The Case of the Grinning Gorilla

Chapter number 6

Della Street said, “Our ten o’clock appointment is here, Chief.”

Mason looked up from the papers on his desk. “Mrs. Kempton?”

“That’s right. Mrs. Josephine Kempton, and her attorney, James Etna.”

“How do they look to you, Della?”

“Mrs. Kempton is something of an enigma. She’s spare, somewhere around fifty, and rather poker-faced I would say. You gather that life hasn’t been kind to her, and she’s had to adjust herself to take things philosophically.”

“And Etna?”

“He’s just a good, active, young lawyer. He’s an admirer of yours and makes no secrets of the fact that the chance to meet you is one of the big thrills of his life.”

“Well, let’s get them in,” Mason said, “and see what they have to say.”

Della Street went into the outer office and returned with the visitors.

James Etna, a man in the middle thirties, came rushing forward to grasp Mason’s hand. “Mr. Mason, I can’t begin to tell you how much this means to me. I want to tell you that I think what you did last night was one of the most splendid things, one of the finest things — I have found out a lot about it since I talked with you.”

“Well, I’m glad I was able to be of some help,” Mason said. “And I take it this is Mrs. Kempton.”

Mrs. Kempton smiled, a tired, patient smile, extended her hand and said, “How do you do, Mr. Mason?”

“Do you know what happened?” Etna went on, bubbling with enthusiasm. “You hadn’t any more than hung up your phone when Hardwick telephoned. He told me that he wanted to apologize for putting through a call at that hour, but that he was going to be busy in the morning and he felt that the information he had was important enough so that it would be of interest to me.”

“Indeed,” Mason said.

“That’s right, and the he offered me five thousand dollars to settle the case — five thousand dollars.”

“Did you take it?” Mason asked tonelessly, conscious of the presence of Etna’s client.

“Do I look silly?” Etna said. “Yesterday afternoon I’d have settled the case if he’d promised not to write any more letters accusing my client of dishonesty, but last night, knowing what I knew, I wouldn’t have accepted the first offer they made if it had been five hundred thousand dollars.”

“Good boy,” Mason said. “What happened after that?”

“Well, then there was a lot of hemming and hawing over the telephone, and he increased his offer to seventy-five hundred dollars.”

“What did you do?”

“I refused.”

“Then what?”

“Then he asked me point blank if I had heard from you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Told him the truth. I told him, yes, I’d heard from Mr. Mason, that Mr. Mason had promised me that if he found out anything that would be of interest in the case he’d let me know, that he had certainly found out something of interest and that he had let me know.”

“So then what?”

“Then Hardwick said, ‘Very well. I don’t think Mr. Mason had any right interfering in this case. I think it was a matter that, to put it plainly, was none of his damn business, but in view of the circumstances and since he already has made this interference, and since my client desires to be fair, I am offering you twenty thousand dollars. That’s our top limit, and that’s all there is to it. Otherwise we’ll sit tight on the fact that the communication was a privileged communication made in good faith.’ ”

“And what did you do?” Mason asked.

“I sank my teeth into that offer,” Etna said. “I told him that we’d take it.”

“Good boy,” Mason said. “I have an idea that Hardwick was probably telling you the truth and that was their final offer.”

“That’s the way I figured it. Of course, there’s a lot of law involved. There’s the question of good faith, absence or presence of malice, a privileged communication, and all of that.”

“But, as you pointed out last night, when you come right down to a showdown,” Mason said, “when a multimillionaire, who is rolling in money and is able to indulge in all of his hobbies, proceeds to take it upon himself to persecute a working woman who is trying to make her way in the world... well, you know how a jury would have looked at it.”

“I sure do, and what’s more, so did Hardwick. I think I could have secured a bigger verdict out of a jury, but it might have been set aside and a new trial granted, and... well, we’re satisfied with twenty thousand dollars, aren’t we, Josephine?”

Mrs. Kempton smiled her patient, tired smile, but she was looking at Perry Mason rather than her lawyer. “Very, very much satisfied,” she said.

“I thought I’d let you know,” Etna said, “that I have charged Josephine five thousand dollars and she is keeping the fifteen thousand.”

“That’s fine,” Mason said.

“And I want to pay you some of that fifteen thousand,” Mrs. Kempton said. “I feel that I should. If it hadn’t been for you, Mr. Mason...”

