The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink

Chapter 6

At nine-thirty Perry Mason dropped into Drake’s office.

“Nothing yet, Paul?”

“Nothing yet,” the detective said.

“Find out anything about Fayette?”

“I can’t be sure about the Fayette,” Drake said, “but there was a George Fayette arrested for making book about five years ago. It could have been the same one.”

“Could have been,” Mason said. “What happened to the case?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“Just that. The man was arrested, booked, released on bail and then nothing happened. The case has simply evaporated into thin air.”

“How much bail?”

Drake grinned. “A hundred bucks.”

“Looks like a fix,” Mason said.

“Could be, all right. You know how those things are.”

“Can you find out where he lives or anything about him?”

“Not a thing.”

“What kind of a bond?”

“One of the bail bond brokers — a fellow who has property worth about twenty thousand dollars, with a mortgage of twenty-five thousand on it, and he’s written about five hundred thousand dollars in bail bonds giving that piece of property as security.”

“Can you prove it?” Mason asked.

“Hell, no,” Drake said, grinning. “You wanted me to look up Fayette. If you want me to expose the bail bond racket you’d better get me five assistants, ten bodyguards, a suit of armor, and hunt yourself a cyclone cellar. I’m just giving you glittering generalities.”

“All right,” Mason said. “I’ve been hoping Alburg would call me. I wrote him a letter and sent it by special messenger to his place. It was left with the cashier. I told her if Morris phoned in I wanted him to know that letter was there, and for him to arrange to have it delivered to him.”

“What did you tell him, Perry?”

“Lots of things. And I told him to call me at any hour of the day or night. I gave him this number and told him to call me here if I wasn’t at my office — to call me the very moment he got this letter no matter what time it was... Let me use your phone.”

Mason picked up the phone, gave Drake’s operator the number of Morris Alburg’s restaurant, and when the line answered, said, “Mr. Alburg, please.”

“He isn’t in.”

“Mason talking. When will he be in?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Mason.”

“Let me talk with the cashier.”

“Just a moment.”

When a woman’s voice came on the line, Mason said, “This is Perry Mason, the lawyer. I left a letter there for Mr. Alburg. That is, I sent it out by messenger, with directions that if Mr. Alburg came in or communicated with his office he was to...”

“Yes, Mr. Mason. I think he has it.”

“Has what?”

“The letter.”

“Has he been in?”

“No. He— Well, you see, he isn’t going to be in tonight. He telephoned and — well, several people have been looking for him.”

“Several people?” Mason asked.

“Several people,” she said. “They’re waiting around here.”

“I understand,” Mason said.

“I told him,” she said, “that quite a few people were looking for him, and I also told him that I had this letter from you, which was supposed to be very important. So he asked me to hop in a taxicab and leave the letter at a cocktail bar. He said he’d pick it up later.”

“He didn’t say how much later?”

“No.”

“If you should hear from him again make certain he has that letter. Tell him it’s the most important move in his schedule right now. Tell him to read that letter and to call me.”

“I will, Mr. Mason.”

“One other thing,” Mason said, “when do you go off duty?”

“One o’clock.”

“Where do you live? What’s your telephone number?”

“Mr. Mason!”

“Don’t be silly,” Mason said. “This is important. What’s your telephone number?”

“Exford 3-9827.”

Mason wrote it down. “I may have to call you,” he said. “Be sure to have Morris get in touch with me. Good-by.”

Mason hung up the telephone, said to Paul Drake, “Morris Alburg is going to call me at this number. Now, as soon as he calls in I want you to have your switchboard operator call the unlisted number at my apartment and put me on the line with Alburg’s call. Can your switchboard handle that?”

“Sure.”

“Tell your switchboard operator that it’s very, very important. I want to be sure that call comes through without any trouble.”

“When’s it coming in, Perry?”

“Sometime tonight — I hope. It may be any minute now.”

“When are you leaving for your apartment?”

“Right now.”

“I’m buttoning things up here myself, and going to call it a day. My night switchboard operator is new, but very competent. She comes on at midnight. The girl who’s on the switchboard now is a wizard. I’ll see both of them are posted and on their toes. You’ll get the call switched through to you the minute it comes in.”

“That’s fine,” Mason said. “I’m on my way.”

“I’ll ride down with you,” Drake told him.

