“All right,” Mason said, “where’s the gun now?”
“I’ve got it where no one is going to find it”
“I’m going to find it,” Mason said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m going to get that gun and turn it over to the police,” Mason said. “Can’t you understand? You’ve left me in the middle. I’ve told the police my story about the gun. I had to. The gun is evidence. I’m an attorney. I can’t conceal evidence. You’re a citizen. You can’t conceal evidence. You would put yourself in the position of being an accessory after the fact. If you beat that, you might be convicted on a charge of concealing evidence. I want you to get that gun and I want you to get it right away.”
“And then you’re going to turn it over to the police?”
“Certainly I’m going to turn it over to the police.”
Beason sighed wearily. “All right,” he said. “I guess I know when I’m licked. May I use the phone?”
“Right here,” Mason said, indicating the telephone. “Just press that button and it will give you an outside line.”
Beason took the phone, pressed the button and waited until the light came on and dialed a number.
“Hello,” he said, “I want to talk to Rosalie.”
Beason waited for a few moments, then said, “Hello, Rosalie? This is Simley Beason. I want you to do something very important for me right away. I’m at the office of Perry Mason, the attorney. I want you to go to my locker and in there you’ll find my golfing clothes and a golf bag full of clubs.
“Take the golf bag out, lift the clubs out of the golf bag, turn it upside down and a package will fall out — a package that is done up in brown paper and that has a label on it stating that the contents of this package were taken from the desk drawer in Perry Mason’s office at six o’clock this morning. You’ll find the address of Mason’s office on that label, and you’ll find my signature on it. That tag is fastened to the brown paper with tape and the package is sealed.
“I want you to bring that package to me at Mr. Mason’s office just as fast as you can get here. Take a taxicab. You can join me in Mason’s office and I’ll drive you back. Have you got that?”
Beason listened for a few moments, then said, “Good girl. I’ll be waiting here.”
Beason hung up the telephone and said to Mason, “I don’t suppose I need to tell you how satisfactory it is to have a good, loyal secretary, but it’s a wonderful feeling. I’ve been putting up with some pretty mediocre secretaries for a while and then Rosalie Blackburn came along and it’s made all the difference in the world. You only need to tell her something once and she gets it and gets it right.”
“Why did you go to all the precaution of sealing that package and putting a label on it?” Mason asked.
“I did it to protect Adelle Hastings. If anything should happen to me I didn’t want anyone to find that package and think that Adelle had been responsible for putting it there.”
“What do you mean, in case anything should happen to you?”
“Oh, I’m not morbid, Mr. Mason. I just recognize the fact that these days a person can get killed in an automobile accident just as easy as not, and— Well, life is full of risks, that’s all.”
Mason regarded him narrowly. “That’s the only reason you took all those precautions?”
“Well, I wanted to... I wanted to have the thing done right.”
“Did you,” Mason asked, “write down the number on that gun when you had it in your possession and before you wrapped it?”
“No. Why should I have done that?”
“To see no one changed guns on you and perhaps substituted the fatal gun for Adelle’s gun.”
“No, I didn’t take the number, but I wrapped it in tissue paper, then in heavy brown paper, sealed the paper with tape, wrote my name across the seal and labeled the package.”
Mason said, “You may have undone the very thing you were trying to do.”
“What do you mean?”
Mason said, “Hastings was murdered. It was a coldblooded deliberate murder. You don’t shoot a man in his sleep in the heat of passion. When a man is lying in bed and you sneak up alongside of him while he is asleep and pull the trigger, you are committing a premeditated, planned murder.”
Beason nodded.
“And then when you take the precaution of shooting him twice in the head, you want to be very, very certain that he is dead.”
Beason shifted his position, then rather reluctantly nodded his head.
“So we are dealing with a cold-blooded murderer,” Mason said, “a person who is shrewd, resourceful, selfish and probably ingenious as the devil.
“Now then, Hastings had his house locked. There is no indication that anyone forced any of the windows. Therefore the police reasoning will be that whoever entered the house had a key. Now, as I understand it, there were two outside keys to the house. One of them was in the office, so that if Hastings wanted anyone to bring papers to the house, or get anything from the house in his absence, he could telephone and have it done. The other key was in the possession of Adelle Hastings. Now, how about a possible third key? What about Minerva, did she keep a key?”
“No, she sent her key in with a very bitter letter.”
“How do you know?”
“Mrs. Hastings showed me the letter.”
“What was in it?”
“Oh, it was an act. She was laying the foundation for a good property settlement. She said that she felt like an old shoe, that he had been proud of her when she was new and then he had discarded her and thrown her out on the trash heap.”
“She got a good property settlement?” Mason asked.
“I considered it a very good property settlement. She didn’t.”
“What attorney negotiated it, the Nevada attorney?”
“No, she and Hastings worked it out by themselves.”
“That’s rather unusual,” Mason said.
“Hastings is rather unusual in matters of that sort. He has a banker’s way of looking at things. He feels your first mistake is your best mistake and that, in the long run, if you have to pay you had better pay and pay cheerfully.”
“All right,” Mason said, “we’ll look at it this way. Someone who is very ingenious, very vindictive, very ruthless, has a key to the Hastings house — or was able to get a key to the Hastings house.
“Since Adelle is my client and your friend, we’ll leave her out of it for the moment. Therefore the key was probably the key that is kept in the office. Now then, if Adelle’s gun was not the murder weapon, but you took that gun up to the office and somebody knew where you had put it, switched guns and put the fatal gun where you left Adelle’s gun, you can see what the situation would be.”
Beason frowned; there was a trace of panic in his eyes, but he said, “I’m afraid, Mr. Mason, that you’re doing a lot of negative thinking, if you don’t mind my saying so. After all, I put that gun in a sealed package. Nobody can tamper with it without having it appear that the package was tampered with, and I took particular pains to conceal it where no one would ever look for it.”
“All right,” Mason said, “we’ll—”
The telephone rang a quick, short ring.
Mason picked up the receiver, said, “You still out there at the board, Della?”
“I am,” she said. “Gertie should be back any minute. You now have a call from Mr. Huntley Banner, who says it’s very important. Do you want to take it?”
“I’ll take it,” Mason said. “Put him on.”
Della Street switched the call onto Mason’s line.
“Hello, Banner,” Mason said. “What’s on your mind?”
Banner said, “I wanted you to know that I rather resented the way you took advantage of me on that phone call.”