Mason shook his head.

“But you did a lot of work in the case. You dug through those diaries and worked out a theory, and...”

“No, please sit down,” Mason told her. “Let’s get informal and friendly right away. I don’t want a dime from either one of you. I’m glad that you were able to make a good settlement. I think your lawyer made a very fine settlement. I agree with Mr. Etna that while you might have recovered more from a jury, that once Addicks had been brought into court he’d have fought the thing all the way through to the highest court in the land. After all, the thing that bothered him more than anything else was being ridiculed in the press and placed in the position of a wealthy man who had tried to make it impossible for a working woman to make a living.”

“That’s the way I felt about it,” Etna said.

“Now,” Mason said, “you can do something for me, Mrs. Kempton.”

“Anything in the world.”

“I want to know something about Helen Cadmus.”

“Well, she was a little — I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Go ahead, do the best you can. Do I gather that she was peculiar?”

“She’d had some terrific heartbreak in her life, I know that.”

“How long did you work out there with her?”

“Somewhere around two years I guess it was.”

“And your employment was terminated very shortly after she disappeared?”

“Two days later.”

“Was there anything in the termination of your employment that had anything to do with Helen Cadmus or her disappearance?”

Mrs. Kempton shook her head. “He fired me for stealing.”

“Think back,” Mason said. “Let’s try and get this thing straightened out. After all, it’s rather a coincidence that...”

“No,” she said. “Mr. Addicks was terribly upset about Helen. I think he was fond of Helen, and I think that...”

“Now wait a minute,” Mason said, “you say he was fond of Helen. Do you think that there was anything...?”

“Well — I don’t know. There was the relationship of employer and employee, and then a friendship on top of that. I don’t think — Benjamin Addicks isn’t an emotional type.”

“Well, let’s talk about Helen first.”

“Helen was very decorative and she knew it. She was very, very proud of her figure. She liked to be photographed and she liked to look at herself in the mirror. I know. There was a full-length mirror in her room, and several times I’ve noticed that she... well, she was proud of her figure.”

“What about the mirror?” Mason said.

“She stood in front of it and looked at herself quite frequently.”

“How do you know?”

“I’d open the door and come in and she’d be there.”

“You mean that she was fond of clothes, that she was looking at herself in the mirror and the way she wore clothes?”

Mrs. Kempton smiled. “All the clothes she had on you could have covered with a postage stamp.”

“Nude?” Mason asked.

“Not nude. Those bathing suits. She loved to take two or three squares of material and knot them around so that they’d make a cute, clever bathing suit. Of course, it wouldn’t have stood any swimming, and it wouldn’t have stood any great amount of wear and tear.”

“Did she wear those on the yacht?”

“Occasionally.”

“When there were mixed gatherings?”

“Well, people she knew. She wasn’t — I’ll put it this way, there wasn’t anything modest about Helen. She was a frank sort of a girl, and I know that she loved to be out in the sunlight. She had a body that was one of the most beautiful bronzed bodies you’ve ever seen. She’d tanned herself until she was just, well, just a beautiful bronze.”

“Except, of course, where the bathing suit came?” Mason asked.

“That was the thing that annoyed her more than anything else, having white streaks on her body. No, Mr. Mason, she had a sunbathing place on the roof, and she would sunbathe in the nude. She wanted her body to have a uniform tan. I think she was even more proud of her tan than she was of her... well, of her curves. And her curves were all right and were all in the right places.”

“Wouldn’t it be unusual for a girl like that to have committed suicide?”

“Very unusual.”

“Where were you when the suicide took place?”

“I was on the yacht.”

“On that cruise?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to know something about that. What can you tell me?”

“I’ll tell you all I can. Mr. Addicks wanted to go over to Catalina. He nearly always took Helen with him on his trips, and very often he took me.”

“Who took care of the house while you were gone?”

“We had quite a staff of servants that came in by the day. I had over-all charge and supervision. I also had supervision of keeping things up on the yacht, and, believe me, that’s a job, Mr. Mason. You can have all the sailors in the world to keep the thing shipshape outside, but the things on the inside, the staterooms and the... well, cleaning up, cleaning out the ash trays, getting rid of all the mess that they’d have in the big room after they’d been out on a cruise. Cigars and cigarette stubs, glasses, empty whisky bottles, all of that. It was quite a chore.”

