The people in the room were grouped in a tense-faced circle around the wheelchair occupied by Elston A. Karr. The day had been warm, yet the blanket covered his legs. His skin was no longer wax-like but was flushed. As his hand touched Mason’s, the lawyer noticed that the skin was dry and hot. Karr turned over the photograph and the letter, looked first at Johns Blaine, then at Gow Loong, the number one boy.
“Well?” he asked.
Blaine said nothing.
Rodney Wenston said, “When I brought her to Mason, I thought she wath a damned imposter, but this proof is pretty convincing.”
Doris Wickford said indignantly, “I’m not an impostor, and I’m tired of being treated like one. After all, this was your idea. I didn’t advertise to try and get in touch with you. You advertised to try and get in touch with me. If my father left any money, it isn’t yours, and there’s no reason why you should act as though giving it to me would be an act of generosity or charity on your part. After all, we have courts to protect the rights of people in cases like this.”
Karr didn’t so much as glance at her. He kept his eyes on Gow Loong.
Gow Loong extended his forefinger. The nail protruded a good half inch from the end of the finger. He placed this long nail on the face in the photograph. “Alla same Dow Tucker,” he said.
Karr nodded.
Gow Loong turned to Karr. “Maybe-so you tired. Too much work. Too much tlouble. Maybe-so you go sleep. Maybe one two hours. Wake up, feel more better. Too many people. Too much talk. Velly much no good.”
Karr turned to Johns Blaine. “I see no reason for prolonging the matter. This girl seems to be it. We’ll have to make an additional check, but that’s Dow Tucker’s picture all right. What she says about how he came to adopt the name of Dow sounds logical. Get me that album of pictures out of the desk in my bedroom.”
Gow Loong became merely a part of the scenery. He effaced himself beyond a point of silence. It seemed that even his personality had retired behind the expressionless composure of a calmly indifferent face. Johns Blaine hurried toward the bedroom.
Mason asked casually, “Keep those pictures in your bedroom all the time?”
“Prints,” Karr said. “The negatives are in a safe place. Wouldn’t take a million dollars for those negatives. Adventures in China that would curl your hair. I’ve seen things that white men aren’t permitted to see, things that no person should ever see. The Temple of the Passionate Buddha under the walls of the Forbidden City — the living dead man called up out of the grave to make obeisance to a Lama god. You might think it’s hypnotism, might think it’s superstition, might think it’s imagination, but I’ve seen things you can’t explain, things you can’t understand, things you don’t even dare to talk about. Take a look through that album, Johns. Get some of those pictures taken at Shanghai in the fall of ’20 and the spring of ’21.”
Blaine turned the pages of the photograph album. “Here’s a picture taken on a junk on the Whangpoo,” he said. “That shows him pretty well.”
“Show it to Mason,” Karr said. “Want him to see it.”
Mason looked at the picture of three men seated on the high stern deck of a big junk. The camera had been focused upon the faces. Back of them was a hazy sheet of water, the dim line of a bank, and the fuzzy outlines of an out-of-focus pagoda rising against the sky. The men were smiling affably at the camera with that peculiarly inane expression with which one obeys the command to “look pleasant.” On a table before them was a huge teapot. Three Chinese cups were nestled into the distinctive hole-in-the-center saucers which furnish a sturdy resting place for Chinese soup-bowl cups. Behind the group, standing a little to one side, looking solicitously down at the man in the center, was a Chinese who was undoubtedly Gow Loong. The man in the center was Elston A. Karr, more robust, twenty years younger, but still with that same cold-eyed concentration glittering from his eyes, that ruthless, indomitable purpose stamped upon his face. There had been change in the twenty years. He had lost weight. His skin had stretched taut across his cheekbones, and there were puffs under his eyes; but there could be no mistaking Elston Karr.
The man on his right was the man shown in the photograph produced by Doris Wickford. There could be no doubt of that, and the two photographs must have been taken at about the same time. The partially bald head, the snub nose, the long lower lip with the deep calipers stretching down from the nostrils, the cleft chin, the bushy eyebrows, the protruding batlike ears were unmistakable.
