Mason unlocked his car, started to get in, then stopped to stare in frowning concentration at the sidewalk. Abruptly he slammed the car door shut, and walked into an all-night restaurant where he found a telephone. He thumbed through the telephone directory, called a number and said, “I want to talk with Dr. Charles Gifford — tell him Perry Mason’s calling on a matter of the greatest importance.”
He heard steps receding from the telephone. A moment later, Dr. Gifford’s voice said, “Okay, Mason, what is it?”
Mason said, “A woman by the name of Sarah Breel, down at the ambulance receiving station at headquarters, broken leg, possible fracture of the skull, and internal injuries. She’s unconscious. The cops are laying for her. You know how they are. They don’t give a damn about the patient. All they want is information. They’ll start hammering questions at her as soon as she flickers an eyelid. Officially, I don’t appear as attorney, so I can’t enter into the picture. No one’s hired a private physician for her. I’m hiring you. You don’t need to tell anyone who’s paying the bill. Move in with a couple of special nurses. Move her, if she can be moved, to a private room in the best hospital in town. If she can’t be moved, see that she has the best accommodations money can buy. Keep nurses with her every minute of the time. Keep in touch with the nurses. The minute she becomes conscious, I want you on the job.”
“Any particular instructions?” Dr. Gifford asked, in a crisply professional voice.
“I don’t think I need to give any, do I?” Mason asked.
Dr. Gifford said, still in that swiftly efficient voice, “Without having seen her, Mason, I would say that she’s suffering from a nerve shock that as soon as she regains consciousness, it will be imperative to keep her quiet. That she can’t be questioned for several days without seriously jeopardizing her chances of recovery. I’d want her kept absolutely quiet, with no visitors.”
Mason said, “I think you’re a hell of a good doctor... If possible, get red-headed nurses.”
“Why the red-headed nurses?” Dr. Gifford asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Mason said, “only in case the dicks should start getting rough, it’s always nice to have a red-headed nurse on the job. You can’t bully a red-head.”
“I know a couple who’ll do fine,” Dr. Gifford told him. “One of them’s a red-head, the other’s a brunette. They’re competent professionally, and you can’t bully them. You know, Mason, people who are suffering from severe concussions have to be kept very quiet.”
Mason said, “You’re what I’d call a damn good doctor,” and hung up.
He telephoned the Drake Detective Agency and asked for messages. The man at the telephone said, “Your secretary telephoned, Mr. Mason, and said she’d located the party you desired and was carrying out your instructions.”
Mason thanked him, hung up and drove directly to the loft building at 913 South Marsh Street, where George Trent had his office and shop. Mason rang for the janitor, whose surliness changed into smiling cooperation as Mason slipped a folded bill into the man’s palm.
“Trent?” he said. “Oh, yes. He has an office on the fifth floor. The niece went up about five minutes ago.”
“Virginia?” Mason asked.
“I think that’s her name. She’s a tall, thin girl.”
“I want to see her,” Mason said. “Let’s go.”
The janitor took him up in the elevator, stepped out into the corridor to indicate a lighted doorway. “That’s the office,” he said, “down there on the left.”
Mason thanked him and pounded his way down the corridor. He knocked on the door, and Virginia Trent said, “Who is it, please?”
“Mason,” he told her.
“Oh, just a minute, Mr. Mason.”
She threw back a bar and opened the door. Mason entered a room fitted up as an office, a small desk at one side of the room, filing cases, a stenographer’s desk and chair on the other. A door opened from the side of the room, another from the back. Virginia Trent was wearing a light tweed overcoat with deep side pockets. Her hands were encased in light weight tan kid gloves. A brown hat was pulled down low, to slant slightly over her right ear, balancing a bird wing of bright colors.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Mason watched her as she closed the door and slipped the bar into place. “Just dropped in to have a chat with you,” he said.
“What about?”
