Perry Mason turned his car into the parking lot by his building. The attendant, who usually saluted him with a wave of the hand, made frantic signals as he drove by.
Mason braked his car to a stop. The attendant came running toward him. “A message for you, Mr. Mason.”
Mason took the sheet of paper. On it had been scribbled: “Police are looking for you. Della.”
Mason hesitated a moment, thinking things over, then parked the car in the stall which was reserved for him and walked into the foyer of the office building.
A tall man seemed to appear from nowhere in particular. “If you don’t mind, Mason, I’ll ride up with you.”
“Well, well, Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide,” Mason said. “Can I be of some help to you, Lieutenant?”
“That depends,” Tragg said.
“On what?” Mason asked.
“We’ll talk it over in your office, if you don’t mind.”
They rode up in silence. Mason led the way down the corridor past the entrance door of his office, went to the door marked “Private,” unlocked and opened the door.
Della Street’s voice sharp with apprehension, said, “Chief, the police are looking for … oh!” she exclaimed as her eyes focused on Lieutenant Tragg.
Tragg’s voice was gravely courteous as he said, “Good morning, Miss Street,” but there was a certain annoyance manifest as he went on, “And how did you know the police were looking for Mr. Mason?”
“I just heard it somewhere. There isn’t supposed to be anything secret about it, is there?” Della Street asked demurely.
“Apparently not,” Tragg said, seating himself comfortably in the client’s chair and waiting for Mason to adjust himself behind the office desk.
“Cigarette?” Mason asked, extending a package to Tragg.
“Thanks,” Tragg said, taking one.
Mason snapped his lighter and held the flame out to Tragg.
“Service!” the police lieutenant said.
“With a smile,” Mason told him, lighting his own cigarette.
Lieutenant Tragg, almost as tall as the lawyer, was typical of the modern police officer who is schooled in his profession and follows the work because he enjoys it, just as his associate, Sergeant Holcomb, who made no secret of his enmity for Perry Mason, typified the old school of hard-boiled, belligerent cop. Between Mason and Tragg there was a genuine mutual respect and a personal liking.
“Staylonger Motel,” Lieutenant Tragg said, looking at Mason.
Mason raised his eyebrows.
“Mean anything to you?”
“Nice name,” Mason said.
“Ever been there?”
Mason shook his head.
“Some client of yours been there?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say. I have quite a few clients, you know, and I presume some of them stay at motels rather frequently. It’s quite convenient when you’re traveling by auto. You can get at your baggage when you want it and—”
“Never mind the window dressing,” Tragg said. “We had a murder at The Staylonger Motel last night.”
“Indeed?” Mason said. “Who was murdered?”
“A man by the name of Binney Denham. Rather an interesting character, too, as it turns out.”
“Client of mine?” Mason asked.
“I hope not.”
“But I take it there’s some connection,” Mason told him.
“I wouldn’t be too surprised.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“I’ll tell you some of the things we know,” Tragg said. “Yesterday afternoon a man who looked the executive type, with dark hair, iron gray at the temples, trim figure, well-tailored clothes, and an air of success, showed up at The Staylonger Motel with a woman who was quite a bit younger. The man could have been fifty. The woman, who was blonde and seductive, could have been twenty-five.”
“Tut-tut-tut!” Mason said.
Tragg grinned. “Yeah! I know. Almost unique in the annals of motel history, isn’t it? Well, here’s the funny part. The man insisted on a double cabin; said they were going to be joined by another couple. However, after getting two units with a connecting door, the man apparently parked the blonde in unit sixteen and established his domicile in unit fifteen.
“The man was driving a rented car. They had drinks, went out, came back, and that evening the blonde drove away—alone.
“At around eleven last night the police received a call from an unknown woman. The woman said she wanted to report a homicide at unit sixteen in The Staylonger Motel, and then the woman hung up.”
“Just like that?” Mason asked.
“Just like that,” Tragg said. “Interesting, isn’t it?”
