Perry Mason indulged in a chuckle. "Go on," he told her.

"Gregory was in trouble. I don't know just what kind of trouble. He's always in a jam of some sort. I think he'd been in prison. That's why I hadn't heard anything from him. He'd disappeared. I'd tried to trace him. I couldn't find out anything about him, except that he'd been killed in an airplane wreck. I don't know yet why he wasn't. He had a ticket to go on the plane, but, for some reason, he didn't take the plane. I guess he was afraid officers were watching for him. The passenger list showed that he had been on the airship. I thought he was dead. I'd have wagered anything he was dead, but his body wasn't found. And then… well, then I just acted on the assumption that he was dead."

The lawyer started to say something, checked himself just as the words were on his lips.

"Were you going to say something!" she asked.

"No. Go on."

"Well, Gregory came back. He insisted that I could get money from Carl. He said that Carl would pay to keep from having his name dragged into a lawsuit. He was going to sue Carl for alienation of affection. He said that I was still his wife and that Carl had come between us."

Mason's laugh was sardonic. "Notwithstanding the fact that Gregory had taken your money, skipped out, and you hadn't heard from him for years," he said.

"You don't understand. It wasn't a question of whether he could win the lawsuit; it was a question of whether he had the legal right to bring it. Carl would have died before he would have let his name get dragged into the courts."

"But," Mason protested, "I thought you promised me you weren't going to do anything until you'd told me the whole story."

"I went back to see Nell Brinley," she said. "There was another telegram there. It was from Gregory. He was furious. He told me to telephone him. I telephoned him, and he told me I would have to give him a final answer that night. I told him I could give him my final answer right then. He said no, he wanted to talk with me. He said he'd give me a break if I'd come to talk to him. I knew that I couldn't get away while my husband was awake, so I made an appointment for two o'clock in the morning with Gregory and then slipped a double dose of Ipral into Carl's chocolate, so that he'd be asleep."

"Then what?" Mason asked, shifting his position slightly so that he could steal a hasty glance through the glass door of the telephone booth into the lobby of the airport building.

"Then," she said, "I got up shortly after one, dressed and sneaked out of the house. I unlocked the garage door, backed out my Chevrolet coupe, closed the garage door, and evidently forgot to lock it. I started to drive away from the house, and then realized I had a flat tire. There was a service station that was open a few blocks from the house. I drove on the flat to that service station. A man there changed the tire for me, and then we found that the spare tire had a nail in it. It was almost flat. There was enough air in it so the puncture didn't show until he'd changed the tires. So he had to take that tire off, pull out the nail and put in a new tube. I told him I couldn't wait for him to repair the other, so he gave me a claim check for it and I was to pick it up later on."

"You mean the tube that had the nail in it?"

"Yes. He was going to put that in the other tire and put it back on the spare. The tube that had been in there was ruined. I'd driven on it when it was flat."

"Then what?"

"Then I went to Gregory's apartment."

"Did you ring the bell?"

"Yes."

"What time was it?"

"I don't know. It was after two o'clock. I was late. It must have been ten or fifteen minutes after two."

"What happened?"

"Gregory was in an awful temper. He told me I had to get him some money, that I must deposit at least two thousand dollars to his credit in the bank by the time the bank opened in the morning, that I had to get another ten thousand dollars from my husband, that if I didn't get it, he was going to sue my husband and have me arrested."

"What did you do?"

"I told him I wasn't going to pay him a cent."

"Then what happened?"

"Then he got abusive, and I tried to telephone you."

"What happened next?"

"I ran to the telephone and reached for the receiver."

"Just a moment," Mason said. "Were you wearing gloves?"

"Yes."

"All right, go on."

"I tried to pick up the receiver. He grabbed me."

"What did you do?"

"I struggled with him and pushed him away."

"What happened after that?"

"I broke loose from him. He came toward me again. There was a stand by the fireplace, with a poker, a shovel and a brush on it. I dropped my hand and grabbed the first thing I came to. It was the poker. I swung it. It hit him somewhere on the head, I guess."

"Then did you run away?"

"No, I didn't. You see, the lights went out."

"The lights went out?" Mason exclaimed.

She squirmed about, vainly trying to find relief from her cramped position. "Yes, every light in the place went out all at once. The power must have been turned off."

"Was that before you hit him, or afterwards?" Perry Mason asked.

"It was just as I hit him. I remember swinging the poker and then everything got dark."

"Perhaps you didn't hit him, Rhoda."

"Yes, I did, Mr. Mason. I know I hit him, and he staggered back and I think he fell down. There was someone else in the apartment—a man who was striking matches."

"So then what happened?"

"Then I ran out of the room, into the bedroom and stumbled over a chair and fell flat."

"Go on," Mason said.

"I heard a match striking—you know, the sound made by a match scraping over sandpaper, and the sound of a man trying to follow me into the bedroom. It all happened in just a second or two. I ran through the bedroom, out into the corridor, and started to go downstairs, and some one was following me."

"Did you go down the stairs?" the lawyer asked.

"No, I was afraid to. You see, the bell had been ringing."

"What bell?"

"The doorbell."

"Some one was trying to get in?"

"Yes."

"When did it start ringing?"

"I don't know exactly. It was sometime during the time we were struggling."

"How long did it continue to ring?"

"Quite a while."

"How did it sound?"

"As though some one were trying to waken Gregory. I don't think the person at the door could have heard the sounds of the struggle, because he rang the bell in a funny way. He rang it for several seconds at a time, then stopped for several seconds, and then rang again. He did that several times."

"You don't know who it was?"

"No."

"But you didn't go down until the bell stopped ringing?"

"That's right."

"How soon after the bell stopped ringing?"

"Just a minute or two. I was afraid to stay in there."

"You don't know whether Gregory was dead or not?"

"No. He dropped to the floor when I hit him and lay motionless. Anyway I heard him fall. I guess I killed him. I didn't mean to. I just hit out blindly."

"So, shortly after the bell stopped ringing, you went downstairs, is that right?"

"Yes."

"Did you see anyone?"

"No."

"Where was your car parked?"

"Around the corner on the side street."

"You went to it?"

"Yes."

"Now, then, you'd dropped your keys in Gregory's apartment. Apparently you dropped them when you picked up the poker."

"I must have."

"Did you know they were missing?"

"Not then."

"When did you find it out?"

"Not until I read the newspaper."

"How did you get in the car?"

"The car door wasn't locked. The ignition key was in the lock. I drove the car back to the garage, and…"

"Just a minute," Mason interrupted. "You had closed the door of the garage when you left, but hadn't locked it?"