“Did anyone help you?”

“No. I handled that by myself. Of course, you understand that even a big yacht is more or less crowded, and there isn’t room to carry a large staff of servants, particularly women servants. The men can bunk together up in the front of the boat, but with the women it’s different. We had to have rooms of our own.”

“All right, let’s get back to what happened that day.”

“Mr. Addicks wanted to go to Catalina. He telephoned down and had the yacht all ready. He expected that we’d take off about two o’clock in the afternoon, but he was delayed with some important business matters that came up, and didn’t get down there until about five o’clock. By that time one of those sudden, terrific windstorms had come up. There was a storm warning out for small craft, but Mr. Addicks went out anyway.”

“And then what happened?”

“Well, it was quite a storm. We finally had to heave to and just take it. We didn’t get into Catalina until the next morning.”

“Now how did you go down to the yacht? In automobiles?”

“Yes.”

“You went down with Mr. Addicks?”

“Yes.”

“And Helen went down with him?”

“No, she left about — oh, I don’t know, about an hour before. She drove the sport convertible down and went aboard. She had some typing to do. That was what had caused the delay in the first place. Some business matter had come up, and Mr. Addicks dictated a lot of stuff to her. I believe there were some agreements and some confidential letters that went with them.”

“Go on.”

“Well, she went down to the yacht. Mr. Addicks stayed behind to gather up some more stuff, then he and I went down together.”

“Were there any guests?”

“No. There were some people we were going to pickup in Catalina, but there was only the crew, Helen and me.

“When did you last see Helen?”

“That afternoon — now wait a minute, I didn’t see her. On the way down Mr. Addicks decided there were some corrections he wanted to make in the letter or agreement, or whatever it was he’d given her, so as soon as we went aboard he went directly to her stateroom. He was dictating in there for — oh, I don’t know, I guess a half an hour.”

“How do you know he was dictating?”

“Oh, I could hear him. Helen’s stateroom was next to mine. We shared a bath between the rooms. I remember I went to the bathroom to wash up, and I heard Mr. Addicks dictating, and evidently he wasn’t relying on shorthand but was dictating directly to the typewriter because I’d hear him dictating and could hear Helen pounding away on the typewriter.”

“Then what happened?”

“There’s an inner and an outer harbor. We started out, but it was terribly rough outside, so Mr. Addicks put in at the outer harbor, and we waited for the wind and sea to go down. They didn’t go down.

“Mr. Addicks telephoned his friends in Catalina. Their time over there was limited. Mr. Addicks’ yacht was a big seagoing affair that could sail around the world, so he decided to put out and go over at half speed.”

“How long did he dictate?”

“I guess until it got too rough for Helen to type. It was terrible.”

“You heard him dictating after you put out?”

“Oh yes.”

“For how long?”

“I can’t tell. I’m a poor sailor. I went to sleep.”

“To sleep?” Mason asked.

“Yes. I have some stuff that I take when it’s going to be rough, and it works pretty well, but it makes me terribly sleepy. I...”

“You didn’t have any dinner that night?”

“Dinner? Heavens, no! I began to feel miserable and then the medicine took hold and I went to sleep and I don’t think I woke up until around midnight. It was pretty bad then. I took some more medicine, and went to sleep, and about, oh, I don’t know, about seven or eight o’clock in the morning I woke up and found it was calm. We were coming into the island then.”

“And then what happened?”

“Well, it was shortly after that that we discovered Helen was missing. Mr. Addicks went down to her stateroom and... well, I guess you know the rest. The bed hadn’t been slept in.”

“She could have accidentally washed overboard?” Mason asked.

“She could have, yes.”

“She could perhaps have been standing out on deck?”

“She could have, but it was rough and we were making heavy weather of it until we hove to. I was down in my room myself, but I talked with some of the sailors afterwards. I guess we were taking a bit of water over the decks. It can get terribly rough out there in the channel.”

“All right,” Mason said, “Helen kept a diary. You knew that?”

“Yes.”

“Now then,” Mason said, “I have four volumes of that diary. Volume number five is missing. Volume number five would have started in about two weeks prior to Helen’s disappearance. That is, volume four ends exactly two weeks before her death. Do you think she gave up keeping her diary?”

