“Yes.”
“All right. How about waiving extradition?”
“You’re arresting them?”
“Yes. On suspicion of murder. Will you waive extradition?”
Mason smiled at him and said, “I’ll wave my hands, and that’s all.”
“Get out!” Holcomb ordered.
Mason picked up his hat and said, “Remember, you two, don’t say a word in answer to any question unless I’m there and advise you to answer that question. They can’t make you talk if you don’t want to. Don’t want to. I’ll do the talking. Don’t waive extradition. Don’t sign anything. Don’t volunteer any information and remember that they’ll pull the old police gag of telling each one of you the other has confessed and—”
The three converged on him, ominous purpose in their eyes. Mason slipped adroitly into the corridor, said, “Good night, gentlemen,” and slammed the door shut behind him.
There was no sign of Della Street in the lobby. He went by cab to the airport, found the pilot and said “Have you seen anything of the young woman you brought up here?”
“Why, no,” the aviator said. “I thought she was with you.”
Mason said, “Get your plane out and warm it up. Hold it in readiness.”
It wasn’t until the motors had been turning for several minutes that a shadowy figure emerged from the darkness to touch Mason lightly on the arm. “Everything okay, Chief?” she asked in a low voice.
“Lord, you gave me a fright!” he said. “I thought they’d nabbed you.”
“No,” she told him, “but I figured it would be a good move for me to keep out of sight in case they came out here prowling around. What did you do?”
“Covered myself with whitewash,” he told her, “by telephoning for the police. Thanks to your tip, I had an opportunity to get the thing all planted before Holcomb pounded on the door. Holcomb’s suspicious, but he can’t prove anything.”
The aviator said, “I’m ready. How about it?”
Mason nodded. “Let’s go,” he said.
Chapter eight
Morning sun was streaming through the windows of Mason’s private office, as he opened the door from the corridor and stood regarding Della Street with a whimsical smile.
She was standing by his desk, putting the finishing touches to an arrangement of maps and circulars which completely covered the top.
“Ship ahoy!” Mason called. “Where are we — Java, Singapore, or Japan? Lower the gangplank so I can come aboard.”
She made motions of turning a windlass. “Okay, Chief,”she said, “watch your step. Those sampans are tricky things to step out of. Here you are. Now climb this ladder. Okay. Here, give me a hand.”
She stretched forth her right hand, clinging to the desk with her left. Mason gripped her hand, gave a long jump to reach her side and said, “How’s this?”
“That’s fine. Now you’re aboard. What do you think of it?”
“Wonderful! Is this my steamer chair?” he asked, indicating the office chair.
“Yes,” she said. “Just settle back and relax and look at the scenery. Over here’s Honolulu. That’s Diamond Head just beyond the beach at Waikiki. See the natives riding the surf with outrigger canoes? The circular says you get a speed of thirty or forty miles an hour, coming in for almost a mile, riding the crests of the huge breakers. Look at the way the water hissed up from the bow.”
“Too tame,” Mason told her, “I want to be the chap riding the surf board.”
“They say that takes lots of practice.”
“Well,” he told her, “it’d be fun learning. Where do we go from here?”
She indicated the next circular. “Tokio,” she said. “That is, the boat docks at Yokohama. We can see Yokohama and then take a run up to Tokio. And after that, here’s Kobe,” indicating another circular, “and then we cross the Yellow Sea and go up the river to Shanghai.”
“How about side trips?” Mason asked. “Do we stop off in between boats?”
“We can if you want, but what you need is a rest. So I thought it would be better to get on a ship, pack our stuff in staterooms. Take all we want, and not have to bother with loading and unloading it, getting it through customs, and into hotels. In case you don’t know it, you have a de luxe suite, all the way around the world. Starting Saturday afternoon you can unpack your trunks, put on your bathrobe and slippers, be where there are no telephones, hysterical women, or lame canaries.”
“That’s swell,” Mason said, grinning. “Speaking of lame canaries, do you suppose we could send a cablegram to Paul Drake and find out what’s happening in the present case? After all, you know, we have to make a living in order to pay for de luxe suites on the Dollar Steamship Lines.”
“Yes,” she said, “I presume we could reach him by cable, although I hope you won’t try to carry your business along with you.”
“Oh, not in the least,” he said, grinning. “Where are we now, in Kobe?”
“No. We were in Shanghai, the last stop. But, why bother with cablegrams? Why not use International Long Distance?”
“Now there’s a thought,” he said. “Let’s get him on the line.”
Della Street put through the call, said to Perry Mason, “Remember, you’re only as far as Shanghai, then you go down to Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore— Oh, yes, that’s one optional side trip. We can stop over at Singapore and run down to Bali, Java and Sumatra. I’ve arranged for that trip at your option.”
“Okay,” he told her, “let’s take that trip. We may as well see it all while we’re doing it. Besides, if we stay on one ship too long the captain might commit a murder and I’d have to represent him. Say, Della, how about stopping over in Honolulu, running down to Australia with Captain Johansen on the Monterey, and—”
She said into the telephone, “Hello, Mabel, this is Della. The boss is in and wants to talk with Paul... Okay, put him on... That folder up in the upper right-hand comer of the desk is the one on Bali, Chief. Better look at it... Hello... Just a minute, Paul. The boss wants to talk with you.”
Mason whistled and said, “Wait a minute. Is this Bali?”
“That,” she told him, “is Bali.”
“All right,” he told her, “we stop off at Bali... Hello, Paul. What’s new under the sun?”
“Read the papers?” Drake asked.
“Yes. I see that the police have taken a tumble to Packard, and are giving plenty of publicity to his disappearance.”
“Not only that,” Drake said, “but they aren’t getting anywhere. It’s no wonder I couldn’t locate him, with the limited resources which are available to a private detective agency. The police have been moving heaven and earth to find him and can’t even get a trace of him.”
“But surely,” Mason said, “they must have been able to uncover something about him in Altaville.”
“Not a trace,” Drake said. “At any rate, nothing they can work on. Packard is the most important witness in this case, and he’s wandering around the city somewhere, in a daze. The probabilities are his amnesia came back on him and he doesn’t know who he is.”
“You’ve been running down all the leads?”
“I’ll say so. I’ve covered the hospitals, jails and every other lead I can think of. The police have been doing the same. They’ve combed the city, looking for an amnesia victim. They’ve uncovered drunks, idiots, crooks and bums, but not a trace of Packard.”
“How about his coupe?”
“The police figure he might have contacted some garage to come and move the car, and perhaps given an incorrect address. I understand they’ve covered every garage which has a tow car and still haven’t learned a thing.”