The Case of the Empty Tin

Chapter 8

The strident bell summoned Perry Mason from the depths of slumber. While his drugged senses were still trying to adjust themselves, his hand automatically reached for the telephone. He said thickly, “Hello.”

Only Della Street and Paul Drake had the number of that telephone which was by Mason’s bedside, a telephone which rang only in cases of grave emergency.

Paul Drake was on the line. “Hello, Perry,” he said. “Sorry to bust in on your slumbers, but snap awake, because this is important.”

“All right,” Mason said, “I can take it. What is it?”

“Remember,” Drake said, “the evening paper mentioned that you were working on the case and that you had employed the Drake Detective Agency to make an investigation?”

“Yes,” Mason said, switching on a light.

“Well, she read the paper and called me up.”

“Who did?”

“I’m coming to that in a minute. I want to make certain you’re awake before I give you this.”

Mason said impatiently, “I’m awake all right. I’ve got the light on. What is it?”

“Mrs. Sarah Perlin, Hocksley’s housekeeper, telephoned the office and said that if she could talk with Mr. Mason personally, she’d make a complete confession. She wanted to know where she could reach you. What do I do?”

“A complete confession?” Mason asked.

“Yes.”

“Where is she?”

“Waiting on one of the other trunk lines.”

“Trace the call?” Mason asked.

“Yes. It’s from a public pay station. I didn’t know what to do. I thought I’d get in touch with you and let you be the goat. If we don’t relay the information on to the police and try to hold her there until a radio car can get on the job, we’re sticking our necks out. But, on the other hand...”

“Tell her to call this number,” Mason said. “Tell her she can talk with me here.”

“And how about the police?”

“Forget ’em.”

“Okay,” Drake said, “I’m stalling her along on the other line. Hold the phone, Perry, until I see if she’s still on the line.”

Mason held the telephone, hearing only the slight buzzing sound of the wire. Then he heard Drake’s voice once more. “Okay, Perry, she says she’ll call you in twenty minutes. She thinks I was having the call traced and notifying the police. She says she’ll go to another pay station. She says if I’ve notified the police, it won’t do a bit of good, that you’re the only one she’ll talk with.”

“Said she’d call in about twenty minutes?” Mason asked.

“That’s right.”

“Okay, Paul. What are you doing up at the office this time of night?”

“No rest for the wicked,” Drake said wearily. “A lot of stuff has been coming in. I’m up here sifting the reports, and juggling the men around on new assignments. I was just ready to quit.”

“What time is it?”

“About one o’clock.”

“How did that woman sound on the telephone, Paul?”

“She didn’t seem particularly excited. She has a good speaking voice.”

“But she said she was going to make a confession?”

“That’s right. I guess that’ll crack the whole case. The way the police figured it out, there was only one shot. Two people had disappeared. That meant Hocksley had killed his housekeeper, removed the body, and was in hiding, or that she had killed him.”

Mason said, “In that latter event, I think there was an accomplice. She didn’t give you any inkling of who it was, did she?”

“No, not a thing. Just said that if she could talk with Mr. Mason personally, she’d make a complete confession. Otherwise, there was no dice.”

“Better stick around,” Mason said, “in case I need you.”

“For how long?”

“Oh, until I tell you to quit.”

Drake said, “Okay, there’s a couch here in the office. I’ll bed down on that, and the night operator will call me in case you phone in.”

“Hate to bust up your sleep,” Mason apologized.

“Oh, it’s all right. I’m used to that.”

“Okay,” Mason said, “I’ll give you a ring.”

He hung up the telephone, stretched, yawned, got out of bed, closed the windows in the room, dressed, and was smoking a cigarette when his telephone rang.

Mason picked up the receiver, said, “This is Perry Mason talking,” and heard a low voice saying in a tone of calm finality, “This is Mrs. Perlin. It’s all over. I’ve decided to confess.”

“Yes, Mrs. Perlin.”