Mason looked around for a chair. She indicated the chair at the desk. Mason looked across to where her large dark brown purse reposed on the stenographer’s desk. “Been typing?” he asked.
“I just got here.”
“Where’ve you been?” Mason asked casually. “I’ve been trying to get you.”
“I went to a picture show,” she told him, “I wanted to get my mind off Aunt Sarah. You know, when you continually brood over anything, you lose your mental perspective. I think it’s better to go to a picture show and give your mind a rest. Don’t you ever do that when you’re working on a case, Mr. Mason?”
“No,” he said grinning, “I don’t dare to take the time for fear someone might steal a march on me. Was it a good show?”
“Pretty fair... Mr. Mason, I want to ask you something.”
“Go ahead,” Mason told her.
“What’s a lie detector?” she asked.
Mason studied her and failed to find any expression in her eyes. “Why the question?” he asked.
“I wanted to know, that’s all.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Well,” she said, “I’m interested from a psychological standpoint, that’s all.”
Mason said, “It’s really not much more than an instrument for taking blood pressure, the theory being that when a witness gets ready to lie, he sort of mentally braces himself, and that shows in a change of blood pressure, which, in turn, shows on a needle. Telling the truth is easy and effortless. Telling a lie involves mental effort.”
“Are they of any real value?” she asked.
“Yes,” Mason said, “their value, however, depends on the skill of the man who does the questioning. In other words, the machine registers what you might call a psychic change in the individual. The skill of the questioner accentuates those psychic changes and makes them significant.”
She looked at him steadily and said, “Mr. Mason, do you know something? I believe I could beat the lie detector.”
“Why should you?” he asked.
“Just as a psychological experiment,” she said. “I’d like to try.”
“What,” Mason asked, “would you like to lie about?”
“Oh, anything.”
“For instance, about what you were doing here?”
Her eyes widened. “Why,” she said, “I came up here to write a few personal letters. The typewriter was here and I thought I’d tap out a couple of letters to my friends.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I don’t know, five minutes or ten minutes.”
“But you hadn’t started writing when I knocked?”
“No.”
“What were you doing?”
She laughed and said, “What is this, Mr. Mason, some sort of a third-degree?”
“Were you,” he asked, “thinking about beating the lie detector?”
“Don’t be silly, Mr. Mason. I just asked you that because I’m interested in the psychological significance You said you wanted to see me, Mr. Mason. What did you want to see me about?”
“I wanted to tell you about your aunt,” he said, watching her narrowly.
“About Aunt Sarah?” He nodded.
“Oh, dear,” she said, “I knew it. I had the most awful premonition all the time I was in the show. I felt certain that it had happened.”
“That what had happened?” Mason asked.
“That she’d been arrested, of course.”
“For what?”
“For shoplifting,” she said, “or... or about the diamonds.”
Mason said, “I’d like to find out something about the Bedford diamonds. Can you give me a description of them?”
“Yes,” she said, “Uncle George had some notes... But tell me about Aunt Sarah. What happened? Is she arrested?”
“She was hit by an automobile,” Mason said.
“An automobile!” the girl exclaimed.
Mason nodded. “Out on St. Rupert Boulevard,” he said, “near Ninety-First Street. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Way out there?” the girl asked. “Why, what would Aunt Sarah be doing out there?”
“That’s where Cullens lives, isn’t it?” Mason asked.
She knitted her forehead in thought. “Yes, I guess it is. Wait a minute, I have his address here in the files, Mr. Mason, and...”
“You don’t need to look at it,” Mason told her. “Cullens lives out ‘here. That is, he did live out there.”
“Has he moved?” she asked.
“No,” Mason said, “he was killed.”
“Killed!”
“Yes, shot in the left side with a revolver.”
“What are you leading up to, Mr. Mason? Please tell me.”
