“When?” Mason asked.

  “Probably around four-thirty yesterday afternoon.”

  “How do they fix the time?”

  “They know that he didn’t go to lunch until after a directors’ meeting. They know just what he ate and exactly when. The post-mortem shows the condition of food in the stomach. Also, there’s a question of body temperature. Police feel that they can fix the time of death within not more than a thirty-minute period. In other words, that the maximum period of variation will be fifteen minutes either way.”

  “I take it they haven’t found the gun?”

  “Not yet. They do have one clue.”

  “What?”

  “When they broadcast the news of the murder – now this is confidential, Perry; it hasn’t been released to the public yet–”

  “Yes, yes, go on, never mind that.”

  “Well, a taxi driver came forward, a fellow by the name of Jerome C Keddie. He’s a Red Line cab driver. The cab number is seven-sixty-one.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “go ahead. What are you looking at me like that for, Paul?”

  Drake said, “I was just wondering why you had me locate cab number seven-sixty-one yesterday evening.”

  “Go on,” Mason said, his face expressionless. “Tell me what Keddie told the cops.”

  “He said that he had picked up a very mysterious passenger, a young, attractive woman, dressed almost entirely in white, that is, a white skirt, white shoes and a sort of cream-coloured jacket with red trim. He picked her up just a short distance from where the body was found. He was returning empty from the country club. There was something about his fare that impressed him. He noticed her particularly.”

  “What did he say impressed him?”

  “He thought she’d been through some very harassing experience. He knew she’d been running. She seemed very upset. Her face was pale underneath her make-up. He thought that perhaps she had been out with a man who had tried to assault her and that she’d either been forced to get out and walk, or had hit him over the head in self-defence or something. He tried to sound her out in conversation, but couldn’t get her to open up at all. He took her to the Union Station. He felt certain that she intended to catch another cab at the station and go to some other destination. She didn’t have any baggage. She said her husband was going to meet her at the train. The cabbie said he thought she was lying.

  “Keddie admitted he’d been listening to the radio broadcasts and that he’d read the morning newspaper, wondering if he wouldn’t find something had happened out on that road – either that there’d been a hit-and-run accident or that some crime had been committed.”

  “He can identify this woman?” Mason asked.

  “He can identify her,” Drake said.

  “That’s nice,” Mason observed quietly.

  “So,” Drake said, “I wonder where that leaves me, Perry.”

  “Why should it leave you anywhere?”

  “I was scouting this cab for you.”

  “You don’t need to tell the police that.”

  “Well, it depends on why I was doing it.”

  “You don’t know why you were doing it.”

  “I suppose,” Drake said, “you wanted to put one of your client’s friends in this cab who could sort of pump the guy and see what happened. That bothers me a lot. But suppose it should turn out that this person he picked up was your client. That might leave us both in a predicament.”

  “Why?”

  “Tampering with the evidence.”

  “Tampering with what evidence?”

  “With the testimony of a witness.”

  “How?”

  “Well, trying to influence him.”

  “Influence him to do what?”

  “I don’t know what was said by the people who were in that taxicab.”

  “Then,” Mason said, “there’s no need for you to worry. What else do you know?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Not if there’s anything else.”

  “Well, of course, the police felt that Keddie had the right idea. They’re covering taxi drivers who were at the Union Station, seeing if they can find a taxi driver who remembers picking up a fare dressed as this woman was dressed.”

  “I see,” Mason said.

  “You’re awfully damned noncommittal about this thing,” Drake blurted out.

  “Who did you want me to commit?” Mason asked. “Myself?”

  “Well,” Drake told him, “I thought you should know that–”

  The telephone rang. Drake said, “That may be for me, Perry. I left word that if anything important came up in this case, they were to call me here.”

  Della Street picked up the telephone and nodded, said, “It’s for you, Paul.”

  Drake picked up the receiver, said, “Yes, this is Paul … Give me that again, will you?”

  Drake said, “Okay, I’ll pass the word on to Mason. Nothing else, is there? … Okay. Thanks.”

  “Okay,” Drake said wearily to Mason. “Here we go again.”

  “Where?” Mason asked.

  “On one of those wild run-arounds of yours. The police have found the murder weapon.”

  “Where?”

  “Someone had thrown it down on the bank to the north of the house.”

  “How nice,” Mason said. “What did they find out from the weapon?”

  “They found that it was a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight calibre revolver, with a five-inch barrel, that it had been fired three times, that the number on the gun had not been tampered with, that, tracing the number, the police found the sale had been made to Enright A Harlan of 609 Lamison Avenue.

  “At about the same time, the police got a lead from a taxi driver who had picked up a fare at the Union Station whose description matched the girl’s they were looking for. This cabbie remembered that he had gone to someplace on Lamison Avenue, but he couldn’t remember the exact number. It was someplace between Fifth and Ninth.

  “So police got the taxi driver to see if he could locate the house, and it was 609 Lamison Avenue. Police went in and invited Mr and Mrs Enright A Harlan to headquarters for a little chat with the district attorney. They’re there now.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “that’s going to make an interesting case.”

