“How much of an oblivion?”
“I’ll engineer that,” Mason said. “I’ll be on the job by that time. But the main thing is to get started on this thing right away.”
Drake said, “All right. I’ll see what I can do. You do ask the damnedest things, Perry.”
“What’s wrong with this?” Mason asked with well-simulated surprise.
“Oh nothing,” Drake said. “Only some time, when you get a little bored with life, try rolling out of bed at three-thirty in the morning with an assignment to have a couple of burros and a prospecting outfit picked up by daylight, then in addition, to get several hundred dollars in placer gold. Then throw in a sweat-stained sombrero that looks convincing, some worn overalls and... Oh, it’s all right, Perry. I guess I’m just getting a little crabby. It sounded bad when you were talking about it, but now that I list over the things I have to do it sounds easy. You’re sure there isn’t anything else you want?”
“Never mind the sarcasm,” Mason said, and hung up before Drake could think of something else to say.
For a few moments Mason rested in the chair, getting his thoughts in order. Then as he checked back over his conversation with Paul Drake, he suddenly frowned with annoyance, picked up the telephone again and said to the long distance operator, “I was just talking with Paul Drake in Los Angeles at Rexmount 6985. There was something that I forgot to tell him. Can you get him back on the line right away? It’s very important.”
Mason held the line. Within a matter of seconds, he heard Drake’s voice again. “Hello, Perry. Something else you forgot to tell me, I suppose.”
“Yes,” Mason said.
“What is it — do you want me to be riding a white elephant when I have my picture taken, or something like that?”
“After you’ve completed your build-up,” Mason said, “be very careful what you eat and drink.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that someone will try to slip you a big dose of arsenic. And it’s not a particularly pleasant experience. It starts with a burning, metallic taste in your throat. Della and I are just recovering.”
And Mason dropped the receiver back into place before the astonished Paul Drake could think up any reply.
Chapter 12
It was a good three minutes before Mason could get himself up out of the depths of the chair and resume his search for Velma Starler.
He passed through heavy drapes and entered the reception hallway, tiptoeing his way along the waxed tiles. The wide sweep of the curved staircase with its wrought iron balustrades stretched gracefully upward. Somewhere a wall clock was ticking monotonously. Aside from that, there was no sign of life in the house.
Mason climbed the wide staircase, oblivious alike of architectural beauty and painstaking construction. To him the stairway was only a painfully laborious means of enabling his wobbling legs to reach the second floor.
In the upper corridor, Mason tiptoed down the long passageway looking for an open door. He felt certain that Velma Starler would be dozing fitfully, her clothes on, ears tuned for the slightest sound from her patients, a skillful nurse making intermittent rounds to see that her patients were all right, catching little catnaps in between.
Mason passed a long file of closed doors, then came to one that was open. He glanced inside.
He saw a sumptuous bedroom elaborately appointed. A bed had been slept in, the covers thrown down. It was quite evidently the bedroom of a woman. But even with the standard of luxury prevailing throughout the entire establishment. Mason had some difficulty realizing that this must be the bedroom of Velma Starler.
As he stood in the doorway, another door slightly ajar caught his eye and feeling certain that this would be far more apt to be the room he wanted, Mason moved with swiftly silent steps down to this partially opened door, gently pushed it farther open. Then, as the door swung on silent hinges so that he could see into the room, Mason abruptly caught himself. This was Banning Clarke’s room.
A woman clad in a negligee was seated at the roll-top desk in the far corner. For the moment Mason could not recognize her, but the back of the head, the lines of the neck, and the slant of the shoulders hardly indicated Velma Starler. They were a little too heavy — a little too...
The woman half turned her head as though some faint sound had caught her ears.
Mason had no trouble in recognizing the profile. It was that of Lillian Bradisson, and the illumination from the green-shaded desk lamp on the top of the roll-top desk etched the lines of expression on her face-lines of cunning greed, an avarice which had become unchained and had wiped all of the carefully cultivated smirk from her face. In that moment, Mrs. Bradisson’s emotions had lost their protective covering and stood unpleasantly naked for his inspection.
Whatever slight noise had caused her to raise her head and listen was apparently dismissed as being of no consequence after a few seconds of motionless waiting. Her head swung back so that Mason could no longer see the face. Her shoulders moved slightly. Mason could not see her hands, but, after a moment, realized she was skillfully and thoroughly searching through the pigeonholes in the desk.
Mason stood silently in the doorway.
The woman at the desk was now too completely engrossed in what she was doing to listen for suspicious sounds. She was running through papers taken from each pigeonhole before pushing them back, then pulling out the contents of the next pigeonhole.
As Mason watched her, she found that for which she had evidently been searching — an oblong, folded document, which she unfolded and read. As she read, she turned to get the light on the page, so that Mason could once more see her face, could watch her expression of curiosity change to one of angry determination.
Mrs. Bradisson reached down through the opening in her negligee, took out another folded paper, so similar to the first at that distance as to be indistinguishable. She placed this paper back in the pigeonhole of the desk. Mason watched her push back the creaky, dilapidated swivel chair preparatory to rising, transfer the folded paper to her left hand, her right reaching toward the switch on the green-shaded desk lamp.
Quietly, Mason tiptoed down the corridor, picked the first door on the left and tried the knob. The door was unlocked.
Mason stepped far enough into the room to be invisible, in case Mrs. Bradisson should take occasion to look back down the corridor.
Someone was sleeping in this room, and Mason could hear the sound of gentle, rhythmic breathing.
The partially opened door caused a current of air to blow briskly through the room, billowing the curtains and sweeping directly across the bed and Mason, fearing that this current of air might arouse the sleeper, pulled the door almost shut, peering impatiently down the corridor, waiting for Mrs. Bradisson to emerge.
But Mrs. Bradisson didn’t make her appearance. After almost two minutes, Mason heard a peculiar intermittent thump — thump — thump from the room where Mrs. Bradisson had been going through the contents of the roll-top desk. A moment later there was another series of pounding sounds.
Exasperated, Mason realized the predicament into which he had betrayed himself. If he started once more toward the room to see what Mrs. Bradisson was doing, he was apt to meet her face to face as she emerged. If he remained where he was, he would be in complete ignorance of what was going on.
The sleeper stirred restlessly in the bed.
Mason resolved to take a chance. He stepped out into the corridor. At that moment, Mrs. Bradisson emerged from the room. Mason, caught between two fires, hastily stepped back into the bedroom.