“But, good Lord, Chief, this was a woman who came with her, a woman whom she brought along and—”
“I know,” Mason said. “At the time Mrs. Davenport thought it was to her best interest to have Sara Ansel with her. I was the attorney. I should have insisted that the conversation about that letter take place in private.”
“And since it didn’t? Then what?”
“Since it didn’t,” Mason said, “it isn’t a privileged communication.”
“And you mean you can’t avoid answering questions about it?”
“Not when those questions are asked by the proper persons in the proper forum under proper authorization,” Mason said.
“And until then?”
“Until then,” Mason told her, “I don’t have to answer a damn thing.”
“So what do we do about the district attorney of Butte County?” Della Street asked.
“Oh, we talk with him by all means. Tell the operator that I’m ready to take his call now.”
Della Street busied herself on the telephone and a moment later nodded to Perry Mason, who picked up the phone, said in his most formal voice, “Perry Mason speaking.”
The voice that came over the wire sounded slightly forced, as though a man might be trying to mask a certain amount of diffidence by excessive vigor. “I am Jonathan Halder, Mr. Mason. I’m the district attorney of Butte County and I want to question you, and your secretary, about a visit you made up here to Paradise.”
“Indeed,” Mason said cordially. “I’m mighty glad to meet you, Mr. Halder, even over the telephone, but I don’t know why you would want to question us on what I consider a very routine matter of business.”
“Well, it may not be so routine,” Halder said. “Now we can get at it the easy way or we can get at it the hard way.”
“The hard way?” Mason asked.
Halder kept the forced vigor in his voice. “I have the right of course to take the entire matter before the grand jury and—”
“What matter?” Mason asked.
“The matter that brought you up here and what you did.”
“Good Lord, man,” Mason interrupted with all the geniality of one talking to an old friend, “if, for any reason, you have any official interest in anything that Miss Street and I did in your county we’ll be only too glad to answer questions. You won’t have to bother with a grand jury or a subpoena or trying to resort to any legal formalities—”
“Well, I’m mighty glad to hear you say that!” Halder interrupted, his voice relaxing into a more normal tone. “I guess perhaps I’ve misjudged you. People up here told me you were pretty resourceful and pretty ingenious, that if you didn’t want to be interrogated I might have to go the limit, even to the extent of getting out a warrant.”
Mason threw back his head and laughed. “Well, well, well,” he said. “One’s reputation certainly can get distorted with distance, like a mirage. How important is all this, Mr. Halder? When do you want to see me?”
“I’m afraid it’s very important, and I want to see you as soon as possible.”
“I’m rather busy at the moment,” Mason said.
Once more a strained note crept into Halder’s voice. “It is very important, Mr. Mason, not only on account of the situation here but because I am cooperating with other law enforcement officers and it’s pretty generally agreed that we want—”
“Certainly, certainly. I understand,” Mason said, laughing again. “You get in a political office and they start putting the pressure on you and then I suppose someone blabs to the newspapers and the first thing you know you’re on a spot. It’s either up to you to get me there for questioning or be subject to a lot of criticism.”
Halder, his voice easy and informal once more, said, “You must be psychic, Mr. Mason, or else you’ve been a district attorney in a relatively small community.”
“Well,” Mason said, “I’m pretty busy, but Miss Street and I can get up there all right. Now, let’s see. I’ll catch a plane to San Francisco and then—”
“Our plane service leaves something to be desired.” Halder said.
“That’s all right,” Mason told him. “I’m too busy to bother with waiting for scheduled planes. Tell you what I’ll do, Halder. I’ll get up to San Francisco or perhaps to Sacramento, then I’ll charter a plane. You have a landing field at Oroville?”
“Oh yes.”
“All right,” Mason said. “I’ll be on that landing field at five-thirty right on the dot.”
“Oh, you don’t need to break your neck trying to get here at a certain specified time,” Halder said. “I want to talk with you, and of course I’d like to talk with you as soon as possible, but—”
“That’s all right,” Mason said. “You’re a busy man. You have things to do. I’m a busy man. I have things to do. We may just as well make a definite appointment so that you’ll know when to expect me and I’ll know that when I arrive there won’t be any time lost in getting together. Will five-thirty be all right?”
“That will be fine,” Halder said, and then added apologetically, “I dislike very much to bother a man who is as busy as you are and whose time is as valuable. After all, it’s probably only relatively a minor matter—that is, I mean you certainly have an explanation, but—well, I’ve been under considerable pressure and—”
“I understand,” Mason said cordially. “Think nothing of it, Halder. I’m glad to do it. Miss Street and I will be there at five-thirty.”
Mason hung up the telephone and grinned at Della Street.
“Chief,” she said, “you certainly gave up without a struggle on that one.”
Mason said, “Let’s be practical, Della.”
“Is that being practical?”
He nodded.
“I don’t get it.”
Mason said, “Things are pretty hot for us at the moment. I’d like to avoid being questioned as long as possible.”
“Well,” she said.
“And,” Mason told her, “that means I don’t want to be available for the local press, the local police or the local district attorney. I want a little time to correlate my thoughts and, above all, I want a little time for some of the seed we have planted to start sprouting. I want to find out what Paul Drake can uncover.”
“And so,” she said, “you walk right into the arms of the district attorney up at Butte County where you certainly don’t dare to answer certain questions without putting your neck in a noose.”
“The more questions I answer right now the more I ‘m apt to get my neck in a noose,” Mason said. “But just stop to think of the practical realities, and the beauty of this situation will occur to you, Della.
“In the first place we can leave immediately and in a rush. We don’t have time to answer questions asked by anybody. We’re hurrying to catch a plane in order to keep an appointment with the district attorney of Butte County. We get a lot of publicity which is bound to be favorable because it means that as soon as we learned the district attorney wanted to question us we dropped everything and dashed up to his county without forcing him to resort to any last desperate measures.
“We fix a definite time of arrival which is such that we can be comfortably hurried. We’re away from the office. We don’t need to let anyone know where we are. They can’t call it flight because we’re on our way to confer with the authorities in Butte County at their request.
“Moreover, Della, because we have a definite time of arrival, and because the Butte County papers are hungry for news, we go up and make news. Since we have fixed a definite time of arrival, the press can be there with photographers.”