The Case of the Fan-Dancer's Horse

Chapter number 7

Ten-thirty came and went with no sign of Lois Fenton. At eleven o’clock Perry Mason’s private telephone rang sharply. This telephone, which had an unlisted number, did not go through the office switchboard, but was a trunk line connected directly with Mason’s desk.

Mason picked up the receiver, said, “Hello.”

Paul Drake’s voice at the other end of the line said, “We’ve found your horse, Perry.”

“Where?”

“Ranch down near Calexico.”

“You’re sure it’s the same horse?”

“Yes. The horse came wandering in to the ranch all saddled and bridled, with a broken bridle rein, as though he’d been galloping and had stepped on it. The horse answers the description, but the pay-off is the saddle. It’s a beautiful hand-tooled saddle made by Wyatt of Austin, Texas, and it has what my operative cautiously described over the party telephone as some additional metal inserts other than those put on the saddle by the maker.”

“A bullet, Paul?”

“Judging from his words and the tone of his voice, that’s what I inferred he was trying to tell me.”

“I want that horse, also the saddle and bridle.”

“You’ve got ’em,” Drake said. “My man put up fifteen dollars covering all charges and has the horse. Then he rented a horse trailer, loaded the horse, and is well on his way up here right now. He was smart enough to wait until he got out of Imperial County before phoning.”

“Good work, Paul. Remember I want the horse, the bridle and the saddle.”

“Okay, you’ve got ’em.”

“Anything else?” Mason asked.

“Just a lot of routine.”

Mason said, “Hold the line a minute, Paul.”

He turned away from the telephone, squinted his eyes against the light of the window, once more made rapid, nervous drumming motions on the desk. Then he turned back to the telephone. “Any mark on the horse, Paul?”

“A scratch along the horse’s left hip. I gather from what my man said it was probably made by the bullet before it embedded itself in the saddle.”

“Okay,” Mason said, crisply. “That does it. Come on in here. I want to talk with you.”

“Be right in,” Drake said, and hung up.

Mason said to Della Street, “They’ve got the horse. Open the door for Paul, will you, Della? He’s coming in.”

Della Street moved swiftly across the office, stood waiting at the door, and as she heard the pound of Drake’s feet in the corridor, opened the door and admitted the detective.

Paul Drake, lanky and loose-jointed, crossed over to the overstuffed leather chair and doubled himself into a position resembling a jackknife.

“Gosh, what a break!” he exclaimed.

“Finding the horse?” Mason asked.

Drake grinned and the grin lit up a lugubrious countenance. “Identifying the damn thing,” he said. “It saves me a trip to the Valley.”

“Give me the dope, Paul,” Mason said.

“Well, I put three operatives on the job. I told them to hire men to help them in the Valley if they had to. I had visions of having to go down there to unscramble the mess. I was afraid each man would show up with a horse that was his favorite candidate, and I’d have to be the arbiter. What the hell is an American saddle-bred horse, Perry?”

Mason grinned. “Take a look at the one you’ve got when he gets here.”

“To me,” Drake announced, “a horse is a horse. Gosh, it sure was a break that we ran onto this one. My man hit it first thing. Of course, when you come right down to it, Perry, the fact that he had a saddle on when he got away gave us a real break.”

Drake waited for Mason to volunteer information. Mason said nothing.

Drake asked, “How did it happen that the horse got lost when it was saddled and bridled?”

“I thought you didn’t know anything about horses.”

“I know the facts of life. When you put a saddle on a horse it means someone wants to ride him. When you put a bridle on a horse it means the same thing. And that bullet hole... well, let’s hope we get the right answers before the questions are made official.”

“Can you depend on this chap who’s bringing the horse in, Paul?”

“I’d trust him anywhere, any time with anything.”

“And is he suspicious about the circumstances under which the horse became lost?” Mason asked.

“Put that ‘lost’ in quotes,” Drake said. “Of course he’s suspicious.”

“What was the name of the rancher — the one who had the horse?”