Drake paused at the switchboard to relay Mason’s instructions, then accompanied the lawyer to the parking lot.

“How strong do you want me to go on this Fayette business?” Drake asked.

“Plenty strong,” Mason told him. “Keep plugging away checking records. If you have someone who knows his way around you might ask him about Fayette.”

“I should turn up something tomorrow if he’s around town at all, particularly if the Fayette who was picked up on that bookmaking charge is the one I think he is... Well, I’ll be seeing you.”

“There won’t be any trouble about that call coming through, will there, Paul?”

“Hell, no. It’ll be a matter of routine. My switchboard operators will be watching for it.”

Mason glanced at his wrist watch as he started the car; it was nine-forty-two.

By ten Mason was ensconced in his apartment, trying to interest himself in a magazine. By ten-forty-five, frowning with annoyance, he started pacing the floor. At eleven-ten he picked up a book. At eleven-thirty he threw the book to one side, undressed and went to bed. It was more than an hour before he could get to sleep. At first he slept fitfully, then weariness overcame him.

Mason was deep in slumber when the unlisted telephone by the side of his bed jangled into noise. At the third ring the lawyer managed to waken sufficiently to pick up the instrument.

“Hello,” he said.

A crisp feminine voice said, “Mr. Mason, I’m sorry to disturb you, but those were your instructions.”

“Oh, yes, this is Drake’s office?”

“That’s right. Mr. Alburg is on the other phone. He said he was calling you in accordance with a letter.”

“Put him on. Can you connect these lines?”

“Yes, sir. Just a moment. I’ll plug them across the switchboard.”

There was the click of a connection, then Mason, somewhat irritably, said, “Hello, Alburg. This is going to cost you a lot of money. Why the hell didn’t you call me earlier?”

Alburg’s voice, sounding strained and hoarse, said, “I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“All right, you’re calling me now,” Mason said. “What’s the low-down on this thing? Was that story the way you gave it to me or were you acquainted with...”

“No names, please,” Alburg said.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mason said angrily, “aren’t you where you can talk? If you aren’t, get to a phone where you can talk. I want to get this thing straight, I’m...”

“Look, Mr. Mason, I’m in trouble, lots of trouble,” Alburg said. “I need you bad. Now get this, Mason, money is no object. I’m in something awful deep. I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”

“When’s that going to be?” Mason asked.

“As soon as you can get here.”

“As soon as I can get there?” Mason exclaimed.

“That’s right,” Alburg said. “I want you here.”

Mason said, “If it’s really important, I’ll see you at my apartment. If it isn’t, you can come to my office at nine-thirty tomorrow morning. But if...”

“Now listen, Mason,” Alburg said, his voice low but filled with apprehension. “This is the worst. This is one hell of a case. I have to see you. We have to make a lot of talk. I don’t go to your apartment. I don’t go to your office. I don’t go nowhere. I don’t leave this room. Instead, you get here quick. You have to come. I write you a letter. I write you before you write me. My letter has a check for one thousand dollars. That’s retainer. There’s more where that comes from. A good fee for you — the best!”

“Why can’t you leave that room?” Mason asked.

“I’m hot.”

“Why can’t it wait until I get to my office in the morning?”

“Tomorrow maybe I am not around any more.”

“All right,” Mason said wearily, “if you’d played fair with me and given me the low-down on this thing, perhaps you wouldn’t have been in such a jam.”

“I’m in a jam before I ever see you, Mason.”

“Where are you?”

“The Keymont Hotel, room 721. The place is not high-class. It’s a joint. Don’t stop at the desk. Walk by the desk like you had a room. Don’t speak to anybody. Take the elevator, come up to the seventh floor, go to 721. The door is unlocked. I’m there.”

“All right.”

“And, Mason—”

“Yes?”

“Make it snappy, yes?”

“All right,” Mason said. “I’ll be there.” He hung up the telephone, kicked the covers off, telephoned the garage to have his car brought out in front and left with the motor running, rubbed exploratory fingers over the slight stubble on the angle of his jaw, jumped into his clothes, hastily knotted his tie, started for the door, then returned to pick up his overcoat, paused to ring the desk and make certain his car was waiting outside, then dashed for the elevator.

The night clerk looked at him curiously, said, “Must be something of an emergency, Mr. Mason.”

