"Help me?"
"Yes."
Colemar's eyebrows rose in surprise.
"Good heavens," he said, "what am I a witness to, and how can you help me?"
"You saw a woman who had been injured lying on the couch down in Mr. Basset's reception room just a few minutes ago."
"I couldn't tell whether it was a woman or a man. Someone was lying on the couch. I thought it was a man, but Edith Brite was standing in front of the couch and Mrs. Basset was very anxious that I shouldn't go near the couch. She kept pushing me away. If you're at all interested, you might care to know that I'm going to report the matter to Mr. Basset in the morning. Mrs. Basset has no right in those offices and I have. She had no right to push me away."
"Overpowered you, did she?" Mason asked sarcastically.
"You don't know that Brite woman," Colemar retorted. "She's strong as an ox and she does everything Mrs. Basset tells her to."
"You'd been out?" Mason asked.
"Yes, sir, to a picture show."
"When you came back you saw someone running down the street?"
Colemar straightened with such frosty dignity as can be mustered by a man whose shoulders have been bent over a desk during years of clerical work.
"I did," he said ominously.
Something in his tone caused Mason's eyes to narrow.
"Look here, Colemar," he said, "did you recognize that man?"
"That," Colemar said, "is something which is none of your business. That is something which I shall report to Mr. Basset. I don't wish to seem disrespectful, but I don't know your connection with Mrs. Basset and I don't know what right you have to invade my room without knocking and ask me questions. You said I was going to be a witness. What am I going to be a witness to?"
Mason heard the sound of a siren as a car rounded the corner with screaming tires. He didn't wait to answer Colemar's question but jerked the door open, sprinted down the hallway, took the stairs two at a time, jerked open the door to the porch, and crossed to the other door just as a touring car slid in close to the curb.
Mason shoved the door open. Dick Basset and his mother, engaged in a whispered conversation, jumped guiltily apart.
"Okay," Mason said, "here are the cops. Don't say anything about any trouble either one of you might have had with Hartley Basset. That line isn't going to go over so good under the circumstances. Do you get me?"
Mrs. Basset said slowly, "I get you."
Feet pounded on the porch. Knuckles pounded imperatively against the door.
She opened it, and two broadshouldered men pushed their way into the room.
"Okay," one of them said. "What's going on here?"
"My husband," Mrs. Basset said, "has just committed suicide."
"That wasn't the way we got it over the radio," one of the men said.
"I'm sorry," she told him. "My son was hysterical. He was laboring under a misunderstanding. He didn't know what had happened."
"Well," one of the men said, "what has happened?"
She motioned toward the door.
"How do you know it's suicide?" the other officer asked.
"You can read the note he left in the typewriter."
The men opened the door. One of them produced a flashlight and sent the beam slithering about the room. The other found a light switch, pressed the button and stood staring at the scene which was disclosed as the lights clicked on.
"How long ago did you find him?" he asked.
"About five minutes ago," Perry Mason said, answering the question.
The men turned to him.
"Who are you, buddy?" one of them asked.
The other one gave a sudden start of recognition.
"It's Perry Mason," he said, "the lawyer."
Perry Mason bowed.
"What are you doing here?" the first man asked.
"Waiting for you to get done with the formalities in connection with this suicide," Perry Mason said, "so that I can discuss certain matters with Mrs. Basset."
"How did you happen to be here?"
"I came here to see Mr. Basset on business."
"What kind of business?"
"Not that it makes any difference," Perry Mason said, smiling affably, "but it had to do with the affairs of a young man who had been employed by Mr. Basset. There'd been some misunderstanding between them, and I wanted to get it straightened out."
"Humph!" the officer said, and stood staring down at the corpse.
"Anyone hear the pistol shot?"
No one answered.
"Evidently used the blanket and quilt to muffle the pistol shot," the officer said. "There's the gun that did the killing."
Perry Mason followed the direction of his pointing finger. On the floor, in plain sight, lay a gun, a.38 caliber Colt, Police Positive, very apparently the gun which he had taken from young Basset.
One of the officers stepped to the corpse, picked up a corner of the blanket and raised it.
"Say, look here!" he called in an excited voice. "Here's another gun under this blanket. How the devil could a man commit suicide with two guns?"
The second officer pushed the spectators toward the doorway.
"Get out of here," he said, "and let me use the telephone. I'm calling the Homicide Squad."
Mason stared at Mrs. Basset. "Two guns," he said. She made no answer. Her lips were bloodless, her eyes dark with terror.
Chapter 5
The witnesses sat in a huddled group in the outer office. The members of the Homicide Squad busied themselves in the death chamber.
Perry Mason leaned toward Mrs. Basset.
"What did you mean by planting that gun?" he whispered.
"Will it make trouble?" she asked.
"Of course, it'll make trouble. Why did you do it?"
"Because," she said slowly, "there couldn't have been a suicide, without the gun being found there. I didn't think there was any gun. You know, we couldn't see any when we were in the room. We didn't move the blanket, and…"
"But why," the lawyer demanded, "did you put that gun there?"
"I had to," she said. "There had to be a gun there. Otherwise it wouldn't have looked like suicide. It would have looked like murder."
"Don't ever kid yourself," Mason said grimly, "that it wasn't murder, and that was Dick's gun you left there."
"I know," she said rapidly, "but that's all right. Dick and I fixed that all up. We'll say that Hartley borrowed the gun from him more than a week ago and that Dick hasn't seen it since."
"But," Mason said, "the gun is empty. There couldn't have been a suicide with…"
"Oh, no," she said. "I put shells in it before I left it in the room."
"The same shells I took from Dick, including the empty cartridge?"
"Yes."
"Did you ever know," Mason asked, "that the police can tell from an examination of bullets whether a bullet has been fired from a certain gun?"
"No, can they?"
"And did you ever know that the police can develop latent fingerprints on that gun, and that when they do, they will find yours and Dick's and mine?"
"Good God, no!"
"You," Mason told her, "are either one of the cleverest women I've met in a long time, or one of the dumbest."
"I don't know about criminal matters," she said. "I wouldn't know anything about them."
"Look here," Perry Mason said, staring steadily at her, "did you think that Hartley Basset had gone out, or did you know that he was lying in there dead?"
"Why, I thought he'd gone out, of course. I tell you I saw him run out… I thought it was he."
"Now, this girl is your daughterinlaw?"
"Yes, she married Dick. But you mustn't say anything about that marriage."
"Why not? What's wrong with it?"
"Please," she said, "don't ask all those questions now. I'll tell you later."
"Now, listen," Mason said grimly, "there's going to be a lot of questions asked you tonight. Are you ready to answer them?"