“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 button 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?”

“Why, yes, of course.”

“Who is it?”

“Mrs. Perlin, Hocksley’s housekeeper.”

“Did she live here?”

“No. She lived in the flat with Mr. Hocksley. I don’t know how she happened to come here.”

“Had you seen her at all today?”

“I’m not going to be questioned about this.”

Mason said. “That’s what you think. You’re going to be questioned about this until your eardrums get calloused. Who telephoned you?”

“I don’t know. It was a woman with a nice voice, who said Sarah had given her a message to pass on to me, that I was to leave my car about half a block beyond the house up the hill. I was to walk back to this house and come right in. In case Sarah wasn’t here, I was to switch on the lights and make myself at home. She said Sarah would be here within a very few minutes of the time I arrived. She said Sarah was keeping a watch on someone who might be trying to double-cross her, and she couldn’t break away long enough to talk with me herself.”

“Did you think it might be some sort of a trap?”

“Not then.”

“Did the one who spoke to you say anything about not telephoning the police?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t think of this as being a trap of some sort to get you? In other words, didn’t you feel somewhat diffident about coming out into a residential neighborhood and simply walking into a strange house at two o’clock in the morning, switching on the lights, and making yourself at home?”

“I tell you, I didn’t at the time. I did later.”

“How much later?”

“When I got near the house and began to think over the things I was supposed to do. This woman told me the front door would be unlocked. I decided that I’d see if the front door actually was open. If it was, I’d go in. Otherwise, I wasn’t even going to try to ring the bell or do anything about it.”

“So you tried the front door and it was open.”

“Yes. I came in. No one seemed to be home. I thought I’d find the bathroom...”

“What did Mrs. Perlin want to confess?”

“She didn’t say. That is, the one who was talking with me didn’t have anything to say about that. She simply said that Sarah had told her to tell me she wanted to make a confession, and ask my forgiveness.”

“Ask your forgiveness!”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t know who this person was?”

“No. She said she was simply passing on the message, that Sarah was busy, and...”

“Yes. You’ve gone over all that, but did this person give you any idea of who she was?”

“No. Somehow, I got the impression she was a waitress in some restaurant where Sarah had established headquarters. You know, where Sarah could stand by the door to wait and watch. She said Sarah was over at the window, watching to see if a man to whom she’d telephoned was double-crossing her.”

“You have your own car?”

“Yes. That is, it isn’t mine. It’s a car I can borrow when I need one.”

“And you parked it a half a block beyond the house up the hill?”

“Yes.”

“She distinctly told you a half block beyond the house, and up the hill, did she?”

“That’s right.”

Mason said, “That shot was instantly fatal. She’s dead. There isn’t the faintest trace of pulse. You can tell from the location of the wound and the direction of the bullet that death was virtually instantaneous. Now then, why should she have committed suicide?”

“I tell you I don’t know.”

“And why can’t you tell your story to the police?”

“Because — because I’m afraid I’m in an awful jam, Mr. Mason. Sarah was the only one who could have vouched for me in case — well, in case the police turn up certain things.”

“And you want me to suppress all of this,” and Mason included the room and the body with a sweeping gesture of his hands, “simply in order to save you from being questioned by the police?”

“It isn’t going to hurt anything if you do this for me,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do to help solve this.”

Mason studied her thoughtfully. Abruptly, he asked, “This Mrs. Perlin, was she a woman who had had much experience as a housekeeper, or had she perhaps had money at one time, run into hard luck, and had to get work as a housekeeper...?”

“No. She’d been a housekeeper for years. I remember checking on her agency card when Mr. Hocksley hired her.”

Mason strolled down the corridor toward the dining room. His hands were pushed down in his pockets, his head thrust forward. She followed him, apprehensive, silently pleading. Abruptly, Mason whirled to face her. “You know what you’re asking?” he demanded.

She said nothing as he paused, her eyes pleading eloquently, her lips motionless.

