Mason watched the banker’s retreating figure. “There’s a man,” he said thoughtfully, “who can be very, very damned dangerous.”
“And very, very damned disagreeable,” Della Street said. “He’s ruined a mighty good dinner.”
Mason said thoughtfully, “He may do more than that. He may be going to ruin a mighty good case.”
“Or save it,” Della said.
“Or save it,” Mason agreed dubiously and without even the faintest enthusiasm. “When a man like that starts messing around with the evidence, you can’t tell what will happen.”
Chapter Nine
“Well,” Della Street said, as Mason signed the check at the restaurant, “what happens next? There was some talk about dancing, you’ll remember.”
Mason nodded, said, “First we’re going to give Paul Drake a buzz and let him know where we are.”
Della Street blew a kiss at the ceiling.
“Meaning?” Mason asked.
“Good-by dancing,” Della said.
“Probably not,” Mason said. “There’s nothing much we can do tonight. Paul is holding the fort, but it’s too soon for him to have any real results. We’ll call him just to keep him in good spirits. Give him a ring, Della, and ask him if there’s anything particularly important.”
Della Street went to the phone booth, dialed Paul Drake’s number, and was back within less than a minute.
“He says we’re to come up there right away,” she said. “It’s important — now don’t ever say anything about a woman’s intuition again, Mr. Perry Mason.”
“Did he say what it was?”
“Lots of things,” she said. “Among other things he has the name of the baby sitter.”
“Oh-oh,” Mason said. “That’s a break. How did he get that?”
“He wouldn’t say. Says he’s sitting on four telephone lines, all of them going like mad; that we’re not to gum up his circuits by telephone calls, but that we’d better get up there.”
Mason grinned. “Everybody seems to be ordering us around tonight, Della.”
“Just restaurant managers, bankers and detectives, so far,” she pointed out.
They drove to the office building, put his car in its accustomed parking space, took the elevator up to Drake’s office.
The night switchboard operator, looking back over her shoulder, nodded to Mason and gestured down the corridor toward Drake’s private office.
There were four lights glowing simultaneously on the switchboard.
Mason grinned at Della and said, “I guess the guy’s busy. Come on, Della.”
He opened the gate at the end of the enclosure which served as a reception room and Mason and Della Street walked down the long corridor past half-a-dozen different doors to enter Paul Drake’s private office.
Drake looked up as they entered, nodded, said into the telephone, “Okay, stay with it. Now I want everything you can get on that... okay, call in just as soon as you get a chance.”
Drake took a big bite from a hamburger sandwich, mumbled while he was chewing, “Sit down. I’m going to eat while I have a chance. These phones are driving me crazy.”
He poured coffee into a big mug, put in cream and sugar, gulped a swallow of the coffee, said, “I can never get to eat a hamburger before it gets soggy.”
“You wanted to see us?” Mason said.
“You’ve eaten?” Drake asked.
Mason nodded.
“I know,” Drake said. “A thick filet mignon or a New York cut, French fried onions, imported red wine, baked potatoes with sour cream, coffee and apple pie a la mode — don’t tell me, it’s torture.”
“Go ahead,” Mason said, “torture yourself.”
Drake regarded the soggy hamburger with distaste, started to take a bite but stopped as the telephone jangled.
Drake unerringly picked the one of the four telephones on which the call was coming in, held it to his ear, said, “Drake talking... okay... go on, give it to me.”
Drake listened carefully, asked, “How do they know?” He listened some more, then said, “Okay, keep an ear to the ground. Hang around Headquarters. Keep in touch with the boys in the press room. They’ll be looking for a late story.”
Drake hung up the phone, picked up the remnants of the hamburger sandwich, looked at it for a moment, then with a gesture of disgust threw it into the waste-basket.
“What gives?” Mason asked.
“I ruined my appetite for that stuff talking about your nice meal,” Drake said. “We have the name of the baby sitter, Perry.”
“Who?”
“She’s a professional. Works through an agency. It’s called the Nite-Out Agency. That’s spelled N-i-t-e — O-u-t. It specializes in baby sitters. Her name is Hannah Bass. I have a complete description with make of car, license number and everything here on a card for you.”
Drake slid over a neatly typewritten card.
“How the devil did you get that?” Mason asked.
“Leg work,” Paul Drake said wearily. “One time the Jennings’ phone was out of order. They wanted a baby sitter. They went over to one of the neighbors, asked to use the phone, had forgotten the number of the agency. The phone book wasn’t handy. They called Information and asked for the number of the Nite-Out Agency, and the woman who lived there in the house happened to remember the name Nite-Out because it struck her as such a nice name for a baby-sitting agency.”
“Then you called up and asked for the name of the woman who did baby sitting for Jennings?” Della Street asked.
Drake shook his head. “You can’t be that crude in this game. You might get slapped down. Moreover, they might tip off someone whom you didn’t want tipped off.
“I played it the long way round. I had my man camp there with the neighbors and keep talking, asking them to try and remember any other conversation. They remembered that the baby sitter had been mentioned by name. They remembered the first name was Hannah because it was the name of their aunt, and they had been wondering whether their aunt might not have been making a little money on the side by baby sitting, so they perked their ears up. But it turned out the last name didn’t mean anything to them so they forgot it. They thought the name was Fish. But then that didn’t sound right. Then the man thought it might have been Trout. And then the woman remembered it was Bass. They’d taken one of those memory courses where they use association of ideas to help in recalling things. They could both of them remember Fish, but it was just luck they remembered Bass.”
“That’s the name all right?”
“That’s the name all right,” Drake said. “I telephoned the Nite-Out Agency and asked them if they had a Hannah Bass working for them and if they could recommend her credit. They said they didn’t know anything about her financial affairs but she was one of their baby sitters; that she was very well liked; that they had never had any complaints; that they had investigated her character before taking her on as one of their sitters, and that she was thoroughly reliable and they had no hesitancy in recommending her for jobs. They felt under the circumstances her credit should be all right.”
Again the telephone rang. Drake picked up one of the instruments, said, “Yeah? Hello. This is Paul Drake.
“The hell... you’re sure...? Okay. Keep me posted on anything new. Good-by.”
Drake hung up the telephone, turned to Perry Mason and said, “That’s a hell of a note. Someone has messed up the gun they found under the pillow where your client had been sleeping.”
“What do you mean?” Mason asked.
“Someone ran a rattail file up and down the barrel until the thing is all scratched and cut. Test bullets fired through it are valueless.”
“Then how can they tell it’s the murder gun?” Mason asked.