The Case of the Fenced-In Woman

Chapter 10

The Las Vegas bellboy regarded the three one-dollar bills which Mason dropped into the palm of his hand and said, “Genevieve... sure, Genevieve is one of the hostesses.”

“How about pointing her out?” Mason asked.

“Right this way.”

The boy led the way down past a bar into a huge casino, where roulette wheels, wheels of fortune and rolling dice furnished a background of sound. Jacketed young women in tight-fitting slacks sat behind tables dealing twenty-one. At the far end of the room a bank of slot machines, whirring away busily, kept a continual monotone of sound interspersed occasionally by a voice over the loudspeaker announcing, “A jackpot on machine number twenty-one... jackpot on machine twenty-one... Machine fourteen hits the double jackpot. Machine fourteen hits the double jackpot.”

The bellboy said, “There she is over there.”

“Which one?” Mason asked.

“The snaky one.”

“They all look snaky to me,” Mason said.

The bellboy grinned. “They’re paid to look snaky. She’s the snakiest. The one on the right.”

“Thanks,” Mason said.

Mason walked through the milling crowd of sightseers and gambling customers to the far end of the room.

The young woman who had her back toward him was wearing a glittering, dark gown which fitted her like the skin on an onion. She turned as Mason approached, surveyed him with large, dark eyes that looked him over with a trace of impudence in their depths.

The gown followed the line of cleavage between her swelling breasts in a low-cut V that started wide then narrowed until it seemed to stretch almost to her waist.

“Hello,” Mason said.

“Hello,” she said.

“I’m looking for Genevieve.”

“You’ve found her.”

“My name is Mason.”

“Don’t tell me the first name is Perry?”

“It’s Perry.”

“I thought I’d seen your picture somewhere. Now what in the world brings you to Las Vegas?”

“I’m looking for amusement.”

“You’re standing in the exact geometrical center of some of the best amusement in the world. Only don’t make any mistake about me, I’m a shill, sucker bait, window dressing. I’m not for sale.”

“Or rent,” Mason said casually.

She smiled. “One might consider a long-term lease,” she said, her large dark eyes looking up to the lawyer’s rugged features and making no attempt to veil their interest.

Mason said, “I want to talk. Are you permitted to talk during working hours?”

“That’s my business. I could lead you to a gambling table and...”

“My attention might become engrossed in other things,” Mason said. “Could we have a drink?”

“That is not encouraged,” she said, “except as a preliminary, but under the circumstances I think it might be done.”

“In a booth?” Mason asked.

“In a booth,” she said, “but there again remember that I’m on duty and in circulation. I’m supposed to lead customers to the gambling tables, to see that everyone is happy and once in a while to take a stack of chips and show the gamblers how easy it is to win.”

“Is it easy to win?” Mason asked.

“If you know how,” she said.

“And how does one learn how?”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

She took Mason’s arm, led him over to the roulette table.

“Give the man twenty dollars for a stack of chips.”

Mason handed over twenty dollars and received a stack of chips.

“Now then, I’ll make a bet with your money,” she said. “You get the winnings.”

She watched the wheel for a moment, then put chips on the number seven.

The wheel stopped on number nine.

“That easy?” Mason asked.

“Hush,” she said, “I’m getting the feel of the thing. Put a couple of chips on twenty-seven and put some on double-zero. Put five chips on the red and three chips on the third twelve.”

“At this rate,” Mason said, “twenty dollars will last fast.”

“And then,” she said, in a half whisper, “I’ll be free to go to a booth with you. They’ll know I’m cultivating a customer.”

The ball clicked into a pocket. “See,” she said.

Mason watched the croupier push out the chips.

“Now,” she said, “you have a lot more than when you started.”

Mason gravely handed her half of the winnings. “Could I make you a free-will offering?” he asked.

She accepted only a part of the chips, made quick bets around the board, leaned against him as she reached for the far end of the table so that Mason could feel her breast pressed against his left arm. Her lips were close to his ear. “I’m not allowed to cash chips,” she said, “but cash is always acceptable later on after you’ve cashed in.”

Mason said, “This is all rather new to me, Genevieve.”

“When you’re winning,” she said, “press your luck. When you’re cold, quit.”

“That’s the only recipe for success?”

