“Very fine, thank you.”

  “Well, I thought I’d drop in and see you for a little while.”

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “So I gathered and I presume you won’t see me personally. In fact, I’m somewhat surprised that you took this telephone call. But I’ll just drop in and sit in the outer office a half an hour or so and then go out again. You see, my rough shadow is still on the job and I want him to earn his money.”

  “By all means,” Mason said.

  “And,” Gideon went on, “I intend to call at your office at least once a day until I find some way of shaking my shadows.”

  “And just how will that be?” Mason asked.

  “Well,” Gideon said, “as I explained to you, Mr Mason, all effective tactics are founded on taking the initiative and doing the unexpected. If I had, say, five hundred dollars, I’d ditch all my shadows and fade out of the picture, but don’t expect me to discuss my affairs on the phone. The fact that you’re talking with me shows there’s a recording of the conversation being made, and the fact I’m keeping on talking shows I have nothing to conceal. I want you to act for me in a certain matter and I’m coming to your office in the hope you’ll see me.”

  Mason said, “Where are you now?”

  “You know,” Gideon said. “You had your private detectives pick me up at the office and follow me last night. I came to my hotel, the Exman Hotel. I have a room here. Not much of a room but, after all, I’m not in a position at the moment to ask for the luxuries of life. I expect to be better off within the next few months. Give me an opportunity to exercise my ingenuity on the outside and I’ll find something that will put me out on top, Mr Mason. I have confidence in my own ability.”

  “So I see,” Mason said. “And you noticed more shadows last night?”

  “Oh, Mr Mason!” Gideon said, reproachfully, “I was loaded with them. Of course, the shadows that you had were pretty clever. They weren’t like the rough shadow, but, after all, I rather expected them and that enabled me to spot them. And I even spotted a couple of the government smooth shadows. That made five people tailing me last night that I know of.”

  “They’re waiting around outside your hotel now?” Mason asked.

  “I don’t find your two men,” Gideon said, “and the smooth shadows are out of sight, but, of course, the rough shadow is on the job.”

  Mason said, “I’ve been thinking things over during the night.”

  “I was hoping you would.”

  “And,” Mason said, “I believe you should have a chance to rehabilitate yourself. I’m sending five hundred dollars over to your hotel by messenger.”

  “In cash?”

  “In cash.”

  “And,” Mason told him, “I don’t expect you to come near the office again. I don’t want to hear from you again.”

  “That’s right, Mr Mason, you have my word – my word of honour.”

  “Thank you,” Mason said. “Wait there for an hour and I’ll have the money delivered.”

  Mason hung up the phone. “Go to the safe where we keep the emergency currency, Della. Get five hundred dollars; put it in an envelope, call a messenger and send it to Mr Gideon at the Exman Hotel.”

  Drake sighed. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Once you give in to this guy, once he knows he can tap you for dough; once he knows that he’s got something that makes you afraid of him, you’ll have him on your back for the rest of your life. A blackmailer never gives up until he has bled a sucker completely white.”

  Mason grinned and said, “I know, but you see this five hundred dollars doesn’t come out of my pocket. I am charging it to expenses and this is what I call bait. You don’t catch fish by putting out a bare hook. You have to put on bait, and when you put on bait it has to be something that the fish likes. Even then you have to put in on artistically so the hook is completely covered … When you come right down to it, Paul, there’s really quite a science to baiting a hook.”

  “Go on,” Drake said.

  “And then, after you have the hook baited, you wait until the fish takes the bait and starts off with it, and then you give a sudden jerk and your fish is hooked. If you jerk too soon, you pull the hook out of his mouth, and if you don’t jerk at the right time, the fish steals the bait and leaves you with a bare hook. One has to have a sense of timing in such matters, and there is a certain amount of skill in connection with putting on the bait and hooking the fish.”

  “Well, you’ve certainly put on the bait,” Drake said. “But I’ll warn you, five hundred dollars will just be an entering wedge in Gideon’s mind.”

  “He’s promised me that he won’t come back, or call me or get in touch with me in any way if I send over the five hundred dollars,” Mason said.

  Drake snorted his sceptical disbelief.

  “He has,” Mason said, “given me his word of honour.”

  Drake groaned, got to his feet, said, “Kid yourself all you want to, Perry, but don’t try kidding me.”

  “Incidentally,” Mason said, “your friend Gideon seems to be rather expert at picking up shadows. He had no difficulty whatever in picking up the two shadows you put on his tail when he left the office.”

  Drake made an exclamation of annoyance. “Those were pretty smooth guys,” he said. “In view of the fact that a rough shadow is on the job, I didn’t think Gideon would spot them.”

  “He spotted them,” Mason said.

  After a moment, Drake said, “I told you that these fellows get pretty smart while they are in stir, Perry.”

  “I know,” Mason said, “and Gideon, I think, was rather smart to start with. Let’s hope he doesn’t outwit himself.”

  “You’re really going to send that money?” Drake asked.

  “I’m going to send it,” Mason said. “I believe Della is putting the money in an envelope right now.”

  Drake said something about a fool and his money being soon parted, and left the office.

