Mason's eyes glittered with concentration. He nodded his head thoughtfully. "Good work, Paul," he said.
"So," the detective went on, "we checked through the meter connections of the electric light company, just on a chance that Gregory Moxley and this Pender woman might have lived here under the name of Gregory Freeman. We didn't find any connections under that name, but we did find a meter connection about two weeks ago under the name of Doris Freeman at the Balboa Apartments, at seven twentyone West Ordway. She's got apartment 609. She's living there by herself. No one seems to know a thing about her."
"Perhaps," said the lawyer, "we can trace some telephone calls through the apartment switchboard, and…"
The detective grinned. "Listen," he said, "what do you think us guys do to earn our money?"
"Oh," Mason said pointedly, "do you earn it?"
"Wait until I finish and you'll say we do," Drake said. "I haven't told you anything yet."
"Go ahead then and tell me something."
"We found there was a switchboard in the lobby. There's some one on duty in the lobby all the time. The switchboard isn't particularly busy. They keep a record of calls that are made and the number of the apartment from which the calls come.
"We were afraid to try and pump the person who had the records, so we arranged to decoy him away from the desk for a few minutes, and one of my operatives slipped in and took a look in the book that lists the telephone records.
"These records aren't kept on an hourly basis—just by the date on which the calls are put through—but we found that this apartment was charged with a call to South ninefourthreesixtwo on the sixteenth day of June, and that call was the first call in the book under date of June 16th, so it must have been made shortly after midnight."
"Where's the book?" asked the lawyer.
"Out there. But we got a photograph of the page that shows the call. That will keep them from doctoring the book, in case we want to bring it into court."
Mason nodded thoughtfully. "Good work," he said. "We may want to bring that book into court—and then, again, we may not. Have you got a good man that we can put on the job? One who's dependable, Paul?"
"Sure. I've got Danny Spear. He's the one who took the photograph."
"Is he good?"
"I'll say he is, one of the best in the business. You should remember him, Perry. We used him in that hatchet murder case."
Mason nodded. "Let's get him," he said, "and go on out there."
"To the Balboa Apartments?"
"Yes."
Drake picked up his hat. "Let's go," he said.
Chapter 14
Paul Drake slowed his light car and swung in close to the curb. Danny Spear, a nondescript individual, with a flatcrowned brown hat tilted back to show rusty brown locks straggling out from under the sweat band, glanced inquiringly at Perry Mason.
Spear would never have been taken for a detective. There was something wideeyed and innocent about him that made him appear to be a typical «rube» pausing in front of a shell game at a country fair. His face habitually wore the pleased grin of a yokel who is seeing the world for the first time. "What do I do?" he asked.
"You trail us into the apartment house," Mason told him. "We'll go in the jane's apartment and buzz the door. If she opens the door to let us in, you walk on past as though you were going to some apartment down at the end of the corridor. But you time things so that you get a look at her face as you walk past the door. It'll only be a quick glimpse, but you can get a flash of her face so you can spot her later on. Now, it's important that you get her fixed in your mind. If you don't get enough of a look to recognize her, you'd better wait until we get in and then come and knock at the door and put up some kind of a stall about knowing the jane that used to live in the apartment, or something of that sort. If you do get a good look at her, take a divorce from us and tail her if she goes out. We'll leave you with the car. When Drake and I leave the place, we'll call a cab. You can be sitting in the car. Do you get that straight?"
Danny Spear nodded. "I gotcha," he said.
"The probabilities are she'll watch us when we leave," Mason said. "She'll be worried, because that's what we're going there for. We're going to worry her. I don't know whether she pulled this stuff alone, or whether she didn't but that's one of the things I want to find out."
"Suppose she telephones?" asked Spear.
Mason said slowly. "She won't telephone. We're going to make her think her line has been tapped."
"You're just going to make her suspicious, is that right?"
"Yes."
"She'll be looking for a shadow," Danny Spear protested.
"That's something we can't help. That's where you've got to play it carefully, and that's why I want you to get a divorce from us as soon as we leave the place. She'll see you walking past us in the corridor and won't figure that you're with us at all."
"Okay," Danny Spear said. "You birds had better drive around the block and let me off at the corner. I'll walk up behind you and time things so we go in the apartment house together. There's just a chance some of her friends might be watching out of a window. If they saw the three of us get out of the same car, it might not be so hot."
Drake nodded, shifted the car into gear, ran around the block, dropped Danny at the corner, swung once more into a parking place in front of the apartment house, got out leisurely, and pulled down his vest, gave his coat collar a jerk and adjusted his tie. With wellsimulated carelessness, the two men entered the apartment house, walking slowly. Behind them came Danny Spear, walking rapidly.
A fat man was seated in a rocking chair in the lobby. He was the only occupant.
Still walking slowly toward the elevator, Paul Drake and the lawyer swung slightly to one side as Danny Spear bustled past them. To the fat man in the chair it seemed purely a fortuitous combination of circumstances which placed all three men in the elevator at the same time.
In the upper corridor, Danny Spear held back, while the other two found the door of the apartment they wanted and tapped on the panels. There was the sound of motion, the click of a lock. The door opened, and a rather plain woman of about twentyfive years of age, with large brown eyes and thin, firm lips, stared in mute interrogation.
"Are you," asked Perry Mason in rather a loud voice, "Doris Freeman?"
"Yes," she said. "What do you want?"
Perry Mason turned slightly to one side, so that Danny Spear, walking rapidly down the corridor, could see the young woman's face.
"My business," said Perry Mason, "can hardly be stated in the corridor."
"Book agent?"
"No."
"Life insurance?"
"No."
"Selling anything?"
"No."
"What do you want?"
"To ask you a few questions."
The thin lips clamped more firmly together. The eyes widened. There was a flicker of fear in their depths. "Who are you?"
"We're collecting some data for the Bureau of Vital Statistics."
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."
By this time, Danny Spear had gone well past them toward the end of the corridor, where he was pounding on a door with imperative knuckles. The door swung open, and a man's voice gruffed a greeting and the operative said, "I've got an express package down stairs for C. Finley Dodge. Where do you want it delivered?…"
Perry Mason boldly pushed his way past the woman, into the apartment. Drake followed and kicked the door shut. She remained standing, clad in a print housedress, and, as the light from the windows struck her face, it brought out incipient caliper lines which were stretching from her nostrils toward the ends of her thin lips. There was no makeup on her face, and her shoulders were slightly rounded. There could be no mistaking the fear in her eyes as her glance shifted from Mason to Drake, then back to Mason again. "What is it?" she asked.