“That’s all there is to it. The trouble is the customer can’t do it. When he gets cold, he starts trying to force his luck. When he’s hot, he tends to get a little conservative. You’re hot; shoot the works.”

Mason watched her spread chips around the board.

Twice more the croupier handed out large piles of winnings.

Following Genevieve’s lead, Mason started scattering chips in various places around the table and from time to time more chips were pushed across toward him.

People who were wandering aimlessly around came to watch the phenomenal success of the pair at the table. Soon the table was ringed with players so that spectators were crowded back into the second row. The play became so heavy that it took the croupier some time in between rolls of the wheel to rake in the chips, pay off the winners.

For a while Mason seemed to hit almost every third roll of the wheel, then there were five consecutive rolls during which he won nothing.

Abruptly the lawyer crammed the remaining chips into the pockets of his coat.

“Come on,” he said to Genevieve, “I want a recess. I want to have a drink, I’m thirsty.”

“You can have a drink served right here,” she said so the croupier could hear her.

“I want to sit down and drink leisurely. Can I pay for it with these chips?”

“Oh, sure,” she said, “or you can cash the chips in at the cashier’s window and come back and buy another stack.”

Mason followed her over to the cashier’s window, handed in the chips, which were carefully counted, and received in return five hundred and eighty dollars.

The lawyer took Genevieve’s arm, surreptitiously pressed a one-hundred-dollar bill into her palm, said, “Is that acceptable?”

“That’s quite acceptable,” she said without looking at the amount of the bill.

She led him past the bar over to a section of booths, slid in behind a table, smiled at the lawyer with full, red lips parted to show pearly teeth.

“You’re a gambler,” she said.

“I am now,” Mason told her. “I’ve been initiated. Is it always that easy?”

“It is when you’re hot.”

“And what happens when you’re cold?”

“When you’re cold,” she said, “you get mad. You start plunging. You get to feeling the board owes you money. Then you look at me with a jaundiced eye and think maybe I’m a hoodoo. About that time I slip one of the other girls the wink and she sidles over to the table, gets interested and makes a bet, leans up against you so she’s pressing her form against you, says, ‘Pardon me,’ and smiles. You say something to her, and I’m sort of pushed into the background. Then if you don’t do something to recapture me, I drift away and you have another hostess on your hands.”

“And she collects a tip?”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “No one who is losing gives anyone a tip, but when a man is winning he gets generous.

“My gosh, I’ve even seen ‘em tip the croupiers down in a joint in Mexico until their pockets were bulging.”

“Can the croupier control what happens?” Mason asked.

“How you talk,” she said, laughing.

“I was talking about down in Mexico,” Mason said.

“I know you were,” she said, smiling at him invitingly.

A waiter paused by the table.

Mason raised his eyebrows inquiringly and Genevieve said, “Scotch and soda please, Bert.”

Mason said, “Gin and tonic, double, please.”

Genevieve adjusted her dress beneath the table, lowered her eyes, then suddenly raised them with an expression of surprise. “That was a hundred dollars you gave me,” she said.

“Right,” Mason told her.

“Well... bless your soul,” she said, “and thanks.”

“I may as well tell you that I want something,” Mason said.

“All men want something,” she said, smiling. “I hope what you want is something I can give. Something easily accessible.”

She moved seductively toward him, then laughed and said, “Oh, let’s forget it. Come down to earth. What do you want, Perry Mason?”

He said, “I want to know whether you know a Nadine Palmer.”

“Palmer, Palmer, Nadine Palmer,” she said, squinting her eyes thoughtfully and frowning slightly with an effort of recollection.

Slowly she shook her head. “The name means nothing to me,” she said. “I might recognize her if I saw her. I know lots of people that are faces without names. Does she live here?”

“She lives in Los Angeles.”

Again Genevieve shook her head.

“Do you know Loring Carson?” Mason asked.

Her eyes snapped up to his with hard appraisal, the pearly teeth vanished from behind the red lips.

“I know Loring Carson,” she said.

“Have you seen him lately?”

She frowned. “It depends on what you mean by lately. I saw him... Well, let’s see. He was here last week... I think it’s been about a week since I’ve seen him.”

“He’s dead,” Mason said.

“He’s... he’s what!”

“He’s dead,” Mason said. “He was murdered today, late this morning or early this afternoon.”

