Paul Drake, head of the Drake Detective Agency, was tall, thin in stature, and perpetually pessimistic in outlook. His face was florid, his eyes regarded the world from behind a glassy film. But, by some quirk of the facial muscles, the corners of his lips turned up, giving him the appearance of continually smiling at life, whereas his actual outlook was exactly the opposite. Slumped down in the seat of Perry Mason’s automobile, his head drooping, a pendulous cigarette hanging from his lips, he straightened slightly as he saw the lawyer. walk around the car and open the door on the driver’s side. “What is it this time, Perry?” he asked. “Have they finally pinched you as an accessory?”
“Not yet,” Mason told him cheerfully, “but we’re doing some investigating, Paul.”
“What sort of investigating?”
“I don’t know,” Mason said, and then added after an appreciable pause, “yet.”
“When will you know?”
“I’ll know,” Mason said, “as soon as I can get to a telephone book and find out where a man by the name of Austin Cullens lives.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“If he lives on St. Rupert Boulevard between Ninety-First and Ninety-Second Streets,” Mason said, “it’s going to have a hell of a lot to do with it.”
He swung his car in a U-turn, drove rapidly to the corner drug store, where he said to the detective, “Alibi yourself out of any tickets for double parking, Paul. I want to take a look at a telephone directory.” He ran into the store and looked up Austin Cullens. The address was 9158 St. Rupert Boulevard. Mason stepped into the telephone booth, dropped a coin, dialed Della Street’s number. “Sorry to keep bothering you, Della,” he said, when he heard her voice on the line. “Hope I’m not interrupting a heavy date.”
“When I have a heavy date,” she said, “I can’t even hear the telephone. What is it this time?”
“I don’t know,” he told her. “There’s something here I can’t figure. Do we have Mrs. Bedford’s address?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“That’s too bad — better get it,” Mason told her. “Then get in touch with her and put her under cover. Get her where the police can’t find her.”
“Shall I let her know what I’m doing, Chief?” Della Street asked, her voice losing its tone of informal banter and becoming crisply businesslike.
“Not unless you absolutely have to, Della. Make any kind of a stall. Tell her I’ve asked you to come and get her and keep her available for important developments. Or, just try the old personality stuff. Tell her you understand she’s a stranger in the city and how would she like to go out to dinner. In short, tell her anything. But put her where the police can’t find her, — and don’t let her know that’s what you’re doing.”
“Okay, Chief, where will I reach you?”
“Keep in touch with the Drake Detective Agency,” Mason said. “Leave word with whoever’s in charge of the office. Tell them Drake or I may telephone later for the information, and not to let it out to anyone else. Of course, if you can’t locate her, you’ll just have to...”
“Leave it to me, Chief,” Della Street said competently, “I’ll locate her. What’s happened?”
“I don’t know yet,” Mason said. “I’m on my way to find out. Remember, keep in touch with Drake’s office.”
“Okay, Chief,” she said, “I’m starting right now,” and hung up the telephone.
Back in the automobile, Mason slid in behind the steering wheel and jerked the car into motion. Paul Drake, sliding half around in the seat so that his back was propped across the corner formed by the door and the seat cushion, said, “So what?”
“So we go places,” Mason told him.
“What do we do when we get there?”
Mason said, “We go up on a porch and ring a doorbell.”
“You’re such a help,” Drake murmured, squirming himself into a position where he was entirely comfortable, with his head resting on the back of the cushion. “Let me know when you get there.” He closed his eyes and apparently dropped into prompt sleep.
Mason raced the traffic for the breaks at the intersection signals, swung into St. Rupert Boulevard and gave the car plenty of speed. He glided into the curb directly opposite a house on the right-hand side which sat back somewhat from the street, surrounded by a well-kept lawn. It was a pretentious, two-and-a-half storied residence, with wide veranda and a driveway leading back to a three-car garage with chauffeur’s quarters over the garage.
“Who lives here, Perry?” Drake asked.
“Austin Cullens,” Mason said. “Come on, Paul,” and he ran across the sidewalk and up to the porch. He found a doorbell and rang it. He could hear the bell jangling in the interior of the house, but there was no sound of motion back of the somber, unlighted windows.
The tall detective said casually, “The door’s ajar, Perry. Does that mean anything?”
“I think it does,” Mason said. “We’re going in.”
Drake slipped a flashlight from his pocket and said, “I suppose you know, some people shoot burglars.”
“Uh-huh,” Mason said. “Let’s find the light switch, Paul.”
The beam from Drake’s flashlight spotted a light switch. Mason reached for it, then stopped and said, “Wait a minute. This switch is already on.” He clicked it twice, to no avail.