“In what way?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tragg said. “But when you stop to look at it, it has a peculiar pattern. Why should a woman call up to report a homicide?”
“Because she had knowledge that she thought the police should have,” Mason said promptly.
“Then why didn’t she state her name and address?”
“Because she didn’t want to become involved personally.”
“It’s surprising the way you parallel my thinking,” Tragg said. “Only I carry my thinking a step farther.”
“How come?”
“Usually a woman who wants to keep out of a thing of that sort simply doesn’t bother to report. Usually a woman who reports, if she’s acting in good faith, will give her name and address. But if that woman had been advised by a smart lawyer who had told her, ‘It’s your duty to report the homicide to the police, but there’s no law that says you have to stay on the phone long enough to give your name and address—’ Well, you know how it is, Mason. It starts me thinking.”
“It seems to be habit you have,” Mason said.
“I’m trying to cultivate it,” Tragg told him.
“I take it there’s something more?” Mason asked.
“Oh, lots more. We made a routine check down at The Staylonger Motel. We get lots of false steers on these things, you know. This time it happened to be correct. This character was lying there in the middle of the floor with a bullet hole in his back. The executive-type busimessman and the curvaecous-type blonde and the rented car had completely disappeared.
“The blonde had driven away in the car. The man had gone through a barbed wire fence out the back way. He’d torn his clothes on the barbed wire. He evidently was in a hurry.”
Mason nodded sympathetically. “Doesn’t leave you much to work on, does it?”
“Oh, don’t worry about a little thing like that,” Tragg said. “We have lots to work on. You see we have the license number of the automobile. We traced it down. It was a rented automobile. We got hold of the automobile, and we’ve come up with some pretty good prints.”
“I see,” Mason said.
“Shortly after we phoned in the order to impound this automobile, we received a telephone call from the man who runs the car rental agency. He said that a woman came in to rent a car, inquired about cars that were available, wanted a car of a certain type, looked over the cars that he had, and then changed her mind. She had a slip of paper with license number on it. She seemed to be looking for some particular car.”
“Did she say what car?” Mason asked.
“No, she didn’t say.”
Mason smiled. “The manager of the car rental agency may have a vivid imagination.”
“Perhaps,” Tragg said. “But the woman acted in a way that aroused the suspicions of the manager. He thought perhaps she might be trying to get hold of this particular car that had figured in a homicide. When she left, he followed her around the block. She got in a car that was driven by a man. The manager took down the license number of the automobile.”
“Very clever,” Mason said.
“The automobile was registered in the name of the Drake Detective Agency.”
“You’ve talked with Drake?” Mason asked.
“Not yet,” Tragg said. “I may talk with him later on. The Drake Detective Agency has offices here in the building on the same floor with you and does all of your work. You and Paul Drake are personal friends and close business associates.”
“I see,” Mason said, tapping ashes from the end of the cigarette.
“So I started making a few inquiries on my own,” Tragg said. “Nothing particularly official, Mason. Just checking up.”
“I see,” Mason said.
“I notice that when Paul Drake is working on a particularly important case and stays up all night, he has hamburgers sent up from the lunch counter a couple of doors down the street. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, Mason, because it never pays for a magician to expose the manner in which he does his tricks. It has a tendency to destroy the effect.
“However, I dropped in to the lunch counter this morning, had a cup of coffee, chatted with the manager, told him I understood he’d been delivering quite a few hamburgers the night before, said I’d like to talk with the man who was on the night shift. Well, he’d gone home but hadn’t gone to bed as yet, and the manager got him on the phone for me. I thought it would just be the same old seven and six of deliveries to Drake’s office, but I hit unexpected pay dirt. I found that you and your secretary were up all night, and that you had hamburgers and coffee.”
Mason said thoughtfully, “That’s what comes of trying to get service. I should have gone down myself.”
“Or sent Miss Street for them,” Tragg said, smiling at Della Street.
“And so?” Mason said. “You put two and two together and made eighteen. Is that it?”