“Loring Carson dead?”

“That’s right. Murdered.”

“Who killed him?”

“I don’t know.”

She lowered her eyes. For some ten seconds her face remained expressionless, then she sighed, raised her eyes to Mason and said, “All right, he’s dead. He’s gone.”

“He was a friend?” Mason asked.

“He was a — a good guy; let’s put it that way.”

“You knew he was having trouble with his wife?”

“Virtually all men have trouble with their wives sooner or later. All the men that I meet do.”

“He gambled quite a bit?” Mason asked.

“We don’t discuss the affairs of customers publicly, but he gambled quite a bit.”

“And won?”

“He was a good gambler.”

“And that means what?”

“Doing just what I told you. There’s no secret about it. Plunge like the devil when you’re hot, lay off gambling when you’re cold. Do that and you’ll win, at least in Las Vegas. But people can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Carson wasn’t like that?”

“Carson was a good gambler and when he was cold, he... he’d do what you’re doing.”

“What?”

“Take me out of circulation and buy me drinks.”

“The management permits that?”

“Look, Mr. Mason, let’s be frank. You’re grown-up and I’m grown-up. You’re a big boy and I’m a big girl. The management doesn’t make much profit on the sale of drinks. The management puts out food, entertainment and lodging as cheap as possible.

“On the other hand, the State of Nevada is largely supported by taxes levied on the profits of gambling establishments. All this glitter and luxury is supported by one thing: the gamblers who don’t know how to gamble, the gamblers who lose.”

“There are gamblers who win?” Mason asked.

“There are gamblers who win.”

“Consistently?”

“Consistently.”

“And, I take it, what you’re leading up to is that when a gambler is active and patronizes the tables, the management has no objection if you take a little time out to be with him.”

“Under those circumstances,” she said, “the management loves it. Now then, Mr. Mason, you’re too smart a man to go back and start plunging and lose very much money. You and I will go back. If you’re cold, you and I are going to part company. If you’re hot, I’ll be with you for a while. Something seems to tell me you’re not going to be hot. I think you’ve made your pass at Lady Luck.”

“And you think Lady Luck is going to turn a cold shoulder on me?”

“Lady Luck is a woman,” she said. “Lady Luck is intensely feminine. You gave Lady Luck an opportunity to smile at you and she did more than smile. She jumped in your lap. You indicated that you were gambling with only half of your mind on what you were doing. You were thinking of me. You were more interested in me than you were in Lady Luck.

“All right, you’ve had your tête-à-tête with me. When you go back to the table, something seems to tell me Lady Luck is going to be cold as ice.”

“And if that happens?”

“If that happens, I’ll drift to the perimeter and vanish. You’ll find yourself with another hostess, provided you’re gambling enough to be important enough to attract a hostess. If you’re not, if you show signs of quitting when you’re cold, you’ll probably find yourself wandering around with no one taking very much interest in you.”

“Interesting, isn’t it?” Mason said.

“Business,” she said. “Now what do you want?”

“I want to know if Nadine Palmer gets in touch with you,” Mason said. “Nadine is a very personable young woman, well put together. I have every reason to believe she flew over here this afternoon from Los Angeles and I think she’s looking for you. If she gets in touch with you, I’d like to know what it is she wants.”

The waiter brought their drinks. Mason clicked glasses with Genevieve. “Here’s how,” he said.

“I know some cute answers to that,” she said, “but somehow I think they’d be wasted and... Look, Perry, I am going to be frank with you. That news about Loring Carson was quite a jolt to me.”

“Were you fond of him?”

She hesitated a moment, then raised her eyes deliberately to Mason.

“Yes.”

“Intimately so?”

“Yes.”

“Let me ask you this: Would you have become the second Mrs. Carson?”

“No.”

“May I ask why?”

“I have my work, he has his. I’m a wonderful playmate. I’d probably make a damn poor wife. He was a showman. He could treat a girl swell. I think he’d be lousy to a wife.

“Some men are like that. They’re essentially salesmen. They like to sell their stuff and feel that they’re getting an order on the dotted line, but when they’ve bought the merchandise, when it’s in the house with them all the time, when it’s eating with them, sleeping with them, traveling with them, they don’t have any incentive to sell. And when they can’t strut their stuff selling, they get bored. After they get bored, they get unresponsive. A man who’s unresponsive is a net loss to himself and to the world.”