The third man in the photograph caught Mason’s eye. He was a thick-chested, heavy-necked individual with thick lips that were twisted into a smile, but even in the photograph it was apparent that the eyes were not smiling. They were the sort of eyes that wouldn’t smile. They were staring in sullen contemplation at the lens of the camera. It was as though the man had been brooding so long upon some sinister scheme that his thoughts had stamped themselves indelibly upon his face.
“Who’s this man?” Mason asked.
Karr said, “A Judas — a dirty traitor — sold us out for his pieces of silver — almost brought about my death.” He looked up at Doris Wickford and said, “He was responsible for the death of your father. I shan’t forget him — ever.”
There was something in the way he said that last that was as whisperingly ominous as the sound of a carving knife being sharpened on a steel.
Mason compared the photograph in the book with that produced by Doris Wickford. Slowly he nodded his head, then asked, “Got any more pictures of Tucker?”
Karr jerked his head to Johns Blaine, and Blaine, turning the leaves of the photograph album, paused four times more to show Mason photographs. Always there were the photographs of the same four men: Karr; his partner, Tucker; Gow Loong; and this heavy-set, sullen-faced man who had apparently betrayed them.
Abruptly Karr said to Miss Wickford, “I want to check up on you. Where you lived, what you did, whom you knew.”
“Of course. You realize I was rather a child when Dad left, but I have rather distinct memories. I can tell you the houses we lived in — some of them, at any rate. Would you mind telling me whether my father left any considerable amount of property?”
“We had a partnership venture,” Karr said. “I didn’t know your father had any heirs. There was a partnership. We made some profit. He was killed. I didn’t make any formal accounting of his share. It wasn’t the sort of business you could offer for probate. We’d have been beheaded or hung if we’d been caught at it. Most dangerous, most risky business in the world, and the most fascinating. Betrayed by a damned Judas. But I got out of there with the money. I invested that money. The investments turned out well. Recently, Gow Loong mentioned that one night when Dow Tucker had been standing by the rail of the junk looking down at some little girls dancing on the landing in a Chinese village, he’d pointed out one little Chinese girl about seven or eight years old, and said that he had a daughter at home just about her age. He never spoke to me about it — very reticent about his private and family affairs. Gow Loong never realized the significance of it until later, when I was talking with him about the night Tucker was captured and killed. I’m tired. I’ll think it over. I’ll follow Gow Loong’s advice and rest. Give Mr. Blaine all the data you can think of, where you live, for whom you’ve worked, where you went to school, all the rest of it. Answer all questions Mr. Mason may ask.”
She nodded.
“One more thing,” Karr said abruptly. “You lived with an aunt?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps there are more letters from your father in your aunt’s things.”
“I never thought of that.”
“Know where they are?”
“No.”
“Try and find them. He might have written to her. See me again. No, don’t see me again. Keep in touch with Mr. Mason. He’s my lawyer. Don’t let Rodney Wenston’s hostility impress you much. He has nothing whatever to say about it. I told him to be skeptical in dealing with claimants. If you’re my partner’s daughter, I want to be friendly with you. If you’re an impostor, I want to send you to jail. I don’t want to waste too much time finding out which it’s going to be.”
Mason heard a quick intake of breath as though Gow Loong had been about to say something. Then the number one boy changed his mind. By the time Mason had raised his eyes, Gow Loong was standing absolutely motionless. Apparently he hadn’t even been listening to the conversation.
“Something you wanted to say, Gow Loong?” Karr asked.
“Maskee,” the Chinese number one boy said.
The girl looked questioningly at Karr. “Is that Chinese?” she asked innocently enough.
Karr’s frosty eyes twinkled into a half smile. “Near enough to Chinese,” he said. “The pigeon English of the treaty port. The greatest word of all, ‘maskee.’ It means never mind, no matter. And now run along, my dear. I think I’ll have some very important news for you soon, but let Mr. Mason check up on you and...”
The harsh sound of the door buzzer interrupted him. He looked quickly at Gow Loong. “See who it is,” he said. “I don’t want to see anyone.”
But as it turned out, Gow Loong had nothing to say on that score. They heard him descend the stairs, heard the door open, and then the crisp tones of an authoritative voice, and the feet of the two men on the stairs.