  Mason looked reassuringly at Della Street as she returned with a fat envelope in her hand.

  “Everything okay, Della?”

  “Everything okay. The messenger is on his way up here.”

  “Tell him to take this envelope to Gideon at the Exman Hotel and not to bother about a receipt,” Mason said.

  “No receipt?” she asked. “Not even for the envelope?”

  “Nothing,” Mason said, grinning. “We’re gentlemen, dealing with each other as such. After all, I have Mr Gideon’s word of honour.”

  Chapter Nine

  Thursday morning Mason entered the office and asked hopefully, “What do we hear from Gideon, Della?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No letter, no telephone?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Perhaps an anonymous letter?”

  “No, not this morning.”

  Mason left his desk, walked over to the window, looked down at traffic on the street below with frowning concentration.

  “Should we have heard?” Della asked.

  “We should have heard,” Mason said. “I’m a little afraid that our friend Gideon has transferred his attention to Mrs Horace Warren.”

  The lawyer started pacing the floor, said at length, “It’s inconceivable that he would have the consummate nerve to go there, yet – Ring up Paul Drake and tell him to put two more men on the house,” Mason said. “I want the licence numbers of every automobile that calls there and I want a description of every person who calls. The operatives will have to use binoculars and keep in the distance.”

  “Anything else?” Della asked.

  “That’s all,” Mason said. And then added grimly, “At the moment.”

  By mid afternoon Mason was restive, pacing the office floor, frowning, reacting nervously every time the phone rang.

  At three o’clock Mason’s phone rang. Della said, “Yes? Hello?” then nodded to Perry Mason.

  “Gideon?” Mason asked.

  “Paul Drake,” she said.

  Mason picked up his telephone. “Yes, Paul, what’s new?”

  “My face is red,” Drake said.

  Mason tilted back in his swivel chair, crossed his ankles on the desk, and seemed suddenly to lose all his tension.

  “Why, what’s the matter, Paul?” he asked solicitously.

  “That damned Gideon!” Paul Drake said. “I told you that these fellows get smart in stir. This guy has become too smart for his britches.”

  “Meaning he was too smart for you?” Mason asked.

  “He was too smart for my men,” Drake said, “and then – Well, damn it, yes, Perry. He was too smart for me.”

  “What happened?” Mason asked.

  “The guy went down to a used-car lot. He looked over some used cars, then he purchased one and paid three hundred dollars down.”

  “In cash?” Mason asked.

  “Of course, in cash. Hell’s bells, it was out of the money you’d given him.”

  “Well, I’m glad to see he used it to buy something useful,” Mason said. “After all, a man needs an automobile to run around in these days.”

  “Now, wait a minute, Perry,” Paul Drake said. “This is pretty damned serious. It’s a brand-new stunt as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Go on,” Mason said. “Or why don’t you come down to the office and tell me about it? Della will make you a cup of coffee and–”

  “Because I don’t want to face you,” Drake said. “Also I’m sitting here in my office with four telephones working, trying my damnedest to get on his trail again.”

  “Well, what happened to the government men?” Mason asked. “Weren’t they on the job?”

  “My God,” Drake said, “there were three government smooth shadows on the job, one rough shadow and my two shadows. That made six shadows that were tailing that bird.”

  “And he walked away from all of them?”

  “I’ll say he did.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Well, he got this automobile, made a down payment on it, signed the contract, and started out.

  “Of course we felt that since he had that automobile it was going to be the old run-around, that he’d go through signals just as they were changing and all that stuff. My men felt that way about it and apparently the government men did, too.”

  “How do you handle a situation of that sort?” Mason asked.

  “With enough shadows, it’s a cinch,” Drake said. “We had one shadow get ahead of him and one stay behind him. We had him bracketed. Then whenever we’d come to an intersection with a signal one of my men would go ahead and the other would stay behind. And of course the rough shadow stayed behind. In that way if Gideon went through a signal just as it was changing, or took a chance on running a red light, the shadows could wait patiently behind because there were shadows ahead to pick him up.”

  “What about the government men?”

  “They were playing it the same way,” Drake said. “My men spotted at least one of the government men, and that government man had spotted him, because he gave him the high sign.”

  “And Gideon got away from a deal of that sort?” Mason asked.

  “I’ll say he got away from it.”

  “How?”

  “He ditched the rough shadow and one of the smooth shadows,” Drake said. “He seemed to feel he had it made. He drove to the airport, parked the car with the motor running and tipped the attendant to let it stay there for five minutes.”

  “Go on,” Mason said.

  “Well, that was a cinch,” Drake said. “The remaining government men came up and made a kick about the car being there in a place where there was supposed to be no parking. They squawked a little bit and insisted the attendant drive it away.

  “While they were doing all this, of course, they were putting an electric bug on the car so they could follow him without crowding him. With one of those electric bugs you can be several blocks away and still follow a guy.”

  “Go on,” Mason said, “what happened? Did they follow him into the air terminal?”

  “No, they didn’t,” Drake said, “because when a man has just paid three hundred dollars down on an automobile you don’t think he’s going to walk away and leave it with the motor running.”