Mason said, “Your aunt stepped out on the street right in front of an automobile. The automobile hit her and broke her leg and fractured her skull. There are possible internal injuries. There was blood on her left shoe. That blood didn’t come from any injuries she’d received. Moreover, there was blood on the sole of the shoe, indicating that she’d...” He broke off as the girl swung half around and toppled into a chair, her face white, her lips a pale pink. “Take it easy,” Mason cautioned. She tried to smile. “Any whiskey in this place?” the lawyer asked.
She indicated the desk. Mason jerked open the upper right-hand drawer, and found a bottle half filled with whiskey. He unscrewed the stopper and handed it to Virginia Trent. She drank awkwardly from the bottle, trying to suck the liquid from the container, and spilling some down the front of her dress as she removed the bottle from her lips, making a wry grimace.
Mason said, “You’ll have to learn to drink out of a bottle. Let some air into it. Like this.”
She watched him and smiled wanly. “You do it very expertly,” she said. “Go on, Mr. Mason, I can take it. Tell me the rest of it.”
“There isn’t any rest of it,” Mason said “Your aunt is unconscious. They found a gun, a bunch of diamonds, some silk stockings which had been stolen from another department store, and some knitting in your aunt’s bag.”
“Will Auntie — will she... recover?”
“I think so,” Mason said. “I have the best doctor in the city on the job. I’ve taken it on myself to order special nurses.” Her eyes thanked him.
“Now then,” Mason said, “there were five diamonds in your aunt’s handbag. They were wrapped in tissue paper. They looked to me as though they might be the Bedford diamonds.”
“There were five in that collection,” she said. “Where... where did Aunt Sarah...”
“That,” Mason said, “is an open question. Cullens had a chamois-skin belt next to his skin. Someone had ripped that belt open and probably taken the contents.”
“But where would Cullens have got Mrs. Bedford’s stones?” she asked.
“Probably,” Mason said, “from a gambling joint known as The Golden Platter. He telephoned Mrs. Bedford that your uncle had pawned the stones there for six thousand dollars; that he was going to bring pressure to bear and try to redeem them for three. In the meantime, the gamblers didn’t like the idea of having pressure brought to bear.”
“But,” Virginia said, “Auntie could never have taken those stones from Mr. Cullens. He might have given them to her, but...”
“If she didn’t get them from Cullens,” Mason said, “she probably got them from the safe.”
“Well, she might have done that,” Virginia Trent said. “I never thought of looking in that bag of hers. It’s a regular suitcase. She carries all kinds of stuff in it.”
“She didn’t have it with her in the department store, did she?” Mason asked.
“No, not this noon. She left it in the automobile.”
“She’d hardly have done that if it had five big diamonds in it, would she?”
“Well, you can’t tell... After all, if Auntie had intended to do any shoplifting, it might have been the safest place for them.”
“Yes,” Mason said slowly, “I can see that... It’s a thought. What’s behind that door, Virginia, the shop?”
She nodded.
Mason opened the door, looked into the dark interior. “You seem to have quite a lot of space here,” he said.
“Yes,” she admitted, “it’s more than Uncle George really had use for, but he needs more room than he could get in an office building”.”
“Where’s the light switch?” Mason asked.
“There isn’t any,” she said. “You turn on each light as you want it by pulling on the drop-cord which hangs from the light. That keeps the men from wasting electricity... Here, I have a flashlight if you want to find the drop-cord.”
She opened her brown leather handbag and took out a nickel-plated flashlight some six inches long by half an inch in diameter.
“That’s a cute little gadget,” Mason said. “Carry it all the time?”
“Yes,” she said. “It... it comes in handy.”
Mason switched on the flashlight, and, by its aid, located the drop-cord on the first light. He was moving over toward it when the beam from the flashlight, sliding over a pile of packing cases in a corner, caught a patch of color. Mason paused to center the beam on the discolored wood.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“What?”
“This pile of big packing cases,” Mason said. “The top one has a... Never mind, I’ll take a look myself.”