“Must be,” Mason said, and glanced at the clock over the desk. It was two-fifteen.

The lawyer glanced at his wrist watch to verify the hour shown by the clock on the wall, walked over to the revolving door, and out into the crisp, cold air of early morning.

The night garage-man was seated in Mason’s car at the curb. He nodded to the lawyer, opened the door and got out.

Mason slid in behind the steering wheel, noticed that the heater was already warming up the interior of the cold car.

“Thanks a lot, Jake,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

He glanced at the dial on the gas tank.

“I filled it up when you brought it in last night,” the night man said. “You instructed me to see that it’s always kept full and...”

“That’s fine,” Mason told him. “I never know when I may have to go some place in a hurry.”

“This looks like one of those times.”

“It does for a fact,” Mason admitted. He slammed the door and sent the car purring smoothly away from the curb.

It took Mason about fifteen minutes to reach the Keymont Hotel. At that hour of the morning there were plenty of parking spaces and Mason parked his car, locked it and entered the lobby.

It was a shabby lobby with well-worn chairs and a musty atmosphere. Entering the place after his brief sojourn in the crisp night air, Mason was all the more conscious of the stale odor of decay. The empty chairs arranged in an orderly row seemed hopelessly incongruous. In keeping with the atmosphere of the place, they should have been occupied by seedy men sitting quietly, reading newspapers, or just staring off into space.

The clerk looked up as Mason entered the lobby, followed the lawyer with his eyes, until Mason had reached the elevator shaft.

“Someone you wanted to see?” the clerk asked, as Mason jabbed the button on the elevator.

“Me,” Mason told him.

“You mean...”

“That’s right.”

“You’re registered here?”

Mason said, “Sure. And you’d better call me at seven-thirty in the morning... No, wait a minute, I’ve got to make a couple of calls first. I’ll wait until I get to the room and then give you a ring when I find out what time I want to be called. I may be able to sleep later than seven-thirty.”

The elevator rattled to a stop. Mason pushed back the door. It was, at this hour of the night, on automatic, and Mason jabbed the last button, which was for the eighth floor. He waited what seemed an interminable interval until the elevator, swaying and rattling, came to a hesitant stop.

Mason slid back the door, closed it and walked down the corridor to a red light which marked the location of the staircase. He took the stairs down to the seventh floor, located room 721 and tapped gently on the door.

There was no answer.

Mason waited a few moments, then tapped again, this time more insistently.

There was still no answer, no slightest sound from within the room.

Mason tried the doorknob. It turned and he opened the door a crack. The light was on.

Mason, standing in the hallway, pushed the door with his foot, swinging it wide open.

The room was empty, but seemed to have been recently occupied since there was a distinct odor of fresh cigarette smoke.

Mason cautiously crossed the threshold.

It was the standardized room of a cheap hotel. The thin carpet was worn through the pattern in a well-defined trail from the door around the bed to the window. There was a washstand and mirror over in the corner, and the carpet in front had been worn through almost to the floor.

Mason’s eyes made swift inventory.

He saw the imitation-leather-bottomed rocking chair, the two straight kitchen chairs with cane bottoms, the square table which looked as though it had been primarily designed to hold a white glass pitcher and bowl before running water had been installed in the room.

Mason left the door open, and took two swift but cautious steps to the door, pulling it toward him to make sure no one was standing behind it. He walked over to another door and disclosed a narrow closet. The next door showed a toilet and a shower jammed together in a room scarcely the size of a good-sized closet.

Having satisfied himself there was no one there, Mason went back and closed the door. This time he gave the room a more careful survey.

It was illuminated with a reddish glow from a glass bowl which hung from the center of the room and was supported by a chain of brass-colored links, through which ran electric wires down to the single bulb.

The bed was an iron bedstead with a thin mattress, carefully covered, however, with a smooth but somewhat threadbare white bedspread. A reading lamp was clamped to the head of the bed.

Mason noticed the indentation near the head of the bed where someone had evidently been sitting. Then he noticed another indentation near the center of the bed.

The lawyer stooped so that he could see this indentation to better advantage.

It looked very much as though someone had thrown a gun onto the bed. The gun had been picked up, but it had left an imprint in the white spread.

Something the color of gold, glittering in the light, caught Mason’s eye. He stooped and picked up a lipstick.