  “You make such masterpieces of understatement,” Paul Drake groaned. “That’s going to make an exciting case, and if they should find out what you did with that taxi driver–”

  “What did I do with him?” Mason asked.

  “You did – Hell, I don’t know what you did with him. Probably, you’ve arranged to confuse the issues in some way. You’ve–”

  The telephone rang again. Della Street picked it up and again nodded. “For you once more, Paul.”

  Drake picked up the telephone, said, “Okay, shoot. This is Paul … Who is it, Jim? … Oh, I see. They are? … Well, let me have it.”

  Drake was silent for almost a minute, then he said thoughtfully, “Well, I guess that’s all there is to it, Jim. Just keep me posted. Thanks for letting me know.”

  Drake hung up the telephone and said, “Well, you were being so damned smart, Perry, you should have advised your client to use a little more care.”

  “In what way?” Mason asked.

  “Police opened her purse and found the receipt issued by the taxi driver for the run down to the Union Station. The amount was two dollars and ninety-five cents, which is exactly the way the cab driver remembers it because he remembers she gave him three and a half, which left him a fifty-five-cent tip. The number of the taxi cab, number seven-sixty-one, is on that receipt. It seems to me, you might at least have had foresight enough to have your client drop that receipt in a wastepaper receptacle someplace. Now, we’re hooked.”

  “Who’s hooked?”

  “You and I.”

  “You haven’t anything to do with it.”

  “I wish I didn’t – you had me locating that cab.”

  “Now look here,” Mason said. “You do a lot of work for me, Paul. The things that you do for me are confidential.”

  “What if the police ask me? I can’t lie to them.”

  Mason said, “Paul, your stomach is bothering you. You’re living on greasy hamburgers and half-fried onions. You’re eating entirely too much fried food. You’re eating at irregular hours. You need a good rest – start taking it.”

  Drake looked at him in surprise.

  “I have a job in La Jolla that I want you to work on,” Mason told him.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ll phone you details after you get down there.”

  “I’m to leave now?”

  “Immediately,” Mason said. “Get a nice unit in a motel, enjoy the ocean breezes and relax.”

  “I think I’m going to like this,” Drake said.

  “I knew you would,” Mason told him. “Who’s going to handle your office while you’re gone?”

  “Harry Blanton. I’ll have to go to the bank to get some money.”

  “Give Paul some money out of the safe, Della,” Mason said.

  She nodded.

  “So,” Mason said, looking at his watch, “there’s nothing holding you back, Paul.”

  Chapter Nine

  Perry Mason sat in the visitors’ room, while on the other side of the table and separated from him by a mesh screen, Sybil Harlan smiled happily.

  “Well,” Mason said, “you don’t look like a girl who’s in trouble.”

  “I’m not. I’m happy as a lark.”

  Mason said, “You’re going to be charged with murder in about fifteen minutes, as soon us the district attorney can get the papers filed.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then,” Mason said, “you will be arraigned and a date set for a preliminary hearing.”

  “What happens at the preliminary hearing?”

  “Actually, it’s a hearing before the magistrate to determine if there is probable cause for believing you guilty. If the magistrate finds that a crime has been committed and there is probable cause to believe you committed the crime, he will hold you over for the Superior Court. Then the district attorney will file an information, and after that you’ll be tried before a jury.”

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Everything depends on that taxi driver. That’s going to be the district attorney’s case.”

  “You mean at the preliminary?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you upset that?”

  “If you can keep your mouth shut, I think I can.”

  “I’ve kept it shut. That’s why I’m here. The district attorney told me that if I’d explain just what I was doing out there on the road, just where I had been, and how I happened to take the taxicab, he wouldn’t file any charges against me. Otherwise, he’d have to proceed.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I smiled sweetly at him and told him that I didn’t think my lawyer would want me to answer any questions unless he was here.”

  “Now that you’ve phoned for me, won’t your husband suspect that you were the one who had me buy the stock?”

  “No. I think I did it very cleverly, Mr Mason. He started talking about what you did at that directors’ meeting, and I told him that if I ever got in trouble I’d most certainly ask for you.

  “So when the police came, I told them I didn’t like their attitude and I’d have to see a lawyer before I so much as gave them the time of day. That was when Enny said, ‘Get Perry Mason, honey.’ And so I told him I was going to. It was his own suggestion.”

  “What about your fifth wedding anniversary?”

  Her eyes became dreamy. “I have him back, Mr Mason.”

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  She nodded. “It happened exactly the way I had hoped it would happen,” she said. “Roxy had been leading Enny on with all of those languishing sighs and sidelong glances. But the minute it began to look as if Enny had got her into a business deal which might terminate in a lawsuit, that woman’s real character came to the front.

  “She dragged Enny off to her lawyer, her lawyer made the mistake of trying to browbeat Enny, telling Enny that he would be responsible because his client had acted on Enny’s advice, and Roxy sat there and nodded her head, with all of her selfish, scheming disposition showing in her eyes, and Enny got so disgusted he felt he never wanted to see her again as long as he lives.”