“You don’t seem to have a very high idea of marriage,” Mason said.

“It’s all right,” she said, “for some people.”

“Carson wasn’t the type?”

“I don’t think Carson would ever have been happy with any one woman until after he passed... oh, probably fifty, and by that time it would have been too late.”

“For marriage?”

“For me. He’d have married some younger woman, someone in her twenties or someone in her early thirties who persuaded him she was in her late twenties.”

“And then?”

“Then Carson would have wanted to settle down. He’d have felt that he’d hit the jackpot. The woman would have seen Loring getting old and slowing down. She wouldn’t want to get old and slow down.”

“And so?” Mason asked.

She shrugged her shoulders, finished her drink.

Mason tilted his glass, said, “Let’s go back to the tables. Will you let me know if Nadine Palmer gets in touch with you?”

“For how much?”

“For two hundred dollars,” Mason said.

“I’ll think it over. It depends on what she wants. Is it something I could make money out of?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not going to lie to you, Mr. Mason,” she said. “I hate liars. I’ve given up a lot of things coming over here to Las Vegas and being a hostess, but I’ve gained certain things. One of them is the right to be free, and the right to be free gives me the right to be frank. Thank God, I don’t have to lie anymore and I’m not going to do it.”

“You used to lie?” Mason asked.

“Any girl who tries to be respectable, and isn’t, has to put up a front.”

“You weren’t?” Mason asked.

She laughed. “You want lots of information for your hundred-dollar tip, Perry Mason. I told you I don’t have to lie anymore. Come on, let’s go back to the table. Let’s see how hot you are.”

She led the way back to the same table.

“Give the man a hundred dollars for chips,” she said to Mason.

Mason passed out a hundred dollars.

The lawyer started putting bets around on the various numbers. This time Genevieve didn’t help him, but simply stood there watching.

Time after time the wheel rolled and Mason collected nothing. He won a small bet on red and one on the second twelve, but the numbers eluded him and his pile of chips started shrinking.

Genevieve looked at him and smiled.

A young woman in a skin-tight dress abruptly reached a bare arm across the table, leaned forward to place a bet on a number at the extreme far corner. She stumbled slightly and her soft, pliant form pressed against Mason’s arm.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said, and looked up and smiled.

“Quite all right,” Mason said.

“Clumsy of me,” she said, “but I just had a hunch on that number... Oh, oh, I didn’t make it after all.”

“Better luck next time,” Mason said.

Her eyes met his. “There’s always a next time,” she said. “Always something new, always tomorrow — and today — tonight,” she said softly.

She placed another bet at the corner of the board so that she pressed against Mason. This time she held the lawyer’s arm.

“Pull for me,” she said. “Wish me luck.”

“You might give me some luck,” Mason said.

“All right, we’ll give each other luck.”

The young woman’s bet paid off.

“Goody, goody, goody,” she said in an ecstasy of excitement, squeezing the lawyer’s arm to her breast and jumping up and down. “Oh, goody, goody, goody, I made it!”

Mason’s smile was enigmatic.

The lawyer made three more bets, which finished his pile of chips.

He backed away from the table.

“Oh, you’re not quitting,” the young woman said in a tone of incredulity.

“Just for a while,” Mason said. “I’m taking a breather. I’ll be back.”

“Do,” she said, and then added, “please.” Then by way of explanation as though to apologize for any seeming attempt at being forward, “I had good luck with you here. You’re so... Well, you brought me luck.”

She looked wistfully after him as Mason drifted away from the table.

Genevieve Honcutt Hyde was nowhere in sight.

The lawyer went back to the bar, ordered another gin and tonic, sat there sipping and watching.

Fifteen minutes later, he saw Nadine Palmer moving through the crowd.

Mason pushed his glass away, followed Nadine to one of the tables.

Nadine was carrying a purse which was literally bulging with chips. She had evidently been drinking.

She pushed up to a roulette table and started making bets. Her luck was phenomenal. Within a few minutes she had a crowd of people watching her play, trying to ride along on her bets.

Mason felt eyes on his and looked up to see Genevieve Hyde appraising him from the line of spectators.