“Looks like a fuse,” Drake said.
“All right,” Mason told him, “keep going. Throw your flashlight down on the floor. Let’s look for... there it is.”
Drake examined the red spot on the floor and said, “Now, wait a minute, Perry. Before we go any farther you’d better tell me exactly what you’re looking for. If this is...”
Mason jerked the flashlight out of the detective’s hand and said, “If this is what I think it is, Paul, we haven’t any time to waste in argument.” He swung the beam of the flashlight in a circle. Drake said, “Here’s another track coming out of this door.”
Mason pushed open the door, and Drake said, “Oh — Oh!” as the beam of the flashlight rested on the sprawled, lifeless figure of Austin Cullens.
“Try those lights,” Mason said.
Drake fumbled for the light switch, and clicked it ineffectively. “Listen, Perry,” he said, “let’s not leave any fingerprints around here. Let’s notify the police and...”
“In a house of this size,” Mason interrupted, “there’ll be several circuits. One fuse blown out won’t kill all the lights. Of course, the main switch may have been pulled, but it’s more apt to be a fuse. Try some of the other rooms, Paul, until you get one where the lights are on.”
Drake said, “Perry, I don’t like this. Every time we touch anything we leave fingerprints.”
“Don’t touch things, then,” Mason said shortly.
“Let me have the flashlight,” Drake said.
“You’ll just have to fumble around, Paul,” Mason told him. “Remember, you’re looking for a telephone with which to notify the police.”
“And what are you doing?” Drake said.
“I’m also looking for a telephone,” Mason told him.
“Now listen, Perry,” the detective said, “when I find a telephone, I’m going to call the cops, see?”
“I know,” Mason said impatiently, “that’s why I’m giving you an out. You’ll tell a straightforward story. As soon as you found the body, you started looking for a telephone. As soon as you found the telephone, you called the cops. Now get started.”
Drake stepped out into the hallway. Mason swung the beam of the flashlight about the room and to the body of the man on the floor. He had evidently been shot, the bullet entering the left side just above the heart. The man’s vest and shirt were open. His undershirt had been pulled up to disclose a chamois-skin belt, in which the flaps of several of the pockets had been raised. Apparently the belt was empty. A viscid red pool had formed beside the body. There were various red smears about the edge of this pool, as though someone bending over the body had stepped in the blood two or three times.
The room was a living room, with a large fireplace at one end, bookcases on either side, lounging chairs, a huge mahogany table, and an all-wave radio set in the corner. The floors were hardwood, waxed to a smooth sheen, with some half dozen Oriental rugs artistically placed. A top coat, scarf, hat and gloves, presumably belonging to Cullens, had been thrown hastily over the back of a chair. Mason, taking care to touch nothing, moved closer to the body, bent over, and suddenly heard a man’s voice saying, “Car number sixteen, proceed at once to the intersection of Washington and Maple Streets to investigate an automobile accident. Car number thirty-two, call your station. Car fourteen, go to thirty-eight nineteen Walpole Street to see a woman about a prowler.” Thereafter, the radio became silent.
Mason heard Drake’s footsteps in the corridor, saw that some light was filtering in through the half-open doorway. A moment later, Drake came back and said, “Okay, Perry, I notified Homicide.”
“Did you tell them I was here?” Mason asked.
“No, just told them about the body, and...”
He broke off as a voice from the corner of the room said, with startling clarity, “Calling car twenty-two. Proceed at once to ninety-one fifty-eight St. Rupert Boulevard. A private detective named Drake has just telephoned that the body of a murdered man is in the house. Probably the body is that of Austin Cullens. Proceed at once to the house. Hold for questioning anyone found on the premises. The homicide squad is on its way.”
The message was repeated. Drake asked, “Did you turn that radio on to police calls, Perry?”
Mason shook his head and said, “You didn’t need to tell them the name of the dead man, Paul.”
“They asked me about it,” Drake said, “asked me how I came to be here, and I told them I’d come to call on an Austin Cullens, accompanied by his lawyer.”
“Give them my name?” Mason asked.
“No. I just said, ‘his lawyer.’ ”
“That helps,” Mason observed sarcastically. “You didn’t need to tell them your life’s history, you know. Why didn’t you just say there was a corpse out here, and let it go at that?”
“The man at the other end of the line didn’t want it that way.”
“You can always hang up a receiver,” Mason pointed out.
“Yeah,” Drake told him, “ you can, but I don’t. My license comes up for renewal next month.”
“Oh, well,” Mason said, “they’d have got the dope sooner or later anyway, I’m just not keen about having that information go out over the police radio. You can’t tell who’s listening in. How about the lights, Paul?”