Drake consulted his notes. “A chap by the name of Nolan,” he said. “Wait a minute, I’ll give you his full name. Frank Loring Nolan. Of course, Perry, when my man gets back we’ll have a lot more detailed information. What I know now is stuff I picked up over the telephone in a hurried conversation. What I want to find out from you is how to answer the questions that I’ll be asked.”

“Nolan’s place fenced?” Mason asked.

“Gosh, Perry, I don’t know. My man got the horse and, after all, that was the main thing. As soon as he mentioned that extra bit of metal in the saddle and the mark on the back of the horse, I thought it would be a fine idea to do our talking at this end of the line after he got here with the horse.”

Mason said, “Paul, where can I get an assessor’s map that would show the various acreages and the ownership in that part of the country?”

Drake grinned. “Believe it or not, right in my office.”

“You have one?”

“I have two dozen. Talk about coincidences! A few weeks ago I worked on a case where I needed detailed assessor’s maps of the Valley, so I had ’em on hand for the boys when they drove in. And a good thing, too, considering the hour you...”

Mason interrupted the detective to nod at Della Street. “Get the maps, will you, Della?”

Della Street glided out through the exit door and down the corridor.

Drake slid around sideways in the big, overstuffed chair, adopting his favorite position with one arm of the chair under the small of his back, the other one supporting his knees. There was about him a mournful look of extreme pessimism, an innocuous, self-effacing expression which in any gathering would automatically relegate him to the background.

Della Street returned with the maps and Mason spread them out on his desk.

“You want to find this man Nolan on the map?” Drake asked.

“That’s right.”

“Down somewhere southwest of El Centro, just north of Black Butte somewhere,” Drake said. “Now this was the strip of territory my man was to work. Here we are. Down this road. See that patch there? Looks like forty acres — F. L. Nolan — that must be the place.”

Mason studied the map.

“What is it?” Drake asked, leaning over, as Mason’s finger came to a stop on an oblong etched on the map.

“The name,” Mason said, “seems to be Jose Campo Colima.”

“Sure,” Drake said, “there are a lot of persons of Mexican descent who own land down there and...”

Mason looked up at Della. “Mean anything to you?”

“Why yes, of course. That’s the courteous gentleman who took the old Mexican woman who had been hurt in to see a doctor.”

“Jose Campo Colima,” Mason repeated, musingly, “and he has a twenty-acre place about — let’s see, I’d say it was about a mile and a half to the north of the ranch of F. L. Nolan.”

“You know this guy Colima?” Drake asked.

“I’ve met him,” Mason said, and then added significantly, “and that’s all. Come on, Paul, we’re going to go call on a man in the Richmell Hotel.”

“Your car or mine?”

“Mine, unless we can spot a taxi at the stand down here on the corner.”

They found a cab waiting at the taxi stand and Mason gave the address of the Richmell Hotel.

As they entered the hotel, Paul Drake said, “I’ve got a complete report on everything that went on here after two-twenty this morning, Perry. That’s when my man got on the job.”

“I’ll get it after a while,” Mason said. “Nothing startling about it, is there?”

“Nothing except that your man in room 511 seemed to be doing a land office business until after three o’clock in the morning. And you were all wet about the chap in 510 checking out.”

Mason, who had been striding across the lobby toward the elevator, abruptly stopped. “What’s that?”

“Five-ten. The party didn’t check out until more than an hour after you telephoned.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure.”

“Where was your man spotted?”

“Up in the corridor in a mop closet.”

“Did he have to square himself with the house dick?”

“Hell, yes. It cost him twenty bucks, and he had to plant himself in a mop closet. Then he finally got the chance to move into 510, after the other party moved out. The room clerk didn’t want to rent it to him because there wasn’t any maid service at that hour in the morning and the bed hadn’t been made up and all that, but he moved in there anyway.”

“And covered the corridor from that room?”

“That’s right.”

“Until when?”