He looked pointedly at Nadine, then back at Genevieve.

Genevieve’s face had no expression whatever.

Mason stayed in the background watching Nadine until finally Nadine had such a pile of chips in front of her, she seemed to be behind a barricade.

Then Mason leaned forward to put a lone dollar bill on number eleven.

“Cash in and check out,” he said in a low voice to Nadine.

She whirled indignantly, then gasped with surprise.

“Cash in and check out,” Mason said again.

The lawyer made two more bets, then stepped back from the table.

“You heard me,” he said to Nadine.

Five minutes later Nadine, with two bellboys carrying chips, went to the cashier’s window.

People watched her with awed curiosity as she cashed in something over ten thousand dollars.

Perry Mason took her arm as she left the window.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“And what are you doing here?” Mason asked.

“I’m gambling.”

“You were gambling,” Mason said. “You’re quitting.”

“What do you mean I’m quitting? I come over here every so often. I’m perfectly able to run my own life, Mr. Perry Mason, without any advice from you.”

“The advice you’re getting from me is purely gratuitous,” Mason said. “I’m talking to you not as a lawyer but as a friend.”

“You’ve become an intimate friend on rather short notice, it seems.”

“I want to ask you some questions,” Mason said. “Would you like a drink?”

“No, I’ve had enough to drink. I’m going out to my room. You want to come?”

“Is it all right?” Mason asked.

“What do you want me to do, hire a chaperon?” she asked. “Or a baby-sitter?”

“Neither,” Mason said, “I just wondered if it was all right.”

She moved out of the side entrance, down the long line of bungalows, the lawyer at her side.

She fitted a key to a door, let Mason open it and then usher her inside. It was a sumptuous room with a bed, television, several deep easy chairs, wall-to-wall carpeting and an atmosphere of quiet luxury.

When Mason had closed the door, Nadine Palmer seated herself, crossed her knees, showing a generous display of nylon, surveyed Mason appraisingly and said, “This had better be good.”

“It is good,” Mason said.

“For your information,” she went on, “I was hotter than a firecracker when you stopped me.”

“How much had you won?”

“Plenty.”

“I gathered you cashed in for around ten or twelve thousand.”

“That was the second time I’d cashed in,” she said.

“As much as that the first time?”

“More.”

“What time did you get here?”

“I took a taxi to the airport,” she said, “and took the first plane.”

“You didn’t buy a ticket under your own name.”

“Is that a crime?”

“It might be taken into consideration in connection with a crime,” Mason told her, “unless, of course, you had a good reason.”

“I had a good reason.”

Watching her, Mason said, “I have the distinct impression that you’re simply sparring for time.”

She said, “And I have the distinct impression that you’re simply fishing for information.”

“I’m not denying it,” Mason said. “I’m asking for information. Why didn’t you buy a ticket under your own name?”

“Because,” she flared, “I’m tired of being an easy mark for every wolf in the world. Thanks to Loring Carson, my name has become a brand. I’m little Miss Pushover.”

“Bosh and nonsense!” Mason said. “A few people read about what had happened in the newspapers, smiled a little, then turned the page and forgot the whole thing — at least, as far as you’re concerned. I will admit that the situation is somewhat different as far as Vivian Carson is concerned. Loring Carson threw a lot of mud at her and I can see where she has been damaged.”

“Well, save a little sympathy for me while you’re at it,” she said. “Every man I’ve met since that publicity has made passes.”

“And didn’t they all make passes before that?” Mason asked.

“Look,” she said, “I was having a winning streak. You came along with that big-shot, imperative manner of yours and told me I was quitting. You bluffed me into quitting. Now speak your piece, and then I’m going back to the tables. If you don’t speak fast I’m going back anyway.”

She got to her feet, smoothed her dress down and moved toward the door.

“Did you,” Mason asked, “know that Loring Carson had been murdered when you left Los Angeles?”

She stopped midstride as he threw the question at her, and whirled, her eyes becoming large, her jaw sagging.

“Murdered!” she said after a tense moment.

“That’s right,” Mason told her.

“Oh, my God,” she said. She walked back to the chair in which she had been sitting and dropped into it as though her knees had lost all their strength. Her eyes, wide and dark with expression, searched the lawyer’s face.

“When?” she asked.