  Mason started to laugh.

  “Go ahead and laugh, damn it!” Drake said irritably.

  “So you don’t know where he went?” Mason asked.

  “Of course we know where he went,” Drake said. “We’re not that dumb. We didn’t follow him into the air terminal but we went in and started milling around and we watched every outgoing plane that was scheduled to depart within the next thirty minutes.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “if he went in, he had to come out.”

  “He went out all right,” Drake said. “He walked right out the door, met another guy, identified himself, and they walked twenty yards to a helicopter that was sitting there with the motor running. They both got in and the helicopter took off and we were left on the ground gawking.”

  “Couldn’t follow him?” Mason asked.

  “How the hell you going to follow a helicopter out of a busy airport,” Drake asked, “unless you have another helicopter on the job?

  “We did everything we could. We got the tower and told them to order the helicopter to come back. We got another helicopter warmed up, but of course Gideon expected all that. He had the helicopter go for about three minutes, then told the pilot to land him in a vacant field by a boulevard where there was a good line of buses.

  “The pilot did that and was just getting in the air coming back when he heard the tower calling him to return at once. Of course the tower felt that the helicopter pilot might have the radio on the loudspeaker so that his passenger could hear everything that was being said, so the tower was very mysterious. They told him that because of an emergency, and apparently because part of his gear was not in order, he was to return at once and make a cautious landing.

  “So the guy returned and – Well, that’s all there is to it. The shadows are sitting on an empty car. Gideon’s gone.”

  “What about the car?” Mason asked. “Don’t they sign a contract that they have to keep up payments and if they make false representations, don’t they–”

  “Oh, shucks,” Drake said, “Gideon’s too damned smart for that. Within twenty minutes after he’d given us the slip at the airport he called the used-car dealer, told him where he’d left the car, told him to get it and repossess it. He said that after thinking things over he’d realized that he had no business buying the car in the first place, that he wasn’t going to have enough use for it, that something else had come up and a friend had a car he could borrow. He told the startled used-car dealer that they’d just call the whole transaction off, that he wouldn’t try to collect back any of his down payment because he realized it was his mistake, and all that stuff.”

  “And the car dealer fell for it?”

  “Sure, he fell for it. Told him that was very generous of him, said that if he sold the car within the next couple of days he’d be able to make some kind of refund on Gideon’s down payment, thanked him a lot and went out and got the car.”

  Mason’s laugh died down to a chuckle.

  “I’m glad it amuses you,” Drake said stiffly.

  “I remember,” Mason said, “you told me not to let Gideon outsmart me, that those fellows got pretty slick after they’d been in prison and that I’d have to watch my step. Apparently you should have been taking some of your own advice.”

  “Oh, go to hell,” Drake said irritably.

  “Well,” Mason said, “he’s played right into our hands now.”

  “What do you mean?” Drake asked.

  Mason said, “As long as he had shadows on his tail he had a perfect alibi.”

  “Alibi for what?” Drake asked.

  “For anything,” Mason said. “He couldn’t be accused of committing a crime because he’d simply call the shadows to the stand, ask them where he was when the crime was committed and that would be that. I told you, once he’d lost his shadows he’d have no alibi.”

  There was silence on the telephone while Drake was thinking that over.

  “So the five hundred dollars was good bait.”

  Mason said, “I’m making no comments, Paul, but from now on start keeping track of every unsolved crime committed in the city, that is, every major crime, particularly the murders and the murder stick-ups where there are witnesses.

  “Whenever you find one of those crimes, have one of your men take that police sketch, go to the eyewitnesses and ask them if that doesn’t look like the man they saw at the scene of the crime.”

  “And try to convince them that it’s the man they saw?”

  “Oh, nothing like that,” Mason said. “Nothing crude, but just plant the idea in their minds that someone, at least, thinks this man is suspect. Then if anything should happen we could of course claim that we were acting in good faith, trying to solve crimes of violence.

  “You see, as far as I’m concerned, Paul, here is a man with a criminal record who is at least short of money. He might well turn to crime.”

  “Short of money, my eye,” Drake said. “The guy’s smoking fifty-cent cigars and wearing a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit of clothes. That’s what made the government men so mad. The guy walked right into the best clothing store, big as life, and got the best suit they had in the place.”

  “And the government men have no idea where he got the money?”

  “Not the slightest. He must have picked it out of thin air because they’ve been shadowing him from the time he left prison.”

  Mason thought that over for a moment, then again chuckled. “Things are looking better every minute, Paul. Keep in touch with me.”

  Chapter Ten

  Late Friday morning Mason’s phone rang and Paul Drake said, “Perry, I’m getting frightened.”

  “How come?” Mason asked.

  “That confounded identification business. I’m afraid we’re in a jam.”

  “Now look,” Mason told him, “all we have to do is to act in good faith so that we’re not lying to Gideon. We simply tell him that this picture of him has been submitted to the eyewitnesses in a murder case. He, of course, has no idea that we ordered the picture made. He thinks it’s a composite picture made from the description of eyewitnesses – not a picture that we had made and then submitted to eyewitnesses.