“As far as I know, they’re still covering it,” Drake said. “I sent a relief down to help him about five o’clock.”

“Well, we’ll go to 511,” Mason said, “and stop in and talk with the boys in 510 afterwards. You got a shadow on that chap who was in my office?”

“Uh huh. The guy reported on the phone a few minutes ago. Your man went to a rooming house at 791 East Lagmore and holed up.”

Mason nodded thoughtfully. “Keep your man on the job, Paul. Okay, let’s go see Callender.”

Mason signaled the elevator operator. They rode in silence up to the fifth floor, walked down the strip of carpet along the corridor, and paused in front of room 511.

A cardboard sign dangled from the doorknob bearing the words, DO NOT DISTURB.

Mason glanced at his watch. “Ten thirty-five,” he said.

“He isn’t going to like it if we wake him up,” Drake said, in a low voice. “Remember, Perry, he was up until around three o’clock this morning seeing people.”

“He isn’t going to like it anyway,” Mason said, and knocked on the door.

There was no answer. Mason’s knuckles pounded again, this time more authoritatively. When there was still no answer, Mason rattled the knob of the door.

“Take it easy, Perry,” Drake warned. “You’ll have the house detective... Oh, oh!”

The knob which Mason had been rattling clicked back. The door swung open an inch or two.

“Take it easy, Perry,” Drake warned again.

Mason cautiously pushed the door open.

The room was in a weird half-light, as though some of the darkness of the preceding evening had been trapped in the room with the closing of the door and the pulling of the drapes. The odor of stale tobacco smoke and cigarette ends assailed their nostrils.

Drake, peering past Mason’s shoulder, suddenly turned, made a panic stricken rush for the door of 510.

Mason, standing in the door of 511, said, “Hold it, Paul. Keep an eye on the corridor.”

“Come on out of there, Perry. Please! I can’t tip you off in time in case someone should...”

Mason gestured for silence with a finger on his lips, stepped into the room, gently closed the door behind him, and clicked on the light switch.

The body of John Callender lay sprawled on the floor.

The man was fully dressed, lying on his back, the right eye all but closed, the left half-opened, leering drunkenly at the overhead light. There was no indication of a struggle.

A Japanese sword had been plunged into his chest. The handle and some seven inches of the blade stood straight up, protruding from the body.

That which made the scene the more gruesome was the fact that Callender had apparently, with his last conscious effort, grasped at the blade of the sword and tried to pull it out of his chest. His right hand, rigid in death, was clasped about the razor-keen blade, and that blade had bitten into the fingers, down as far as the bone.

Taking great care not to touch anything, Mason detoured the red stain on the carpet and looked about him.

The room in which the body was lying was the reception room of a suite. Back of it was a bedroom which Mason could see through the open door. The bed was made up and had not been slept in. Back of the bedroom was a bathroom. Lights were on in the bathroom. The door was partially open.

Using his handkerchief so that he would leave no fingerprints, Mason pushed the bathroom door all the way open so that he could see no one was in the room. Then he gently closed the door again until it was in its original position.

A closet at the far end of the bedroom caught Mason’s eye. Here the door was standing wide open. More than a dozen suits hanging on a central bar were visible, through this open door.

Mason moved over so that he could see the entire closet. It was well filled with clothes, clothes which ranged from rough tweeds to a tuxedo and a full dress suit. A shoe rack contained more than a dozen pairs of shoes of different types.

Once more using his handkerchief so that he would leave no fingerprints, Mason opened one of the drawers in the bureau. It was well filled with shirts and neatly folded underwear.

Mason pushed the drawer closed, walked back to the parlor of the suite, again detoured the body and opened the door a crack.

Paul Drake was standing in the doorway of 510.

Mason raised his eyebrows in a silent question, and Drake nodded.

Once more using his handkerchief to protect his hands from contact with the doorknob. Mason stepped out into the corridor, pulled the door shut behind him and darted across to the sanctuary of room 510.

Drake kicked the door shut.

