“Listen, I’d like to see you tonight and get the thing cleaned up right now.” There was a certain quaver of excitement in Locke’s voice.
“You can’t do that,” Mason told him. “I could give you the information tonight, but I can’t give you the proofs until tomorrow.”
“Well,” insisted Locke, “you could give me the information tonight, and then I’d pay you when you brought in the proofs tomorrow.”
Mason gave a mocking laugh. “Now I’ll tell one,” he said.
Locke said, irritably: “Oh, well, have it your own way.”
Mason chuckled. “Thanks,” he said, “I think I will,” and hung up the receiver.
He walked back to his automobile and sat in it for almost twenty minutes. At the end of that time, Frank Locke came out of the hotel, accompanied by a young woman. He had been shaved and massaged until his skin showed a trace of red under its sallow brown. He had the smugly complacent air of a man of the world, who rather enjoys knowing his way about.
The young woman with him was not over twentyone or two, if one could judge by her face. She had a well curved figure, which was displayed to advantage; a perfectly expressionless face; expensive garments and just the faintest suggestion of too much makeup about her. She was beautiful in a certain full blown manner.
Perry Mason waited until they had taken a taxi, then he went into the hotel, and walked over to the telephone desk.
The girl looked up with anxious eyes, put a surreptitious hand to the front of her waist, and pulled out a piece of paper.
On the piece of paper had been scribbled a telephone number: Freyburg 629803.
Perry Mason nodded to her and slipped the piece of paper in his pocket.
“Was that the conversation—that line about paying for information?” he asked.
“I can’t divulge what went over the line.”
“I know,” said Mason, “but you’d tell me if that wasn’t the conversation, wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe,” she said.
“All right, then, are you telling me anything?”
“No!”
“That’s all I wanted to know,” he told her, and grinned.
Chapter 4
Perry Mason walked into the Detective Bureau at Police Headquarters.
“Drumm in here?” he asked.
One of the men nodded, and jerked a thumb toward an inner door.
Perry Mason walked in.
“Sidney Drumm,” he said to one of the men who was sitting on the corner of a desk, smoking. Some one raised his voice, and yelled: “Oh, Drumm, come on out.”
A door opened, and Sidney Drumm looked around until he saw Perry Mason, then grinned.
“Hello, Perry,” he said.
He was a tall, thin man, with high cheek bones, and washedout eyes. He would have looked more natural with a green eyeshade on his forehead, a pen behind his ear, keeping a set of books on a high stool, than in the Detective Bureau at Police Headquarters, which was, perhaps, why he made such a good detective.
Mason jerked his head and said, “I think I’ve got something,Sidney.”
“Okay,” said Drumm, “be right with you.”
Mason nodded and walked out into the corridor. Sidney Drumm joined him in about five minutes.
“Shoot,” he said.
“I’m chasing down a witness in something that may be of value to you,” Mason said to the detective. “I don’t know yet just where it’s going to lead. Right now, I’m working for a client, and I want to get the low down on a telephone number.”
“What telephone number?”
“Freyburg 629803,” said Mason. “If it’s the party I think it is, he’ll be as wise as a treeful of owls, and we can’t pull any of this wrong number business on him. I think it’s probably an unlisted number. You’ve got to get it right from the records of the telephone company, and I have an idea you’d better do it personally.”
Drumm said: “Gee, guy, you’ve got a crust!”
Perry Mason looked hurt.
“I told you I was working for a client,” he said, “there’s twentyfive bucks in it for you. I thought you’d be willing to take a run down to the telephone company for twentyfive bucks.”
Drumm grinned.
“Why the hell didn’t you say so in the first place?” he said. “Wait till I get my hat. We go down in your car or in mine?”
“Better take both,” Mason said. “You go in yours, and I’ll go in mine. I may not be coming back this way.”
“Okay,” the detective said. “I’ll meet you down there.”
Mason went out, got in his machine, and drove to the main office of the telephone company. Drumm, in a police car, was there ahead of him.
“I got to figuring,” said Drumm, “that it might be better if you didn’t go up there with me when I got the dope. So I’ve been up and got it for you.”
“What is it?”
“George C. Belter,” Drumm told him. “And the address is 556 Elmwood. You were right about its being an unlisted number. It’s supposed to be airtight. Information can’t even give out the number, let alone any information about it. So forget where you got it.”
“Sure,” agreed Mason, pulling two tens and a five from his pocket.
Drumm’s fingers closed over the money.
“Baby,” he said, “these look good after that poker game I was in last night. Come around again some time when you’ve got another client like this one.”
“I may have this client for some time,” Mason observed.
“That’ll be fine,” Drumm said.
Mason got in his car. His face was grim as he stepped on the starter and sent the machine speeding out towardElmwood Drive.
Elmwood Drive was in the more exclusive residential district of the city. Houses, set well back from the street, were fronted with bits of lawn, and the grounds were ornamented with wellkept hedges and trees. Mason slid his car to a stop before five hundred and fiftysix. It was a pretentious house, occupying the top of a small knoll. There were no other houses within some two hundred feet on either side, and the knoll had been landscaped to set off the magnificence of the house.
Mason didn’t drive his car into the driveway, but parked it in the street, and went on foot to the front door. A light was burning on the porch. The evening was hot, and myriad insects clustered about the light, beating their wings against the big globe of frosted glass which surrounded the incandescent.
When he had rung the second time, the door was opened by a butler in livery. Perry Mason took one of his cards from his pocket, and handed it to the butler.
“Mr. Belter,” he said, “wasn’t expecting me, but he’ll see me.”
The butler glanced at the card, and stood to one side.
“Very good, sir. Will you come in, sir?”
Perry Mason walked into a reception room, and the butler indicated a chair. Mason could hear him climbing stairs. Then he heard voices from an upper floor, and the sound of the butler’s feet coming down the stairs again.
The butler stepped into the room, and said: “I beg your pardon, but Mr. Belter doesn’t seem to know you. Could you tell me what it was you wanted to see him about?”
Mason looked at the man’s eyes, and said, shortly, “No.”
The butler waited a moment, thinking that Mason might add to the comment, then, as nothing was said, turned and went back up the stairs. This time he was gone three or four minutes. When he returned, his face was wooden.
“Please step this way,” he said. “Mr. Belter will see you.”