Mason grinned and said, “I guess they did. Okay, on your way. Think you can remember all I’ve told you?”
“Sure,” she said.
She flashed him a quick smile from the door, then Mason could hear her heels click... clack... click... clacking down the corridor toward the elevator.
Mason put on his hat, went out to the other office, and said, “All right, Della. I’m going out into the highways and byways. Get yourself some dinner and stick around the telephone.”
She reached up to take possession of his right hand, caressing it with hers. “You’ll be careful, Chief?” she asked.
Smiling down at her, he once more shook his head.
She laughed and said, “I could have saved my breath, but keep your eyes peeled, and if there’s anything I can do, let me know.”
“Okay, Della, but I want you to keep out of circulation for a little while. I don’t want to have them drag you into the case. They’ve subpoenaed Mae Farr to appear before the grand jury. They’ll probably subpoena me.”
“And me?” she asked.
Mason nodded.
“What’ll we tell them?”
Mason said, “We won’t commit any perjury. We won’t play into their hands. And we won’t betray the interests of our clients. We’ll generally adopt the position that just about everything that happened was a privileged communication, confidential, and not the subject of a grand jury investigation. That’ll raise a lot of technical points. Oh, we’ll come out all right, Della.”
“I suppose you want me to say nothing.”
“Be like the clam,” Mason said.
“At high tide?”
“What’s the difference?” he asked.
“You gather clams at low tide.”
“Right,” Mason said. “Be like a clam at high tide.”
As the door closed behind him, the telephone rang. Della picked up the receiver and answered.
“Hello, beautiful,” said Paul Drake. “Let me speak to the boss.”
“He’s just stepped out,” said Della, “and I think he is looking for action.”
“Oh, oh,” said Paul. “I was waiting for him to give me a ring after Mae Farr left. The D.A. has sent the story out. The papers aren’t mentioning names right now because they’re afraid, but the D.A.’s office is mentioning names. They state that they’re prepared to prove Mason was out last night looking for that gun, that he’s going to be subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury, and that in the meantime he’s being kept under the closest surveillance. He—”
Della said, “Gosh! Let me try to catch him at the elevator, Paul.”
She slammed down the receiver, dashed out of the door, raced down the corridor to the elevators, and frantically jabbed at the button.
When one of the elevators stopped, she said breathlessly to the operator, “Listen, Sam, rush me down to the ground floor, will you, please? I have to get there right away.”
The elevator operator grinned, nodded, and disregarding the curious stares of the other passengers as well as various stop signals along the way, dropped the cage swiftly to the lower corridor.
Della pushed people to one side, running toward the street exit. She was just in time to see Mason enter a taxi cab fifty feet down the Street. She called to him, but he couldn’t hear her. The taxicab swung out into traffic. Two men in plain clothes, sitting in an automobile parked in front of a fireplug, eased their car into motion and in behind the taxicab.
Della looked quickly up and down the street, could find no cab in sight. A red traffic signal held up traffic coming her way while the cab containing Mason and the car with the two officers turned to the right at the next intersection and were swallowed up in traffic.
Della Street turned and went slowly back to the office.
Chapter 10
Mason discharged the taxicab a block from the Balkan Apartments and reconnoitred carefully. The two plain clothes men who had followed the taxicab drove on past without so much as a look in Mason’s direction. Mason walked the block to the apartment house and looked at the directory for the name of Hazel Tooms.
As he pressed the button opposite her name, a man came walking briskly down the street from the opposite direction, turned into the apartment house, and fished in his pocket for a latchkey.
The electric door release buzzed, and the man who had been looking for his latchkey pushed against the door and went on in. Mason followed him, passed him in the corridor, walked to the elevator, and went to the fifth floor. He found 521 near the end of the corridor and tapped gently on the panels of the door.
The young woman who opened the door was taller than average and was dressed in lounging pyjamas. She carried herself firmly erect. Her brownish hair had highlights. Her eyes, blue and cautious, surveyed Perry Mason in frank appraisal. There was neither nervousness nor fear in her manner. She seemed quite capable of taking care of herself in any emergency.
“I don’t know you,” she said.
“A situation which I wish to remedy at once,” Mason replied, lifting his hat and bowing.
She looked him over from head to foot, then stood to one side.
“Come in,” she said.
When Mason had entered the apartment, she closed the door, indicated a chair, and then, instead of seating herself, stood with her back to the door, her hands on the knob.
“All right,” she said. “What is it?”
Mason said, “My name is Mason. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Not a thing. If this is a mash, save your breath. I don’t go out with strangers.”
Mason said, “I’m doing a little investigating.”
“Oh,” she said.
“I have reason to believe,” Mason went on, “that you have some information in which I’d be interested.”
“What about?”
“About the Pennwent.”
“What about it?”
“When you saw it last and about Frank Marley’s Atina and when you saw it last.”
“A detective?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” Mason said.
“What’s your angle?”
“I’m representing someone who wants the facts.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Nothing.”
She left the door then and sat down across from Perry Mason. She crossed her legs and hugged one knee with the interlaced fingers of large, capable hands. “Pardon me for being cautious,” she said, “but you read so much stuff these days of men getting into women’s apartments, slugging them over the head, choking them, and playful little practices of that sort, and I was taking no chances.”
“Did I,” Mason asked, “look like one of those?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what they look like.”
Mason laughed. Hazel Tooms smiled slightly.
“Well,” Mason said, “let’s get back to my question.”
“About the boats?”
“Yes.”
“What about them?”
“When did you see Frank Marley’s cruiser last?”
She smiled and said, “Really, Mr. Mason, I’d prefer to get back to my original question.”
“What’s that?”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Exactly what I told you the first time,” Mason said. “Nothing.”
“Then why should I answer?” she asked.
“Let’s look at it another way,” Mason suggested, with a slight twinkle in his eye. “Why shouldn’t you answer?”
She said, “Charity may begin at home, but it ends up in the poorhouse.”
Mason said, “All right. I’ll put my cards on the table.”
“Aces first, please,” she said.
“I’m a lawyer. I’m representing a Miss Mae Farr in connection with—”
“Oh, you’re Perry Mason.”