Mason paused before the door of 729. He knocked twice. There was no answer.
Drake produced the key, glanced at Mason.
The lawyer nodded. Drake inserted the key, clicked back the latch.
The door swung back on well-oiled hinges.
There was no one in the room, although the lights were on.
Mason entered the room, closed the door behind him, called, “Anyone there?”
No one answered.
Mason walked to the partially opened door leading into the bedroom. He knocked gently.
“Everybody decent?” he called, waited for a moment for an answer, then pushed open the door.
Abruptly he recoiled.
“All right, Paul, we’ve found it!”
Drake came to stand at Mason’s side. The body of the girl was sprawled diagonally across one of the twin beds. Her left arm and the head were over the far edge of the bed, blond hair hung straight down alongside the dangling arm. The girl wore a tight-fitting, light-blue sweater, and blood from a bullet wound in the left side of the chest had turned the sweater to a purplish hue. The right arm was raised as though to ward off a blow at her face, and remained stiffly grotesque. The short, disarranged skirt disclosed neat nylon legs doubled up and crossed at the ankles.
Mason crossed to the body, felt the wrist, and put slight pressure on the upturned right arm.
Puzzled, he moved around to the side of the bed and touched the left arm.
The left arm swung limply from the shoulder.
Paul Drake said, “Good Lord, Perry, we’re in a jam. We’ve got to report this. I insist.”
Mason, regarding the body in frowning concentration, said, “Okay, Paul, we’ll report it.”
Drake lunged for the telephone in the room.
“Not here! Not now!” Mason said sharply.
“We have to,” Drake said. “Otherwise we’ll be concealing evidence and making ourselves accessories. We’ve got to turn Conway in and let him—”
“What do you mean, we have to turn Conway in?” Mason interrupted. “Conway is my client.”
“But he’s mixed up in this thing!”
“How do you know he is?”
“He admits it!”
“The hell he does. As far as we know, there was no body in the room when he left. This isn’t the girl he left here. If it is, she dressed after he left.”
“What do you intend to do?” Drake asked.
“Come on,” Mason told him.
“Look, Perry, I’ve got a license. They can take it away. They—”
“Forget it,” Mason said. “I’m running the show. You’re acting under my instructions. I’m taking the responsibility. Come on!”
“Where?”
“To the nearest phone booth where we can have privacy. First, however, we give it a quick once-over.”
“No, Perry, no. We can’t touch anything. You know that.”
“We can look around,” Mason said. “Bathroom door partially open. No sign of baggage, no clothes anywhere. Conway said the girl was in undies and was supposed to be Rosalind’s roommate. This place doesn’t look lived in.”
“Come on, Perry, for the love of Mike,” Drake protested. “It’s a trap. If they catch us prowling the place, we’ll be the ones in the trap. We can claim we were going to phone in a report and they’ll laugh at us, want to know what we were doing prowling the joint.”
Mason opened a closet door. “I shouldn’t have brought you along, Paul.”
“You can say that again,” Drake said.
Mason regarded the empty closet.
“Okay, Paul, let’s go to the lobby and phone. This is a trap, all right. Let’s go.”
Drake followed the lawyer to the elevator. The elevator girl had brought the cage back to the seventh floor. She was sitting on the stool, her knees crossed, good-looking legs where they could be seen.
She was looking at the book but seemed more interested in her pose than in the book.
She looked up as Mason and Paul Drake entered the elevator. She closed the book, marking the place with her right forefinger. Her eyes rested on Paul Drake.
“Down?” she asked.
“Down,” Mason said.
She looked Paul Drake over as she dropped the cage to the ground floor.
Drake, engrossed in his thoughts, didn’t give her so much as a glance.
Mason crossed the lobby to a telephone booth, dropped a dime, and dialed the unlisted number of Della Street, his confidential secretary.
Della Street’s voice said, “Hello.”
“You decent?” Mason asked.
“Reasonably.”
“Okay. Jump in your car. Go to Paul Drake’s office. You’ll find a man there. His name’s Conway. Identify yourself. Tell him I said he was to go with you. Get him out of circulation.”
“Where?”
Mason said, “Put him anyplace, just so it isn’t the Redfern Hotel.”
Della Street’s voice was sharp with concentration. “Anything else?”
“Be sure that he registers under his right name,” Mason said. “Got that?”
“Yes, Chief.”
“All right. Listen carefully. He heard a woman’s voice on the telephone. There was something in the spacing of that voice he thinks was familiar. The voice itself was disguised, but there was something in the tempo he’s heard before.
“Now, it’s important as hell that he identify that voice. Keep after him. Make him think. Hold his nose to the grindstone. Tell him I have to have the answer.”
“What shall I tell him about the reason for all this?” Della asked.
“Tell him you’re following my instructions. Make him remember what it is about that voice that’s familiar.”
“Okay. That all?”
“That’s all. Get started. You haven’t much time. Return to the office after you get him located. Be discreet. Act fast.”
“Where are you now?”
“At the Redfern Hotel.”
“Can I reach you there?”
“No. Don’t try to reach me anywhere. Get this man out of circulation, then go to the office and wait.”
“Okay, Chief, I’m on my way.”
Mason hung up, dropped another dime, dialed police headquarters and said, “Homicide, please.”
A moment later, when he had Homicide on the line, he said, “This is Perry Mason, the attorney.”
“Just a minute,” the man’s voice said. “Sgt. Holcomb’s here. I’ll put him on.”
“Oh-oh,” Mason said.
Sgt. Holcomb’s voice came over the line. “Yes. Mr. Mason,” he said with overdone politeness. “What can we do for you tonight?”
“For one thing,” Mason said, “you can go to the Redfern Hotel, Room 729, and look at the body of a young woman who’s sprawled across one of the twin beds in the bedroom. I’ve been careful not to touch anything, but it’s my opinion that she’s quite dead.”
“Where are you now?” Holcomb asked sharply.
“In the telephone booth in the lobby of the Redfern Hotel.”
“You’ve been up in the room?”
“Naturally,” Mason said. “I’m not psychic. When I tell you a body’s there, it means I’ve seen it.”
“Why didn’t you use the room phone?”
“Didn’t want to foul up any fingerprints,” Mason said. “We came down here and used the phone in the lobby.”
“Have you told anyone about this?”
“I’ve told you.”
Holcomb said, “I’ll have a radio car there in two minutes. I’ll be there myself in fifteen minutes.”
“We’ll wait for you,” Mason said. “The room’s locked.”
“How did you get in?”
“I had a key.”
“The hell you did!”
“That’s right.”
“Whose room is it?”
“The room is registered in the name of Gerald Boswell.”
“You know him?”
“As far as I know,” Mason said, “I’ve never seen him in my life.”