Holding the flashlight in his left hand, Mason walked over to the corner and examined the reddish-brown stain which had seeped out to stain the boards. The lawyer sniffed the air, then stood a small box on the end and climbed up on it.
The box swayed under the lawyer’s weight. Before he could step down, it buckled under him with a crashing sound. Mason flung out his hand to catch his balance, and caught the edge of the large packing case on top of the pile. A moment later, the entire pile of cases tottered precariously.
“Look out!” Virginia Trent screamed from the doorway.
Mason flung himself to one side. The big packing box slid down the pile, split with a crash on one corner, and spilled out the inert body of a man, which slumped to the floor, where it lay, indistinct in the half-light, a grotesque sprawl of death.
Virginia Trent stared, then started to scream, shrill, hysterical screams which cut through the silence of the building.
Mason moved toward her. “Shut up!” he said. “Help me find that drop-cord.”
He had dropped the flashlight in his fall, and now groped, with outstretched hands, searching for the cord which controlled the light. Virginia Trent backed away from him, as though, in some manner, associating him with that which lay on the floor. Her eyes were wide and staring. Her mouth formed a great dark circle as she continued to scream.
Mason heard feet in the corridor, heard someone pounding at the door.
“Shut up, you little fool!” Mason said, jumping toward her. “Can’t you see...”
She ran screaming back into the outer office. The pound of fists on the door became louder. Virginia Trent backed into a corner. Someone knocked out the glass panel in the door, reached in through the jagged break in the glass and turned the knob.
Mason stood facing the door as Sergeant Holcomb twisted back the knob. “What the hell’s coming off here?” he asked.
Mason jerked his head toward the shop. “I don’t know. There’s something out there you’d better look at, Sergeant.”
Virginia Trent continued to scream. Sergeant Holcomb said, “What’s eating her?”
“Having hysterics,” Mason said.
Virginia Trent pointed toward the shop, tried to control herself, and couldn’t. Mason moved toward her and said, “There, there, kid, take it easy.”
She recoiled from him in horror, flung her arms around Sergeant Holcomb and clung to him, trembling and shaking.
“What the hell have you been trying to do?” Holcomb demanded of Mason.
Mason said, “Be your age, Sergeant. The kid’s upset. There’s a body in the other room.”
“A body!” Mason nodded.
“Whose?”
Mason said, “I wouldn’t know. It was stuffed in a packing case on the very top of a pile. I saw a stain which looked suspicious. I climbed up on a box and started to investigate. The box gave way, I grabbed at the packing case, and the whole pile toppled over. The body fell out. It’s half dark in there. She started to have hysterics and I tried to quiet her down.”
Holcomb said, “Let’s take a look.”
Virginia Trent clung to him in a frenzy of fear. Holcomb fought against the thin arms which clamped so rigidly around his neck. “Take it easy,” he said. “Snap out of it... Hell, you’re drunk!”
“No, she isn’t drunk,” Mason said. “There’s some whiskey in the desk. She fainted when I told her about her aunt, and I gave her some whiskey.”
“When was that?”
“Just a minute ago.”
“The janitor says you just came,” Holcomb grudgingly admitted. “Which drawer’s the whiskey in?”
“The upper right.”
Holcomb opened the drawer, took out the bottle of whiskey, then stopped, peered farther in the drawer, reached in and pulled out a gun. “What’s this?” he asked.
Mason, inspecting it, said, “I’d say it was a thirty-eight caliber revolver.”
Holcomb said, “Here, help me hold this girl’s arm while we pour some hooch down her. She won’t let go of me.”
The girl screamed with fear as Mason approached her.
“Seems to think you’re responsible for her troubles,” Holcomb said.