“No, I’m sure she didn’t. She had a brief case. She used to carry that diary with her all the time. I remember that I remonstrated with her a couple of times.”

“Why? What was wrong with keeping a diary?”

“It’s all right if a body just puts in a few things about where they are and what they’re doing and things of that sort, but Helen just pored over her diary, she put in hours on it. Hours when she should have been out with other people.”

“That’s the point,” Mason said, “that’s what I want to know about. What friends did she have?”

“Mr. Mason, I don’t think she had any.”

“Then what was the idea of keeping herself so beautiful, and getting that beautiful sun tan?”

“She was ambitious. She wanted to go to Hollywood and become an actress, and she thought that sooner or later there would be an opportunity through some of the connections she would make through Mr. Addicks.”

“Was Addicks friendly with the Hollywood crowd?”

“No, that’s the trouble. He wasn’t. He was in a position where he could have been, but Mr. Addicks — I don’t like to talk about a former employer, Mr. Mason, but Mr. Addicks is very, very unsocial. I think his life became dominated by... well, I suppose you know about his brother.”

“What about him?”

“He committed a murder.”

“Where?”

“In some foreign country. I think it was Australia.”

“And was executed?”

“I presume he was. All I know is that he committed murder and that Mr. Addicks was very, very much attached to his brother, and apparently Mr. Addicks has... well, if you ask me, I think Mr. Addicks is afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid of himself. Afraid that there’s some sort of a curse in the family, some kind of a homicidal complex that he has — the same thing that his brother had. I think he’s trying to find out something about that.”

“And so he experiments with monkeys and apes.”

“Mostly gorillas. He says gorillas are the closest to man in their psychological reasoning; that chimpanzees are friendly and all of that, but he is interested in the lowland gorilla.”

“And they’re kept in cages?”

“That’s right. Of course, you have to have very strong cages for them because...”

“And there’s a trainer?”

“There are several trainers, and one psychologist who...”

“Where do all those people live?” Mason asked. “Who does their housekeeping? Who cooks for them?”

“They live in their homes. They work in a completely separate house that faces the back street. They come and go as they please. They’re not permitted to have the run of the grounds at all. They can come to the main house through a corridor, but only if they’re sent for.”

“Who takes care of the gorillas at night?”

“No one. They’re caged in strong, heavily barred cages.”

“What would happen if there’d be a fire at night?”

“That’d be just too bad. If you want to bring that up, what would happen if there was a fire in the daytime? You can’t just open the cage of a gorilla and say, ‘Come on out.’ ”

Mason thought that over.

“Those gorillas are mean?”

“I guess so. I only petted one of the smaller ones. He loves me. Some like people, some don’t. Some of the experiments were for the purpose of confusing them. They’d be trained to take food from a box when a bell rang. At other times they’d get an electric shock when they tried it. Then the trainers would change the signals all around — something about a confused orientation they called it. I didn’t like it. Neither did Helen.”

“Well,” Mason said, “I couldn’t help but be interested on account of the diary. Thanks a lot.”

Mrs. Kempton said, “Helen kept herself to herself, Mr. Mason. She had a consuming, driving ambition. She was willing to sacrifice everything to that, and, of course, somewhere in the back of her life there was an unfortunate love affair.”

“Did she tell you about that?”

“Good heavens, no. She didn’t need to. You could see as plain as day what she was doing.”

“What was she doing?”

“She’d evidently been jilted by someone who... well, sometimes I had the idea it was someone who fancied that he was a little bit above her in life, a little bit superior to her. Helen seemed to have dedicated her whole life to showing him that she could make a success, and the only thing that she had that she could make an outstanding success of was... well, something like pictures. She was really beautiful.”

“So I gather,” Mason said. “I have some photographs of her. Who took them, do you know?”

“Mr. Addicks, I suppose. He was always snapping people with a camera, and on the whole he took some pretty good pictures.”

“He had a camera on the yacht?”

“He had cameras on the yacht, he had cameras in the house, he had cameras everywhere. He had a whole bunch of cameras of different sorts.”

“All this about Helen’s love affair, how did you get this information?”

“By putting two and two together. She was a good looking, normal girl, but she didn’t seem eager to go out. She worked, she wrote in her diary, she took sunbaths. She even had a quartz light for the cloudy, rainy days.”

