"The theory of the district attorney's office is that Cartright complained about the howling dog merely in order to get Foley away from home, so Cartright could run off with Foley's wife."

"Well?" asked the detective.

"It doesn't make sense," the lawyer said. "In the first place, why go to all that elaborate trouble in order to get Foley away from home? In the second place, there must have been some previous talks between Cartright and his wife. He must have known where she was, and she must have known where he was. Those talks necessarily took place in the absence of Foley. Having decided that they were going to go back together and patch things up, why the devil didn't Cartright walk over to the place, cuss Foley out and take his wife?"

"Probably because he didn't have the guts," Drake said. "There are people like that."

"All right," Mason agreed patiently, "let's suppose you're right on that. Then he went to the law, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"How much simpler it would have been to go to the law and complain that Foley was living in a meretricious relationship with his wife, and have the law step in. Or, he could have hired me as his attorney, and I'd have gone out there and pulled the woman out of the house damned quick. That is, if she wanted to get away. Or, the woman could simply have walked out. After all, Cartright had all of the legal rights on his side."

Drake shook his head.

"Well," he said, "that's up to you. What you wanted me to do was to get the facts. You were going to put them together."

Mason nodded slowly.

"What do you think happened?" asked Drake.

"I don't know," Mason said, "but I'm telling you that the thing doesn't click. It doesn't fit together and it doesn't make sense, and the farther we go into it, the less sense it makes."

"Now, then Drake said, "who are you representing?"

"I'm not entirely certain," Mason said slowly. "I'm representing Arthur Cartright, and I may be representing his wife, or I may be representing Foley's wife. By the way, what happened to her?"

"You mean Forbes?" asked the detective.

"Foley or Forbes, it's all the same. I know him as Foley; that's the way I first met him, so that's the way I describe him."

"Well," said Drake, "we haven't had any luck on tracing Mrs. Forbes yet. Naturally, she felt quite a bit disgraced and she left Santa Barbara, but we don't know where she went. You know how a woman would feel about those things, particularly when a man didn't give her any warning, but simply disappeared and took a friend's wife with him."

Mason nodded slowly, and reached for his hat.

"I think," he said, "that I'm going out and talk with this Clinton Forbes, alias Clinton Foley."

"Well," Drake told him, "every man to his taste. You may have your hands full. He's got the reputation for being a belligerent customer, and having the devil's own temper. I found that out in checking back on his career in Santa Barbara."

Mason nodded absently.

"That's one thing they can't ever say about you," Drake remarked. "They can't ever say you haven't got guts. You go out of your way in order to get into trouble."

Perry Mason shook his head, paused for a moment, then walked back to his desk, sat down and picked up the telephone.

"Della," he said, "get me Clinton Foley on the line. His residence is 4889 Milpas Drive. I want to talk with him personally."

"What's the idea?" asked Drake.

"I'm going to make an appointment with him. I'm not going to chase all the way out there, only to find that I've run up a taxi bill."

"If he knows you're coming, he'll have a couple of bouncers waiting to throw you out," the detective warned.

"Not after I get done talking with him, he won't," Mason said grimly.

Paul Drake sighed and lit a cigarette.

"A fool for a fight," he said.

"No, I'm not," Mason told him. "But you overlook the fact that I'm representing my clients. I'm a paid gladiator. I have to go in and fight; that's what they hire me for. Any time I get weak kneed so I don't have guts enough to wade in and fight, I've unfitted myself to carry on my profession, at any rate, the branch of it that I specialize in. I'm a fighter. I'm hired to fight. Everything I got in the world, I got through fighting."

The telephone rang, and Mason scooped up the receiver.

"Mr. Foley on the line," Della Street 's voice said.

"Okay," Mason told her.

There was the click of the connection, and then Foley's voice, vibrant with booming magnetism.

"Yes, hello, hello."

"Mr. Foley," said the lawyer, "this is Perry Mason, the attorney. I want to talk with you."

"I have nothing whatever to discuss with you, Mr. Mason," Foley said.

"I wanted to talk with you about the affairs of a client who lived in Santa Barbara," said Perry Mason.

There was a moment of silence. The buzzing noise of the wire was all that could be heard. Then Foley's voice came, pitched a note lower.

"And what was the name of this client?" he asked.

"Well," Mason told him, "we might agree on a tentative name of Forbes."

"Man or woman?" asked Foley.

"A woman — a married woman. Her husband had run off and left her."

"And what did you want to see me about?" Foley demanded.

"I'll explain that to you when I see you."

"Very well, when will you see me?"

"As soon as convenient."

"Tonight at eightthirty?"

"Can you make it any earlier?"

"No."

"Very well, I will be at your place at nine o'clock tonight," said Mason, and slid the receiver back on the hook.

Paul Drake shook his head lugubriously.

"You do take the damnedest chances," he said. "You'd better have me go out there with you."

"No," Mason told him, "I'm going out there alone."

"All right," the detective said, "let me give you a tip, then. You'd better go prepared for trouble. That man's in a dangerous mood."

"What do you mean prepared for trouble?"

"Carry a gun," the detective said.

Perry Mason shook his head.

"I carry my two fists," he said, "and my wits. I fight with those. Sometimes I carry a gun, but I don't make a practice of it. It's bad training. It teaches one to rely entirely on a gun. Force should only be a last resort."

"Have it your own way," Drake remarked.

"How about the housekeeper?" said Mason. "You haven't told me about her yet."

"The housekeeper didn't change her name."

"You mean she was with Forbes before he became Foley?"

"That's right. Her name is Mrs. Thelma Benton. Her husband was killed in an automobile accident. She was employed as a private secretary to Forbes when he was in Santa Barbara. She accompanied him on his trip. But here's the funny thing: apparently Mrs. Cartright didn't know that Thelma Benton had been employed by Forbes as a secretary. The young woman came with them as a housekeeper, and Mrs. Cartright never knew she'd been Forbes' secretary."

"That's strange, isn't it?"

"Not particularly. You see, Forbes had an office in Santa Barbara where he transacted his business. Naturally he was rather secretive about it, because he was getting his affairs turned into cash. Evidently the secretary suspected a good deal, and he didn't want to leave her behind, or she didn't want to be left behind, I don't know which. She went with them when they left."

"How about the Chinese cook?"

"He's a new addition. They picked him up here."

Perry Mason shrugged his broad shoulders.

"The whole thing sounds goofy," he said. "I'll tell you a lot more about it tonight, however. You'd better be in your office, Paul, so I can call you if I want any information.

"Okay," Drake told him, "and I don't mind telling you that I'm going to have men outside, watching the house. You know, we've got a tail on Foley, and I'm just going to double it, so that if there's any trouble, all you've got to do is to kick out a window, or something, and the men will come in."