A man who had evidently been asleep had thrown off a light blanket and was sitting up on the edge of the rumpled bed. His coat had been hung over the back of a chair, his shoes were on the floor, he was wearing shirt and trousers. Another man, standing near the washbowl, held a half-smoked cigarette in between the forked fingers of his right hand, the smoke eddying upward. He was regarding Paul Drake with hard, startled eyes.

Drake said, “Do you know these boys, Perry?”

Mason shook his head.

Paul Drake indicated the man on the bed. “Frank Faulkner,” he said, and then nodding toward the man standing up, said, “Harvey Julian.”

Both men nodded. There was no attempt made to mouth any acknowledgment of the introduction.

Drake turned to Mason, “I’m going to have to report this, Perry.”

Mason shook his head, waved his hand back and forth with the fingers open, a gesture of dismissal.

“I tell you, I’ve got to,” Drake said. “Hell’s bells, Perry, I’ve got a license at stake. The smart boys amended Section 7578 of the Business and Professions Code to provide that in addition to all of the other causes for revoking the license of a private detective, the Board could make a revocation for ‘any other cause which the Board deems sufficient.’ You know what that means. They’ve got you where it hurts. And they don’t like me.”

Mason said, “Just a minute, Paul. I want to find out something first.”

Drake shook his head. “Perry, I’m telling you I can’t take a chance with it. We don’t know what’s going to happen here, and if I don’t...”

He broke off as knuckles sounded on the door panel.

“Now what?” Mason asked.

“Oh, Lord,” Drake groaned. “We’re in for it now. We...”

“Wait a minute,” Mason said, as the knock was repeated. “Hold everything, Paul. It’s across the hall, on the door of 511.”

Faulkner stepped to the door of the room, placed his eyes to the eyepiece of a portable periscope which had been so arranged that the opening projected slightly above the edge of the half-open transom.

“Room service,” he announced curtly, in a half-whisper. “A tray with a pot of coffee.”

Once more the knock was repeated. Then Faulkner said, tensely, “He’s trying the doorknob. Going in. Okay, he’s in the room now switching on the lights... There he goes.”

They heard the sound of a banging door, of steps running down the corridor.

“If they ever find out I’ve been there they’ll have my license for not reporting it,” Drake groaned.

“Who’s going to find out you were in there?”

Drake snorted, “Don’t be silly, we’re sewed up.”

“What do you mean?”

“That house detective,” Mason said, mournfully. “He’s got the deadwood. And right now they’re notifying the Homicide Squad. We couldn’t possibly get out of here without putting our necks in a noose. We’re trapped — right here in this room. We could stay here all right until the thing blew over, if it weren’t for the fact that when the police get to quizzing the house dick they’ll find out I had a man on this floor; that the house dick took twenty bucks to let him hide in the mop closet at the end of the corridor, and then put him in this room. That means the police will come here. We don’t dare to get out before they come, and when they do come we’re trapped.”

There was a moment of heavy silence. Then Mason moved over to the room telephone, picked it up and called a number.

“What’s the number?” Drake asked, suspiciously.

“Police headquarters,” Mason said, holding his hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. “Okay. Here you are, Paul. Report your murder if you want to. Just don’t mention my name — not yet.”

“They’ll already have the report,” Drake said. “That bellboy...”

“What the hell,” Mason said cheerfully, “there isn’t anything in the Business and Professions Code that says you have to report it first.”

Drake took the telephone. “Hello, headquarters? Paul Drake, Drake Detective Agency. I want to report a murder. Room 511, Richmell Hotel. The victim is a John Callender. I had men shadowing his room. A bellboy went in just now and discovered the crime, and...”

Mason’s forefinger firmly pressed down the button on the phone which cut off the connection.

“What the hell?” the detective exclaimed.

“The law says you have to report it. You’ve reported it. You don’t have to visit with them over the phone. Hang it up, Paul.”

Drake dropped the receiver into the pronged cradle.