“I don’t think they know the exact time; probably sometime late this morning or early in the afternoon.”

“Where?”

“Out at the house he had built for Morley Eden.”

“Who... Who did it?”

“They don’t know,” Mason said. “The body was found against the barbed-wire fence on the Eden side of the house.”

“How was he killed?”

“He was stabbed with a butcher knife that may have been taken from the knife rack in the Vivian Carson side of the house. What makes it interesting is that there is some evidence indicating he had removed a large sum of cash from a place of concealment by the swimming pool, and the person who murdered him had taken that cash.”

She sat looking at him, her manner indicating either that she was having trouble getting the full import of his disclosure or that she was mentally dazed.

Mason said, “I may not have very much time to talk with you, Nadine, because the police are making a frantic effort to find you.”

“The police! Why should they want me?”

“Because,” Mason said, “there is some evidence indicating that the person who committed the murder picked up the knife on one side of the house, then got to the other side through the barbed-wire fence by means of the swimming pool.

“You’ll remember that when I got to your apartment I found you with your hair wet. You were in a negligee. You said you had been taking a shower. Wasn’t that rather an unusual time of day for you to be taking a shower?”

“Not for me it wasn’t. What are you getting at?”

“And,” Mason said, “I asked you for a cigarette. You told me to look in your purse. I looked in there and found a package of cigarettes. I took out one. It was soaked. I couldn’t get it to light.

“You came dashing out of the bedroom, trailing your negligee behind you, careless of how much you were exposing because you were in such frantic haste to get at that purse. You grabbed it, whirled around, pretended to take the pack of cigarettes from the purse and handed it to me.

“Those cigarettes were quite dry. I think you had them in your hand when you came out of the bedroom,”

“Indeed,” she said sarcastically, “and what does all this mean, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”

“It means,” Mason said, “that you wanted to get from one side of the house to the other; that you stripped off your dress and dove in, clothed only in panties, bra and stockings; that afterward you swam back, squeezed the water out of your undergarments, put them in the purse, put on your dress, went home, and were just changing when I rang the bell.”

“Meaning that I killed Loring Carson?” she asked.

“Meaning,” Mason said, “that the police are going to regard all of these things as highly suspicious circumstances. Now then, when you got in the car with me I mentioned something about Loring Carson’s girlfriend, Genevieve Hyde, who is a hostess over here in Las Vegas. The minute you heard that name you suddenly got the idea you wanted to get out of my car and into a taxicab.

“I thought at the time it was because I had let a cat out of the bag; that you didn’t know the name of Carson’s girlfriend and as soon as you found it out you decided you wanted to see her.

“Now I have another idea.”

“And what’s your other idea?” she asked.

“Now,” Mason said, “I have a feeling that you may have suddenly acquired a bunch of cash; that you were wondering how to account for all that cash being in your possession, and when I mentioned Las Vegas it gave you a great idea. You decided you’d come over here, be seen plunging at first one gambling table and then another, and then later on you could say that you had been a heavy winner.”

“Indeed!” she said. “But it happens that I was a heavy winner. You were standing there long enough to see that. You saw the chips I cashed in.”

“Exactly,” Mason said. “The fact that you came over here with the idea of camouflaging your sudden acquisition of wealth doesn’t mean that you couldn’t have run into a winning streak.”

She looked at him speculatively for a few minutes.

“Well?” Mason asked.

“You’re the one who’s all wet, Mr. Perry Mason,” she said. “I don’t know anything about a wet pack of cigarettes. I didn’t slip off my dress and go swimming in my underthings. I come over here to Las Vegas every so often in order to gamble. I love to gamble. Sometimes I’m very, very good at it. Usually I like to have a gentleman friend with me but I will admit that when you mentioned Las Vegas it rang a bell in my mind and I suddenly had the feeling that I was hotter than a stove lid; that if I could get over here I’d run right into a big winning streak.

“When I have a hunch like that I play it. Sometimes it’s something that someone says that gives me a hunch on a horse running in a race; then I dash out and make a bet on that horse. I like to play my hunches.”

“And this was a hunch?”

“This was a hunch.”

“Rather a rapid reaction,” Mason commented.

“All of my reactions are rapid,” Nadine said. “Where in the world did Loring Carson have all of this stuff hidden at the Eden residence?”