“I haven’t put two and two together as yet,” Tragg said. “I’m simply calling your attention to certain factors which I haven’t tried to add up so far.
“Now, I’m going to tell you something, Mason. Binney Denham was a blackmailer. We haven’t been able to get all the dope on him as yet. He kept his books in some sort of code. We haven’t cracked that code. We do have fingerprints from that rented car. We have some cigarette stubs from the ash tray. We have a few other things we aren’t talking about just yet.
“Now if you happen to have a client who was susceptible to blackmail, if Binney Denham happened to be bleeding that client white and the client decided to get out of it by just about the only way you can deal with a blackmailer of that type, the police would be as co-operative as is consistent with the circumstances—if we received a little co-operation in return.
“What we don’t know is just where this curvaceous blonde entered into the picture. There are quite a few things we don’t know. There are quite a few things we do know. There are quite few things we are finding out.
“Now, a good, smart lawyer who had a client in a jam of that sort might make a better deal with the police and perhaps with the D.A. by co-operating all the way along the line than by trying to hold out.”
“Are you speaking for the D.A.?” Mason asked.
Tragg ground out his cigarette in the ash tray. “Now there, of course, you’ve come to the weak point in my argument.”
“Your district attorney is not particularly fond of the ground I walk on,” Mason pointed out.
“I know,” Tragg conceded.
“I think, under the circumstances,” Mason said, “a smart lawyer would have to play them very close to his chest.”
“Well, I thought I’d drop in,’ Tragg said. “Just sort of a routine checkup. I take it you don’t want to make any statement, Mason?”
Mason shook his head.
“Keep your own nose clean,” Tragg warned. “There are people on the force who don’t like you. I just thought I’d give you a friendly warning, that’s all.”
“Sergeant Holcomb going to be working on the case?” Mason asked.
“Sergeant Holcomb is working on the case.”
“I see,” Mason said.
Tragg got up, straightened his coat, reached for his hat, smiled at Della Street, and said, “At times you’re rather obvious, Miss Street.”
“I am?” Della Street asked.
Tragg nodded. “You keep looking at that private, unlisted telephone on the corner of Mason’s desk. Doubtless you’re planning to call Paul Drake as soon as I’m out of the door. I told you this was a friendly tip. For your information, I don’t intend to stop in at Drake’s office on the way out and I don’t intend to talk with him as yet.
“I would like to be very certain that nothing happens to put your employer out of business as an attorney, because then he couldn’t sign your pay checks, and personally it’s a lot more fun for me to deal with brains than with the crooked type of criminal lawyer who has to get by by suborning perjury.
“I just thought I’d drop in for a social visit, that’s all, and it might be a little easier for you to keep out of trouble if you knew that I’m going to have to report what I’ve found out down at the lunch counter about the consumption of sandwiches and coffee in the Mason office during the small hours of the morning.
“I don’t suppose the persons who entered and signed the night register in the elevator would have been foolish enough to have signed their own names, but of course we’ll be checking that and getting descriptions. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the description of the man and the woman who went to your office last night didn’t check with the description of the man and the woman who registered in units fifteen and sixteen at The Staylonger Motel. And, of course, we’ll have a handwriting expert take a look at the man’s signature on the register the elevator man keeps for after-hours visitors.
“Well, I’ll be ambling along. I have a conference with my zealous assistant, Sergeant Holcomb. I’m not going to mention anything to him about having been here.”
Tragg left the office.
“Hang it!” Mason said. “A man will think he’s being smart and then overlook the perfectly obvious.”
“Lieutenant Tragg?” Della Street asked.
“Tragg nothing!” Mason said. “I’m talking about myself. Having hamburgers sent up from that lunch counter is convenient for us and damned convenient for the police. We’ll remember to keep out of that trap in the future.”
“Thanks to Lieutenant Tragg,” she said.
“Thanks to a very worthy adversary who is very shortly going to be raising hell with our client,” Mason said.