The young man who had emerged from the restaurant started walking rapidly down the street. He was a slender, quick-moving individual, who gave the impression of nervous energy and tension, a man who would be quick to anger, who would form likes and dislikes rapidly, and, once having reached an adverse decision, would be difficult to change.
“Okay,” Mason said in a low voice to Della, “let’s go.”
They walked slowly until near the end of the block they let the young man overtake them.
“John Locke?” Mason asked just as the man passed him.
The man whirled as though Mason had jabbed him with a pointed instrument. His face showed a certain amount of alarm, a complete lack of cordiality.
Della Street, seeing that expression on his face, said sweetly, “I wonder if you’d mind talking with us about Nadine Farr.”
“Who are you?” he asked, his eyes shifting to Della Street, then his expression gradually softening under the influence of her smile.
“Friends,” Mason said.
“Friends of whom?”
“Of yours and of Nadine.”
“Prove it.”
“Let’s keep walking,” Della Street said, and then added swiftly and with just that note of consideration in her voice which made it seem the decision rested with Locke, “shall we?”
By that time, however, both Mason and Della Street were walking one on each side of the young man.
“What’s this all about?” he asked.
“I’m Perry Mason, a lawyer,” the lawyer told him. “I’m helping Nadine.”
“Did she consult you?”
“Not directly. Dr. Denair consulted me.”
“Dr. Denair,” Locke said angrily. “If he’d kept his fingers out of this there wouldn’t have been any trouble.”
“That, of course, is an academic point now,” Mason said. “The thing is that regardless of how we happened to get into this thing we’re all of us interested in helping Nadine.”
“She doesn’t need help. All she needs to do is to keep quiet. The more you try to explain the more trouble you’re going to make and sooner or later—”
“I’m afraid you’re not fully posted on developments,” Mason said.
“Such as what?” Locke asked.
Mason said, “Police raided Dr. Denair’s office this morning. They had a search warrant. They demanded possession of the tape recording.”
“Good heavens, did Dr. Denair give it to them?”
“He had no choice in the matter, although as it happened Dr. Denair wasn’t there. If he had been, he probably would have refused until it could have been adjudicated whether the tape recording was a privileged communication, but Dr. Denair was absent. His nurse was there and she honored the search warrant and surrendered the tape recording. You hadn’t heard about that?”
“No.”
“Well,” Mason said, “there have been quite a few developments. This is neither the time nor the place to discuss them. Suppose we get in my automobile and I’ll take you to wherever you’re going.”
“I was going to my apartment.”
“Under the circumstances,” Mason told him, “it might not be wise to go to your apartment right at the moment. I think it would be better to wait until you’re fully familiar with certain facts.”
“Why shouldn’t I go to my apartment?”
“Because the police want to question you.”
“What do they have to question me about?”
“That,” Mason said, “is the question.”
John Locke strode along for a few seconds, maintaining an angry silence.
“If we could only tell you some of the things that you should know,” Della Street said, “it would help you protect Nadine.”
“Go ahead and talk.”
Mason stopped abruptly. “I’m going back to my car,” he said. “Della, you can talk with Locke. Tell him all of the developments in the case. Don’t hold back anything. I’ll go get the car and pick you up.”
Locke stopped, sized Della Street up for a few moments, then said to Mason, “What’s she to you?”
“My confidential secretary,” Mason said. “She has been for years. She knows everything about my business, everything about this case.”
Locke said, “All right, we’ll all go back. We can talk while we’re walking.”
Mason motioned to Della Street. She took the inside of the sidewalk so that Locke was between them.
Mason, talking rapidly, said, “Why did you tell Cap’n Hugo about the confession, about that tape recording?”
“How do you know I did?”
“Because Cap’n Hugo evidently told Mrs. Jackson Newburn and somehow the police got on to it.”
“If Cap’n Hugo has told, I’ll¯”
“Take it easy,” Mason interrupted. “Hugo is something of a character. He’s talkative and he’s independent. You have to take him the way he is. He may be a very important witness in the case. Let’s not antagonize him.”
“Go ahead. Tell me what happened.”
Mason said, “After the police got hold of that tape recording I felt that it was essential to find out whether there was anything to Miss Farr’s confession or whether it was the distorted hallucination of a drugged brain.”
“Well, that’s all it was.”
“Now just a minute,” Mason said. “Wait until you get the picture. I went out to Twomby’s Lake where she said she had thrown the bottle. I hired some boys who were swimming to dive and see what they could find. They came up with a bottle filled with shot and containing some pills.”
“The deuce they did!”
“I took those pills to Hermann Korbel, a consulting chemist,” Mason said. “Police backtracked me and got the evidence from Korbel before he had a chance to complete his investigation, but he had enough material from the pills so that he was able to show that the pills were not cyanide. They—”
“They weren’t?”
“No, they were completely harmless.”
“What were they?”
“The sugar substitute that had come in the bottle originally.”
“Well, then, that’s all there is to it,” Locke said. “She didn’t know she’d poisoned him. She only knew she’d given him some pills from a bottle and afterwards she began to wonder if that bottle was the one it was supposed to be. If the bottle was recovered from the lake and—”
“That’s what I thought,” Mason interrupted. “It’s what I told Dr. Denair. It’s what I told Nadine. It’s what I told the police. I told them they didn’t have a case, that there hadn’t been any murder. I laughed at them.”
“Well, then, why all the excitement?”
“Because afterward the police went out to the lake, got boys to do some more diving and found another bottle, just like the first. This one had shot and pills in it. These pills were cyanide of potassium.”
Locke started to say something, then changed his mind. He walked several yards in silence.
“All right,” Mason said, “this is my car. Let’s get in.”
His manner was sufficiently brusque so that it left no room for refusal.
Della Street held the door open. “We’ll ride three in front,” she said. “You get in next to Mr. Mason so you can hear him and I’ll sit on the outside.”
Locke jumped into the car without any hesitation. Della Street climbed in after him and pulled the door shut.
Mason started the motor, switched on the lights and swung away from the curb.
“Where’s Nadine?” Locke asked.
“That,” Mason said, “is what I am trying to find out. We’d like to reach her before the police do.”
“And you don’t know where she is?”
“No.”
“I understood she was—”
“Yes?” Mason asked as Locke broke off.