“You’re asking me to square a murder,” Mason said, “to get my neck in a noose, and you’re doing it as casually as though you were wanting to know if I wouldn’t buy you an ice cream, or sign my name in your autograph album.”

She kept looking at him, pleading with her eyes. Her hand came out to touch his arm.

Mason said, “Once I walk out of this house without calling the police, I’ve put myself in the middle of a great big spot. I’ve given you a stranglehold on me. How deeply are you mixed in this business?”

She shook her head.

“Come on. Speak up.”

“I’m not in it at all.”

Mason said, “That’s what you think. You called the police yesterday morning, didn’t you?”

“Do we have to talk here?”

“We have to do some talking here.”

“It’s dangerous just being here.”

“It’s dangerous just walking away.”

“I came to work yesterday. No one was in the house. Usually Mrs. Perlin is there, and nearly always there are some records for me.”

“Records?” Mason asked.

“You know, the wax records that have been dictated on a dictating machine.”

“Oh.”

“This morning there weren’t any records. Mrs. Perlin wasn’t there.”

“How about Hocksley?”

“I very seldom see him. He sleeps most of the day. He works rather late at night.”

“But you have seen him?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Go ahead.”

“I couldn’t understand there not being any work laid out for me or any message. Then I started looking around, and I saw the door to Mr. Hocksley’s room was open. Then I saw spots of blood. I went in and saw the safe with a great pool of blood in front of it, and then I went out to the garage where we keep the car.”

“That’s in the house next door?”

“Yes. The Gentries rent Mr. Hocksley a garage.”

“And the car was there?”

“Yes; but there were bloodstains in it, all over the back seat. Really, Mr. Mason, that’s all I know. Then I called the police.”

“Why not call them now?”

“I can’t explain my being here. I can’t explain — lots of things.”

“What, for instance?”

“Things — complications that would be brought about by what’s happened here. Don’t you see. They’d think that Mrs. Perlin and I had worked together to get Mr. Hocksley out of the way.”

“Why should you want him out of the way?”

“I don’t know. I only know that’s what they’d say. It looks as though I must have had some connection with Mrs. Perlin, as though she’d communicated with me sometime today, and I hadn’t told the police.”

“She did communicate with you, didn’t she?”

“Well, in a way, yes.”

“And you didn’t tell the police?”

“She told me not to.”

Mason looked at his watch, hesitated a moment, then said, “If I do this for you, what’ll you do for me?”

She met his eyes without flinching. “What do you want?” she asked.

Mason said, “I don’t want you to run out on me if the going gets tough.”

“All right.”

“You’ll stick?”

“Yes — only — only don’t kid me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t tell me that you’re going to give me a break, and then as soon as I’ve left, call the police.”

Mason said, “As far as that’s concerned, I’ll go you one better. I know a roadhouse that’s still open. I’ll buy you a drink, and a sandwich, and you can watch me to make certain I don’t even go near a telephone.”

She hugged his arm. “You don’t know what this means to me! It — it means everything!”

Mason said, “Okay, let’s go.”

“Shouldn’t we — turn the lights off?”

“No,” Mason said. “Leave things just as they are.”

“But I’m the one who turned the lights on.”

“All right, leave them that way.”

“How about locking the doors?”

“No. Leave them just the way they are.”

“Why?”

“Suppose something happens. Suppose we’re picked up within a block by a prowl car. Suppose someone sees us leaving. We tell our story, and police find the doors locked.”

“I see. Look here, we have two cars. We can’t...”

Mason said, “You get in my car. I drive you up to your car. You get in, turn it around, and follow me for four or five blocks, park your car, get out, and go to the nightclub with me. I bring you back to where your car is parked. In that way, you’ll know I’m not doing any telephoning.”

Looking up, she said, “I think you’re wonderful. I can’t imagine why you’re doing this for me.”

Mason said, “Neither can I.”