"You've talked with your wife before coming here? She knows you're consulting me?"

"No."

"Why?"

"I don't know just how to explain it so you'll understand."

"I don't know how I can understand unless you do explain it."

"I'd have to begin at the beginning and tell you the whole story."

"I thought that's what you were doing."

"I was trying to."

"Well, go ahead."

"She tried to drug me."

"Tried to what?"

"Tried to drug me."

"Look here," Mason said, "where is she now?"

"Home."

"Does she know that you know about this?"

Montaine shook his head.

"Well, let's hear the story," Mason said impatiently.

"It starts with when I came home from the hospital. That is, it really starts before that time. I had been very nervous. I started taking what I thought was a sedative. I didn't know it was habitforming. It turned out it was habitforming. My wife told me I must break it off. She got some Ipral to give me. She said that would help me cure myself."

"What's Ipral?"

"It's a hypnotic. That's what they call it."

"What's a hypnotic? Is it habitforming?"

"It isn't habitforming. It cures nervousness and insomnia. You can take two tablets and go to sleep and wake up in the morning without feeling dopey."

"Do you take it all the time?"

"No, of course not. That's the reason I took it, to quiet my nerves when I had one of those fits of nervous sleeplessness."

"You say your wife tried to drug you?"

"Yes. Last night my wife asked me if I would like some hot chocolate before I went to bed. She said she thought it would be good for me. I thought it would be fine. I was undressing in the bedroom. There was a mirror in the bathroom, and a door opened through to the kitchen. By looking in the bathroom mirror, I could see my wife fixing the chocolate. I noticed her fumbling with her purse. I thought that was strange so I stood still, watching her in the mirror.

"I saw her take out the Ipral bottle and shake tablets into the chocolate. I don't know how many tablets she put in. It must have been more than the usual dose."

"You were watching her in the mirror?"

"Yes."

"Then what happened?"

"Then she brought the chocolate in to me."

"And you told her you'd seen her drugging the drink?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I wanted to find out why she was doing it."

"What did you do?"

"I slipped into the bathroom and poured the drink down the bowl. Then I washed out the cup with water, filled it with cold water and took it into the bedroom with me. We have twin beds. I sat on the edge of my bed and sipped the water as though it had been chocolate."

"She didn't see you were drinking water instead of chocolate?"

"No, I was sitting where she couldn't see into the cup, and I sipped it slowly, as though it had been chocolate."

"Then what did you do?"

"Then I pretended to be very sleepy. I lay perfectly motionless, waiting to see what happened."

"Well, what did happen?"

Montaine lowered his voice impressively. "At one thirtyfive in the morning my wife slipped out of bed and dressed quietly in the dark."

Mason's eyes showed interest. "Then what did she do?"

"She left the house."

"Then what?"

"Then I heard her open the door of the garage and back her car out. Then she stopped the car and closed the garage door."

"What kind of a door?" Mason asked.

"A sliding door."

"A double garage?"

"Yes."

"And," Mason asked, "the only reason she stopped and closed that door was to keep any one from seeing her car was gone?"

Montaine nodded eagerly and said, "Now you've got the point. That's right!"

"Now then," Mason went on, "have you any reason to think any one was keeping a casual eye on the garage?"

"Why, no. Not that I know of."

"But your wife evidently thought some one might be looking at the garage—a night watchman perhaps."

"No. I think it was to keep me from looking out of the window and seeing the door was open."

"But you were supposed to have been drugged."

"Yes… I guess so."

"Then she must have been careful to close the door for another reason."

"I guess that's right. I hadn't thought of it in that way."

Mason asked thoughtfully, "How do the doors slide?"

"There are two tracks, one just outside of the other. Either door can slide all the way back and forth across the entire front of the garage. In that way, either car can be taken out. That is, you can take out the car on the left by sliding both doors to the right, or the car on the right by sliding both doors to the left. Then, when you close the garage, you simply leave one door on the left, slide the other back to the right and lock it with a padlock."

Perry Mason's fingers tapped the key which lay on his desk. "And this is your key to the padlock?"

"Yes."

Mason indicated the newspaper photograph. "And this is your wife's key?"

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

"Because there are only three keys. One of them I keep in the desk, one of them in my key container, and the other is in my wife's key container."

"And you have looked in the desk, to make sure that the third key isn't missing?"

"Yes."

"All right, go on. What happened after your wife closed the garage door?"

"She backed her car out, just as I've told you. Then she closed the garage door."

"Did she," asked Perry Mason, "lock the garage door?"

"Yes… No, I guess she didn't… no, she couldn't have."

"The point I'm getting at," Mason said with slow emphasis, "is that if she dropped her keys while she was out, she couldn't have unlocked the garage door when she returned. I take it she did return, since you say she is home now."

"That's right. She couldn't have locked the garage door."

"What happened after she left?"

"I tried to dress," Montaine said, "so that I could follow her. I wanted to know where she was going. As soon as she left the room, I started getting into my clothes, but I couldn't make it. She had driven away before I had my shoes on."

"Did you make any effort to follow her?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I knew I couldn't catch up with her."

"So you waited up until she came in?"

"No, I got back into bed."

"What time did she come back?"

"Some time after two thirty, and before three o'clock."

"Did she open the garage doors then?"

"Yes, she opened them and drove her car in."

"Then did she close them?"

"She tried to."

"But she didn't?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Well, sometimes when the doors are slid back, the brace on the inside of one of the doors catches on the bumper of the other car in the garage. When that happens you have to lift the doors back away from the bumper."

"The doors caught this time?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't she lift them away?"

"She wasn't strong enough."

"So she left the garage door open?"

"Yes."

"How did you know all this? You were lying in bed, weren't you?"

"But I could hear her tugging at the door. And then, when I went out to look this morning, I saw what had happened."

"All right, go on."

"I lay in bed, pretending to be asleep."

"When she came in?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you confront her as she came in the room and ask her where the hell she'd been?"

"I don't know. I was afraid she'd tell me."

"Afraid she'd tell you what?"

"Afraid she'd tell me something that would—would —"

Perry Mason stared steadily at the reddishbrown eyes. "You'd better," he said slowly, "finish that sentence."

Montaine took a deep breath. "If," he said, "your wife went out at one thirty in the morning, and…"

"I'm a bachelor," Perry Mason said, "so leave me out of it. Tell me the facts."