Faulkner, the operative who was sitting on the edge of the bed, said, “For God’s sake, will somebody wise me up?”

Julian, on duty at the door, said, “We don’t know a thing about it, Frank. We’re covering the room, that’s all we know. Don’t listen to their conversation, if you don’t want to.”

Faulkner said, “I don’t think I want to.”

Drake said, “That’s all right. I’m responsible for you boys and I’m holding you responsible to me, Perry.”

“Okay by me,” Mason said, cheerfully. “Let’s have the works and have it fast. Faulkner, you’re the one who came on duty last night?”

“That’s right.”

“When?”

“I arrived here at about 2:16 or 2:17, and got on the job in two or three minutes after that. I’d figure perhaps two-seventeen and a half, if I had to get right down to a split second. For all-around purposes, I entered it in my notebook as 2:20.”

“You got here pretty fast,” Mason said.

“I was having a poker game in my apartment,” Faulkner explained. “Drake’s call caught me there. He said it was urgent and I jumped in my car and came down here.

Not much traffic at that hour of the night and I made it fast.”

“What did you do?”

“I looked around for the house dick. He wasn’t in the lobby — probably prowling the corridors. I carry a hotel key in my pocket for jobs of this kind. I walked across the lobby jingling the hotel key, got in the elevator and went directly to the fifth floor.”

“Then what?”

“I looked the place over,” Faulkner said. “The boss had told me that room 510 would be vacant. I saw there was light coming under the door. I also saw there was light coming under the door of 511. I figured 510 hadn’t checked out yet and I’d wait for him to get out. I looked around the corridor for the mop closet. That’s the best place to wait on a job of this kind. I found it. Fortunately it was located almost directly across from the elevator and where I had a clear view down the corridor. I got in there. It was pretty cramped, but I could manage to stand up and get a squint down the corridor.”

“You had this periscope arrangement?” Mason asked.

Harvey Julian said, “No, I brought that with me when I came on duty.”

“What time?”

“Five o’clock this morning. Drake got me and asked me to come up here and spell Frank Faulkner in case there should be a shadow job turn up.”

“Where was Faulkner?”

“I was in the room here by that time,” Faulkner said.

“What time did you get in the room?”

“It’s quite a long story,” Faulkner said. “I’d rather tell it the way it happened.”

“Okay, let’s have it your way then,” Mason said. “Only remember, we haven’t got much time. Make it snappy.”

“Well, as I say, I got on the job at 2:20. There was a lot doing in room 511. People were going in and out.”

“What people?” Mason asked.

Faulkner took a notebook from his pocket. “You want absolutely everything in the order it happened?”

“Everything. But let’s clear one thing up first. What time did you get into the room here at 510?”

“The man who was in it checked out at 3:02 A.M. I got in the room about ten minutes after.”

“How did you get in the room?” Mason asked.

“Went downstairs and registered.”

“Your right name?”

“Yes.”

“Then you weren’t covering the corridor between the time Sheldon checked out and you got into the room?”

“Now wait a minute,” Faulkner said. “I wasn’t, but the house dick was. That’s why I wanted to tell it to you the way it happened.”

“Okay,” Mason said, “let’s have it.”

“The house dick caught up with me about 2:35.I made a mistake. He was pussyfooting down the corridor and...”

“Never mind that,” Mason said. “What happened?”

“There was a little trouble for a minute. I showed him my credentials, told him what I was doing and he was pretty hostile. I slipped him a ten and that got him over his hostility. He told me he wouldn’t turn me in, but told me to get out. It took another ten to fix it so I could stay here. I told him that I had a tip 510 was going to check out and I was only waiting for that to happen. I told him I had to keep the corridor covered.”

“Why did you tell him you were on the job?” Mason asked.

