The Case of the Daring Decoy

Chapter Eleven

It was nearly noon when Perry Mason parked his car near the Redfern Hotel.

He bought a paper, opened it and then walked rapidly to the door leading to the lobby.

As he pulled back the door, Mason held the paper in front of him as though engrossed in some article on the sporting page.

He walked at a leisurely, steady pace to the elevator.

“Seven,” Mason said, holding the paper so that he could see only the legs of the girl elevator operator, his face completely concealed from her by the paper.

The cage started upward.

Abruptly she asked, “Where’s your friend?”

“How’s that?” Mason asked.

“The one who was interested in my book.”

Mason lowered the newspaper, looked at the girl with interest. “Oh,” he said, “it’s you. What are you doing here?”

“Running the elevator.”

“So I see. Do you work twenty-four-hour shifts?”

“Eight-hour shifts. We switch shifts every two weeks. This is shift day. I started work at 5:00 a.m. and go off duty at one o’clock.”

“How did you recognize me?” Mason asked curiously.

“From your feet.”

Mason regarded his shoes thoughtfully. The elevator came to a stop at the seventh floor.

“What about my shoes?” Mason asked.

“Not your shoes. Your feet.”

“I thought you were interested in that book you were reading.”

“I was, but I notice people’s feet and... well, I noticed your friend. Where is he now?”

“He’s in his office — or he was the last. I saw of him.”

“Is he married?”

“Not him.”

She said, “I like him.”

“I’ll tell him,” Mason said.

“No, no, don’t do that! I didn’t mean it that way. I meant...”

Mason laughed as her voice trailed off into silence.

“All right,” Mason said, “what about my feet?”

“It’s the way you stand,” she said. “You keep your feet flat on the floor and evenly spaced like a man getting ready to slug somebody. Most people lounge around with their weight on first one foot and then the other or lean against the rail along the edge of the elevator. You stand balanced.”

“Thanks for telling me,” Mason said. “I’ll try to be more average after this.”

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“Why not?”

She smiled at him. “You’re too distinctive the way you are.”

Mason regarded her thoughtfully. “But you fell for my friend,” he said.

“Who said I fell for him?”

“Didn’t you?”

She pouted a moment, then said, “Well, perhaps a little. You’re different. You’re inaccessible. But your friend is more... well, more available. Now, if you tell him any of this, I’m going to put scratch marks all over your face.”

“Can I tell him you’re interested?” Mason asked.

“No,” she said shortly.

“When did you quit last night?” Mason asked.

“Gosh, not only did I have to switch shifts this morning, but I had to work later last night because of the trouble. They wanted to question the other girls.”

“When you say the trouble, you’re referring to the murder?” Mason asked.

“Hush! We’re not supposed to even mention that word.”

The buzzer on the elevator sounded.

“Well, thank you,” Mason said, “I’ll tell my friend.”

She looked up at him impudently. “Where are you going?”

“What do you mean?”

“Here on the seventh floor?”

The buzzer rang again.

“You’d better get the elevator back down,” Mason said.

She laughed. “That’s what I mean by being inaccessible. You’ve been talking to me, not because you were interested in me, but because you don’t want me to know what room you’re going to. You were stalling around waiting for me to start down. All right, smartie, I said you were inaccessible. Go ahead.”

She slid the elevator door closed, and took the cage down.

Mason walked down to Room 728 and turned the knob.

The door swung open. A man who was seated in a straight-backed chair which had been tilted against the wall, his stocking feet on the bed, a cigarette in his mouth, looked up at Mason and nodded.

Mason kicked the door shut.

“You’re Drake’s man?” Mason asked.

The man said, “Hello,” tonelessly, cautiously.

Mason walked over to stand by the individual who got to his feet. “You know me. I don’t know you,” Mason said.

The operative opened his wallet and showed his identification papers. “How thoroughly have you gone over this place?” Mason asked.

“I’ve taken a look,” Inskip said. “It’s clean.”

“Let’s take another look,” Mason told him. “Got a flashlight?”

“In my bag there.”

Mason took the flashlight, bent over and carefully followed the edges of the worn carpet around the room. He gave careful inspection to the washstand in the bathroom.

“You sleep here?”

“I’m not supposed to sleep until I get an okay from Drake. He told me you were going to be in this morning. I was looking for you earlier. I didn’t want to go to sleep until after you’d been here. When you leave, I’ll put a ‘Don’t Disturb’ sign on the door and get eight hours’ shut-eye. However, I’ll be available in case anyone wants anything.”

Mason said, “On a check-out they’d make up the bed before they rented the room.”

“Sure!” the man said.

“Okay,” Mason told him. “Let’s take a look at the bed. You take that side, I’ll take this. Just take hold of the bottom sheet and lift the whole thing right off onto the floor. I want to look at the mattress.”

“Okay,” Inskip said, “you’re the boss.”

They lifted the sheets and blankets entirely off the bed.

Mason studied the mattress carefully.