Lieutenant Tragg preceded the Chinese houseboy up the stairs. “Good afternoon, everyone,” he said. “Good afternoon. Ah, Mason again. And a young woman. Hope I’m not intruding. Your houseboy said you were busy, Karr, but just as I put my duties ahead of my own personal convenience, I have to adopt that attitude elsewhere. I trust you’ll understand.” Tragg ceased speaking and looked inquiringly at Doris Wickford.
“Miss Wickford,” Mason introduced. “Lieutenant Tragg of the Homicide Squad.”
“Homicide!” Miss Wickford said with a little startled exclamation.
“That’s right,” Tragg explained. “You probably aren’t interested in murder cases, Miss Wickford, but if you’d been reading the papers, you’d know that a man and his housekeeper were...”
“But are you working on that?” she asked.
Tragg eyed her narrowly. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, his voice suddenly noncommittal. “They lived in the flat below here.”
“Lived below here?” she asked, her eyes widening, and seeming suddenly to take on a darker hue.
“In the flat right below here,” Tragg repeated. “Didn’t you know it?”
There was no flicker in her glance, no waver in her eyes. “No,” she said.
“Sorry,” Tragg said, “but I’ve got to ask a few questions. Let’s go back to the night of the murder, gentle-men. Now, Gow Loong where were you?”
“Down China city. I visit my cousin.”
“How many cousins?” Tragg asked.
There was just the bare suggestion of a flicker of triumph in Gow Loong’s eyes. “Twenty-one.”
It was Miss Wickford who broke the silence with a little laugh. “Twenty-one cousins!” she exclaimed.
Karr said to Lieutenant Tragg, “Chinese cousins are different from ours. In China they properly have only one hundred names. Everyone who has the same surname is supposed to be related. It’s a vague relationship. There’s nothing to compare with it in this country. That’s why a Chinaboy will say of another Chinese, ‘He allee same my cousin.’ ”
“I see,” Tragg said. “Most interesting. And your name is Loong?”
“That’s not really his family name,” Karr interposed again. “Gow Loong he calls himself. Literally translated, it means ‘nine dragons’ — Cantonese. So don’t try looking it up in the official Mandarin dictionaries. Cantonese is a different language. Sort of a Chinese nickname. Means he has the strength, wisdom, daring, and courage of nine dragons. Each one of them furnishes some attribute: Loyalty, courage, perspicacity, endurance, shrewdness in money matters, ability to study — let’s see. How many’s that? Seven. I’ve forgotten the other two. Virtue and filial respect, probably. No matter. It illustrates the point. Anyway, he’s got twenty-one witnesses. He wasn’t here. I know he wasn’t here. If you want to check up on him, that’s easy. Who else do you want?”
Tragg turned to Blaine.
Blaine said, “I believe I’ve explained that at the same time the murder was committed I was flying down from San Francisco with Mr. Wenston here. We left San Francisco at eleven o’clock. I had some friends come down to the plane to see me off.”
“Good thing you did too,” Wenston interposed. “Otherwise I couldn’t have prethented any alibi myself.”
Tragg suddenly whirled to Karr. “You,” he said.
Karr met his eyes with cold defiance. “I was here — alone.”
“That’s rather unusual, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“In your wheelchair?”
“No. In bed. I believe I’ve gone over all that with you before, Lieutenant.”
“You haven’t,” Tragg said meaningly. “Mason has.”
“What do you mean?” Karr asked.
Karr kept staring at the detective with the cold concentration of one who is completely the master of his own soul, and resents uninvited familiarities. “Do you have any fault to find with what Mr. Mason answered?” he asked.
“I may have,” Tragg said.
“Under those circumstances,” Karr announced with cold dignity, “I am afraid it will be necessary for me to ask Mr. Mason to speak for me again. I am not feeling well, Lieutenant, and this interview has wearied me.”
Tragg said affably, “Let’s not get off to a bad start, Mr. Karr. I’m trying to save you future trouble.”
“Thank you for your consideration. You don’t need to try to save me anything. I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”
“Despite the fact that you are unable to walk?” Tragg asked.
“Despite the fact that I am unable to walk.”
“I don’t want to have any misunderstanding about that,” Tragg observed.
Karr said, “You don’t need to have any. I can’t walk.”
“You were here alone in this flat,” Tragg said. “So far as is known, you, the housekeeper, and Hocksley were the only three persons under this roof.”