“Told him I didn’t know for sure,” Faulkner said, “but told him I thought the boss was working on a case involving a hotel sneak thief. That made the house dick feel good. I slipped him the second ten and told him he’d get the credit for making the pinch, if there was a pinch, but that my boss would claim the reward on any loot we found in the place where the guy lived. That suited the house dick all right and we made a deal. He said he’d go back to hang around the desk and when 510 checked out he’d come up here and take my place covering the corridor. I could go down then and get the room.”

“And it happened that way?”

“That was the way it finally worked out. Five-ten checked out around 3:02. The house dick got up here around 3:04 and I went down to the desk and got there just as the man in five-ten was going out through the lobby door, followed by the elevator boy lugging his suitcase. I pretended to the clerk that I’d been waiting around in the lobby all evening for a room and that I’d been promised the first check-out. The clerk didn’t want to give me the room because he said they didn’t have any maid service at that hour of the night. The last maid went off duty at two in the morning and she was only on duty for emergency calls. I finally convinced him I didn’t care anything about that, so he let me have the room with the understanding that I’d take sheets and towels, make up the bed myself and put in fresh towels.”

“Did you?” Mason asked.

Faulkner grinned and indicated the rumpled bed. “I didn’t get in the bed. I just got on it. I put on clean pillow slips, that’s all.”

“Then you and the house dick must be buddies.”

“We got along all right.”

“What’s his name?”

“Sam Meeker.”

Mason said, “This is important. What time does he come on duty, do you know?”

“Sure. He comes on at eight at night and goes off at eight in the morning.”

“Anyone on during the day?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask him. A lot of these hotels only use the house dick at night.”

“All right,” Mason said, “he’s off now. That’s going to help. Now then, let’s have a note of what happened in room 511.”

“Well, just about the time I got established in the closet the guy who had 510 here came darting out of 511. He shot across the corridor, jerked open this door and went in.”

“Do you know what room he came out of?”

“I think he came out 511.”

“You don’t know?”

“Not absolutely. It all happened too fast.”

“All right then, you don’t know what room he came out of.”

“I think I know.”

“It’s your neck,” Mason said. “Stick it out as far as you like, or keep it in. Which side of the corridor was the mop closet on?”

“On the other side from 511.”

“On the same side as 510?”

“That’s right.”

“Then, looking down along the corridor, when the man went back into the room you say you think was 510, you didn’t have any depth of perspective. In other words, you were looking right along a solid line of doors. How could you tell exactly which door the man entered?”

Faulkner said, “He went in 510. In the first place, the door looked like that of 510, but in the second place, when he opened the door, the oblong of light streamed out into the corridor and fell right on the door of 511. That shows the door was exactly opposite, and then when I went down to the lobby and he was checking out, I saw the way the man was dressed. He had on exactly the same clothes that the man had worn who came out of 511; a distinctive checkered suit.”

“All right, what happened after that?”

“At about two twenty-two and a half,” Faulkner said, “the elevator stopped. I clocked it as 2:23, but if you want to get really technical about it, it was probably a few seconds before that. And you should have seen the dish that got out.”

“Give me the particulars.”

“She was class. She had on a tight-fitting little fine-patterned grayish sort of skirt that hit her right at the top of the knees and boy, oh boy, did she have legs and everything that went with ’em, and the way she used her feet when she walked! Seemed to just drift along over the floor.”

“Young?”

“Just a dish,” Faulkner said, “around twenty-two, or twenty-three, maybe.”

“Blonde or brunette?”

“Auburn haired.”

“Anything in her hands?”

“A violin case.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

“She went down to 511.”

“Then what?”

“She knocked, waited, evidently heard someone tell her to come in. She opened the door and went in.”

“You don’t know anyone called to her to come in?”

“No. I couldn’t hear. Just the way she opened the door is all.”

“Better save the mind-reading,” Mason warned. “This is going to be a murder case. You’ll be on the stand. What happened next?”

“She came out in just about ten minutes. I clocked her out at 2:32.”

“Still carrying the violin case?”

“Still carrying the violin case.”

“Then what?” Mason asked.