“I don’t know what you’re looking for,” Inskip said, “but I heard that the bullet didn’t go clean through. Death was instantaneous and there wasn’t any bleeding except a little around the entrance wound. That was all absorbed by the sweater.”

“Well, there’s no harm in looking,” Mason said.

“You don’t think anything happened here in this room, do you?” Inskip asked.

“I don’t know,” Mason told him.

The lawyer moved the flashlight along the edge of the mattress.

“Give me a hand,” he said to Inskip. “Let’s turn this mattress over.”

They raised the mattress.

“Any stain on the mattress would have had to soak through the sheets, and bloodstained sheets would have been reported,” Inskip said.

“I know,” Mason said. “I— Here! What’s this?”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Inskip said.

They propped the mattress on its edge and looked at a small, round hole in the mattress.

“It looks to me,” Inskip said, “as though someone had held a gun right up against the bottom of the mattress and pulled the trigger, holding the gun on an angle so the bullet wouldn’t go all the way through.”

“Well, let’s find out,” Mason told him.

“How are we going to do it?”

Mason pushed his finger in the hole, said, “That won’t do it. Let’s see if we can get something to use as a probe.”

“There’s a wire coat hanger in the closet,” Inskip said. “I have a pair of pliers with wire cutters in my bag. I always carry pliers with me, because you never know what you’re going to run up against in this business. Let me make a probe.”

Inskip cut a piece of straight wire from a coat hanger while Mason held the mattress.

The detective ran the wire up inside the hole in the mattress for a few inches, then said, “Here it is. I can feel the wire hitting something hard.”

“Can you make a hook on that wire and get it out?” Mason asked.

“I can try,” Inskip said, “by putting a loop on the thing and working it over. I’ll see what I can do.”

Inskip used his pliers, then again put the wire probe in the hole in the mattress, manipulated it back and forth, up and down, said, “I think I’ve got it,” then pulled. He pulled something back for a couple of inches, then the probe slipped loose.

“Have to get another hold,” Inskip said. “I think I can widen that loop a little now.”

He again worked on the wire, then once more pushed it up in the hole, said to Mason, “I’ve got it now.” He pulled back on the wire. A metallic object popped out of the hole and fell down between the springs.

Inskip retrieved it. “A 38-caliber bullet,” he said.

Mason stood motionless, his eyes half-slitted in thoughtful concentration.

“Well?” Inskip asked.

“Let’s get the bed back into shape,” Mason said. “Turn the mattress the way it was.”

“Now what?” Inskip asked.

Mason said, “Take a sharp knife, take the pointed blade of the knife and make some kind of an identifying mark on that bullet so you can recognize it. Better put it on the base of the bullet. Try not to disfigure the bullet any more than possible.”

“Then what?”

“Keep that bullet with you,” Mason said. “Don’t let it out of your possession at any time, no matter what happens.”

“Now, wait a minute. You’d better keep it,” Inskip said.

Mason shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to be a witness in a case I was defending. I want you to keep that. And I want you to keep it with you. Don’t let it out of your possession. Get some soft tissue and wrap it up so you don’t destroy any of the striations on that bullet.”

“Then what?” Inskip asked.

“Then,” Mason said, “we make up the bed and you can go to sleep.”

“But how the devil did that bullet get in that mattress?” Inskip asked.

“That,” Mason said, “is one of the things we’re going to have to find out.”

“Do we want to tell anyone about this?”

“Not now,” Mason said. “The police would laugh at us and claim we were faking evidence.”

“Later on it’ll be just that much worse,” Inskip pointed out.

“I know,” Mason told him. “That’s why I want you to keep the bullet. What’s your background? How long have you been in this business?”

“Quite a while. I was a deputy sheriff for a while, then I drifted up to Las Vegas, and worked there. I did some security work when Hoover Dam was going through. I’ve been with the government and now I’m working as a private operative.”

“Ever been in trouble?”

“No.”

“Nothing they can throw up at you? You’re not vulnerable in any way?”

Inskip shook his head. “My nose is clean.”

“All right,” Mason told him, “save that wire probe so you can show it if you have to.”

“What’s the significance of that bullet?” Inskip asked.

“I don’t know,” Mason told him. “That is, I don’t know yet.”

“Okay, you can call on me any time.”

“You going to tell the police about this?” Mason asked.

“I’d like to, Mr. Mason.”

Mason said, “Hold it until ten o’clock tonight, anyway. I want first chance to tell the police about it. Then you can—”

“Let’s not talk time schedules,” Inskip interrupted. “Let’s leave it this way: I suggest to you that I think the police should know about this, and you say that you’re going to tell them. Okay?”

“Okay,” Mason said, “we’ll leave it at that. I didn’t say when, did I?”

“No. You didn’t say when. I told you to report to the police. You said you would. I assumed you meant right away. However, because of that assumption I didn’t pin you down. That was my mistake. That’s all it was, a mistake.”

“A mistake,” Mason agreed.