"Where can I notify you about the automobile?"

She frowned for a moment, and then said, "Oh, just notify the insurance company and my husband's lawyers will keep in touch with them. After all, I guess it's not so serious. It's up to them to supply us with a new car, isn't it?"

"Oh, you'll get your car back, Mrs. Clammert. Probably some hitchhiker took it to get over a few miles of road. He'll abandon it by the side of the road somewhere when he runs out of gas, or, if he doesn't, he'll be picked up by some of the officers who'll be patrolling the highway."

"Well," Della Street said, "I guess the insurance company will take care of it. You've been very, very nice here, and I'm sorry I couldn't stay longer, but you understand how it is."

The clerk assured her that he understood, prepared her bill and saw that her baggage was safely started for the depot.

Perry Mason was seated in his office, reading mail, when the door opened and Della Street appeared in the doorway, carrying a hatbox.

"Well," he said, "how's the disappointed bride?"

She was all crisp efficiency. "Everything went off okay, Chief. They're notifying the motor patrols, and the border stations."

"Yes," Mason said, "I heard the reports on the police calls."

"The clerk was most solicitous," she said. "He remembered the new Buick and thought it was such a beauty and hoped I wouldn't be deprived of it more than a day or two… Tell me first: Why did you go to all this trouble simply to get the police to report a car as stolen? Couldn't you have simply used a telephone and…"

He interrupted her with a smiling shake of the head. "You wouldn't deprive me of my honeymoon, Della!"

"You deprived yourself of it," she retorted, "and you still haven't answered my question."

"I wanted Watson Clammert arrested," he said slowly. "I wanted him arrested under such circumstances that he would appear to be a professional car thief. I couldn't have brought about that result by any ordinary means, since I didn't dare to make a formal charge in my own name and didn't dare to sign a complaint in any name. My theory may be wrong, in which event I can't afford to leave any back trail the police or Clammert could follow. We needed someone who would enlist the sympathy and active cooperation of the police without signing a complaint and without leaving a back trail. The Biltmore Hotel is a big factor in Santa Barbara and the sheriff of Santa Barbara County is sufficiently important to get all sorts of political cooperation. But the Biltmore Hotel most certainly wouldn't have acted as a cat's paw to pull our chestnuts out of the fire unless we had established ourselves so firmly with them that it would never have occurred to them to question your identity.

"It took human interest to do that, and the best way to get human interest was to give the clerk an orchestra seat and let him become a sympathetic spectator of your blasted romance."

"And would you tell me just what chestnuts you expect to have pulled from the fire?" she inquired.

Mason shook his head. "Not now," he said… "Did you come down on the train?"

"No, I had the hotel take my stuff to the depot and then I chartered a car to drive me down."

"Leave any back trail?"

"No."

"Good girl. They're rushing things with Douglas Keene. They start the hearing at two o'clock this afternoon."

She stared at him with startled eyes. "You mean they're going to start the preliminary at two o'clock this afternoon? Why, it's twenty minutes to two now."

He nodded. "I was just getting my things together ready to go down there. Want to go?"

"Of course, I want to go."

"Drop your hatbox then, and come on. I'll talk things over in the taxi."

"But why let them rush things? Couldn't you have held them off?"

"I think," he told her with a grin, "things are coming along in good shape. I want to have them rushed."

"Why?"

"Partially to get the suspense of those two kids over with, and partially to get even with Sergeant Holcomb."

"How do you mean?"

"If Sergeant Holcomb solves the mystery," Perry Mason said with a grin, "he gets the credit. If I solve the mystery I get the credit."

"You think Sergeant Holcomb could clear it up?"

"I think it will be cleared up for him. That is, I think the machinery has been set in motion. It won't be long before the situation clarifies itself, and I want to beat everyone to it. You know me. I'm a great grandstander."

Her eyes were more expressive than her voice, and her voice held that peculiar, low, vibrant note which characterized her when emotions mastered her. "You're the squarestshooting man in the world," she said. And then, as he looked up, she added with a grin, "And one of the most unsatisfactory bridegrooms. You've no idea how sympathetic that hotel clerk felt toward me."

Chapter 18

Spectators pushed and jostled, filling judge Pennymaker's courtroom to capacity.

Dick Truslow, one of Hamilton Burger's most trusted trial deputies, grinned across the counsel table at Perry Mason.

Truslow had that attribute of a dangerous fighter—an ability fully to appreciate the strong points of an antagonist—a personal liking which could instantly be laid aside to give place to official combativeness.

"Is Shuster going to be associated with you in this case?" Truslow asked.

"He'll probably try to expectorate his way into it before we get done," Mason remarked. "The other day I saw him talking in the bright sunlight and there was a rainbow in front of his lips."

Truslow laughed, then lowered his voice confidentially. "You should see Hamilton Burger," he said. "He's having a fit."

"What's the matter?"

"Of course," Truslow said, closing one eye, "I wouldn't want to be quoted, but the Chief has been shooting off his face that it's all bosh and poppycock, this contention of yours that anyone could send a telegram in another person's name if he had a reasonable amount of assurance and a knowledge of the address and telephone number of the person he was impersonating."

Mason managed to look innocent.

"So someone," Truslow said, chuckling, "sent the widowed housekeeper out at Laxter's place a telegram, and signed the Chief's name to it."

"What was in it?" Mason asked, with a perfectly straight face.

Truslow said, "Don't look around—she's looking this way—wait a minute… There, now take a look—over your left shoulder. See her standing there with the telegram? Look at the simpering look on her face. She thinks it's nothing less than a proposal of marriage."

"What does the district attorney think?" Mason inquired.

"I can't tell you," Truslow said, "not unless you put cotton in your ears."

Mason smiled. "Has it changed your contention in regard to the source of that Winifred Laxter telegram?"

"Well, my instructions were not to bear down too hard on it… but I'm afraid I've got you this time, Perry. We've got a pretty damn good case of circumstantial evidence. You're not going to resist having the defendant bound over, are you?"

"Oh, I think so," Mason said.

"Ten to one you can't get anywhere. You might kid a jury into giving you a break, but you're never going to be able to get past the preliminary."

Mason lit a cigarette, then almost immediately dropped it into a cuspidor, as Judge Pennymaker pushed open the door of his Chambers and took his place on the Bench. The court was formally called to order. Dick Truslow arose to address the Bench. "Your Honor, the preliminary hearing in this case is for the purpose of determining whether there are reasonable grounds to hold over Douglas Keene on a charge of first degree murder—to wit, the murder of one Edith DeVoe, but, in order to show the motive for that murder, it will be necessary for us to introduce evidence relating to the murder of one Charles Ashton. However, may it be understood that any evidence looking to the death of Ashton is limited solely for the purpose of fixing a motive so far as the murder of Edith DeVoe is concerned, and we will not introduce that evidence or seek to have it considered for any other purpose."