“Shut up!” Mason told him. “She’s nuts. Here, Virginia, drink some of this... Can’t you see, she’s having crazy hysterics.” She turned her head from side to side, fighting against the preferred whiskey. Mason said, ‘It’s the only way. Hold her on that side, Sergeant. It’s a good thing she has gloves on and can’t scratch.” Between them, they forced a generous draught of whiskey down her throat. She choked, sputtered, and started to cough. “Anyway,” Mason said, “that’ll make her quit screaming. Come on, Virginia, buck up. You’ve got to take it.” ‘
The janitor stood in the doorway. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
Holcomb said, “Take charge of this girl,” and half pushed Virginia Trent over to his arms. She clung to the janitor as she had clung to Sergeant Holcomb. Holcomb and Mason entered the shop and groped for the drop-cord, found it and switched an overhead incandescent into blazing brilliance.
Mason said, “I presume that’s George Trent. He’s evidently been dead for a while.”
Holcomb called to the janitor, “Hey, you! Come in here and take a look at this fellow and see if you can identify him.”
As the janitor moved toward the door, Virginia Trent released her hold, dropped into the stenographer’s chair at the typewriter desk, put her head on her arms and sobbed violently.
The janitor stared, open-mouthed. “That’s George Trent,” he said simply.
Holcomb moved toward the telephone, reached over the girl’s shaking shoulders to pick up the instrument, dialed headquarters and said, “Homicide... This is Holcomb. We have another one out here at nine thirteen South Marsh Street. This time it’s George Trent. Come on out.”
He hung up the telephone and said to Mason, “Show me where he was.”
Mason indicated the pile of packing boxes. “I heard them fall just as I was getting out of the elevator,” Holcomb admitted. “How did you know he was there?”
“I didn’t,” Mason said. “I happened to notice that peculiar reddish-brown stain which had seeped through the crack in the bottom of the packing case. I climbed on a box. The box collapsed. I grabbed at the packing case, and the whole pile came down.”
“Where was he?”
“Jammed in that big packing case.”
“Where was it?”
“Up on the very top of the pile.”
Sergeant Holcomb inspected the packing case and said, “He was evidently shoved in there right after he’d been shot.”
“And then put up at the top of the pile,” Mason said.
Holcomb nodded. “That was because they didn’t have a cover for the packing case, and they didn’t want him discovered.”
Mason said, “It’s a cinch he’d be discovered there sooner or later.”
“Later,” Holcomb said, “not sooner. The man who killed him was sparring for time.”
He stood staring moodily down at the body for several seconds, and then said musingly, “At that, it’s a hell of a place to leave a body.”
“Are you,” Mason asked, “telling me?”
There was silence for several seconds, a silence which was broken only by the sobbing of Virginia Trent. Then Mason said, “Take a look under his shirt, Sergeant. See if there’s a chamois-skin belt with some stones in it.”
Sergeant Holcomb said acidly, “I’ll make my investigation after the coroner arrives. If you want any further information, Mason, you can get it by reading the newspapers.”
“You mean you don’t want me to stick around?” Mason asked.
Holcomb considered for a moment, then said, “No. The janitor tells me you went in just a minute before I did. I heard the packing cases upset as I got out of the elevator, then heard the girl start to scream. I guess this is once I can give you a clean bill of health, and something seems to tell me I can get a lot more information out of this young woman if you’re not hanging around giving her advice.”
“She’s hysterical,” Mason said.
“She’ll get over it.”
“It’d be a shame to question her now. You’ll make a nervous wreck of her.”
“What was she doing here?” Sergeant Holcomb wanted to know.
“She works here off and on. It’s her job.”
“Yeah. What was she working on here this time of night?... When you come right down to it, Mason, how did you know she was going to be here?”
“I didn’t,” Mason said. “I just dropped in. She’d been at a picture show, and came up here to write some letters.”
“What letters?”
“I don’t know. Some letters she wanted to write on a typewriter.”
Sergeant Holcomb jerked his thumb in the direction of the · corridor door. “Okay, Mason,” he said, “that’s all. She talks English. I won’t need an interpreter.”