"Not unless they identify my fingerprints on the gun, and they can't do that until after they've taken my fingerprints. They haven't any record of them down at headquarters. They'll probably be peeved about Hazel Fenwick disappearing, but they won't have anything to pin a charge on. We've got a new district attorney now, and I think he's inclined to be a squareshooter. He wants to get convictions when he's certain he's prosecuting guilty people, but he doesn't want to convict innocent ones."
"You want me to write up the things Brunold said last night?"
He shook his head as he passed into his inner office.
"No," he called over his shoulder, "let that go. We'll see whom we're representing before we take any definite steps." He dropped into his big swivel chair, picked up the newspaper and was reading the account of Basset's murder when the telephone rang and Della Street said, "I got Harry McLane on the telephone. He was very independent, but I got a number out of him where I could talk with his sister. I talked with her, and she says that she must see you right away. She's bringing her brother with her, if she can get him to come. She said that she'd wait all day in your reception room if she had to, but that she simply had to see you."
"Did she say what about?" he asked.
"No, she didn't say… I've sent one of the boys down to pick up your car. Paul Drake telephoned and wants to see you at your convenience."
"Tell Paul to come on in," Mason said. "Let me know as soon as Bertha McLane gets here. If the police haven't got the Fenwick girl, she'll probably call up sometime today. She may use a phoney name. So if any mysterious woman tries to get in touch with me, be sure that you take the message and get the lowdown on it. You can be tactful but insistent.
"Tell Paul Drake to come directly to my private office. I'll let him in. When I buzz for you, come in and take notes."
He slipped the receiver back into place, read half a column in the newspaper, and then heard a tapping on the door which led to the corridor. He opened it, and Paul Drake, his face set in its fixed expression of droll humor, entered the room.
Mason looked at him shrewdly and said, "You look as though you'd had a good night's sleep last night."
"Well," Paul Drake told him, "I got darn near twenty minutes."
"Where did you get it?" Mason asked, pressing the buzzer summoning Della Street.
"In the barber's chair this morning. I wish you'd get your brainstorms during office hours. You always want your rush stuff put through at night."
"I can't help it," Perry Mason told him, "if murderers insist on claiming their victims after office hours. Did you find out anything?"
"I found out lots," Drake said. "I had twenty operatives working on the thing at one time, chasing down different angles. I hope you've got a client with long purse strings."
"I haven't, but I'm going to have. What's the dirt?"
"It's quite a story," Drake told him; "one of those human interest yarns."
Mason indicated the big overstuffed leather chair.
"Sit down and spill it."
Paul Drake jackknifed his long length into the chair, sliding around and sitting sideways, so that his back rested against one of the arms, while his knees draped over the other arm. Della Street came in, smiled at the detective and sat down.
"It goes back to one of these romantic betrayals of the midVictorian Era."
"Meaning what?"
Drake lit a cigarette, puffed out a cloud of smoke, waved his hand in an inclusive gesture and said, "Picture to yourself a beautiful farming community, prosperous, happy and narrowminded—accent on the narrowminded."
"Why the accent?" Mason inquired.
"Because it was that sort of a community. Everyone knew what everyone else did. If a girl turned out in a new dress, there were a dozen different tongues to wag in speculation on where she got it."
"And a fur coat?" the lawyer asked.
Paul Drake threw up his hands in a gesture of mock dismay and said, "Oh, my God! Why blacken a girl's character that way?"
Mason chuckled and said, "Go on."
"A girl lived there named Sylvia Berkley—rather a pretty girl—trusting, simple, straightforward, cleareyed."
"Why all the niceties of description?" the lawyer asked.
"Because," Drake said seriously, "I'm for that kid in a big way. I've got a description of her. I've even got photographs."
He searched in his pocket, brought out an envelope, took from it a photograph and handed it over to Perry Mason. "If you think it didn't take engineering to dig out that photograph at four o'clock in the morning, you've got another think coming."
"Where did you get it?"
"From the local paper."
"She made the headlines then?"
"Yes; she disappeared."
"Abducted, or something?"
"No one ever found out. She just disappeared."
The lawyer looked searchingly at the detective and said, "You've got the story behind that disappearance, haven't you?"
"Yes.
"All right, go ahead and tell it to me."
"If I seem to get romantic or poetic or something, it's because I've been up all night," Drake told him.
"Never mind that; get down to brass tacks."
"There was a traveling man who was selling dry goods. His name was Pete Brunold."
"He had one eye?" Mason inquired.
"No, he had two eyes at that time. He picked up his artificial eye later on. That's one of the reasons I'm a little mushy about them."
"Where does it start?" Mason asked.
"I guess it starts with Sylvia Basset's folks. They had ideas. You know, the type that stood so straight they leaned over backwards. Traveling salesmen were slickers from the city. When Brunold started to take the girl out, the folks hit the ceiling.
"There was a little movie house in the burg. You know, there weren't any radios in those days. The movies were just graduating from the galloping cowboy stuff. The town wasn't big enough to get many of the old stock melodramas, and…"
"Forget the community," Mason said impatiently. "Did Brunold marry her?"
Drake, in his slow drawl, said, "I can't forget the community without forgetting the story. No, he didn't marry her, and, brother, this is my yarn and I'm going to stick to it."
The lawyer signed, gave Della Street a half humorous glance and said, "Okay, go ahead with the lecture."
"Well, you know how a highstrung girl does things. The town thought she was going to hell fast. Her folks wanted her to give Brunold the bum's rush. She stuck up for him, and I guess perhaps she had ideas buzzing around in her bonnet—ideas of living her own life. You know, Perry, it was along about that time that girls were just commencing to break away from the kind of stuff that had been drilled into their noodles for generations."
Perry Mason yawned ostentatiously.
"Oh, hell," the detective said, "you're taking all the romance out of my young life—just when I was beginning to think my youth hadn't entirely vanished."
"It isn't youthful romance, it's the mush of senility," Mason said. "For God's sake, get it through your head that I've got a murder case on my hands and I want facts. You give me the facts and I'll hang plenty of romance on them when I dish them out to the jury."
"The hell of it is," Drake said, turning to Della Street, "that when the Chief gets this sketch he's going to feel just the same way about it I do. He's like a bride's biscuit—he puts up a hardboiled exterior, but when you bust through him he's all soft and mushy on the inside."
"Halfbaked is the word you're groping for," Mason told him. "Come on, Paul; let's have the stuff."
"One day," Drake said, "Brunold got a letter from Sylvia. That letter told him they couldn't put off getting married any longer."