Mason nodded. “Lieutenant Tragg on Homicide,” he said. “You may have heard of him. He...”
“Sure I’ve heard of him,” the radio officer said. “So you’re Tragg’s brother. Well, well! Say, you know I ran onto Tragg at the convention here a couple of months ago. He gave us a talk on examining witnesses who were at the scene of a crime. Bright chap.”
Mason nodded eagerly. “Yes. He was up here a couple of months ago.” He added, somewhat ruefully, “But I didn’t see much of him. I had my work, and he was frightfully busy. I guess those police conventions are rather — well, I guess an officer has his time pretty well taken up.”
The radio men exchanged grins. “We do for a fact.”
Mason switched out the lights behind them. Della Street, making herself comfortable in a chair in the front room, unostentatiously glanced at her wristwatch as the trio entered the living room.
“What’d you say your name was?” the first officer asked.
“Miss Garland,” she said, with somewhat aloof dignity.
“Getting subscriptions for the Chronicle,” the first officer explained. “Now, Miss Garland, let’s find out about this woman who went around the comer.”
Della Street raised her eyes, looking at a far comer of the ceiling. She placed her gloved finger against her chin, and said meditatively, “Well, let me see. I couldn’t tell how she was dressed, but there was something about her. Oh, yes, her walk. Rather an exaggerated swing to the... er... hips... I remember she had on a narrow-brimmed hat and... no, I don’t think she wore any coat other than a jacket. Her skirts were rather short, and she was — well, leggy.”
The radio officer laughed in high good humor. “Leggy,” he said. “That’s a good one. Damned if it doesn’t describe that breed of cat.”
“I don’t think you could miss her if you happened to see her walking along the street,” Della Street said.
The officers glanced at each other. “You didn’t see any man with her?”
“No. She was alone.”
“How close were you?”
“I was rather close,” she admitted, “just up on the porch of that other house. But you know how it is when you’re working. You have so many calls to make and such a limited time within which to make them. You don’t dare to start too early or you break in on a family right after dinner, usually with the woman of the house doing dishes in the kitchen. Then after it gets just so late, you feel rather conspicuous, even when you know people are still up. Lots of times the ringing of a doorbell will waken a child, and that makes for a bad reception. So there’s only a relatively short period of time in which you have to work.”
The officer looked at his watch. “Pretty late now, isn’t it?”
She nodded, bit her lip, lowered her eyes, and said in a halting voice, “But I had some emergencies — my kid sister — well, I just needed the extra money. I get paid so much a subscription, you see.”
The officer said, “Okay, Miss Garland. Come on, Jack, let’s take a run down the car track and see if we can’t pick up this moll. Not that we’ve got anything against her. You’re sure she wasn’t prowling around up here on the porch?”
Della Street grew thoughtful. “She just came up here for a few moments. I somehow had the impression that she might be just trying to avoid meeting the man who was walking along the street. That’s why I noticed him more than I did her. You know how it is. Unescorted girls who have work which keeps them out in the evening quite frequently have — oh, well, you know.”
“Guys make passes at you?” the officer asked, grinning.
“Uh huh,” Della said casually. “I don’t mind a nice clean pass at times, but it’s this street-mashing, smirking pick-up stuff that gets you. And then you never know when someone may get really violent. You get fed up on it after a while.”
The officers exchanged glances. “Well, we’ll be on our way. We’ll pick her up, and give her a shakedown. One thing’s certain, she can’t fool us if we once nab her. She talks tough... So you’re Lieutenant Tragg’s brother. Well, well. I didn’t know he had a brother here in San Francisco. He didn’t say anything about it.”
Mason beamed. “I’m very proud of him. I think he’s making a splendid record from all I can hear. Occasionally he sends me some newspaper clippings.”
“He’s a good man,” the officer agreed. “Well, so long. If you have any trouble, or see anybody prowling around, just give headquarters a ring. Probably nothing to it, but this guy said there was a couple talking about casing a lay in the neighborhood. He said he was trying to get past them on the sidewalk, and heard ’em distinctly. Well, good night, Tragg. Good night, Miss Garland.”
“Good night,” Della Street said graciously.
Perry Mason closed the front door, turned and bowed to Della Street. “It would be a pleasure to subscribe to a paper through such an attractive and poised young woman,” he announced. “I can appreciate how badly you need the money on account of your sister, but really, you know, if I were to subscribe just through sympathy...”
“Don’t mention it,” Della Street interrupted. “I know the approach already. We run into it so often. But I hardly expected that the brother of a police lieutenant would stoop to such a thing.”
They both laughed. Mason switched out the big indirect light, leaving the room illuminated only by the floor lamps. “That was a close squeak,” he announced.
“Are you telling me!” Della Street asked.
Mason got up from the chair, said, “Well, we’ll take a look around.”
“Think it’s safe?”
“Oh, sure. Those officers will go on down the car tracks for three or four blocks, find no trace of the woman they’re looking for, report to headquarters, and by that time have a call to investigate something else. But let’s not stick around here any longer than we have to.”
“Just what are you looking for?”
“I want to find out something about Karr’s San Francisco personality.”
“You think he’s had this place as Carr Luceman?”
“I think so. Notice the fact that Luceman’s first name is pronounced exactly the same as Karr’s last name, although it’s spelled differently. Notice that this place apparently hasn’t been lived in except for short periods of time. Evidently, Karr is a marked man, probably in connection with some of his Chinese arms-smuggling ventures, or it may be because of that old partnership feud which dates back to 1921. When he came to San Francisco, he didn’t want to stay at a hotel. Naturally, a person of his description is rather easy to spot.”
“And that trouble with his legs?” Della Street asked. “The wheelchair?”
Mason said, “Figure it out for yourself. He had a bullet hole through one leg. Naturally, he didn’t dare go to any doctor in Los Angeles, because a gunshot wound has to be satisfactorily explained. If Karr had given them his Los Angeles address and then the disappearance of Hocksley and his housekeeper had been duly noted...”
“I see,” Della Street interrupted. “He had this identity already established in San Francisco. No one was missing from this place, so he could come here and invent that story of the accident. But who shot him?”
Mason grinned. “He shot himself. His cat knocked the gun off the table when he was...”
Della Street made a little grimace. “Save it for your brother the Lieutenant,” she said.
Mason said, “We’ll look this place over before we start speculating. There are better places to talk.”
He started a slow circling survey of the living room, making comments out loud: “Pictures on the wall, regular stock stuff. Furniture the sort that would go with the house. Nothing very much to indicate a man’s individuality. Books in the bookcase. Oh-oh, we’ve got something here. The Struggle for the Pacific, Asia in Transition, The Economic Situation in Japan, The Strategic Effect on Singapore. Here are fifteen or twenty books dealing with the situation in the Orient sandwiched in with books of the type that unquestionably went with the house, old favorites in frayed bindings. Well, that gives us something. Let’s keep looking.”