“Oh yes,” the manager said. “She’s going to be gone for some little time. She made arrangements with me to feed her canary.”
“When did she leave?” Mason asked.
The manager looked at him curiously. “Are you a detective?” she asked.
Mason grinned and jerked his thumb at Smithy. “He is.”
“Oh — what’s the trouble?”
“No trouble,” Mason said. “We’re just trying to get a line on her.”
The manager’s lips clamped together. “Well, I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can tell you except that she’s gone.”
Mason played a hunch. “Did she have the boy with her?”
“She had the boy with her.”
“Suitcases?”
“One doesn’t go for an indefinite stay without suitcases.”
“Taxicab?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“Does she own a car?”
“I don’t think so.”
Mason tried to be as charming as possible. “It wouldn’t hurt you to be a little more communicative.”
“I’m not so certain about that. I don’t discuss tenants’ affairs.”
“Oh well,” Mason said, “it isn’t particularly important. We’re just checking, that’s all. How long has she had the boy, do you know?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”
“Well, thanks a lot,” Mason said. “Good-by.”
He gave her his best smile and led the way out of the apartment house.
“I don’t get it,” Smithy said.
“What?”
“Your technique,” Smithy told him. “I’d have flashed my credentials and suggested she might get into trouble if she tried to withhold information.”
“I have a better idea,” Mason told him, studying the directory. “Let’s see, Grace Hallum was in 208. Let’s look at 206 and 210 — who’s in 206?”
Smithy consulted the directory.
“Miss M. Adrian,” he said.
“Give her a ring,” Mason instructed.
Smithy pressed his thumb against the button.
In a few moments the door was buzzed open.
Mason and the detective again entered the apartment house. The manager had now retreated into her apartment and the door behind the little counter was closed.
The two men climbed the steps to the second floor.
Mason tapped on the door of 206.
The door opened the scant two or three inches allowed by a heavy brass safety chain. A woman with a long, thin nose surveyed the two men suspiciously. “What is it?” she asked.
Mason studied the blinking eyes, the nose, the thin lips, the prominent chin, said, “Show her your credentials, Smithy.”
Smithy took a worn billfold from his pocket, extended it so the woman could look it over.
“Detectives!” she said.
“Smithy is a detective,” Mason said. “I’m a lawyer. We want to talk with you.”
“What’s your name?”
Mason gave her his card.
Her face showed surprise. She looked from the card to Mason’s face and then said, “Good heavens, you are! Why you’re Perry Mason.”
“That’s right.”
The chain snapped off the catch. “Well, come in,” she said. “I’m honored. Of course, I haven’t been preparing for visitors and Sunday is usually my morning to straighten up the apartment. I usually go out to a movie on Saturday night and... well, sit down and tell me what this is all about.”
“It’s about your neighbor next door,” Mason said.
Miss Adrian, a woman in her late fifties, small boned, spry as a bird, paused in mid-stride. “Well now, I just knew there was something wrong there,” she said.
Mason nodded. “That’s why we came to see you.”
“But I didn’t tell anybody. I’ve kept my own counsel. Now, how in the world did you know that I’d seen anything?”
“We have ways of finding out things like that,” Mason said. “Would you mind telling us about it?”
“What do you want to know?”
“When did the boy come here?”
“Yesterday morning,” she said. “Yesterday morning at exactly four-thirty-five.”
“Do you know who brought him?”
“His father, I suppose.”
“And what do you know about Grace Hallum?”
“She’s divorced — lives on alimony. She works as a baby sitter part of the time for extra money and calls herself Miss Grace Hallum rather than Mrs. Hallum. She used to be a model and she never lets a body forget it.”
“Does she work for the Nite-Out Agency?”
“I believe that’s right, yes.”
“Well, then,” Mason said, smiling casually, “you didn’t think there was anything unusual about it, simply someone bringing a boy to stay with her.”
“Nothing unusual about it!” Miss Adrian exclaimed. “Well I like that!”
“There was something unusual then?”
“I’ll say there was. At that hour in the morning with my wall bed down, my head right up against that partition and... I’ll say one thing about this apartment house, the only way you can have any complete privacy is to talk in sign language.”
“You heard what was said?”
“I heard enough of it.”
“Such as what?”
“Well, Grace Hallum was a little shocked at the idea of being called at that hour in the morning but the man was a regular client of hers so she opened the door and let him in. Well, you know, she was terribly coy about not being dressed and all that.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty-seven, but she says it’s twenty-four,” Miss Adrian snapped, “and she has looks. She is very, very well aware of those looks and she had just as soon other people would be aware of them too, if you know what I mean. She’s a blue-eyed, tall blonde and she’s always posing. She wears dresses that show her hips, if you know what I mean.”
“We know what you mean,” Mason said affably. “Just what was the conversation?”
“This man wanted her to keep the boy until he gave her further instructions. He asked her to get some suitcases ready because she might have to travel and... that’s about all there was to it yesterday morning.”
“And then what happened after that?”
“Well, the man came up this morning and I’ve never heard such a conversation in my life.”
“What do you mean?”
“The man was talking with the boy about some sort of a shooting. He kept saying, ‘Now remember, you didn’t shoot anyone. You had a bad dream,’ and I heard the boy say, ‘I did too shoot the pistol,’ and the man laughed and said, ‘So what of it?’ and then said, ‘You thought you shot the pistol, you dreamed you did, but the pistol really wasn’t fired at all!’”
“Then what?”
“Then the boy said, ‘No, I fired the pistol. The rest of it may have been a dream, but I know I fired the pistol.’”
“Go on,” Mason said. “What happened after that?”
“Well, the man talked with the boy a while and said he was going to send him on a long trip with Miss Hallum and to be sure and be a good boy and do everything Miss Hallum told him to.”
“Did Miss Hallum seem surprised?”
“Not her — now I can tell you this much, there’s been a lot of goings on in that apartment, suitcases banging around, people coming with this and that. She was packing and talking with the boy and the boy was doing quite a bit of crying. He seemed to be terribly upset about something.”
“Go on,” Mason said.
“Well, that’s about all I know except that another woman came and called on her last night. I gathered she was the woman who runs the Nite-Out Agency. They had quite a conversation. A lot of it was in whispers. Apparently the boy was asleep and they were trying to keep him from knowing anything about it.”