“Heard someone running, heard a door slam,” Karr said. “Then I didn’t hear anything more for ten or fifteen minutes. Then I heard someone moving around cautiously. I heard a man’s voice talking. Might have been telephoning.”
“Then what?” Mason asked.
“Nothing more for an hour. Then things moving again, a sound of something being dragged across the floor, and out the side door. It sounded like a body being dragged by someone who couldn’t lift it. There were two people, I think. I was in bed. I couldn’t even get to the window or the telephone. Never have a telephone by my bed. Makes me too nervous if it rings at night.”
“The side door?” Mason asked.
“That’s right. The side door is right opposite the garage over at the other house — that one on the north. Hocksley rents that garage, keeps his car there. His stenographer uses it sometimes.”
“Hear anything else?” Mason asked.
“Voices. I think one of them was a woman. I heard a car start and drive out. It was gone about an hour, came back to that garage. Gow Loong was back by that time.”
“And Mr. Blaine?” Mason asked as he heard steps on the stairs.
Blaine said, “I got in about two o’clock.”
The steps on the stairs were louder. Gow Loong said, “You come topside upstairs, please. Solly no come sooner. No savvy policee man. Massah in here, please.”
Lieutenant Tragg, standing in the doorway, surveyed the group for a minute before his eyes segregated Perry Mason from the others. As he recognized the lawyer, a slight flush deepened his color, but there was no other indication of surprise or annoyance. “Well, well,” he said, “fancy seeing you here! May I ask what’s the occasion of the visit?”
Mason said, “My client, Mr. Karr, is nervous. You understand how it is when a man of law-abiding habits is suddenly brought into contact with lawlessness. He naturally becomes apprehensive. Mr. Karr has been intending to make a will for some time, and the unfortunate occurrence downstairs tended to emphasize the uncertainties of life. He sent for me to... to come on a legal matter.”
“So you’re drawing a will?” Tragg asked skeptically.
Mason started to say something, then apparently caught himself, and said, “Well, I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by discussing Mr. Karr’s private business. You may draw your own conclusions, Lieutenant.”
“I’m drawing them,” Tragg said significantly.
Mason performed the introductions. “Mr. Karr,” he said, “Mr. Johns Blaine, and Gow Loong, the number one boy.”
Lieutenant Tragg said, “I’ve met the others. Mr. Karr’s the one I want to talk with.”
Mason said, “I’m afraid Mr. Karr can’t help you very much. I’ve been asking him generally about the murder. Just the natural questions that one would ask out of curiosity, you know.”
“Yes,” Tragg said, and added, after a duly significant pause, “just out of curiosity.”
Mason grinned. “Certainly, Tragg. I hope you don’t think that if I were interested in what had gone on downstairs, I’d be approaching it in this roundabout method.”
Tragg said, “Experience has taught me that your methods of approach are sometimes oblique, but always deadly.”
Mason laughed. “Come on over and sit down. I’m afraid Mr. Karr can’t help you very much. You see, he heard two shots in the wee small hours of the morning, but thought they were from the exhaust of a truck, and...”
“Two shots!” Tragg interrupted.
Mason regarded him with wide-open, innocent eyes. “Why, yes. Weren’t there two?”
Tragg said, “What time was this?”
“Oh, perhaps one or two in the morning. He didn’t look at his clock. But he thinks it was right around in there.”
“Why does he place the time as being around in there if he didn’t look at the clock?”
“Well, he’d awakened about twelve-thirty, and he was just getting back to sleep again,” Mason said.
Tragg frowned. “That doesn’t agree with statements made by some of the other witnesses.”
“The deuce it doesn’t,” Mason said in apparent surprise. “Well, Mr. Karr can’t be very certain about any of it, Tragg. There is, of course, a chance he actually did hear a truck backfiring, and didn’t hear the actual shots, which may have been fired earlier in the night.”
“Shot,” Tragg said. “There was only one.”
Mason gave a low whistle.
Tragg looked at Karr. “You’re certain there were two?”
Karr said, “I don’t think I can add anything to what Mr. Mason has said.”
“I’ve been talking it over with him,” Mason observed easily, “and he isn’t certain of a thing, Tragg. That’s why I told you I didn’t think he could help you much.”
Tragg said to Karr, “What do you know about this man, Hocksley, who lived in the flat below you?”
“Not a thing,” Karr said. “I’ve never so much as set eyes on the man. You see, I’m confined to my wheelchair and bed. I’m not interested in the neighbors, and I don’t particularly care about having them interested in me. Even if Hocksley had lived a completely normal, ordinary life, I probably would never have seen him; but he didn’t.”
“In what way didn’t he?”
“I think,” Karr said, “the man must have slept most of the day, because I’d heard him up at all hours of the night. He did a lot of talking down there. It sounded as though it was dictation he was pouring into a dictating machine...”
“Why not to a stenographer?” Tragg asked.
“It may have been,” Karr said, “but it sounded more like a dictating machine, a steady, even monotone of fast dictation with virtually no pauses. I’ve noticed that when people dictate to stenographers, they pause every little while — that is, most of them do. Then they’ll have intervals of real long pauses while they’re waiting for ideas. Something about a dictating machine which speeds up a man’s concentration. He feeds the stuff right into it. Anyway, that’s the way I’ve always thought about it.”
Tragg frowned and looked down at the toes of his shoes. After a while he said, “Humph,” then turned to regard Mason thoughtfully.
“Oh, well,” Mason said cheerfully, “it’ll probably work out all right. It’s been my experience there are always these little discrepancies in a case. What happened, Tragg?”
Tragg said, “Hocksley had that flat downstairs. He had a housekeeper, a Mrs. Sarah Perlin. A stenographer, Opal Sunley, came in and transcribed records. You’re right, Mr. Karr. The man dictated to a machine. In any event, that’s what Opal Sunley says, and I was glad to get your corroboration on that.”
“What was his line of business?” Mason asked.
Tragg said, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know!” Mason exclaimed. “Haven’t you talked with his stenographer?”
“That’s just it,” Tragg said. “His stenographer tells an absolutely impossible story.”
“What do you mean?”
“Apparently, Hocksley was engaged in some sort of exporting business. He wrote a great many letters giving detailed specifications about bills of lading, shipments, shipping directions, and all that sort of stuff. He wrote to a manufacturer’s agent about buying merchandise. He wrote to steamship companies about deliveries. And every damn letter in the outfit was a phoney.”
“What do you mean?” Mason asked.
Tragg said, “The letters were some sort of code stuff. Because from what the Sunley woman tells me, I know darn well that, with shipments in the condition they are today, the letters weren’t what they seemed to be on their face.”
“Did she know it?” Mason asked.
“No. She’s one of the slow, plugging kind that sticks a head clamp over her head, turns on the dictating machine, transcribes the letters, and forgets about them.”