“Then at 2:44, a droop about twenty-six or-seven got out of the elevator. He walked down the corridor like he was going to a fire. He opened the door of 511 and popped in, and then he popped out and came down the corridor... Well, he acted as though he wanted to run but didn’t dare.”

“How long was he in there?”

“Ten seconds.”

“Describe him.”

“Droopy shoulders, thin, five seven or eight, a hundred and thirty maybe. He was wearing a brown overcoat, buttoned up.”

“An overcoat?”

“Yes, a light-weight gabardine.”

“Hat?”

“No. Brown curly hair — a dime-store sheik, an underfed wolf, fast on his feet, though. I put him as a half pimp or a tout. He had something to deliver, something he wanted to leave. I thought he’d phoned from downstairs and had a clearance, the way he popped into the room and then popped out. You know the way those squirts are. But, of course, he could have seen something that scared him — something on the floor.”

“Better let the police do the speculating. He didn’t come right out?”

“It depends on what you mean by that. It was ten seconds. I timed him.”

Mason grinned. “Then he wasn’t scared. Paul Drake beat that time by nine and four-fifths seconds. What else you got?”

“Then at 3:02 Sheldon came out and walked across to the door of 511. I thought he was going to knock for a minute, but he didn’t knock. He just stood there as though he was listening and then he started down the corridor toward the elevator. He was looking directly at the door of the mop closet so I eased the door shut before he got close to me. I waited until I heard him go down in the elevator and then I opened the door a crack. After a minute I heard the elevator coming up again. I ducked back into the mop closet but this time it was Sam Meeker, the house dick. He told me 510 was checking out and he’d stay on the job and watch the place and I could go on down and register and get the room.”

“You went on down?”

“Yes.”

“Take the elevator?”

“That’s right. Sam took the elevator up. The elevator boy was in the lobby lugging Sheldon’s bag, hoping for a tip. Sam stepped into the cage and took it up to the fifth, gave me the nod, and I stepped into the elevator and took her down. There’s only one elevator running at that hour. I don’t think anyone knew the cage had made a trip — either Sheldon, the clerk, or the operator. I left the elevator, moved over into a shadowy place in the lobby and as soon as Sheldon was out of the place went over and told the clerk I’d been waiting in the lobby with the promise of the first check-out. I told him the man who was on duty before him had made me the promise. The rest is what I’ve told you already.”

“All right, you got into this room and then what happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“That’s right.”

“There’s a sign DO NOT DISTURB on the door across there. When was that put out?”

“That must have been put out just about the time the house dick was taking over and I’d gone down to register,” Faulkner said. “When I came back and moved into 510 I noticed that sign on the door. I asked Meeker when it had been put there, and Meeker said it was on there as soon as he got squared away and noticed what was going on, but Meeker is a bigger man than I am, and he had trouble fitting himself into the mop closet.”

“When you came back up here, that sign DO NOT DISTURB was on the door?”

“That’s right.”

“That sign wasn’t on the door when you went down?”

“Well... I don’t think it was.”

“Did you ask Meeker about it?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“Said no one had even been near the door of the room.”

“But the sign wasn’t on when you went down in the elevator?”

“I... I don’t think it was.”

Mason turned to Julian, the other detective. “What do you know, Julian?”

“Not a darn thing,” Julian said. “Drake got me about 4:30. I was in bed. He wanted me to drive down to the Imperial Valley for him and I told him nothing doing. Then he wanted to know if I’d come up here and take a job relieving Frank Faulkner here in the hotel. I told him that was okay by me. He wanted to know how soon I could get on the job and I told him I’d have to get some coffee and I should shave. He told me to put a razor in my pocket and come on up and I could shave here. I stopped in an all-night restaurant and grabbed a cup of coffee.”

“Get anything else?”

“No, I wasn’t hungry. I just wanted some coffee. I got up here and — oh, I don’t know, I guess it really was a few minutes after five, but we called it five o’clock in round figures because there was nothing doing, and I told Frank to roll over on the bed and take a snooze and I’d take over for a while. I was getting ready to wake Frank up when you folks came up. I saw you knock on the door and go in, and then...”