  “So then what happened?”

  “So then he came home to me, wanting to confess his infidelities and be forgiven.”

  “And what happened?”

  “I never gave him the chance to confess,” she said. “I told you that a woman should never forgive a man for his infidelities. It puts them both in an embarrassing position. She should simply be ignorant of them. I told him that, of course, I knew in making business deals with women like Roxy, he had to use a little sales appeal. I said I expected that, and then I smiled and asked him if he remembered the first time he had met me, and all of a sudden, I was the body beautiful and Roxy Claffin was just a legal headache.”

  “And how did you explain about me?”

  “I didn’t have to explain. He told me all about you and about what you had done at the directors’ meeting, and I just lay in his arms and stroked his hair and smoothed his forehead and let him tell me his troubles. And he told me that Roxy’s lawyer had said that you were the most diabolically ingenious attorney of the whole California Bar; so I said, ‘Well, that’s fine. If I ever get in trouble, I’ll call on Perry Mason.’ And he said, ‘You’ll never get in trouble, but if you do, he’s the man you want.’

  “So then, when the officers came out and started asking him questions about the gun and interrogating me and … and when they found that receipt from the taxicab in my purse – Mr Mason, do you think it was wise having me leave that receipt in my purse? Shouldn’t I have destroyed it and–”

  Mason said, “No, no, that’s just the way I want it. Tell me, what about the gun?”

  “Well, it’s one of Enny’s guns, all right.”

  Mason said, “Is that the gun you had in your glove compartment?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Did you take it from Enny’s collection?”

  “He gave it to me.”

  “How did it get up there at the scene of the crime?”

  “There’s only one way – someone broke into my glove compartment and stole it.”

  “When?”

  “It could only have been after – afterwards. I can tell you one thing, Mr Mason – that gun never killed George Lutts.”

  “Ballistic experts say it did.”

  “Then the ballistic experts are lying.”

  “How do you know it didn’t kill Lutts?”

  “I … I’m sure it didn’t. Mr Mason, you can pin your whole defence on cross-examining those ballistic experts. They just can’t make that theory stand up. That’s not the fatal gun.”

  “They can identify bullets and guns with scientific accuracy,” Mason warned.

  “I don’t care what they can do. They’re bluffing, trying to get us to make some admission. I’ll absolutely guarantee that’s not the fatal gun, Mr Mason.”

  “All right,” Mason told her. “Here’s the hard part. Look me right in the eyes.”

  “I’m looking.”

  “Did your husband kill George Lutts?”

  “Good heavens, no!”

  “How do you know he didn’t?”

  “Why, he wouldn’t do a thing like that and … and then, besides, at the time Lutts and I were up at that old house Enny and Roxy were just getting ready to leave for an appointment with Roxy’s lawyer.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course. Enny told me all about it. They had an appointment with Arthur Hagan. He’d been in court all day, but he said he’d see them after five o’clock.

  “I saw Enny drive up while I was up there on the hill. That is, I guess it was Enny, It was his car. He wanted to take Roxy with him to see the lawyer.”

  “You didn’t see him drive away?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see Roxy?”

  “Yes. She was running around down there, and Enny honked the horn a couple of times to hurry her up. He hates to be kept waiting.”

  “But you saw both of them down there.”

  “Yes. That is, I saw Roxy and I saw Enny’s car with someone in it. I presume it was Enny.”

  “You’re certain of Roxy?”

  “Oh yes, there’s no mistaking that little minx. I wonder how she’s feeling, now that she realizes she made a play for Enny and lost him.”

  “She may be feeling pretty good,” Mason said significantly. “She knows that you’re being questioned about the murder of George C Lutts, and it just may occur to her to think of something that would enable her to help the prosecution with its case. That would put you out of the way for a nice long time and leave your husband where she could get her claws into him again.”

  “She’ll never get her claws into him again,” she said. “Enny isn’t entirely a fool, and I guess her true character came to the surface when she got Enny into the lawyer’s office.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “Sometime around five o’clock, I think.”

  Mason said, “The point I’ve been trying to make is that despite the fact it was your husband’s gun that was used in the murder, the police seem to be leaving him pretty much alone.”

  “That’s because he has such an ironclad alibi. They’ve checked it. He was in his own office until shortly after four; then he dashed out to get Roxy and went to see her lawyer. They were with him until six-thirty. Apparently, Mr Mason, you threw a double-barrelled scare into everyone. That legal point you thought up must have been a dilly. I understand that Roxy’s lawyer is pretty much worried. And, of course, that made Roxy get in a panic – she may be liberal with her affections, but that’s the extent of her generosity. She’s tight as wallpaper with her dollars.”

  “All right,” Mason said. “What did you tell the officers?”

  “Not one thing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not even on preliminary questions?”

  “No. I told them I left the beauty parlour, because I knew they’d find out about my going there. In fact, I’d told my maid to tell anyone who called that that’s where I was. But aside from that I told them nothing. I said I’d been attending to some very private business and I didn’t care to make any comment.”