“It was an ingenious hiding place,” Mason said. “He had evidently built it purposely while he was building the house. By pulling on a ring that was cleverly concealed behind the cement steps in the swimming pool, a hinged tile was elevated and that disclosed a steel-lined receptacle.

“When I left the place the police were planning to test the edge of this tile and the inside of the receptacle for fingerprints.”

Despite herself, the expression on her face altered.

“Fingerprints!”

“Fingerprints,” Mason repeated.

“You wouldn’t... wouldn’t leave fingerprints on a smooth surface like that?”

“On the contrary,” Mason said, “the tape that cushioned the inside lip of the hinged tile would be an excellent place to leave fingerprints and it is very, very possible that the smooth surface on the interior of the steel-lined receptacle would take and hold a fingerprint.”

“Mr. Mason,” she said, “I... I want to tell you something.”

“Now wait a minute,” Mason warned, “I’m here trying to get information. I’m a lawyer but you’re not my client. I have a client. If you tell me anything I can’t keep it in confidence.”

“You mean you’ll have to tell the police?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m not going to tell you anything,” she said abruptly.

“All right, don’t,” Mason told her. “But remember this: If — and mind you, I say ‘if’ — there should be anything that would be damaging to you in the evidence that the police are going to uncover, you don’t have to make any statements to them.

“If you were out there, if you picked up that money or any part of it, the best thing for you to do is to tell a lawyer of your own choosing.”

She was silent for several seconds.

“Well?” Mason asked.

She said, “I was out there.”

“At the pool?”

“No. I wasn’t at the house at all. I had driven my car up to the point above the house. There are some lots up there that are for sale. I had been out there before and I saw that one could see this house, the patio and the swimming pool from that point.”

“What were you doing out there? Now, don’t answer unless you want the police to know.”

“The police know — at least they’re going to know.”

“How does that happen?”

“A watchman for the subdivision caught me out there.”

“Tell him you were thinking of buying a lot?”

“I couldn’t. He caught me peeping with binoculars. I knew Norbert Jennings was going out there again with blood in his eye, looking for Loring Carson. He had a tip Carson was to be there. As the maligned woman who was to be the subject of a fight, I wanted to see the fight. Instead of that I saw...”

Abruptly her voice trailed into silence.

“Saw what?” Mason asked.

“I saw... saw...”

She ceased talking as the chimes sounded.

“That’ll be the masseuse,” she said parenthetically. “I left word for her to come here and...”

She crossed to the door, opened it and said, “Come on in. You’ll have to wait for just a few minutes, I—”

She broke off and gasped as she saw Lieutenant Tragg’s smiling face.

“Quite all right, thank you,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “I’ll come in, and if you’ll permit me to introduce myself, I’m Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide of Los Angeles, and the gentleman with me is Sergeant Camp; Sergeant Elias Camp, of the Las Vegas police.”

The two men moved into the room.

Tragg smiled at Mason and said, “You know, Mason, you’re quite a bird dog, really quite a bird dog.”

“You followed me here?” Mason asked.

“Oh, we did better than that,” Tragg said. “We knew that you wanted to find Nadine Palmer and had had a detective trailing her, so we simply rang up the various airlines and asked if they had booked a Perry Mason any time during the afternoon for any destination.

“Now, Mrs. Palmer, here, didn’t use her own name evidently, because we couldn’t find where she’d taken a plane. But we found you had taken a plane here, and you’re rather a distinctive individual, Mr. Mason. You stand out, you really do. You left quite a broad trail once you arrived here. We had little difficulty picking up that trail.

“We’d have been here sooner only we wanted to get a few formalities disposed of first.”

Lieutenant Tragg turned to Nadine Palmer. “Now, Mrs. Palmer, you have been doing a little gambling since you arrived?”

“Yes. Is there anything wrong with that?”

“Not a thing. And I understand you’ve been rather fortunate?”

“Very fortunate, indeed — and I take it that’s not illegal.”

“On the contrary, that’s very nice,” Tragg said. “The Internal Revenue Service will be very interested. They always like to get an unexpected windfall of this sort. And where did you leave your winnings, Mrs. Palmer?”

“I... I have them here.”

“That’s fine,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “Now this paper that I’m handing you is a search warrant, giving us authority to search your baggage.”