“Here’s what we’ve been waiting for,” Drake interrupted. “It’s the law.”

Through the transom could be heard authoritative voices. A door opened and shut-opened again. A man’s voice said, “Let’s dust that doorknob for fingerprints.”

Mason turned to Faulkner. “This woman that went in at 2:23 and out at 2:32. Give me a better description.”‘

“She seemed to me to be two-thirds stockings.”

“That might be a darn good description at that. What about the skirt?”

“It was some sort of a little black and white checkered affair, and there was a coat to match. It was sort of grayish overall but there were little black dots in it, or something. It gave the effect of a very fine plaid with some sort of tan-colored stockings and straight seams and — I think she had on brown shoes.”

“What did she weigh? How tall was she?”

“Oh around five feet two, or three inches. You can just visualize a perfect figure and that’ll be it. She had auburn hair.”

“What’s going on in the corridor, Paul? Have they posted a man on guard?”

Drake, his eye at the periscope, said, “Not in front of the door. They’re all in there. I’ve got to check in with them, Perry. Are you ready?”

“Give me another thirty seconds. Open the corridor door, Paul, take a look down the corridor.”

The detective opened the door, looked down the corridor, then closed the door. “Man on guard at the corridor by the elevator,” he said.

Mason moved over and picked up the telephone. “Bell captain, please,” he said into the transmitter.

A moment later, when he had the bell captain on the line, he inquired, “Say, what’s wrong up here on the fifth floor?”

The bell captain seemed apologetic. “The police are requesting guests who happen to be on the fifth floor to remain in their rooms temporarily. It’ll only be for a moment or two. They’re getting names and addresses of witnesses.”

“Witnesses to what?” Mason asked.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t tell you. It’s a matter of police routine.”

Mason hung up. Something in the wastebasket caught his eye. He bent down, retrieved two oily cleansing tissues with some red on them. He slipped them into his pocket.

He opened the window, waited for a propitious moment, then scaled his hat far out over the street and closed the window. He crossed the room, opened the door, stepped out into the corridor and walked toward the elevator.

The plain-clothes man stepped forward to bar his way. “I’m sorry, buddy, you’ll have to wait a minute.”

Mason looked at him in surprise. “Wait a minute! What for?”

The man turned back the lapel of his coat and let Mason see the gold shield. “Just a little formality.”

“What’s it all about?”

“I wouldn’t know, but the Chief wants to get the names of people on this floor and ask them if they heard anything last night. It’ll only take a minute.”

Mason said, “Cripes, they rented me a room without a bath and I want to go down to the lobby to the washroom. You can come along with me now if you want.”

“I can’t leave the place here. There’s one on this floor, ain’t there?”

“I guess so,” Mason said. “Oh well, okay. How long’s it going to be?”

“Not over five or ten minutes.”

Mason turned back to the corridor for a step or two, then swung back to the plain-clothes man. “You don’t know where it is, do you?”

“Hell, no, I just got here. It ain’t as though you needed a blueprint. Look at the doors. It’ll have a sign on it that says, men.”

“Thanks,” Mason said, sarcastically. “You’re such a help.”

“Cripes, I ain’t a traffic officer.”

Mason walked along the corridor, ostentatiously looking at each door until he came to the stair door. He opened that tentatively, looked back at the plain-clothes man. When he saw that the officer seemed to see nothing alarming in this, Mason walked through the stair door and took the stairs two at a time. There was no watcher in the sixth floor corridor, but Mason went up to the seventh floor and then to the eighth, just to be on the safe side. At the eighth floor he pressed the button which summoned the elevator, stepped in casually and was whisked down to the lobby.

Mason paused at the newsstand, then at the travel desk, walked over to the stand marked THEATER TICKETS, then stepped out of the door and onto the sun-swept sidewalk.

“Taxi?” a doorman asked.

Mason nodded.