“They’re just off in this corner of the house. The circuit which supplies the dining room, pantry, kitchen, and stairway is okay.”
“Did you leave them all on?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Where was the telephone?”
“The one I found was in the dining room. I think it’s an extension. There’s probably one in here.”
Mason swung the beam of the flashlight, and Drake said, “That’s a telephone over there in the corner.”
Mason said, “Uh-huh, I didn’t see it. All right, Paul, call your office. A man by the name of Harry Diggers had an accident out here in front of the house an hour or so ago. He hit a Sarah Breel. He claims she stepped out from the sidewalk right in front of his car. Police held him for a while and then let him go. I want a complete statement from him, and I’d like it before the police pick him up again. Your men can get his address from the records. There’s a gambling club down on East Third Street over a cafe known as The Golden Platter. Have a couple of men find out all they can about that. A gem broker by the name of George Trent is out somewhere on a drunk. Get men on the job to find him. Get the best description you can from people who know him. Pick up a photograph if it’s at all possible. Burgle his office if you have to. He has a string-bean niece, name of Virginia. She lives at his house. It’s listed in the telephone directory. Get a photograph and a description of George, and put enough men to work to find him. He’ll be hanging around a place where he can get liquor and gambling in combination.”
“How about women?” Drake asked.
“Perhaps women too, I don’t know. Never mind that. Get busy. You’ll have to hurry before the officers come.”
Drake, moving with a swiftly silent efficiency which belied the gangling appearance of his arms and legs, melted back into the corridor, and a few moments later, Mason heard the muffled sound of his voice over the telephone. From the street came the sound of tires as a car slid to an abrupt stop. Mason, trying to give Drake more time at the telephone, walked out to meet the radio officers half way up the cement walk leading to the porch.
“Your name Drake?” one of the men asked.
Mason shook his head, said, “No. My name’s Mason. I found the body.”
“Thought your name was Drake.”
“No,” Mason said, “It isn’t. Here, have a card.” He fumbled around in a card case, gaining valuable seconds.
“What’s the dope?” one of the men asked.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Mason said. “I was calling on Austin Cullens, who lives here. I wanted to see him in connection with a certain business matter, about which I’d been consulted earlier in the day. I found the lights off and the door ajar. I stepped inside and found him...”
“The lights are on now,” one of the officers interrupted, indicating the lighted windows on the right-hand corner of the house.
“That’s another circuit,” Mason explained. “Apparently one fuse was blown. The room where the body lies has a fuse blown out. However, it’s only taken one of the circuits. I notice the radio is still on.”
“Who turned on the lights in the other part of the house?” the officer asked.
“That was done,” Mason said, “in order to locate a telephone.”
“Okay, we’ll go take a look. I thought the report came in that your name was Drake.”
Mason decided it was impossible to stall any longer. “Mr. Drake,” he said, “accompanied me at the time.”
“Where is he now?”
“Inside.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say so?”
“Why,” Mason said, with an expression of hurt innocence, “you didn’t ask me. I came out to explain to you what you’d find.”
“What’s Drake doing?”
“Waiting inside.”
One of the officers took Mason’s arm. The other ran ahead up the sidewalk and into the house. Drake came sauntering down the corridor to meet them, a cigarette dangling from his lips. “Hello, boys,” he said. “I see you got my call all right. I’ve notified Homicide.”
“Okay,” one of the officers said, “where do you fit into the picture?” Drake showed them his card and his license as a private detective. “You haven’t touched anything, have you?”
“Nothing except the telephone,” Drake said.
“And why the telephone?”
“I had to call Homicide, some way, didn’t I?”
Mason said, “Drake was careful to avoid using the telephone in the room where the body was found. We haven’t touched anything in there. The man was shot once. It looks as though robbery was the motive.”
A siren screamed in the distance. One of the men said, “Okay, Jim, here comes Homicide. Let’s give it a quick look before they get here... Hell, it’s dark in the corridor.”
“That’s what I told you,” Mason said. “One of the fuses is blown.”
“How did you see the stuff?”
“With a flashlight.”
“Where’s the flashlight?”
Mason took it from his pocket.
“You usually carry a flashlight with you?” the officer asked suspiciously.
“Drake does,” Mason said. “It’s his flashlight.”
One of the officers produced a flashlight from his own pocket, played the beam around the room, brought it to rest on the corpse and said, “Dead all right.”
The sirens screamed at the corner. A car skidded to a stop. Pounding feet came up the cement walk and across the porch. Sergeant Holcomb, of the homicide squad, stared at Mason. “So you’re in on this, are you?”
“I’m in on nothing except the house,” Mason told him.