The lipstick was worn flat, and from little ridges at the edges looked as though it might have been drawn across some hard surface.

The lawyer searched the room carefully, studied the lipstick once more, then turned up the small square table.

On the underside had been lettered in lipstick, “Mason Help 262 V 3 L 15 left.”

Mason was standing looking at the lipstick and the message on the bottom of the table when he heard a faint squeaking noise from across the room. The knob of the door was slowly turning.

Hastily thrusting the lipstick into the side pocket of his coat, Mason put the table back into position, and was standing poised thoughtfully, one foot on the chair, in the act of taking a cigarette from a cigarette case as the door slowly, cautiously opened.

The woman who stood in the doorway was about twenty-five years of age, with a good figure, raven-dark hair, large dark eyes, and olive skin, against which the vivid red of her mouth was a splash of crimson.

She drew back with a quick intake of breath, half a scream.

Mason, regarding her with calm, steady eyes, said nothing.

The woman hesitated in the doorway, then slowly entered the room. “You — Who are you?”

“Is this your room?” Mason asked.

“I–I came here to meet someone. Who are you?”

“I came here to meet someone. Who are you?”

“I–I don’t have to give you my name.”

Mason, watching her, said slowly, “My name is Perry Mason. I am an attorney. I came here to meet a client. The client told me he was registered in this room. Now, tell me whom you expected to meet.”

“Oh, thank heaven! You’re Mr. Mason. Where’s Morris? I’m Dixie Dayton. I came here to meet Morris Alburg. He telephoned me that you were coming, but he said he’d be here with us. He said he was going to have you represent me, so I want to tell you frankly...”

Mason seated himself, gestured her to a chair. “Now, wait a minute,” he said, “it may not be that simple.”

“What do you mean?”

“In the first place, you may have had a wrong impression of what Mr. Alburg wanted to say to me.”

“No, I didn’t, Mr. Mason. I know it was that, honestly it was.”

“In the second place,” Mason said, “regardless of what anyone might say, I might not want to represent you.”

“Why? Morris — Mr. Alburg will pay you whatever it’s worth.”

“What makes you think he will?”

“He promised me he would.”

“You might be guilty of something.”

“Mr. Mason, don’t let them pull the wool over your eyes.”

“I’ll try not to,” Mason said, “but, after all, I have to pick and choose my cases. I can’t possibly take all the work that’s offered to me. I have to know a good deal about the facts in any given case before I commit myself. And I frequently turn down cases.”

She dropped down to the floor at his feet. “Mr. Mason, if you only knew what it meant; if you only knew what I’m up against.”

Mason said nothing.

“Mr. Mason, tell me, how much do you know? How much has Mr. Alburg told you?”

“Not very much,” he said.

She said, “All right, I’ll tell you the truth, Mr. Mason. I’ll tell you the facts in the case.”

“I may not be free to listen,” Mason told her. “At the moment I’m not free to receive any confidential communication from you. If you tell me anything I can’t treat it as a professional confidence.”

“Oh, don’t be so cagey,” she said. “After all, why should you and I sit here and spar with each other? Let’s get down to brass tacks.”

She quickly reached up and took his hand in hers. “I suppose I’m being terribly impulsive and you must think I’m a ninny, but I’m in an awful jam, Mr. Mason, and you’re going to have to get me out.”

“I’ve already explained to you,” Mason said, “that I can’t talk with you, and I’d prefer not to listen until after I’ve seen Morris Alburg. I have to know where I stand before I...”

“Oh, Mr. Mason,” she wailed. “Please — I’m going to put my cards on the table for you, Mr. Mason.”

“I can’t even let you do that at the moment,” Mason said.

She sat silent for a few minutes, thinking. She still held onto his hand. Gripping it, she said, “You mean so much to me, Mr. Mason. I can’t begin to tell you what it means to have you working on the case.”

“I’m not working on it.”

She met his eyes with laughing challenge and said, “Yet.”

“Yet,” Mason told her, half-smiling.

“And you certainly are one cautious lawyer.”

“I have to be.”

She lightly kissed the back of his hand. “For the moment that will have to serve as a retainer,” she said. “You stay right there. I’m going to see if I can’t get a line on Morris Alburg. You just wait here and I’ll bring him within fifteen minutes, and then we’ll get started right.”

