Montaine bowed. "Well, Counselor," he said, "I think we understand each other perfectly. Think it over. Don't give me a final answer now. Despite your mental ability I might prove a dangerous adversary."
Mason held open the door to the corridor. "You've got my final answer," he said. "If you want war you can have it."
Montaine paused in the hallway. "Sleep on it," he suggested.
Mason said nothing, banged the door shut. He stood for a moment in thoughtful contemplation, then strode to the telephone, picked up the receiver, and, when he heard Della Street 's voice on the wire, said, "Get me Paul Drake, Della."
A moment later the telephone rang. Mason spoke swiftly. "Paul," he said, "we've got to work fast. Here's something I want you to get busy on right away: Moxley was a swindler. He specialized in swindling women. We know that some one telephoned Moxley a short time before he was murdered. We know that this some one was demanding money. That person is very likely to have been a woman. We know that on at least one occasion Moxley went through a marriage ceremony in order to get possession of some money he wanted. You're checking back on Moxley's life. As fast as you get an alias that he used, have your men cover the hotel registers and the public utility offices to see if a woman using one of those aliases as a married name has recently arrived in the city. We might locate the person who was putting the screws on Moxley before the police get the information."
"Good idea," Drake said. "How about Montaine? Do you think we should try to put a shadow on him?"
"No," Mason said. "It wouldn't do any good. He didn't come to my office until he was ready to. From now on, his life is going to be out in the open. We could shadow him until Doomsday, and wouldn't find anything. Whatever mischief he's been up to, he's been up to before he came here."
"I was right then," the detective inquired, "and he'd been here for several days?"
"Yes."
"Did he admit it?"
"Not until after I put the screws on him. He spotted you, and he knew you were a detective."
"What was he doing here?" Drake asked.
"That," Mason said, "is something we can only surmise. He wasn't talkative. There's more to this than we figure, Paul."
"He must have been following Rhoda," Drake said. "He must have shadowed her to your office."
"Yes, I think he did."
"Then, when Carl called on you," Drake said, "Carl must have known through his father that his wife had called on you."
"Yes, I think he did."
"Then the father and the son must be working together."
"That's an inference," the lawyer agreed, "but we've got to feel our way, Paul. We're going up against a tough combination."
Drake's voice betrayed a trace of excitement. "Look here, Perry," he said, "if Montaine was following Rhoda around, he must have known about Moxley."
"He did."
"Then he must have known about the appointment for two o'clock in the morning."
"He didn't admit that."
"Did you ask him about it?" Drake inquired.
Perry Mason laughed. "No," he said, "but I will."
"When?"
"At an opportune moment," the lawyer replied, "and I think you'd better forget about Montaine, Paul. He's an intelligent man and a ruthless man. For all of his vaunted family pride, he thought nothing whatever of sacrificing the life of Rhoda Montaine in order to further his own interests."
"Well, don't let him crawl out of the picture," Drake cautioned.
"Hell!" Mason exclaimed. "I'd no more let him crawl out of the picture than a kid would let Santa Claus crawl out of the picture around Christmas time."
Chuckling, he hung up the telephone. Della Street opened the door from the outer office. "A messenger," she said, "has just brought papers that were served on Rhoda in the case of Carl Montaine against Rhoda Montaine. It's an action for an annulment of the marriage.
"And Doctor Millsap rang up and told me to tell you they sweated him at headquarters all night, without getting anything out of him. He seemed real proud of himself."
Mason's tone was grim. "They're not done with him yet," he said, reaching for the papers Della Street held out to him.
Chapter 11
Perry Mason moved cautiously through the night shadows. In the doorway of the Colemont Apartments he paused to listen. Along Norwalk Avenue lay the silence of staid respectability. From the main boulevard came the noise of an occasional horn, the whining sound of cars rushing through the night. The midnight carousers, turning from gay revelry to a contemplation of the morrow's work, sought to atone for wasted hours by crowding automobiles to greater speed.
The entrance to the Colemont Apartments was dark and silent. A short distance down the street, the Bellaire Apartments glowed with illumination from an indirect lighting fixture which shed a soft radiance over the foyer, the mail boxes, call bells and speaking tubes. Some of this brilliance radiated to the sidewalk, filtered into the entrance of the all but obsolete apartment house where Moxley had met his death. Perry Mason stood for some five minutes in the shadows, making certain that no patrolling steps were beating down the sidewalk, that no police radio car was cruising in the vicinity.
Earlier in the day Perry Mason, working through a real estate agent, had rented the entire building. Three of the apartments had been vacant for several months. The fourth had been rented by the week, furnished, by Gregory Moxley. The march of progress had doomed the old frame building to eventual destruction. Tenants demanded more modern apartments. The owners of the building had been only too glad to accept the rental offer made by the lawyer's representative, without inquiring too minutely as to the purpose for which the building was to be used, or the identity of the tenant.
Mason took from his pocket the four keys which had been delivered to him. Shielding the beam of a flashlight under his coat, he selected one of the keys, inserted it quietly in the lock and paused once more to listen. A car turned off the main boulevard and whined past the street intersection. Mason waited until it had reached the next corner before turning the key. The lock clicked, the door swung open and Perry Mason stepped into the darkness, pausing to close and lock the door behind him. He groped his way up the stairs upon cautious feet that kept crowding the side of the stair treads, lest they should make unnecessary noise.
The apartment that had been occupied by the murdered man covered the entire south side of the upper floor. Street lights, sending beams through the windows, furnished sufficient illumination to disclose the outlines of the furniture.
What had, at one period of the history of the house, been a front bedroom was now remodeled into a living room. Back of it, a room had been fitted as a dining room, and back of the dining room was a kitchen and a corridor. The corridor led to a bedroom in the back of the kitchen. A bathroom opened from the bedroom. Perry Mason moved quietly through the room, checking the articles of furniture against the copies of the police photographs which he carried in his hand and which he illuminated with his small flashlight. He moved to the window which looked out toward the Bellaire Apartments. That window was now closed and locked. Perry Mason made no effort to raise it. He stood by the window, staring at the dark apartment directly opposite, an apartment which was, he knew, occupied by Benjamin Crandall and wife.
Perry Mason moved back across the room, out into the corridor and entered the kitchen. Over a gas stove he found what he was looking for.
The lawyer tiptoed to the window, carefully pulled down the curtain, making certain that it was fixed in an even position at the bottom, so that no light would trickle through. He snapped on his flashlight, took from his pocket a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, a roll of adhesive tape and some wire. He picked up a chair, carried it across to a point of vantage, stood on the chair, and let the circle of illumination from his flashlight rest upon the electric bell which had been screwed into the wall. Working with painstaking caution, Perry Mason unfastened the screws, disconnected the wires, removed the bell from the wall. When he had it in his hand, he carefully studied it, then stepped down from the chair. Using the beam of the flashlight to guide him, he walked to the head of the stairs. Here he had placed a package which had been under his arm when he entered the apartment.