When she had finished, she carefully polished the key to apartment 702 so as to remove any possible fingerprints, and dropped it in Fay Allison’s purse. She ground up all but six of the remaining sleeping tablets and mixed the powder with the chocolate which was left in the canister.
Then she donned pajamas, took the remaining six tablets, washed off the label with hot water, and tossed the empty bottle out of the back window of the apartment. Then she snuggled down into her own bed and switched off the lights.
Over in the other twin bed, Fay Allison lay motionless, except for a slight chest motion as her shallow breathing raised and lowered the coverlet.
The maid was due to come at eight the next morning to clean up the apartment. She would find two still figures, one dead, one in a drugged stupor.
Two of the tablets constituted the heaviest prescribed dose. The six tablets Anita had taken began to suck at her consciousness. For a moment there was swift panic. Perhaps she had really taken too many. Could it be that... that... perhaps...
It was too late now. The soothing influence of the drug warmed her consciousness into acquiescence.
She wondered if she could call a drugstore and find out if... a moment later she was asleep.
Chapter two
Louise Marlow, tired from the long airplane ride, her ears still ringing with the sound of muffled motors, paid off the taxicab in front of the apartment house.
The cab driver surveyed her solicitously. “Want me to wait until you see if your party’s home?”
“I have a key,” Louise Marlow said.
“How about your bags?”
“Don’t worry about them. I’ll get them up all right.”
He helped her with her bags to the entrance door. Louise Marlow inserted the key which Fay Allison had sent her, smiled her thanks to the cab driver, and picked up her bags.
Sixty-five years old, white-headed, steely-eyed, square of shoulder and broad of beam, she had experienced many and varied vicissitudes in life, and from them had extracted a salty philosophy of her own. Her love was big enough to encompass those who were dear to her with a protecting umbrella. Her hatred was bitter enough to goad her enemies into confused retreat.
With casual disregard for the fact that it was now one o’clock in the morning, she marched calmly down the corridor to the elevator, banged her suitcase and overnight bag into the corner of the cage, and punched the button for the sixth floor.
The elevator moved slowly upward, then shuddered to a stop. The door slid slowly open and Aunt Louise, picking up her bags, walked down the half darkened corridor, peering over the tops of her glasses for numbers over the doors.
At length she found the apartment she wanted, inserted her key, opened the door, and groped for a light switch.
She found the light switch, clicked it on, and called, “It’s me, Fay!”
There was no answer.
Aunt Louise dragged her bags in, pushed the door shut, called out cheerfully, “Don’t shoot,” and then added by way of explanation, “I picked up a cancellation on an earlier plane, Fay.”
The continued silence bothered her. She moved over to the bedroom.
“Wake up, Fay. It’s your Aunt Louise!”
She clicked on the bedroom light, smiled down at the two sleepers, then said, “Well, if you’re going to sleep right through everything, I’ll make up a bed on the davenport and say hello to you in the morning.”
Then something in the color of Fay Allison’s face caused the keen eyes to lose their twinkle of friendly humor and become hard with steely concentration.
“Fay!” she said.
The figures slumbered on in complete oblivion.
Aunt Louise went over and shook Fay Allison, then turned to Anita Bonsal and started shaking her.
The motion finally brought Anita back to semiconsciousness from drugged slumber.
“Who is it?” she asked thickly.
“I’m Fay Allison’s Aunt Louise. I got here ahead of time. What’s happened?”
Anita Bonsal knew in a drowsy manner that this was a complicating circumstance that she had not foreseen, and despite the numbing effect of the drug on her senses, managed to mouth the excuse which was to be her first waking alibi.
“Something happened,” she said thickly. “The chocolate... we drank chocolate and it felt like... I can’t remember... can’t remember... I want to go to sleep.”
She let her head swing over on a limp neck and became a dead weight in Louise Marlow’s arms.
Aunt Louise put her back on the bed, snatched up a telephone directory, and thumbed through the pages until she found the name — Perry Mason, Attorney at Law.
There was a night number — Westfield 6-5943.
Louise Marlow dialed the number.
The night operator on duty at the switchboard of the Drake Detective Agency, recognizing from the peculiar sound of the buzzing that the ringing phone was that of Mason’s night number, picked up the receiver and said, “Night number of Mr. Perry Mason. Who is this talking, please?”
Louise Marlow said in a firm, steady voice, “This is Louise Marlow. I haven’t met Perry Mason, but I know his secretary, Della Street. I want you to get in touch with her and tell her that I’m at Keystone nine-seven-six-oh-oh. I’m in a mess and I want her to call me back here just as quick as she can. Yes, that’s right! I know her personally. You tell her it’s Louise Marlow talking and she’ll get busy. I think I may need Mr. Mason before I get through, but I certainly want to talk with Della Street right now.”
Louise Marlow hung up and waited.
Within less than a minute she heard the phone ring, and Della Street’s voice came over the line as Aunt Louise picked up the receiver and said, “Hello.”
“Why, Louise Marlow, whatever are you doing in town?”
“I came in to attend the wedding of my niece, Fay Allison,” Aunt Louise said. “Now listen, Della. I’m at Fay’s apartment. She’s been drugged and I can’t wake her up. Her roommate, Anita Bonsal, has also been drugged and I managed to get her awake, but she keeps going back to sleep. Someone’s tried to poison them!
“I want to get a doctor who’s good and who can keep his damned trap shut. I don’t know what’s back of all this, but Fay’s getting married tomorrow. Someone’s tried to put her under sod, and I propose to find out what’s behind it. If anything should get into the newspapers about this, I’ll wring someone’s neck. The whole business looks fishy to me. I’m at the Mandrake Arms, apartment six-oh-four. Rush a doctor up here and then you’d better get hold of Perry Mason and...”
Della Street said, “I’ll send a good doctor up to you right away, Mrs. Marlow. I just got in. Perry Mason, Paul Drake, the detective who handles his investigations, and I have been out nightclubbing with a client. Mr. Mason brought me home just a few minutes ago and I can catch him at his apartment. You sit tight. I’m getting busy.”
Chapter three
When Aunt Louise answered the buzzer, Della Street said, “Mrs. Marlow, this is Perry Mason. This is ‘Aunt Louise,’ chief. She’s an old friend from my home town.”
Louise Marlow gave the famous lawyer her hand and a smile. She kissed Della and said, “You haven’t changed a bit, Della. Come on in. There’s a mess here. I can’t afford to have a word get in the newspapers. We had to get this sawbones. Now, how do we keep him from blabbing?”
“What does the doctor say?” Mason asked.
“He’s working like a house afire. Anita is conscious. Fay is going to pull through all right. Another hour and it would have been too late for her.”