“No!” she cried. “You can’t do that! You can’t...”

“Oh, but we can,” Tragg said, “and we’re going to. Now this handbag or purse here. It’s lying on the bed as though you’ve put something in it in a hurry. Let’s just see what we have here, if you don’t mind.”

Tragg opened the bag.

“Well, well, well,” he said.

“That’s money I won!” she cried. “I won it here gambling in Las Vegas.”

Tragg stood looking at her, his smile deceptively cordial but his eyes hard as diamonds.

“Congratulations,” he said.

Mason said, “I assume there’s no further need for me to be here. You can remember what I told you, Mrs. Palmer, and...”

“Don’t go, don’t go,” Tragg said. “I want you here for two reasons: First, I want you to hear what Mrs. Palmer has to say because you’ll be a disinterested witness since you have other clients in the case, and second, I want to search you before you go.”

“Search me?” Mason asked.

“Exactly,” Tragg said. “Who knows but what you came here to present a claim on behalf of your client and received something in the way of a cash settlement. I’m quite sure we won’t find anything, Mason, but it’s a formality that the Las Vegas police insisted on. If you’ll just stand there, please.”

“Do you have a warrant to search me?” Mason asked.

The Las Vegas officer said, “We can take you down to the station, book you on disorderly conduct, occupying a room for immoral purposes, resisting an officer and a few other charges. Then we’ll turn you inside out when we get you down there. You can have it whichever way you want. Now hold your arms out from your sides.”

Mason smilingly held his arms out from his sides. “Go right ahead, gentlemen,” he invited.

“He’s clean,” Tragg said, “clean as a hound’s tooth. I know him like a book. He’d have pulled some sort of a razzle-dazzle if he’d had anything on him.”

The Las Vegas officer rapidly went through Perry Mason’s pockets. “I guess the stuff is all there,” he said, indicating Nadine Palmer’s handbag.

“And quite a haul,” Tragg said. “Several thousand dollars. Now, did you win all of this money at the tables, Mrs. Palmer?”

Nadine Palmer said, “I don’t like your attitude, I don’t like the way you come into my room and make yourselves at home, I don’t have to answer any of your questions. You’re trying to browbeat me and intimidate me and I’m going to insist on having a lawyer of my own choosing here before I answer any questions.”

“Is Mr. Mason the lawyer you have reference to?”

“He is not,” she said. “Mr. Mason is representing other people in the case. I want an attorney who will represent me and me alone.”

Tragg stepped over, held the door open and bowed smilingly to Mason. “That, Counselor,” he said, “is the cue for your exit. You’ve been searched, you have a clean bill of health, you aren’t this woman’s attorney. We’re taking her to Headquarters for interrogation and we certainly don’t want to detain you.

“I even understand that you were a little lucky at the gaming tables a while back. If you don’t mind accepting a word of advice from a seasoned officer, I would suggest that now you’ve made your little pile of winnings, you stay away from the tables for the rest of the evening. They have an excellent floor show here, I understand.

“And of course you won’t mind having the Las Vegas police keep an eye on you, Mason. We want to know where you go, what you do and with whom you talk. I wouldn’t tell you this, only I know that you’ll spot the gentleman waiting around the entrance to the casino as a plainclothes officer who has been instructed to keep you in sight. In such cases if there’s a mutual understanding it’s always so much easier all around.”

Tragg bowed with mock deference as he held the door open.

Mason turned to Nadine Palmer, “I think you’ve made a wise decision,” he said. “Get an attorney.”

“Are you presuming to advise her?” Tragg asked.

“Just as a friend, not as an attorney,” Mason said.

Tragg said to Nadine Palmer, “Mr. Mason is representing other people in this case. Everything he does is done for their best interests. Quite naturally if he can get you involved with the police, it’s going to make things a lot easier for his clients. I’m just telling you this so you can take everything into consideration. I wouldn’t want you to labor under any misapprehensions, and I’m quite certain Mason wouldn’t want you to think he was advising you as an attorney while he has conflicting interests because then he’d be guilty of unprofessional conduct.

“And now, good night, Mr. Mason, and I hope you enjoy the floor show.”

“Thank you,” Mason said. “I’m quite certain that I will, Lieutenant, and I hope you enjoy your visit here.”