He stared at her with his lips tightening. “So that’s the kind of a playmate you are, eh?”
She met his eyes and nodded, slowly.
“Yes, Mr. Mason, I’m the sort you can trust. I’m never going to betray you.”
He sucked in a deep breath, then sighed.
“Oh, hell,” he said, “what’s the use!”
There was a moment of silence. Then Perry Mason asked, in a voice that was entirely without expression: “Did you hear a car drive away—afterwards?”
She hesitated a moment, and then said: “Yes, I think I did, but the storm was making a lot of racket up there with the trees rubbing against the house and everything. But I think I heard a motor.”
“Now listen,” he told her. “You’re nervous and you’re unstrung. But if you’re going to face a bunch of detectives and start talking that way, you’re just going to get yourself into trouble. You’d either better have a complete breakdown and get a physician who will refuse to let any one talk with you, or else you’d better get your story licked into shape. Now you either heard a motor or you didn’t hear one. Did you, or didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, defiantly, “I heard one.”
“Okay,” he said. “That’s better. Now, how many people are in the house?”
“What do you mean?”
“Servants and everybody,” he said. “Just who’s there. I want to know everybody that’s in that house.”
“Well,” she said, “there’s Digley, the butler.”
“Yes,” said Mason, “I met him. I know all about him. Who else? Who is the housekeeper?”
“A Mrs. Veitch,” she said, “and she has her daughter staying with her now. The daughter is there for a few days.”
“All right, how about the men? Let’s check up on the men. Just Digley, the butler?”
“No,” she said, “there’s Carl Griffin.”
“Griffin, eh?”
She flushed. “Yes.”
“That accounts for the fact that you used the name ‘Griffin’ when you came to call on me the first time?”
“No, it doesn’t. I just used the first name that came into my mind. Don’t say anything like that.”
He grinned. “I didn’t say anything like that. You’re the one that said it.”
She rushed into rapid conversation.
“Carl Griffin is my husband’s nephew. He’s very seldom home at night. He’s pretty wild, I guess. He leads a pretty gay life. They say he comes in drunk a good deal of the time. I don’t know about that. But I know that he’s very close to my husband. George comes as near having affection for Carl as he does for any living mortal. You must know that my husband is a queer man. He doesn’t really love any one. He wants to own and possess, to dominate and crush, but he can’t love. He hasn’t any close friends and he’s completely selfsufficient.”
“Yes,” said Mason, “I know all that stuff. It isn’t your husband’s character that I’m interested in. Tell me some more about this Carl Griffin. Was he there tonight?”
“No,” she said, “he went out early in the evening. In fact, I don’t think he was there for dinner. It seems to me that he went out to the golf club and played golf this afternoon. When did it start to rain?”
“Around six o’clock, I think,” said Mason. “Why?”
“Yes,” she said, “that’s the way I remember it. It was pleasant this afternoon, and Carl was playing golf. Then I think George said that he had telephoned he was going to stay out at the golf club for dinner and wouldn’t be in until late.”
“You’re sure he hadn’t come in?” asked Mason.
“Certain.”
“You’re sure that it wasn’t his voice that you heard up there in the room?”
She hesitated for a moment.
“No,” she said, “it was yours.”
Mason muttered an exclamation of annoyance.
“That is,” she said hastily, “it sounded like yours. It was a man who talked just like you. He had that same quiet way of dominating a conversation. He could raise his voice, and yet make it seem quiet and controlled, just like you, but I’ll never mention that to any one, never in the world! They could torture me, but I wouldn’t mention your name.”
She widened her blue eyes by an effort, and stared full into his face with that look of studied innocence.
Perry Mason stared at her, then shrugged his shoulders. “All right,” he said, “we’ll talk about that later. In the meantime you’ve got to get yourself together. Now were your husband and this other man quarreling about you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know!” she said. “Can’t you understand that I don’t know what they were talking about? I only know that I must go back there. What will happen if somebody else should discover the body and I should be gone?”
Mason said, “That’s all right, but you’ve waited this long, and a minute or two isn’t going to make any great difference now. There’s one thing I want to know before we go.”
“What is it?”
He reached over and took her face and turned it until the light from the globe in the top of the car was shining full on her face. Then he said, slowly, “Was it Harrison Burke that was up in the room with him when that shot was fired?”
She gasped. “My God, no!”
“Was Harrison Burke out there tonight?”
“No.”
“Did he call you up tonight or this afternoon?”
“No,” she said, “I don’t know anything about Harrison Burke. I haven’t seen him or heard from him since that night at the Beechwood Inn, and I don’t want to. He has done nothing but bring trouble into my life.”
Mason said, grimly: “Then, how did it happen that you knew that I had told him of your husband’s connection with Spicy Bits?”
She dropped her eyes from his, tried to shake her head free of his hands.
“Go on,” he said, remorselessly, “answer the question. Did he tell you that when he was out there tonight?”
“No,” she muttered in a subdued voice. “He told me that when he telephoned me this afternoon.”
“Then he did call up this afternoon, eh?”
“Yes.”
“How soon after I had been at his office, do you know?”
“I think it was right after.”
“Before he had sent me some money by messenger?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before? Why did you say that you hadn’t heard from him?”
“I forgot,” she said. “I did tell you earlier that he’d called up. If I had wanted to lie to you, I wouldn’t have told you at first that I’d heard from him.”
“Oh, yes, you would,” said Mason. “You told me then because you didn’t think there was any possibility that I would suspect him of having been in that room with your husband when the shot was fired.”
“That’s not so,” she said.
He nodded his head slowly.
“You’re just a little liar,” he said, judicially and dispassionately. “You can’t tell the truth. You don’t play fair with anybody, not even yourself. You’re lying to me right now. You know who that man was that was in the room.”
She shook her head. “No, no, no, no,” she said. “Won’t you understand, I don’t know who it was? I think it was you! That was why I didn’t call you from the house. I ran down to this drug store to call you. It’s almost a mile.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because,” she said, “I wanted to give you time to get home. Don’t you see? I wanted to be able to say that I called you and found you at your apartment, if I should be asked. It would have been awful to have called and found that you were out, after I recognized your voice.”