“But, Chief, what in the world would she be doing out there? She’s made a settlement with Addicks.”
“She may have been trying to blackmail him for the murder of Helen Cadmus,” Mason said. “You know, she’s rather a peculiar individual. She certainly was listening intently to everything we said about Helen Cadmus and her diaries.”
“Well,” Della Street said, “let’s go. We can talk it over on the road and...”
“Where do you get that ‘we’ stuff?” Mason asked. “This may be a little rugged, Della.”
“Don’t think you’re going to leave me behind now,” she said. “I’m a rugged girl. Come on, let’s go.”
She flew around the office, switching out lights, grabbed her hat, thrust it on her head, handed Mason his hat, and jerked open the exit door.
“I’ll run down the hall and get the elevator up here,” she said, and flashed past Mason to run on tiptoes down the long, echoing corridor of the building.
By the time Perry Mason had arrived at the elevator, Della Street had the cage waiting at the floor.
“Good girl,” Mason said.
The night janitor, on duty at the elevator, said, “You folks look as though you’re going some place in a hurry.”
“We are,” Mason told him.
The janitor dropped the cage to the ground floor while Mason was scrawling his signature in the book, showing the time of departure from his office.
They ran over to the parking place, jumped into Mason’s car, and Mason gunned the motor into life, waved at the parking attendant, and tore out through the back of the parking lot into the alley so fast the tires sent up a squeal of protest.
Mason slowed the car just enough to keep it under control as he came to the end of the alley, made an abrupt right turn into the street and pressed the accelerator almost to the floor board.
He slipped through the first intersection on an amber light, just skimmed a red signal at the next.
“If we should have to stop and do a lot of explaining to a traffic officer,” Della Street said, “it’s going to delay us.”
“I know,” Mason told her, “but I have a hunch this is really urgent.”
“And,” Della Street pointed out, “if we don’t get there in one piece, we might as well not have started.”
“That also is true,” Mason said dryly.
“Chief, are you going to go at this thing blind?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just take her as a client in case she’s... well, you know what I mean?”
“In case we find a body out there?” Mason said.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know,” Mason told her. “There’s something peculiar about Josephine Kempton. I don’t know what it is. You have the impression all the time you’re talking with her that she’s very much interested in finding out what you’re thinking, but that she has no intention of letting you know what she’s thinking. It’s like playing stud poker. You have the feeling that she has a pretty good idea of what your hole card is, but you don’t know anything about hers, and somehow you have the uneasy feeling that it may be an ace.”
“She could get you into trouble in case you became impulsive.”
“I know,” Mason admitted. “That’s why I want to size up the situation before I decide what to do. There’s something about this case, Della, the whole thing, that has aroused my curiosity.”
“For your information,” she told him dryly, “that was a boulevard stop back there.”
“I know,” Mason said, “but I didn’t see any cars coming, and I saw no reason to comply with an empty legal formality.”
Della Street settled back in the cushions of the car, placed a nearly shod foot against the dash so as to brace herself against sudden stops, and said, “I think probably that last remark is a very complete index to your character.”
As they approached Stonehenge Mason said, “I’m just going to take a quick swing around the front of the house, Della.”
“The watchman will see you.”
“I’m not going to stop in the parking place. I’m just going to drive by long enough to give it a once-over and see what the front of the house looks like.”
“You can’t see it from the road, can you?”
“I think we can get a glimpse of it.”
The lawyer drove his car down Olive Street, slowed slightly as he came to the parking place by the side of the road and the two massive square stone columns.
The heavy iron gates were closed.
“I don’t see anything of the watchman,” Della Street said.
“If I stopped the car I have an idea he’d pop into sight,” Mason said, driving rapidly to the intersection and turning to the right.
Halfway down the side street there was a place where it was possible to get an unobstructed view of the entire north gable of the house.
“The place is lit up like a church,” Della Street said.
Mason slowed the car to a stop.
“A ten foot, heavy-meshed fence all around the place,” he said. “It breaks into a Y at the top, with barbed wire on both sides of the Y. That means there’s an overhang so you can’t climb in or climb out. Mr. Addicks certainly does value his privacy.”
“Doesn’t he — Chief, look! Look up there!”
“Where?”
“That upper window in the gable. See the man — he’s pushing his way out of the window and...”
“That’s not a man,” Mason said. “That’s a gorilla.”
They sat in spellbound silence while the oblong of light framed the massive body of the huge gorilla. The animal stretched forth a long, groping arm, then made a leap for the branches of a shade tree. A moment later he was slithering down the shade tree, and, within a matter of seconds after that, floodlights blazed on all over the yard, sirens began to scream a warning, and the barking dogs reached a crescendo of excitement.
“Now what?” Della Street asked.
“Evidently our gorilla slid down to the ground,” Mason said, “and crossed a beam of invisible light. He’s set in motion an electrical apparatus which turns on floodlights all over the place, starts sirens going and releases the police dogs. Now we’ll see what’s going to happen.”
He sat watching for a second or two, then suddenly put the car into gear.
Della looked at him in surprise. “Chief, you’re not going to try to get to the house now?”
He nodded.
“Hadn’t we better wait and see what developments are?”
“Perhaps we’d better get there before some of these developments take place,” Mason said.
He spun the car into Rose Street.
The high, wire fence, with the barbed-wire Y at the top, angled back from the road, leaving a cemented parking place in front of a row of garages. A two-story building sat back some twenty feet from the road, leaving ample space for parking and turning automobiles.
On the door of this two-story building the numbers 546 were plainly legible.
Mason stopped the car in front of the door, jumped out and pushed his finger against a bell button.
He could hear the sound of an electric bell in the interior, but waited in vain for any indication that anyone had heard the summons.
“Chief,” Della Street said apprehensively, “she said she’d meet us here. If she doesn’t... well, that’s all there is to it. We can call the police, or...”
Mason shook his head and pressed the bell button again. “Something’s happened,” he said, “something that upset her plans. At least one of those big gorillas is loose.”
“Chief, they could tear you in two. The way that big animal loomed against the oblong of light and then jumped out into space to grab the tree limb...”
She broke off, shuddering.
“I know,” Mason said. “It gives you the creeps, but there’s something definitely wrong here. Mrs. Kempton had real panic in her voice.”