“That was her whole life?”

“That and her work. Of course, she had no real office hours. She was on call whenever anything turned up, and she went with Mr. Addicks, of course, whenever he went anywhere.”

“Was that frequent?”

“Oh yes. He had lots of irons in the fire. There’d be a phone call on some mining deal or other and he’d be running around, throwing things into a car, and then he’d be off — sometimes with Hershey, sometimes with Fallon, sometimes just by himself — with Helen, of course. She went on all of his trips.”

“There’s one more question before you go. Do you feel that there was anything really strange about Helen’s death?”

“Of course there was.”

“I mean, do you feel that she didn’t commit suicide?”

“That she could have been washed overboard accidentally?”

“I’m asking you,” Mason said.

She said, “Mr. Mason, I’m never going to say anything that would make it difficult for anyone. I know all too well how rumors can get started and how much they can do to ruin a person’s whole career, but... well, if I’d been the police I wouldn’t have quit that easy.”

“And why not?”

“Because... well, I know, I just absolutely know Helen didn’t commit suicide, and I know that somebody took her diary and threw it overboard.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because her diary was missing, and I know that she would have kept it with her.”

“How do you know it was missing?”

“I had the job of going through Helen’s room afterwards and tidying it up and getting the things together for the public administrator. He went in there with me and we went through everything. He put all of her clothes and personal things in one box, and all of her books in another.”

“She left no relatives?”

“No one could find out a thing in the world about her, where she came from or anything.”

“Nathan Fallon claims that he’s a distant relative,” Mason said.

“Nathan Fallon does?” she asked in incredulous surprise.

Mason nodded.

“She hated the ground he walked on. He was no more related to her than — than he was to those apes out in the cages.”

“You don’t think she had perhaps known him before she got the position and...?”

“You mean that she owed her position to him?”

“In a way, yes.”

“Good heavens, no. She hated Nathan Fallon.”

“How do you feel about him?”

“I don’t like to hate people.”

“But you don’t like him?”

“Definitely not.”

“Did Fallon try to be attentive to...?”

“Try to be attentive to her? Of course he did. He couldn’t keep his hands off of her at first — and then she slapped him into his place. He’s one of those men who go around pawing and slapping and nudging, and letting his hand rest on your arm, then on your shoulder, and then he’ll start patting you on the knee. When he has a chance he’ll slip an arm around you, but it’s never still. He’s — the man is just unclean somehow. You want to spit in his face.”

“Well, I think that gives me all the information I wanted,” Mason said. “I was primarily interested in finding out about the missing diary.”

“Well, I... I’ve done a lot of wondering about that myself. She could have taken it with her when she went overboard.”

“Anything else you’ve been wondering about?”

“Yes.”

“Such as what?”

“Well,” she said, “that important document that she was doing for Mr. Addicks. I’ve often wondered about that, and about what happened to it.”

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t in her stateroom, and I don’t think Addicks took it with him when he left her stateroom. Of course he could have, but I doubt it. I think she was supposed to have finished the typing the next morning. They called off work when the storm got bad.”

“Well, let’s suppose her death wasn’t suicidal, and let’s suppose it wasn’t accidental,” Mason said.

She looked at him steadily. “That leaves murder.”

“That leaves murder.”

Her face remained absolutely expressionless. Her lips were clamped together.

“You’re not saying anything,” Mason told her.

“And I’m not going to say anything.”

Mason got to his feet and shook hands with her. “Well, I’m glad to have been of some service, and I’m glad you made your compromise, Mrs. Kempton.”

James Etna grabbed Mason’s hand and pumped his arm up and down. “I can’t ever thank you enough both on behalf of my client and for myself. I... well, I just can’t begin to tell you how much it has meant to both of us.”

“Quite all right,” Mason said. “I was glad to do it for you.”

“Well, you’ve certainly been nice.”

“By the way,” Mrs. Kempton said, “I missed some things out there myself. Would you mind telling me what was found in that collection of stuff in the urn, if you know? Was there a pearl earring that matches this?”

She held out an earring and Della Street nodded emphatically.

“There was the mate to that earring,” she said. “I remember noticing it particularly, and noticing the way the pearls were put together in a little cluster.”

“Oh, thank you,” Mrs. Kempton said. “I’m so glad! My mother had those earrings and... well, I felt terrible when one of them was missing. I...”

