Chapter 14

Paul Drake slowed his light car and swung in close to the curb. Danny Spear, a nondescript individual, with a flatcrowned brown hat tilted back to show rusty brown locks straggling out from under the sweat band, glanced inquiringly at Perry Mason.

Spear would never have been taken for a detective. There was something wideeyed and innocent about him that made him appear to be a typical «rube» pausing in front of a shell game at a country fair. His face habitually wore the pleased grin of a yokel who is seeing the world for the first time. "What do I do?" he asked.

"You trail us into the apartment house," Mason told him. "We'll go in the jane's apartment and buzz the door. If she opens the door to let us in, you walk on past as though you were going to some apartment down at the end of the corridor. But you time things so that you get a look at her face as you walk past the door. It'll only be a quick glimpse, but you can get a flash of her face so you can spot her later on. Now, it's important that you get her fixed in your mind. If you don't get enough of a look to recognize her, you'd better wait until we get in and then come and knock at the door and put up some kind of a stall about knowing the jane that used to live in the apartment, or something of that sort. If you do get a good look at her, take a divorce from us and tail her if she goes out. We'll leave you with the car. When Drake and I leave the place, we'll call a cab. You can be sitting in the car. Do you get that straight?"

Danny Spear nodded. "I gotcha," he said.

"The probabilities are she'll watch us when we leave," Mason said. "She'll be worried, because that's what we're going there for. We're going to worry her. I don't know whether she pulled this stuff alone, or whether she didn't but that's one of the things I want to find out."

"Suppose she telephones?" asked Spear.

Mason said slowly. "She won't telephone. We're going to make her think her line has been tapped."

"You're just going to make her suspicious, is that right?"

"Yes."

"She'll be looking for a shadow," Danny Spear protested.

"That's something we can't help. That's where you've got to play it carefully, and that's why I want you to get a divorce from us as soon as we leave the place. She'll see you walking past us in the corridor and won't figure that you're with us at all."

"Okay," Danny Spear said. "You birds had better drive around the block and let me off at the corner. I'll walk up behind you and time things so we go in the apartment house together. There's just a chance some of her friends might be watching out of a window. If they saw the three of us get out of the same car, it might not be so hot."

Drake nodded, shifted the car into gear, ran around the block, dropped Danny at the corner, swung once more into a parking place in front of the apartment house, got out leisurely, and pulled down his vest, gave his coat collar a jerk and adjusted his tie. With wellsimulated carelessness, the two men entered the apartment house, walking slowly. Behind them came Danny Spear, walking rapidly.

A fat man was seated in a rocking chair in the lobby. He was the only occupant.

Still walking slowly toward the elevator, Paul Drake and the lawyer swung slightly to one side as Danny Spear bustled past them. To the fat man in the chair it seemed purely a fortuitous combination of circumstances which placed all three men in the elevator at the same time.

In the upper corridor, Danny Spear held back, while the other two found the door of the apartment they wanted and tapped on the panels. There was the sound of motion, the click of a lock. The door opened, and a rather plain woman of about twentyfive years of age, with large brown eyes and thin, firm lips, stared in mute interrogation.

"Are you," asked Perry Mason in rather a loud voice, "Doris Freeman?"

"Yes," she said. "What do you want?"

Perry Mason turned slightly to one side, so that Danny Spear, walking rapidly down the corridor, could see the young woman's face.

"My business," said Perry Mason, "can hardly be stated in the corridor."

"Book agent?"

"No."

"Life insurance?"

"No."

"Selling anything?"

"No."

"What do you want?"

"To ask you a few questions."

The thin lips clamped more firmly together. The eyes widened. There was a flicker of fear in their depths. "Who are you?"

"We're collecting some data for the Bureau of Vital Statistics."

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

By this time, Danny Spear had gone well past them toward the end of the corridor, where he was pounding on a door with imperative knuckles. The door swung open, and a man's voice gruffed a greeting and the operative said, "I've got an express package down stairs for C. Finley Dodge. Where do you want it delivered?…"

Perry Mason boldly pushed his way past the woman, into the apartment. Drake followed and kicked the door shut. She remained standing, clad in a print housedress, and, as the light from the windows struck her face, it brought out incipient caliper lines which were stretching from her nostrils toward the ends of her thin lips. There was no makeup on her face, and her shoulders were slightly rounded. There could be no mistaking the fear in her eyes as her glance shifted from Mason to Drake, then back to Mason again. "What is it?" she asked.

The lawyer, who had been sizing her up carefully, nodded imperceptibly to Paul Drake. "It's important," he said, in a harsh, aggressive voice, "that you answer all of our questions truthfully. If you start lying to us, you're going to get into trouble, do you understand that?"

"What do you mean?" she countered.

"Are you married or single?" asked Perry Mason.

"I don't know what business it is of yours."

Mason raised his voice, "Never mind that, sister. You just answer my questions and keep your comments until later. Are you married or single?"

"I'm married."

"Where did you live before you came here?"

"I'm not going to tell you."

Mason looked over at Paul Drake and said significantly, "That is the best proof of guilt we can have."

As Doris Freeman turned to stare apprehensively at Paul Drake, Perry Mason lowered his right eyelid in a significant wink. "That isn't a sign of guilt, in itself," said Paul Drake, pursing his lips thoughtfully.

Mason whirled toward the young woman. Once more, his voice became the voice of a lawyer browbeating a witness. "You lived in Centerville, didn't you? Don't deny it. You might as well admit it now as later."

"Is it," she asked, "a crime to live in Centerville?"

Mason turned back to Drake. His lips twisted in a sneer. "How much more do you want?" he asked. "If she isn't in on it she wouldn't stall like that."

Doris Freeman's hands crept to her throat. She walked unsteadily toward an overstuffed chair, sat down suddenly, as though her knees had lost their strength. "What," she said, "what…"

"Your husband's name," said Perry Mason.

"Freeman."

"What's his first name?"

"Sam."

Perry Mason's laugh was scornful. He flung his arm out in rigidly pointing accusation. An extended forefinger was leveled at her face as though it had been a loaded revolver. "Why do you tell us that," he said, "when you know his name was Gregory?"

She wilted, as though the life force had oozed from her pores. "Who… who are you?"

"If you really want to know," Perry Mason said, "the telephone company is investigating a charge that your phone has been used for blackmail."

She straightened slightly and said, "Not for blackmail. You can't call that blackmail."

"You were trying to collect money."

"Of course I was trying to collect money. I was trying to collect money that was due me."