"Baloney," said the reporter. "That's a good line to hand to the jury, but I'm asking you for the lowdown."

"There isn't any lowdown," Mason told him.

"The hell there ain't," said Nevers. "Don't think I'm going to pull chestnuts out of the fire for you. You've given me a break in this case, and I'm willing to give you a break. But don't think I'm going to run around playing cat's paw for you, and get my fingers burnt unless I know whether the chestnut is worthwhile reaching for."

Mason shook his head.

"You've got me wrong, Harry," he said. "I simply want to have a test arranged under exactly identical circumstances."

"Well," said Nevers, "we'll talk that over for a while. What do you mean by exactly identical circumstances?"

"Well," said Perry Mason, "here's the way I want the test arranged. I want it so that I'm riding in the front seat of the automobile with Judge Purley. I'll be in the position that Arthur Crinston occupied. I'm perfectly willing to allow Drumm, the Deputy District Attorney, to sit in the back seat with Don Graves."

Harry Nevers stared at him with eyes that showed a glint of surprise.

"Have you gone crazy?" he asked.

"No," said Perry Mason shortly.

"Why you poor damned innocent babe in the woods!" said Nevers. "Don't let Claude Drumm fool you with any of that bushwa about being fair. He's one of the crookedest campaigners in the game. He's the one that ditched the notes that contained the first statement Don Graves made to the police—the one in which he said he recognized Devoe as the murderer, and didn't say anything about there being some other person in the room."

"That's all right," said Mason. "What if he did?"

"Why, simply this: He'll have things arranged so that Don Graves could be blindfolded and still make a one hundred percent identification. If you let him sit within nudging distance of Don Graves or where he can whisper or signal to him, you're just a plain fool."

Perry Mason shook his head and smiled.

"All right, then," said Nevers, "tell me what's up or you don't get a bit of cooperation out of us."

"There are times," said Perry Mason, "when a person has to use a little strategy—for instance when one is stalking a flock of geese it's always advisable to get behind a horse to walk up on the geese."

"What does that mean?" Nevers inquired.

"It means that geese are wild things, and they take flight whenever they see something they can't understand, or something that looks like a hunter," said Perry Mason. "But they're accustomed to the sight of a horse and when they see a horse walking around them, they don't pay any attention to it."

"So you're walking behind a horse?" asked Harry Nevers.

Perry Mason nodded his head.

Nevers slid his feet off the arm of the chair, stood up, and looked steadily at Perry Mason.

"Look here," he said, "you've got a reputation among lawyers of being a fast worker, and a twofisted campaigner. You've got the reputation of jockeying a case around so that you get in a position to give one knockout punch and then concentrate on that one punch. You don't go around wasting your energy in a lot of little taps that don't mean anything. Now I want to know what the knockout punch is in this case."

"I'm not certain yet," Perry Mason told him. "There may not be any."

"The hell there ain't," said Nevers. "Look at the way you've tried this case. You have sat back and let the prosecution put in every damned bit of evidence they wanted. You haven't crossexamined the witnesses so as to bring out anything that's to the advantage of either of the defendants."

"What do you mean by that?" inquired Perry Mason in low, ominous tones.

"Keep your shirt on," Nevers drawled tonelessly. "You aren't fooling me any with that stuff. You know as well as I do that Don Graves made a statement to the police the night of the murder, in which he either said, or at least intimated, that the person who struck the blow was Devoe, the chauffeur. He said there wasn't a woman in the room at the time the blow was struck, or at least he failed to say he saw a woman in the room. You've gone ahead and let him testify in this case, and haven't brought that out, or even intimated that he ever made a contradictory statement."

"It wouldn't do any good if I did," Perry Mason said. "The notes of that statement have been destroyed, and Graves would swear, either that he never made such a statement, or that Frances Celane asked him to give her a break, and he tried to leave her out of it."

"Baloney," said Nevers.

Perry Mason slid open a drawer in his desk and took out a flask of whisky.

"I'll tell you this much, Harry," he said. "If you'll play ball with me, you won't be sorry."

"Meaning by that?" asked Nevers.

"Meaning by that you can stick around on this test that's made and save a big slice of the front page for a blowoff."

Harry Nevers pushed back the glass which Mason had handed him with the bottle, and tilted the bottle to his lips. He took half a dozen swallows, then handed the bottle back to the attorney.

"When's this blowoff going to come?" he asked. "Right after the test?"

"I don't think so," said Perry Mason. "I think I'll have to do a little manipulation."

The reporter spoke as though he might have been thinking out loud.

"We can force the D.A. into making that test," he said. "It's a test that is bound to come out all right. But you've got something up your sleeve. You're trying this murder case with no more apparent fight about you than as though you were covering a coroner's inquest. You're going through it with a hop, skip and jump, and letting the prosecution get in all the damaging evidence they want. Everybody in town is talking about what a poor defense you're putting up."

"Yes?" asked Mason, raising his eyebrows.

"Oh forget it!" said Nevers, with a trace of feeling in his voice. "You know damned well they are. A kid out of law school would have tried this case better than you're trying it. Everybody is commenting on it. The town is divided into two camps—those that think you're shrewd as the devil, and have something up your sleeve, and those that think you've just been lucky on your other cases, and haven't got anything on the ball. Naturally, it's an important case. A woman who's got as many millions as Frances Celane at stake; a secret marriage; a sex angle, and all that sort of stuff makes front page news. It's the opportunity of your life to drag this case along, fighting every inch of the way, keeping your name on the front page of the newspaper for two or three weeks. In place of that you're acting like a dub. For a murder case, this thing is streaking through the court like a greased pig going between a farmer's legs."

Perry Mason corked the whisky bottle, and slid it back in the drawer of his desk.

Nevers looked at him searchingly.

"Going to say anything?" he asked.

"No," said Perry Mason.

Nevers grinned and wiped the back of his hand across his lips.

"Okay," said Nevers. "I've done my duty. I'll tell the city editor I tried my damnedest to get something out of you. Maybe I'll fake some piece of inside information that the readers can pick out between the lines."

Perry Mason took the reporter's arm and escorted him to the door of the outer office.

"Listen, Harry," he said, "if you fake anything, be sure you fake it right."

Perry Mason paused in the doorway, suddenly turned and faced the reporter.

"All right," he said, "I'll give you a bit of inside information. Rob Gleason is intending to make a complete confession and take the blame for the crime, exonerating Frances Celane."

Nevers stared at him.

"You can't give me that for publication," he said.

"Why not?" asked Perry Mason.

"It would be violating every professional confidence."