“Did you report that it was missing?” Mason asked.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Well, I thought — I don’t know. Live and let live is my motto, and I didn’t want to do anything that was going to upset things.”

“You thought you had lost it?”

“I knew I hadn’t lost it, because they had both of them been in my jewel case, and when I went to put them on just one of them was left.”

“So you thought someone had taken it?”

“Well, I... I didn’t know.”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“No.”

“Well,” Mason said, “it was in the bunch of stuff that was there in the urn. I remember seeing a pearl earring, and Miss Street seems quite positive it’s the mate to that one.”

“I am positive,” Della said.

“Thank you so much,” Mrs. Kempton said, and gave them the benefit of her patient, quite smile.

James Etna looked as though he wanted to shake hands all over again. “This is one of the most interesting experiences I’ve ever had, Mr. Mason. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, and to think that you would help me out on a case of this sort — it means a lot, Mr. Mason. I appreciate it.”

“Glad to do whatever I could,” Mason said.

They left the office. Della Street looked at Perry Mason.

“Well?” she asked.

“This little playmate of ours,” Mason told her.

“You mean Fate?”

Mason nodded.

“What’s Fate doing now?”

“I think,” he said, “that there was some reason why I was attracted to those diaries of Helen Cadmus.”

“All right,” she said, “Fate wanted you to do Mrs. Josephine Kempton a good turn, and you’ve done it. If you ask me, I’ll bet that five thousand dollar fee meant a lot to that young lawyer.”

“Probably so,” Mason said, “but I still don’t think we have the answer.”

“I don’t see why not. You’ve cleared everything up and... oh, I see, you’re thinking about the disappearance of Helen Cadmus?”

“I’m thinking about the disappearance of Helen Cadmus.”

“You don’t think it was suicide?”

Mason said, “I can’t get over a feeling in the back of my mind that it could have been murder.”

“Good heavens, Chief, there’s only one person who could have murdered her, and that was Benjamin Addicks.”

“Or her friend Nathan Fallon,” Mason said. “Don’t forget him.”

“And,” Della Street said, and paused.

“Yes,” Mason said, smiling, “go ahead.”

Della Street shook her head.

Mason’s smile broadened.

“Oh, all right,” she said. “I hate myself for even entertaining the thought, but if you’re starting to figure out a murder case... well, you can’t overlook the woman who had the adjoining stateroom, who had an opportunity to enter Helen’s stateroom at any time by going through the bathroom, who said she had taken medicine that had drugged her all night — good Lord, Chief, what a horrid, nasty mind I’m getting, working for a cynical lawyer!”

“What a fine, logical mind you’re getting,” Mason corrected.

“Chief! You don’t suspect her?”

“In a murder case,” Mason said, “one suspects everyone.”

“But you don’t know it’s a murder case.”

“No,” Mason said, “and sometimes I wonder if I wasn’t supposed to find out. I wonder somehow if people don’t leave behind them a sort of telepathic thought that can attach itself to someone’s mind.”

“Or if you’re a spiritist,” Della Street said, “you can think that perhaps Helen Cadmus, knowing your ability to ferret out the truth in a case, had been giving you a subconscious urge, perhaps...”

“Quit it,” Mason said, grinning, “or I’ll be going to see a medium.”

“Well,” Della Street said seriously, “under the circumstances, it would be interesting to see what a medium would say.”

“I think a good deal of that is mental telepathy,” Mason said. “She might read my mind and confuse the issues.”

“She couldn’t confuse them any more than you’ve confused me,” Della Street said. “You’ve given me the creeps. There’s something about that... well, I don’t know, now that you mention it, there’s something about that woman.”

“You mean Mrs. Kempton?”

“Yes.”

“Rather a peculiar type,” Mason said, “but not an unusual type. You see them quite frequently, particularly persons who are housekeepers. Those are the people who because of death, divorce or some other reason, have lost their own homes and yet are interested in making a home. So they hire out to make a home for someone else, and in doing it... well, naturally they have to repress a lot of their own feelings, so you get that general atmosphere of repression and...”

Della Street shivered. “I wish I hadn’t thought of it. I’m getting a prickly, cold feeling all the way up my spine.”

“All right, let’s quit thinking of it,” Mason said, “and go to work.”