“Hocksley!” Miss Wickford exclaimed.
Tragg turned to look at her. “Hocksley,” he said.
“Why...!”
“The name mean anything to you?” Tragg asked.
She smiled and shook her head somewhat dubiously.
Tragg kept his eyes boring into hers. “But,” he asked affably in the manner of one making small talk, “you’ve known a Hocksley somewhere, I take it, Miss Wickford?”
She said, “No.”
“The name has some association for you? Come now, let’s not beat around the bush.”
She said, “My father mentioned a Hocksley in one of his letters.”
“How long ago?”
“Oh, perhaps twenty years.”
Karr laughed mirthlessly. “Hardly the same Hocksley,” he said.
Tragg didn’t shift his eyes. “You were a child at the time?”
“Yes.”
“How old?”
“Seven.”
“Where was your father?”
“China.”
“What did he say about Hocksley?”
She shifted her eyes to Karr as though looking for some signal. Tragg said insistently, “This is just between you and me, Miss Wickford. What did your father say about Hocksley?”
“My father was in a partnership in China. I believe Hocksley was one of the partners.”
Tragg thought that over for a few seconds, then asked abruptly, “When did you meet Mr. Mason?”
“About an hour and a half ago.”
“Karr?”
“About forty minutes.”
“Known anyone here longer than that?”
“I met Mr. Wenston before I met Mr. Mason.”
“How much before?”
“A few minutes before.”
“What are you doing here?”
Wenston interposed hastily, “She’s calling on a matter of business. It’s highly confidential. I don’t want anything thaid about it.”
Tragg pursed his lips. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Now let’s see. Wasn’t there an ad in this morning’s paper, an ad by someone who wanted to find the daughter of his dead partner?”
There was no sound in the room, save the rasping breathing of Elston A. Karr. As by common consent they turned to look at him.
“Your father’s name was Wickford?” Tragg asked the girl, whirling abruptly back toward her.
“In China he went under the name of Dow Tucker.”
“Wrote you about the partnership?”
“Yes.”
“When? Exactly what date?”
“In the latter part of 1920.”
“What happened after that?”
Karr said, “I can tell you. He...”
“Shut up, Karr,” Tragg said without taking his eyes from the girl’s face.
“I didn’t hear anything more from my father after a letter written in the first part of 1921. I heard later on that he had died.”
“How did he die?”
“I understood he was murdered.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“His body was never shipped home?”
“No.”
“Ever get any property from his estate?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Any other relatives living?”
“No.”
“When did your mother die?”
“Around eighteen months before Dad went to China.”
“With whom did you live after that? After your father left?”
“An aunt.”
“Mother’s sister or father’s?”
“Mother’s.”
“Where’s she?”
“Dead.”
“How long?”
“Three years.”
“And your father wrote about having a partnership arrangement with a man named Hocksley?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t mention his first name?”
“I...”
“You didn’t save that letter?”
“No.”
“Mention the name of the other partner?”
She hesitated a moment, then said, “Well... yes.”
“A man named Karr?”
“Yes.”
“Remember the first name?”
After she had been silent for several seconds, Tragg said abruptly, “I asked you if you knew his first name?”
“I was trying to remember.”
“Well, think fast.”
She turned to Karr. “Your first name is Elston, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She said, “I have a haunting memory in the back of my mind that Karr’s first name was Elston. I can’t remember. Perhaps it’s just the association of ideas, having met Mr. Elston Karr this afternoon. I... I may have confused his first name.”
“With what?”
“With the name of my father’s partner.”
“What other Karrs do you know?”
“None who spell their names this way.”
Tragg looked up at Karr. “Well?” he asked.
Karr said, “In the fall of 1920 and the spring of 1921 I was in partnership with three men in Shanghai. One of them was named Dow Tucker. I think he’s this girl’s father. The other one was a man named Hocksley.”
“Indeed!” Lieutenant Tragg said, his voice showing only a courteous interest. “And what became of Hocksley?”
Karr said, choosing his words carefully, “Hocksley disappeared. He disappeared under suspicious circumstances. He carried away with him a very large sum of money in partnership funds. Fortunately, not all of the partnership funds, but a large amount.”
“So,” Tragg said, “naturally, you felt quite bitter toward Hocksley.”
