They were grinning as they entered the pet store.
Arthur Gibbs was a thin, bald-headed individual with eyes the color of a faded blue shirt which had been left too long on the clothesline. “Hello,” he said in a calm, well-modulated voice. “I was just getting ready to close up. I’d about given you up.”
“This is Perry Mason,” Paul Drake introduced.
Mason extended his hand. Gibbs gave him a bony, long-fingered hand which seemed completely lacking in initiative. As Mason released it, he said, “I suppose you want to know about that parrot.”
Mason nodded.
“Well, it’s just like I told you,” Gibbs said to Paul Drake.
“Never mind what you told me,” Paul Drake said. “I want Mr. Mason to get it firsthand. Just go ahead and tell him about it.”
“Well, we sold this parrot on the...”
“Before you go into that,” Drake interrupted, “tell Mr. Mason how you identify the parrot.”
“Well,” Gibbs said, “of course, I’m just acting on an assumption there. You’re asking me about a parrot that cussed whenever it wanted something to eat. I trained a parrot to do that stunt.”
“What was the idea?” Mason asked.
“It’s just a stunt,” Gibbs explained. “Occasionally, you’ll find people who think it’s smart to have a parrot that cusses. Usually they get tired of them before they’ve had them a long while, but when they first hear a bird swear, it’s quite a novelty.”
“And you deliberately train them to swear?” Mason asked.
“Sure. Sometimes a bird will pick up an expression or a sentence just from hearing it once, but for the most part, you have to drill sounds into ’em. Of course, we don’t train them to do any real lurid cussing; just a few ‘damns’ and ‘hells’ do the trick. People get such a kick out of hearing a parrot cut loose with a good salty line of talk instead of the usual stereotyped ‘Polly wants-a-cracker,’ they’ll buy a bird on the spot.”
“All right When did you sell this bird?”
“Friday, the second of September.”
“At what time?”
“Around two or three o’clock in the afternoon, I think it was.”
“Tell me about the man who bought it.”
“Well, he wore spectacles and had sort of tired eyes. His clothes didn’t look any too good, and he looked... sort of discouraged... no, not discouraged either. Ever since I talked with Mr. Drake about him, I’ve been trying to think more clearly so I can describe him. He didn’t look unhappy... In fact, he seemed to be a man who knew what he was doing and was living his own life in his own way and getting some happiness out of it. He certainly didn’t seem to have much money. His suit was shiny, and his elbows were worn almost through, but I will say this for him — he was clean.”
“How old?” Mason asked.
“Around fifty-seven or fifty-eight, somewhere around in there.”
“Clean-shaven?”
“Yes, he had wide cheekbones and pretty straight lips. He was about as tall as you are, but he didn’t weigh quite as much.”
“What was his complexion? Pale or ruddy?” Mason asked.
“He looked like some sort of a rancher,” the man said. “He’d been out of doors quite a bit, I think.”
“Did he seem nervous or excited?”
“No, he didn’t seem as though he’d ever get excited over anything, just calm and quiet. Said he wanted to buy a parrot, and he gave me a description of the sort of bird he wanted to buy.”
“What do you mean when you say ‘description’?” Mason asked.
“Oh, he told me the breed and size and age.”
“Did you have any other birds beside this?”
“No, this was the only one I had that would fit the description.”
“Did he hear the bird talk?”
“No, he didn’t. That’s a funny thing. He just seemed to want a parrot of a certain appearance. He didn’t seem to care much about anything else. He took a look at the bird, asked me the price, and said he’d take it.”
“Did he buy a cage at the same time?”
“Yes, of course. He took the parrot with him.”
“And he was driving a car?”
“That’s the thing I can’t remember,” Gibbs said, frowning. “I can’t remember whether I took the cage out to the car or whether he did. I have an impression that he was driving a car, but I didn’t pay too much attention to it. If he did have a car, it was just the ordinary sort of a car you’d associate with a man of that type, nothing to attract attention or to impress itself on my memory.”
“Did he talk like an educated man?” Mason asked.
“Well, there was something quiet about the way he talked, and he had a peculiar way of looking at you while he was talking... looking right straight through you without seeming to be trying to do it. Some people just stare at you, and some seem to try to look holes through you, but this fellow just had a quiet way of...”
“Wait a minute,” Mason interrupted. “Would you know the man if you saw his picture?”
“Yes, I think I would. I know I’d recognize him if I saw him, and I think I’d recognize the picture if it was a good picture.”
Mason said, “Just a minute.”
He walked out to where Della Street was sitting in the car. He pulled out his penknife and said, “Going to have to cut your paper to pieces, Della.”
“Making dolls?” she asked.
“Making mysteries,” he told her, and ran his knife around the border of the newspaper photograph of Fremont C. Sabin. He took it back into the pet store, unfolded the photograph, and said, “Is this, by any chance, the man who bought the parrot?”
Gibbs became excited. “That’s the fellow,” he said, “that’s the man all right. That’s a good picture of him; those high cheekbones and that strong, firm mouth.”
Mason folded the newspaper photograph and pushed it down in his pocket. He and Drake exchanged significant glances.
“Who was it?” Gibbs asked. “Has his picture been in the paper recently?”
“Just a man who liked parrots,” Mason said casually. “Let’s wait until after a while to talk about him. Now, I want to get some information. Have there been any new parrots sold around here that you know of, recently?”
“I gave everything I had to Mr. Drake,” Gibbs said. “But when Mr. Drake was asking me about parrot food this afternoon, and whether I’d had any inquiries from any new people about how to take care of parrots, I couldn’t think of any at the time; but after Mr. Drake had left, I happened to remember Helen Monteith.”
“And who’s Helen Monteith?” Mason asked.
“She’s the librarian over at the city library, and a mighty nice girl. Seems to me I read about her being engaged to be married a short time ago. She came in a week or so ago to buy some parrot food and asked me questions about taking care of parrots.”
“How long ago?”
“Oh, a week or so... Let me see, yes, it’s been a little more than a week, maybe ten days.”
“Did she tell you that she’d bought a parrot?”
“No, she didn’t; just asked some questions about parrots.”
“Did you ask her why she wanted to know?”
“I may have. I can’t remember now. The whole thing is kind of fuzzy in my memory. You know how it is; a man doesn’t think very much about all of those little transactions. Thinking back on it now, I can remember that at the time I wondered whether she’d been in the city and bought a parrot in there... Come to think of it, I guess I didn’t ask her any questions at all, just gave her what she wanted.”
“Do you have her address?”
“I can find it in the phone book,” Gibbs said.
“Don’t bother,” Mason said, “we’ll look it up. You’d better shut up shop and go home... She’s listed in the telephone book, is she?”