She walked quickly across the room, opened the door and vanished.

Mason came out of the chair almost at once, hurried to the telephone, and gave Paul Drake’s private, unlisted number.

It seemed minutes before Mason heard Drake’s sleepy voice.

“Wake up, Paul,” Mason said. “This is important. Get it, and get it fast.”

“Oh, Lord, you again,” Drake said thickly. “Every time I try to get a little sleep...”

“Forget the sleep,” Mason barked into the telephone. “Snap out of it. I’m up here in the Keymont Hotel, room 721. There’s a brunette girl, about five feet two, who weighs one hundred and fifteen, age twenty-five or twenty-six, olive skin, large round eyes, a vivid red mouth, up here with me — that is, she will be here inside of a minute or two, and...”

“Well, congratulations,” Drake said. “You sure do get around!”

“Can the wise stuff,” Mason snapped. “Get hold of some operatives and send them up here... First, I want a woman, if you can find one, to make the original contact. Try and have her in the corridor when this girl leaves the room. You’ll have to work fast, Paul. The woman can put the finger on this girl and identify her so that the men who are on the outside can pick her up when she leaves. I want her tailed and I want to find out where she goes.”

“Have a heart, Perry,” Drake begged. “It’s three o’clock in the morning. Good Lord, I can’t pull people out of a hat. It’ll take me an hour or two to get anybody on the job. I’ll have to get someone out of bed, get him dressed, give him time to get down there...”

“Who’s at your office?” Mason asked.

“Just a skeleton crew. I keep a night switchboard operator, a night manager, and there’s usually one man available...”

“The switchboard operator,” Mason interrupted, “man or woman?”

“Woman.”

“Competent?”

“Very.”

“Get her,” Mason said. “Shut off the switchboard for an hour. It’s a slack time in the morning so you won’t miss any business. Get that woman up here. Do it now. You only have a few minutes, so get busy. Close up your office for an hour if you have to, but be prepared to shadow this girl the minute she leaves the hotel.”

Mason didn’t wait to hear Drake’s expostulations. He slammed up the receiver and went back to the chair where he had been sitting.

Taking a white handkerchief from his pocket, he used a corner to wipe off the stain of lipstick from the back of his right hand. Then, moving the table to an inverted position, he used another corner of the handkerchief to wipe off a small sample of the lipstick from the bottom of the table.

Restoring the table to its original position, he took the gold-plated lipstick container from his pocket and very carefully touched the end of the lipstick to still another portion of the handkerchief. With his fountain pen he made marks on the handkerchief opposite each of the stains — 1, 2 and 5. Then he folded the handkerchief, put it back in his pocket and settled back once more in the chair to wait.

It was a long wait.

At first, Mason, watching the minute hand on his wrist watch, counting the minutes, kept hoping that time would elapse before the young woman returned so that Drake’s operatives could get on the job. Then after fifteen minutes he frowned impatiently, and began to pace the floor. There was, of course, the possibility that he was being stood up, being put in a position of complete inactivity at a critical period by a deliberate ruse.

He had been certain that it was Morris Alburg who had called him. He was at the place Alburg had designated as a rendezvous. There was nothing to do except await further developments — or go home.

Abruptly and without warning the doorknob turned. The door opened with careless haste, and the brunette girl appeared on the threshold. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes shining with excitement. It was apparent that she had been hurrying as fast as she could.

At the sight of Mason she abruptly relaxed. “Oh, thank heavens you’re still here! I was so terribly afraid you wouldn’t have had enough confidence in me to wait.”

Mason raised his eyebrows.

“I didn’t intend to be so long. I was afraid you’d walk out on me.”

“I wasn’t going to wait much longer at that. What was the idea?”

“I had to see Morris. That was all there was to it. I simply had to see him. I knew that.”

“And you’ve seen him?” Mason asked.

“Yes. I have a note for you.”

She thrust her hand down the front of her blouse, pulled out a note, crossed the room rapidly and pushed it into Mason’s hands. “Here, read this.”

The note was typewritten.

The body of the note had been typewritten, the signature was a scrawl in pencil. It could have been Morris Alburg’s signature. Mason tried to recall whether he had ever seen Alburg’s signature and couldn’t remember any specific instance.

The young woman radiated assurance. “Now we can talk,” she said.

