“How early?”
“Start at two or three o’clock in the morning,” Mason said. “Hang it, Paul, start with the first name that’s on the register.”
“Okay,” Drake said, “I’ll get busy. It won’t take but a few minutes to look at that register. I can bring it down here if you want.”
“Go ahead, get it,” Mason said. “Now, here’s something else. I want you to look up Minerva Shelton Hastings. She was the second wife of Garvin Hastings. His third wife, Adelle Hastings, is my client, and for your information, Garvin Hastings was found dead in bed this morning. He had been murdered. Two shots had been fired into his head while he was sleeping. I’d like to find out something about Minerva’s background.”
“Okay,” Drake said. “I’ll start some men working on her and I’ll get that register and come right back, if you want.”
“I want,” Mason said.
Drake left the office, and Mason, frowning thoughtfully, started pacing the floor. “It darn near has to have been this morning,” Mason said half to himself, his eyes on the carpet as he paced the floor.
Abruptly he turned. “Della, do you know when they clean the offices?”
“You mean these offices?”
“Yes.”
“On this floor they do it in the morning. On the floor below, at night. The same cleaning women have the job for both floors.”
“I had an idea they cleaned them in the morning,” Mason said, “because we’re in here at all hours of the night and I’ve never yet run into any cleaning women.”
“I think they try to clean here around six in the morning,” Della said.
“What about the cleaning women? I wonder if they could be bribed — or victimized.”
“Probably victimized,” she said. “I doubt if they’d be open to a bribe. They’re pretty responsible people.”
The lawyer nodded, resumed pacing the floor.
Drake’s knock sounded on the door.
Della opened the door.
Drake said, “I think we’ve struck pay dirt, first rattle out of the box, Perry.”
“How come?”
“My detective bureau is open twenty-four hours a day,” Drake said. “I keep it open so men who are on the job can have a place to call in and file their reports. Actually we almost never see anyone between ten or eleven o’clock at night and seven-thirty or eight in the morning.
“I try to get in by eight o’clock every morning and I like to have the night operatives have a report on file when I get in, so quite a few of the men come in around six-thirty to seven in the morning, type up their reports, then go out to breakfast.”
Mason nodded.
“Now, this morning at six o’clock the register shows there was a Sidney Bell who signed in on the register as coming to my office, but Sidney Bell is a stranger to me. I don’t know anyone by that name and I don’t have any operative of that name.
“However, the pay-off is that my own office records show that no Sidney Bell came in at six o’clock this morning; in fact there was no one in my office except two or three operatives who came in to type reports.”
“We have Sidney Bell’s signature there?”
“That’s right, right here. Sidney Bell came in at six-o-five and left at six-fifteen.”
“And gave his destination as your office?”
“That’s right.”
Mason said, “Let’s find the cleaning woman who does this office, Paul. Get hold of her address and get hold of the elevator operator and see if we can get a description of Sidney Bell.”
“I’ve already done that,” Drake said. “One of the assistant janitors runs the elevator early in the morning. He remembers Bell very well. He was a tall man wearing a dark suit and carrying a brief case. Moreover, he was wearing dark glasses. That impressed the assistant janitor. He thought it was pretty early in the morning for a man to be wearing dark glasses.”
“Not at all,” Mason said. “In this case dark glasses seem to be a universal disguise — and actually it’s a damned effective disguise. What about the scrub woman, Paul?”
Drake grinned. “I haven’t overlooked that either. Her name is Maude G. Grump. She has a telephone and I saved you a little money there.”
“How come?”
“I interviewed her over the telephone. She describes the tall man in the dark suit, wearing dark glasses, who came in with a brief case when she was cleaning your office. He had an air of complete assurance. He said, ‘Good morning. I have to go to Arizona on an early plane and want to get some papers. I guess you don’t mind getting up early in the morning but it’s quite a hardship as far as I’m concerned.’ ”
“Wait a minute,” Mason said, “the door to the office would have been closed. They don’t leave the office doors open when they’re cleaning.”
“He tapped on the door, told her he’d forgotten his key, gave her five dollars and a pat on the back. She remembers him as a very fine gentleman.”
“Did he tell her he was Perry Mason?”
“Not in so many words, but by his actions he certainly did.”
Mason said, “Get Maude Grump on the phone again, Paul. Tell her that if she’d like to make a little extra money she can come in to the office. I want to talk with her. Tell her she may have to wait a couple of hours but that she’ll be receiving fifteen dollars an hour.”
“Can do,” Drake said, “and will do right now. Anything else, Perry?”
“I think that’s enough for now,” Mason said.
“Okay,” Drake said. “Back to the salt mines.”
He opened the exit door of the private office and went out.
Mason turned to Della Street. “Now we have a man in the case, Della.”
She nodded.
Mason was thoughtfully silent for a few moments, then said, “Did you notice the tone of voice in which Adelle Hastings talked with Simley Beason over the telephone?”
“Gosh, yes,” Della Street said. “It was a tone of what you might call warm intimacy.”
“Exactly,” Mason said. “Now, the man who came up to this office was here in the building only ten minutes. During that time he had to go to the office, tap on the door, get the attention of the cleaning woman, get into the office, get the gun and get out — all within ten minutes.
“Now, of course he may have reasoned the way Paul did, that the gun would be somewhere in my desk. But the way the thing was planned this man had to know where the gun was.”
“I don’t follow you on that,” Della Street said.
“If he had anticipated a long search,” Mason explained, “he’d have told the cleaning woman he had some work to do and didn’t want to be disturbed.
“He didn’t do that. He told her he was catching a plane and had stopped in to get some papers. That meant he had committed himself to quick action, a hurried in-and-out affair.”
“Gosh, yes!” she exclaimed. “That means he must have known no long search was going to be necessary.”
“Exactly,” Mason said.
“Oh-oh,” Della Street said, “I am now beginning to get the full implications.”
Mason said, “Call Hastings’ office, Della. Let’s see if we can get Simley Beason before he goes to lunch.”
She put through the call and a moment later said, “Mr. Simley Beason, please... Tell him it’s Mr. Mason’s office calling — Mr. Perry Mason, the attorney.”
She held the phone for a moment, then nodded to Perry Mason and said, “They’re calling him. He’s coming to he phone.”