The pet store on the corner was a bedlam of noise when Mason opened the door, nodded to a clerk, and walked back toward the office in the rear. A parrot screeched greeting. A chained monkey thrust forth an inquisitive paw, clutching at the lawyer’s coat. A fat individual, with pale, patient eyes, and a black skullcap protecting the shiny dome of an onion bald head, looked up from a ledger, then came waddling from the glass-enclosed office.
“Ja, Ja,” he said, “it is the Herr Counselor, himself! It is an honor you come to my place of business.”
Mason shook hands, perched himself on the edge of a counter and said, “I haven’t much time, Karl. I want to find out something.”
“Ja, ja! About the Fräulein who came in with the canary, eh? She said that you had sent her. You perhaps want to know something about that canary?”
Mason nodded.
“It is a good canary,” Helmold said. “It is worth a good price. He has a fine voice.”
“He seems to have a sore foot,” the lawyer said.
“Ja. It is nothing. The claws on the right foot have been cut too short. Today he is lame. Tomorrow he is lame. The next day, nothing. And the day after that, you could never tell.”
“How about the left foot?” Mason asked.
“On the left foot the claws are cut nicely, all except one claw, and that claw, it is not cut at all. I do not understand.”
“The claws were cut today?” Mason asked.
“Ja, ja. There are little fine threads of blood on the perch which come from the sore toes of the right foot. It was done today, ja.”
“And the young woman wants to keep him here?”
“Ja.”
“For how long?”
The fat proprietor of the pet store shrugged his shoulders and said, “I do not know. She does not tell me that.”
“For a day?” Mason asked.
The eyes grew wide with surprise. “You joke, nicht wahr? A day! What sort of a storage business is that?”
“No,” Mason said, “I want to know. Did she say anything about leaving him here for a day?”
“Ach, no. By the month I quoted her prices, and by the month she paid. Understand, Counselor, not even by the week; by the month.”
Mason slid from the counter. “Okay, Karl,” he said. “I just wanted to check up on it.”
“I thank you for sending her to me,” Helmold said. “Some day perhaps I can do something for you, nicht wahr?”
“Possibly,” Mason said. “What name did she give you?”
“Her name?”
“Yes.”
Helmold stepped into the office, thumbed over some records, came out with a card in his hand and said, “The name is Mildred Owens, and the address is General Delivery, Reno. She moves to Reno, and after a while she sends and gets the bird. But not for more than a month, anyway.”
A slow grin spread over the lawyer’s face.
“That is good news?” Helmold asked anxiously, looking over the top of his glasses.
“Very good news,” Mason said. “You know, Karl, I was commencing to think my hunches weren’t right. Now I feel a lot better. Take care of that canary, Karl.”
“Ja, ja. I take care of him. Would you like to look around and—”
“Not today, Karl. I’ll see you some other time. I’m busy right now.”
Helmold nodded genially, escorted Perry Mason to the door of the pet shop. “Any time I can do something for you, you tell me. It is a pleasure. This—” with a sweep of his hand — “talk of a lame canary, it is nothing. I wish to do something.”
Mason grinned, left the pet-shop proprietor bowing and smiling in the doorway, and sought a barber shop, where he was shaved, massaged and manicured.
Usually, hot towels on his face made him relax into a state where he was neither awake nor asleep, a peculiar, drowsy, half-dreaming condition in which, his imagination stimulated, he could see things with crystal clarity. But this time the hot towels steamed no thoughts into his mind. The canary was lame. One of the claws on the left foot had not been clipped at all. The remaining claws on that foot had been trimmed correctly. But the claws on the right foot had been trimmed too closely. And it was this which made the canary lame. Moreover, Rita Swaine, in taking the bird to the pet store, had been frank enough in referring to Mason as the person who had sent her there, but had given a fictitious name and address.
Why?
Out of the barber chair, Mason adjusted his tie, glanced at his wrist watch, and strolled leisurely back to his office. The street was filled with afternoon shadows and the advance guard of the late afternoon traffic jams.
Rounding the corner in the corridor from the elevator, he saw Della Street standing in the doorway of his private office, beckoning to him frantically, and, as he quickened his stride, she ran swiftly down the flagged floor of the building.
“Listen,” she said, “Paul Drake’s on the private line and he says he must talk with you right away.”
Mason’s long legs added another few inches to his quick stride. “How long ago did he call?”
“He’s on the line, just this minute. I recognized the sound of your steps in the corridor.”
“This his first call?”
“Yes.”
Mason said, “It may be important, Della. Don’t go home until we find out.” He pushed his way into his private office, picked up the receiver of his desk telephone and said in a low voice, “Okay, Paul, what is it?”
The slightly distorted sound of the detective’s voice showed the lawyer that Drake was holding his lips directly against the transmitter.
“Perry,” he said, “was this a run-around?”
“Was what a run-around?”
“About the divorce case.”
“No. What are you talking about?”
“I think,” Drake told him, “you’d better get out here right away.”
“Where’s ‘here’?”
“Out in front of Mrs. Stella Anderson’s place on Alsace Avenue. I’m talking from a drug store a couple of blocks away, but I’ll meet you where my car’s parked.”
“What’s the trouble?” Mason asked, frowning.
Drake lowered his voice and said, “Listen. A couple of men in a prowl car drove up, stopped at the Prescott house, opened the back door with skeleton keys, and went in. About fifteen minutes later, Sergeant Holcomb of the homicide squad came out with lots of sirens and a couple of men, and a few minutes later the coroner showed.”
Mason gave a low whistle. “Did you pick up anything, Paul?”
“Not much, but I understand the tip-off came from a Mrs. Weyman, who lives just west of the Prescott house on Fourteenth Street.”
“How did she get the tip-off?” Mason asked.
“No one knows.”
“And you don’t know who’s the corpse.”
“No.”
“You,” Mason told him, “wait for me in front of Stella Anderson’s place. I’m coming out. And let me give you a tip, Paul — don’t ever underestimate a hunch on a lame canary.”