A gleam showed in Karr’s eyes despite his attempt to control his expression. He said, “The man was beneath contempt.”
“And he took with him a large amount of partnership funds?”
“Yes.”
“In other words, some of your money?”
“Yes.”
“Naturally, you wanted that back.”
“Yes.”
“And naturally you made some attempt to trace him.”
“That’s right.”
“And, in short, Karr, your efforts finally were successful. You located Hocksley in this flat below you. You took the flat above him and...”
“I did nothing of the sort,” Karr interrupted. “I took this flat because I desired privacy. I believe the records will show that some ten days or two weeks after I moved in, the lower flat was rented to a man by the name of Hocksley. I can assure you that I didn’t even know his name until this matter came up. I am confined to my house. I don’t get out. I...”
“Your Chinaboy gets out?”
“He does the shopping.”
Tragg pursed his lips, turned toward Gow Loong, then swung back toward Karr. “Well, let’s finish this phase of the matter first. What was the first name of your partner in China?”
Karr hesitated.
“Come on,” Tragg said. “Let’s have it. Stalling around isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
Karr said, “We called him Red. I don’t think I ever did know his first name... If I did know it, I’ve forgotten it.”
Miss Wickford said, “Perhaps I can help you there a little, Lieutenant. His name was Robindale E. Hocksley. I remember my father writing about him. I was just a child at the time, but names have always stuck in my memory. I was going to tell you this before, but you interrupted me with another question.”
Tragg said, without looking around, “You’re not helping me a damn bit, Miss Wickford. I know what his name was. I knew all about that partnership before I came up here. I wasn’t asking questions because I wanted information, but to find out who’s trying to co-operate and who’s trying to cover up. Karr, why didn’t you tell me your partner had the same name as that of the man who was murdered?”
“I didn’t know it until after the murder. Then it just didn’t occur to me it was other than a similarity of surnames. I never knew Red Hocksley’s first name was Robindale.”
“How about you?” Tragg asked Gow Loong.
“What’samalla me?” Gow Loong demanded with the shrill rapidity of an excited Chinese.
“How long you been with Mr. Karr?”
“Maybe-so long time.”
“In China?”
“Sure, in China.”
“You remember the three men in the partnership Mr. Karr’s spoken about?”
“Red Hocksley I heap savvy,” Gow Loong said. “Him velly bad man. Heap no good. Alla time no can tlust.”
Tragg said, “You’ve seen this man who lived downstairs?”
Gow Loong shook his head. “No see.”
“You read his name on the door?”
“No read.”
Tragg turned to Blaine. “How about you?”
Blaine said affably, “I have only been with Mr. Karr for a year.”
“What’s your job?”
“Well, I act as sort of nurse. You see, Mr. Karr is...”
“Ever do any nursing before?”
“Well...”
“Got a permit to carry that gun you’re lugging around?” Tragg interrupted.
Blaine’s hand moved automatically to his pocket. “Sure, I got a permit. I...” He stopped as he caught the triumphant gleam in Tragg’s eye.
Tragg laughed. “What did you do before you became Karr’s bodyguard?”
“I had a detective agency in Denver Colorado,” Blaine blurted, red-faced. “I wasn’t making very much money at it, and when I had this opportunity to draw steady wages and good wages, I jumped at it.”
Tragg said, “That’s better. If you want to keep that permit to carry that gun and if ever you want to go back into the detective business, you’ll be wise to co-operate a little. Now what do you know about Hocksley?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Ever see the man?”
Blaine said, “Look here, Lieutenant, I’m going to be frank with you. I was hired to act as Karr’s bodyguard. I gathered that, because of some old feud in China, his life might be in danger. I’ve never heard him mention the name of Hocksley, and today is the first time I ever knew about that Shanghai partnership. Karr never told me what specific danger he feared. I had an idea he was still doing a little gun-running — getting stuff past the Japs. I won’t go into details, but I think Karr’s the brains of the works. I think it would raise the devil, not only with Karr, but with an underground grapevine by which munitions are being smuggled in, if Karr got any publicity. I don’t know how the government would feel about it, but I presume that, at least unofficially, they’d have some interest in the matter. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been keeping my mouth shut. I can’t tell you a lot about methods, but, as I get the picture, there’s quite a fleet of Chinese fishing junks that put out from all the coast villages. Those people have to five, and in order to live, they have to fish. The Japanese realize that. Occasionally, they search these junks. Some of them are considered above suspicion. Some aren’t. They can’t search them all. Therefore, you can see it’s pretty important for Karr to keep under cover, and — well, that’s been my job. I’ve been keeping him sewed up and out of circulation.”