Mason said nothing.

“Well — can’t we?”

“I want to know why Morris Alburg isn’t here,” Mason said. “He promised to meet me here.”

“But he had to change his plans.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s busy doing something that’s terribly important.”

“What?”

“Protecting me — and also himself.”

She drew up a chair, sat down, said, “Mr. Mason, when can one person kill another person — and be justified?”

“In self-defense,” Mason said.

“Does a person have to wait until the other one is shooting at him?”

“He has to wait until he is attacked, or until a reasonable man under similar circumstances would think that he was in great bodily danger or threatened with death.”

“And then he could shoot?”

Mason nodded. “That’s generally the law of self-defense. There are a lot of various qualifications about the man’s duty to retreat and about who provoked the conflict in the first place. But that’s the general rule.”

“Now, then,” she said, “suppose you knew that a cold-blooded, deliberate, efficient killer was on your trail and was going to commit murder. Wouldn’t you have the right to kill him first?”

“Under the circumstances I’ve mentioned,” Mason said.

“I know,” she said, “but suppose you knew a man was out to kill you. Suppose he was watching your place, sitting in a car, a machine gun in his lap, and you managed to sneak out of your back door without his knowing it. Couldn’t you take a rifle and blow the top of his head off without being guilty of murder?”

Mason shook his head.

“Why not?”

“Because under those circumstances,” Mason said, “you’d have had a chance to call up the police and ask for protection.”

She laughed scornfully. “Trying to get police protection from a man like the one I’m talking about is like asking the police to protect you against smallpox or the bubonic plague... Why, the man would simply slip through the fingers of the police like nothing at all and you’d be dead before morning.”

“You asked me to tell you what the law was. I’ve told you. I don’t make the law, I study it.”

She said, “That’s exactly the same thing Morris told me, but I wouldn’t believe him. It doesn’t sound fair to me, but that’s what he said the law was, and so he said that you wouldn’t approve of what he’s doing.”

“What is he doing?”

“Ever hear of George Fayette?”

“Why, do you know him? I’d like to find out something about him.”

She laughed bitterly. “Lots of people would like to find out something about him. He’s a killer.”

“Go ahead,” Mason invited.

“And right at the moment he’s trying to kill Morris and me.”

“Why?”

“That’s one of the things I’d like to know. I presume because I’m Tom Sedgwick’s girl friend.”

“And who is Tom Sedgwick?”

“He’s someone the police are looking for. They’re trying to frame a murder on him.”

“So they want to kill you and Morris Alburg?”

“That’s right.”

“Why? That doesn’t make much sense.”

“You act as though you didn’t believe me.”

“I’m not certain that I do.”

“Listen, you can’t argue with facts. Fayette tried to have me killed there in that alley back of Mr. Alburg’s restaurant.”

“Just what happened then?” Mason asked.

She said, “Fayette was on my trail, intending to kill me. He came walking into that restaurant with just one thought in mind, and that was to frighten me into running out into the back alley.

“If I’d had one lick of sense I’d have known that was exactly what he wanted. Even a man with Fayette’s pull and brass could hardly expect to shoot a woman down in a public restaurant and then just get up and walk out of there.

“And yet he’s done things that have been just as crazy as that — and got away with them, too. But somehow you don’t stop to think when you see George Fayette looking at you. It’s like reaching up to put your hand on a rock and finding a rattlesnake coiled there.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said as she stopped. “I’d like to know exactly what happened.”

She said, “I dashed out of that restaurant, and that’s exactly what Fayette wanted. He had an accomplice in a car waiting for me.

“All Fayette had to do was to sit tight and appear to be innocently enjoying his dinner, and I’d rush right into the jaws of his trap.”

“And just what did happen when you reached the alley?”

“Well, the accomplice tried to force me to get into the car with him. I was just too plain panic-stricken to cooperate. And I guess that upset everyone’s plans. It had never occurred to anyone that I wouldn’t fold up like an accordion and march right into that car like a good little girl.

“As it was, I did the unexpected. I started to run.

“By the time the man managed to take a shot at me I was out of the line of fire through the open door. He stepped on the throttle to catch up with me, and the lurch of the car jerked the door back so it closed. He fired again, and the bullet went clean through the car door.

“By that time I was just running in blind panic. I dashed out into the street, and right in front of an oncoming car.