“What was your lead?”
“I wanted to see Mr. Cullens on a matter of business.”
“What business?”
“Something about which he’d consulted me.”
“Was he a client of yours?”
“Not exactly.”
“All right, then, what was the business?”
Mason said, “I was looking for a man named George Trent, a gem expert. I had reason to believe Cullens knew something.”
“What made you think so?”
“Call it a hunch if you want to,” Mason said.
“I don’t want to,” Holcomb told him, “and it doesn’t sound logical.”
“All right, then,” Mason said, letting anger creep into his voice, “it wasn’t a hunch, and it isn’t logical. So what?”
Holcomb said to one of the officers, “Take these two guys into a separate room. Don’t talk with them and don’t let them talk with you. Don’t let them do any telephoning. Don’t let them touch anything. And, above all, don’t let them do any rubber-necking around... Okay, boys, go through the house. We’ll take the room in here... Make sure the men are posted at the back... Okay, let’s go.”
Mason and the detective were escorted into the dining room by an officer who indicated seats with silent hostility, and continued to watch over them in sullen silence while Mason heard steps on the stairs, the pound of feet in the upper corridors, heard additional cars roar down the boulevard to come to a stop in front of the house, and men pell-mell up the cement walk to the front door.
It was twenty minutes later when Sergeant Holcomb descended on the pair for questioning, and at the end of fifteen minutes’ questioning he knew no more than when he had started. “All right,” he said, “you birds can go. But there’s something about this I don’t like.”
“I don’t know of anything else we could have done to cooperate,” Mason said. “Drake notified the police the minute we arrived and found the body.”
“Where were you just before you came here?” Holcomb asked.
“Immediately before I arrived here,” Mason said, “it happened that I was in a drug store telephoning.”
“To whom?”
“To my secretary, if you want to know.”
“About what?”
“Trying to find out the address of a certain client.”
“This address?”
“No, it was another client.”
“Who?”
“It has nothing to do with this case,” Mason said, “and, as it happens, I didn’t get the address.”
“Then how’d you happen to come here?”
“I wanted to see Cullens.”
“And you decided you wanted to see him right after you found out you couldn’t get that other address?”
Mason said, “As a matter of fact, I looked up Cullens’ address in the telephone book in the drug store.”
Holcomb said, “Okay, you birds can go... And remember, Drake, your license is coming up one of these days.”
Mason said, “I resent that as an attempt at intimidation. Drake has been entirely courteous throughout this entire matter. Both of us have answered every question you’ve asked.”
“Yeah, I know,” Holcomb said, “but somehow I have a feeling I haven’t asked the right questions.”
“Then go ahead and ask the right questions,” Mason told him.
“How the hell can I when I don’t know what they are?”
“Well,” Mason said irritably, “how the hell can I answer them when you don’t ask them?”
Holcomb jerked his thumb to the door. “On your way,” he said, “and don’t just happen to stumble on any more corpses before morning. There is such a thing as a private detective being altogether too damned efficient, if you get what I mean, Drake.”
Drake started to say something, but Mason interrupted. “Is it your pleasure,” he asked, “that in the future Drake refrain from notifying the homicide department of any corpses he may stumble on?”
Holcomb’s face darkened. “You know what I mean,” he said. “Get started.”
The officers ushered them past a corridor, which, by this time, was well filled with newspaper photographers, a representative from the coroner’s office, and half a dozen plain-clothes officers. Half way to the car, Drake said vindictively, “Damn him! He’ll try to give me a black eye with the Board of Prison Directors when my license renewal comes up.”
Mason laughed. “He’s just being nasty on general principles,” he said. “He can’t block your license except for cause, and he can’t get any cause. Try to be respectful to a man like that, and he keeps pushing you around. Stand up to him and tell him where he gets off at.”
“Just the same,” Drake said, “let’s not find any more corpses.”
“Okay,” Mason agreed.
“Where to now?”
“Where we can telephone your office and find out what’s in the wind. If nothing startling has developed, we go down to The Golden Platter and try to get some information before the police frighten those birds to cover.”
Drake said, “That’s the thing I don’t like about your business, Perry. You’re always trying to beat the police to something.”
“That’s the way I protect my clients,” Mason said.
“And some day it’s gonna cost me my license.”
“On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that I’m withholding information from the police.”
“Just what information do you have that the police should know about?” Mason asked.
“Nothing. But I have a hunch you have.”
“All right,” Mason said grimly. “Try not to be a mind reader, then. In other words, Paul, as your attorney, my best advice to you is to not only act dumb, but be dumb and follow directions.”
Drake said, “Okay, Perry, I’m dumb.”