Tragg took a deep breath, looked across at Karr.
Karr said somewhat scornfully to Blaine, “You can keep your gossip to yourself. Your ideas of what I’m doing are crazy.”
Blaine shrugged his shoulders, said, “I’m hired by you. I do a good job for you. I want to keep on doing a good job for you, but I know which side of the bread has the butter. I’m not going to tangle up with the police department.”
“Where, may I ask, did you get your information?” Karr asked coldly. “Been snooping?”
Blaine said indignantly, “I haven’t been snooping. I got it from you.”
“What do you mean?”
“From little things you did, little hints you let drop, the expression on your face,” Blaine said impatiently. “After all, I’ve been a private detective, and I was a cop before that. What the hell do you think? That I’m going to associate with someone for a year and then not know what I’m hired to protect him against? Nuts!”
Tragg got up, walked over to the window, stood looking out, his hands pushed down into his pockets; then he whirled to regard Perry Mason. “Personally, Mason, I think it’s a runaround. I’m not saying anything — not yet. It’s getting so that whenever we’re working on a case and you come into the picture, the hot trail we’re following develops a habit of running back to the starting point so that we’re tearing around in circles. It’s nothing except coincidence, yet — but it’s a hell of a lot of coincidence.”
“Speaking of running around in circles,” Mason said, “did you come up here to pay this visit simply because you thought Miss Wickford was here and could give you some information on Karr’s past connections?”
Miss Wickford said, “Don’t be silly. Lieutenant Tragg couldn’t have known I was going to be here, because I didn’t know it myself until the moment I picked up the paper and...”
“I came up here to ask questions,” Tragg interrupted.
“Exactly,” Mason said, “and, I take it, they were rather important questions; and since this interesting information which has been uncovered about Karr’s former partner has been purely fortuitous, I naturally am wondering just what really caused this visit. Or is Miss Wickford an undercover associate?”
Tragg said, “Well, I’ll relieve your curiosity on that, Mason. I came up here to find out about a telephone.”
“What telephone?” Mason asked.
“A telephone which seems to have been something more than a telephone, one in which I thought Karr might have some interest.”
Karr said wearily, “I’m not interested in telephones. I’m a sick man, and the experiences of the afternoon haven’t done me any good.”
Gow Loong said, “Massah should have gone bed long time ago. Maybe-so go now.”
Karr said, “All right, Gow Loong.”
“Just a moment,” Tragg ordered. “I want to ask a couple more questions.”
“Massah sick,” Gow Loong said. “No can talk.”
“About that telephone,” Tragg insisted, putting a hand on Karr’s wheelchair.
“What about the telephone?” Karr asked, his voice gone flat with weariness.
Tragg said, “We have reason to believe that the person who committed that murder had a very definite reason for lifting the telephone receiver.”
Mason avoided Tragg’s eyes.
Karr said, “I suppose he wanted to call someone. You have to lift the receiver to do that, you know.”
“When we first examined that telephone,” Tragg went on, ignoring Karr’s sarcasm, “we noticed only an ordinary desk telephone with two fingerprints which had been outlined in paint on the receiver. Then we made a more detailed investigation and found something which is very peculiar, to say the least.”
Karr said, “Don’t beat around the bush. If you’re trying to accuse me of something, come out and say so.”
Mason said, “He’s just trying to surprise you into an admission of something, Mr. Karr. It’s the way the police work. Apparently a person’s poor health doesn’t change their methods.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Tragg said, ignoring Mason’s interpolation, “but I’m telling you what we found.”
“Well, what did you find?”