“Well, that’s virtually the entire story. I regained consciousness in a hospital, and I knew, of course, that where I was would be a matter of public record, and Fayette could find me without any trouble. So I got up and explored the private room in which I’d been placed. I found my clothes in the closet. I was pretty wobbly on my pins, but I dressed and got out of there. Of course I got in touch with Morris at once.”

“And what did Morris do?”

“He fixed me up with an outfit and gave me a chance to hide... But, of course, Morris was pretty much upset because he realized Fayette was after him at the same time.”

“So Alburg is taking steps to remove Fayette?”

“I probably shouldn’t have told you that. In fact, I’m not going to tell you that. I’m simply telling you that right at the moment Morris is busy on a matter of the greatest importance and he isn’t going to have any opportunity to get in touch with you until — well, I’d say for three or four hours at the most, but he’s written you this note so that you’ll understand.”

“All right,” Mason said, “what do you want me to do?”

“That’s rather difficult to say. You’re not very cooperative. You’re still suspicious.”

“Do you blame me for that?”

“Yes.”

Mason laughed.

“Morris — Mr. Alburg wrote you a note, didn’t he?”

“No.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The signature is a scrawl. I’m not at all certain it’s his. I’m not familiar with his signature.”

“It’s his. I saw him sign it.”

“It’s just a scrawl.”

“He was in a hurry. He had things on his mind.”

“The note is typewritten. He could have written it in his own hand a lot easier than tapping it out on a typewriter and it would have been a lot faster.”

“How do you know? Perhaps he writes faster on a typewriter than with pen and ink.”

“Don’t be silly,” Mason said. “Whoever typed this note tapped it out laboriously with two fingers.”

“Perhaps Mr. Alburg was in a position where he couldn’t write. He might have been hiding somewhere. He told someone what he wanted to say to you and that someone typed out the note and took it to Mr. Alburg to sign.”

“Or perhaps scrawled her own version of Alburg’s signature on it,” Mason said.

“Oh, you lawyers, with your everlasting suspicions! You make me sick.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t successfully represent Morris Alburg until I know a lot more about you than I do now. Do you happen to have a driver’s license with you?”

“No. Mr. Alburg specifically identifies me in this letter.”

“But there’s no one to identify the letter.”

“Oh, nuts! I told Morris I’d bet you’d be like that. So I suppose you’ve got to see Morris face to face and have him tell you I’m Dixie Dayton and that you’re to represent me, and show you the birthmark on my left hip and then give you a banker’s guarantee... Oh, all right, I’ll go get Mr. Alburg and bring him here — and it’s going to be dangerous.

“If he doesn’t get Fayette first, George Fayette is going to kill him. And a fat lot you care! You with your lawyer’s skepticism. If your client gets killed trying to come here to identify me, you’ll know who’s to blame.

“All right, wait right here.”

“And if you should see Morris Alburg,” Mason said, “tell him to come to me at once before he tries to deal with Fayette or with anyone else. Tell him I’ll be waiting here and that I’ll tell him how to handle the situation.”

She was standing at the door, one hand on the knob, looking at him over her shoulder, her eyes dark with emotion.

“So that’s what you want,” she said scornfully. “Darned if I’m not sorry I opened up and talked to you the way I did. I thought you were a shrewd criminal lawyer who knew his way around. You talk like a reformer. I might as well write to Prudence Penny and say, ‘My dear Miss Penny: What shall I do? There is a gunman who wants to kill me. He’s almost succeeded twice in the last twenty-four hours, and now I know where I can put my finger on him. What should I do?’

“And instead of saying simply ‘rub the guy out,’ Prudence Penny would say, ‘My dear Miss Whosis: You must remember that we have laws to take care of people of that sort. You should consult the authorities at once and tell them about your danger. They’ll know what to do.’

“Perry Mason,” she went on scornfully, “the great lawyer — Prudence Penny. Why the hell don’t you get one of those encyclopedias on etiquette and a Gideon Bible, and throw your law books out the window?”

She slammed the door behind her so hard that the mirror which was hanging over the washbowl jumped and started to vibrate.

Perry Mason sat perfectly still, his eyes on his wrist watch, wondering if Paul Drake had had time to get his operatives placed, and whether they would be successful in following the girl.