstairs bedroom, and who couldn’t resist the temptation to pull the trigger and then drive away.

  “That left the erring wife alone in the house with a lover who had just been shot. She did the best she could. She turned out the gasoline lantern and knew that she had to leave the place. She had only one way of leaving. That was the same way she had arrived, in Edgar Ferrell’s automobile.”

  Lorraine Ferrell slowly, thoughtfully nodded.

  “All that, of course, is predicated on one fact,” Mason said.

  “What?”

  “That you’re telling me the truth.”

  She didn’t even look up from her contemplation of the carpet. There was no resentment, no anger in her tone.

  She said simply and convincingly, “I’m not much of a liar, Mr Mason. I have done it once or twice, but I’m not good at it and I don’t like it. I’m telling you the truth. It’s easier. It’s less trouble. You’re a lawyer – somehow, I have an idea you’d have stripped me naked if I’d tried to hide behind a cloak of deceit. I’m telling you the truth. You’re probably the only person on earth who will know that I am not a grief-stricken widow. I’m putting the cards on the table. I …”

  Knuckles sounded on the door, then the knob turned. The door opened, and John Addison, looking haggard and worried, stood in the doorway.

  “Hello, Mason. Thank God you’re here!”

  “What happened?” Lorraine Ferrell asked.

  “Damn near everything,” Addison said. “Look, I don’t know my way around this office. Come on into my office. I keep a bottle in there. I need a shot.”

  Addison led the way into his own office, opened the glass door of a bookcase, pressed the catch, swung a whole shelf of books out to one side and disclosed a row of bottles, a little electric ice box.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Scotch and soda,” Lorraine Ferrell said.

  Mason nodded.

  Addison placed three glasses on his desk, splashed Scotch into the glasses with a shaking hand, dropped in ice cubes and cold soda.

  He said, “This light gets my nanny goat. It’s daylight enough outside so this illumination seems yellow and sickly and …”

  He walked over to the window, flung back the heavy drapes, then moved over and switched out the lights.

  The sun had not yet risen, but there was enough light to show objects quite distinctly in the room.

  Addison raised his glass; “Here’s luck,” he said, and then added, “we’re going to need it.”

  He drained a good half of the glass.

  “What happened?” Mason asked.

  Addison dropped into a big swivel chair, took a cigar from a humidor on the desk, clipped off the end, lit a match and held the tip of the cigar against the flame, rotating it slowly, to get a good even light. He shook out the match, dropped it into an ashtray and said, “Edgar Ferrell was killed with my gun.”

  “Your gun!” Lorraine exclaimed.

  Addison nodded moodily.

  “How come?” Mason asked, his eyes coldly cynical.

  Addison kept his eyes on the tip of his cigar, consciously avoiding those of his partner’s widow and his lawyer.

  Mason waited patiently for Addison to answer the question.

  Lorraine inhaled sharply, leaned forward as though about to say something, then caught Mason’s eyes, settled back in the chair and waited.

  Addison took a few puffs at his cigar, gulped down another big swallow of Scotch and soda.

  “It is,” he said defensively, “one of those little things that you just never think of in the ordinary course of a day’s work.”

  He waited, and no one said anything.

  “But,” Addison went on, “they become damned important when a murder case crops up.”

  Again there was a period of silence.

  “Now then,” he said, looking at Mason for the first time since he had started his explanation, “you deal in murder cases, just the same as I deal in merchandise. I suppose that you will claim I should have told you this when I first talked to you. To your mind, it’ll seem damn important. That’s because you are trained to think in terms of murder cases. That’s your business. To my mind it was simply a minor matter that had no importance whatever.”

  “You’d better get it off your chest,” Mason said, “and quit stalling around.”

  “When Edgar wanted to go on this fishing trip, he wanted a revolver. He borrowed mine.”