“Concealed in the base of that telephone in such a way that it would hardly be noticeable on a superficial examination was a small hole. The telephone was bolted to the desk, which was unusual. We further found that the desk was screwed to the floor so that the telephone and desk were held in one position. That aroused our suspicions. We made a careful examination and found that the base of the telephone contained a very ingenious burglar alarm, a ray of invisible light which could be switched on so that it played across the door of that room. The only way the connection could be broken was by throwing a switch which was on the far side of the light beam, or by picking up the telephone receiver and lifting it from its cradle, which automatically had the effect of cutting off the beam of light.”
Karr said, “It doesn’t mean a damned thing to me. I fail to see why you are telling me about it.”
“Because,” Tragg went on patiently, “when any person walked across this beam of light without first lifting the telephone receiver, it caused a buzzer on the screen porch of the lower flat to sound. And that buzzer, Mr. Karr, was fastened to the side of the house so that it was directly below your bedroom window! ”
Karr placed his thin, wasted hand on the arm of the chair, gripped it so that the cords stood out plainly under the skin of the back of his hand. “Buzzer — under my window. Then that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“That must have been what wakened me first, before I heard anything. I heard a peculiarly insistent sound which was like the buzzing of mosquitoes. It was high-pitched, distinctly audible, very irritating to a man of my nervous temperament. I kept listening, thinking at first it was a mosquito in the room, then realized that the sound was coming from outside of my window.”
“How long did it continue?” Tragg asked.
“Some little time. I don’t know how long it had been going before I woke up.”
“How long before you heard the shots?”
Karr said firmly, “There was only one shot.”
Tragg sighed. “I take it,” he said, “I am indebted for the other shot to the versatile mind of Mr. Mason.”
Karr said testily, “You are indebted for the extra shot to what I told Mr. Mason. At the time, I thought there might have been two shots. Since then, and on thinking it over, I have come to the conclusion that there was only one shot, and perhaps an echo from the side of the adjoining house.”
“And how about the buzzing?” Tragg asked.
“The buzzing,” Karr said, “continued for a few minutes after the sound of the shot, and then ceased.”
“Think carefully. Did you hear it again?”
“No,” Karr said positively. “I didn’t hear it after that.”
Tragg studied him for a moment, then said, “It would have simplified matters if you’d told me this stuff when I first questioned you.”
Karr, staring right back at him, said, “And it would have simplified matters if you’d told me about the telephone receiver.”
“I didn’t know about the burglar alarm then.”
“And I didn’t know that the buzzing of a mosquito was important.”
“Then there was only one shot?”
“I’ve come to the conclusion now there was only one shot.”
“Do you know what time it was?”
“I can’t tell you exactly, no. It was sometime after midnight, and I would say before one o’clock. And now if you’ll excuse me, Lieutenant, I’m going to retire. I’m not going to drive myself past the danger point for anyone. I’ve already put up with more than I should.”
Without another word, Karr lowered his hands to the rubber tires of the wheelchair. But quick as he was, Gow Loong was the first to apply the pressure against the wheelchair which sent it into motion toward the rear of the house.
Doris Wickford said to Mason, “Apparently I’m to camp on your doorstep until this is cleaned up.”
Rodney Wenston shook his head. “I know the guv’nor pretty well,” he said. “Don’t rush him. He won’t do a thing if you crowd him.”
Lieutenant Tragg said to Mason without any more expression in his voice than if he had been commenting on an unusual spell of weather, “Certainly is strange the number of coincidences there are in this case. And every time I come here I find you here.”
Mason laughed. “I think of it as being the other way around. Every time I come to talk with my client, you manage to drop in. I was thinking that perhaps I was being followed.”
“It might not be a bad idea at that.”
Tragg started toward the stairway, then paused as he was near the first step, and beckoned Mason over to him.
“I see nothing for it but to arrest young Arthur Gentrie and charge him with murder.”
“Whose murder?” Mason asked.
Tragg smiled amicably. “Thought you’d catch me on that one, didn’t you? Well, just to put your mind at rest, when we discovered the body of Mrs. Perlin, we made a complete search of the premises. We went through everything, even cleaning out the ashes in the furnace, and in those ashes we found some interesting things, a few bits of charred cloth, some buttons, the remnants of a pair of shoes. On the portions that hadn’t been completely destroyed by fire, we found dark stains. An analysis shows they were made by human blood. You might think that over, Mason. And now if you’ll pardon me, I’ll run along. I want to talk with young Gentrie as soon as he gets back from the hardware store.”