“How are you feeling?” Mason asked, walking over and sitting on the edge of the bed.
“I don’t exactly know yet. Who are you?”
“I’m Mason.”
“Perry Mason?”
“Yes.”
“I guess I owe you one. You saved my life, I understand.”
“I did the best I could,” Mason said.
“Did you have a hard time locating me?”
“I’ll say.”
“Gosh, that hot coffee tastes good. I guess I’m caught up on my sleep for quite some spell now.”
“Any idea who sent you the candy?” Mason asked.
She hesitated.
“Go on,” Mason prompted.
“Well, I thought it — you know, I’m not accusing anybody, but...”
“Go on.”
“Well, I met a young woman who seemed very much on the up-and-up — a squareshooter, you know.”
“That was Miss Faulkner?”
“Yes, that was Miss Faulkner. She runs the Faulkner Flower Shops.”
“I know.”
“Well, she told me I should have some orchids to go with my dress and sent them over.”
“Then what?”
“I got fed up with the whole business and decided to walk out on the joint. I was working over at the Golden Horn. They call me a hostess, but, you know, I was supposed to give the boys the spending urge, and let the management cash in.”
Mason nodded.
“Well, I went on home, and when I had been there about ten minutes, a messenger brought a box of candy. I opened the candy, and it had exactly the same sort of card in it that had been with the orchids.”
“The same handwriting?” Mason asked.
“I didn’t make a detailed comparison, but it certainly looked like it, and the initials and everything were the same.”
“So what did you do?”
She smiled and said, “Chocolate creams are one of the fondest things I am of. I was feeling low, and I went to town.”
“Then what?”
“I began to feel funny. I thought at first it was just drowsiness, but I had a one o’clock appointment at your office so I knew I couldn’t go to sleep. If it hadn’t been for that, I’d probably have drifted off without knowing anything about it, but, as it was, I kept fighting myself trying to keep awake. And then suddenly I realized it wasn’t just being sleepy. I’d been doped. I had an awful time keeping myself awake long enough to talk with you over the telephone. I can just remember hearing your voice. I kept trying to talk, and I’d go to sleep in between words, wake up with an awful effort, and then I’d go off to sleep again. It seemed as though I’d been talking with you for ages and ages.”
Mason said, “Now this is highly important. It may make a lot of difference. When you were talking with me, I heard a crash. It sounded as though you’d fallen out of the chair to the floor.”
“I can’t help you on that, Mr. Mason. I can’t remember.”
“I understand that, but when we arrived at your apartment, the telephone was lying on the floor, and the receiver had been put back into place. Now I can’t figure that you’d have put the receiver back.”
“I don’t think I could have.”
“Then someone must have been in your apartment, after you became unconscious and before I arrived.”
“And found me lying on the floor and gone off and left me without trying to help?”
“Yes.”
“That would be strange,” she said. Her eyes glinted with sudden anger.
“It would. Who else has a key?”
She took a deep breath. “Now get me straight, Mr. Mason. I’m no tin angel, but I strut my stuff at the nightclub. When I go to my apartment — well, I’m all finished. That’s the only way a girl can play my racket and have any self-respect left. No one at the nightclub even knows where my apartment is. Irma Radine’s one of my best friends there. Even she doesn’t know. The men who run the place don’t know.”
“You’re certain?”
“Absolutely, positively, definitely certain.”
“Robert Lawley for instance?”
“Robert Lawley,” she said, with a grimace of distaste, “a weak-chinned, spineless wise guy. He’s what the boys call ‘half smart.’ He thinks he’s so la-de-da he’s a pain in the neck.”
“How did you meet him? Did Peavis ask you to get in touch with him or...”
“Sindler Coll,” she said.
“You’ve known Sindler?”
“Not so very long.”
“Well?”
“I was strong for Sindler,” she said. “I liked him. He got tired of me, and tried to run another jane in on the business when it looked as though there was going to be some gravy. I didn’t like that.”
“I don’t blame you.”
She said, “You’re certainly asking a lot of personal questions,” finished the coffee, and Mason took the empty cup and set it with the saucer on the table.
“What has Sindler said about me?” she asked, after a moment.
“Nothing.”
She studied her fingernails. “You’re certain of that?”
“Why, yes, of course. What is there to say?”
“Oh, you know, a man can shoot off his face sometimes. I thought perhaps he’d make some crack about the poison.”
“No. He seemed very solicitous.”
“He’s a good egg, at that.”
Mason took the handkerchief he had found in the telephone booth from his pocket. “Is this yours?”
She looked at it. “Why, yes. Don’t tell me I’ve been leaving handkerchiefs around in men’s apartments.”
“That handkerchief was found in the telephone booth at Sindler Coll’s apartment house.”
She said, “I wasn’t going to tell you about that.”
“About what?”
“I went around to Sindler’s apartment before I went home — that is, I tried to, but — well, he came out in the hallway to meet me. He told me he was having a business conference and couldn’t see me, to come back later on.”
“That was right after you left the Golden Horn?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you do?”
She said bitterly, “A business conference! His hair was mussed, his tie was pulled over to one side, and there were lipstick smears on his mouth.”
“So what did you do?”
“I went right back downstairs. I tried to telephone Miss Faulkner. I was willing right then to go out to Bob Lawley’s place and spill everything. I wanted to tell her I’d go to your office and tell you the whole business — everything, or do anything else she wanted.”
“Did you get her?”
“No. There was no answer at her house, or at the shops.”
“Then what?”
“So then I gave up telephoning and went to my apartment, and the messenger came with the candy, and you know the rest.”
Mason said, “It’ll help a lot if you don’t remember having seen me. You’re not supposed to have visitors. The police are narrow-minded about such things.”
“Oh, the bulls,” she remarked contemptuously. “Well, don’t worry about them.”
“You’ll tell your story to them just as you told it to me?”
She laughed. “Don’t be silly. I’ll tell the cops nothing. I don’t beef to the cops. I handle my own grief.”
Mason said, “Get any ideas about Miss Faulkner out of your head. She wanted you as a witness. If you’d been poisoned and died, she’d have been in a fix. Your candy was sent by some other person.”
“Okay, Mr. Mason. If you say so, it’s so.”
Mason said, “Good girl. Here’s luck for a speedy recovery.”
“Recovery, hell!” she cried. “I’m so recovered right now, I’m going to wreck this joint if they don’t let me out.”
Mason laughed. “You can talk with Dr. Willmont about that.”
“Who’s he?”
“The doctor I got for you.”