"I walked into something," Danny Spear said.

Mason surveyed the battered countenance, nodded, waited for further information. Spear pulled the hat lower on his forehead, depressed the brim so that it shaded his bad eye, tilted his head forward and turned toward the Greenwood Hotel. "Let's go in," he said. "Barge right past the bench warmers in the lobby. I know the way."

They pushed their way through the swinging doors. Half a dozen men were sprawled about the narrow lobby of the thirdrate hotel. They stared curiously. Danny Spear led the way past the long row of chairs and thickbellied, brass cuspidors, to a narrow, dark stairway. Over on the left was an elevator shaft screened with heavy iron wire. The cage seemed hardly as large as the average telephone booth. "We can make time using the stairs," Danny Spear called back over his shoulder.

They reached the corridor on the second floor, and Spear led the way to a door which he flung open. The room was dark and smelly. There was a white enameled bed with a thin, lumpy mattress, a bedspread with several holes in it. A pair of socks, one of them with a large hole in the toe, had been thrown over the iron rail of the bed. A shaving brush with dried lather on it was standing on the bureau. A wrinkled necktie hung to the side of the mirror. A piece of brown paper, large enough to wrap a bundle of laundry in, lay on the floor. A laundry ticket was beside it. Half a dozen rusted safety razor blades were on the top of the scarred bureau. To the left of the bureau was a half open door which led to a closet. Chips of wood lay all over the floor. The lower part of the door had been whittled away and broken out. Danny Spear closed the door to the corridor, swept his arm about the room in an inclusive gesture. "Well," he said, "I stepped on my tonsil."

"What happened?" asked Perry Mason.

"You and Paul crossed over to the other corner and took the taxicab after you came out of the Balboa Apartments. I guess the jane was watching you from a window, because you hadn't any more than rounded the corner before she came out in a rush and ran over to the curb, looking for a cab to flag. It took her three or four minutes to get a cab, and she was almost wringing her hands with impatience.

"A yellow finally pulled in to the curb for her. Evidently she never figured on being followed. She didn't even bother to look out of the rear window as the cab pulled away. I started the crate and jogged along behind, nice and easy, not taking any chances on losing her. She came to this place and paid off the cab. She was wide open.

"When she started to go in the hotel, however, she seemed to get a little bit suspicious. It didn't look so much as though she suspected she'd been followed, as though she was doing something she shouldn't. She looked up and down the street, hesitated and then ducked into the hotel.

"I was afraid to crowd her too closely, and by the time I hit the lobby, she'd gone on up. The elevator was at the second floor. I figured she'd left it there. There were just the usual bunch of barflies hanging around the lobby, so I took the stairs to the second floor, went over there in the shadows by the fire escape and sat tight, watching the corridor. I guess it was ten minutes later that she opened the door of this room, stood in the corridor for a minute, pulling the old business of looking up and down, and then started for the stairs. She didn't take the elevator.

"I marked the room, let her get a good start, and then went on down after her. She didn't take a cab this time, and I had a little trouble picking her up. She'd rounded the corner before I found her. She was walking down to the carline. She took a surface car that would take her to within a block of the Balboa Apartments at seven twentyone West Ordway. So I figured it was a safe bet she was just economizing on cab fare and that I could come back and spot the bird she'd been talking with. That was where I pulled the prize bonehead play of the day."

"Why?" asked Mason. "Did he recognize you?"

"New, he didn't recognize me. I was sitting on top of the heap, if I hadn't tried to get too smart."

"Well, go on," Mason prompted impatiently. "Let's have it."

"Well, I came back to the hotel, climbed the stairs and knocked on the door of the room. A big guy came to the door. He was in his shirt sleeves. There was a suitcase on the bed that he'd been packing. It was one of those cheap, bigbellied suitcases that the country merchandise stores feature, and it was pretty well sunbleached, as though it had been in a show window on display or had been left out in the sun somewhere. The guy was about thirty years old, with heavymuscled shoulders as though he'd been pitching hay all of his life. Somehow though, I didn't figure him so much for a ranch hand, as for a garage mechanic. Maybe it was just a hunch, but there was grime worked into his hands, and something about the way he kept his sleeves rolled up that spelled garage to me.

"He looked pretty hostile and just a little bit scared, so I smirked at him and said, 'When your partner comes in, tell him that I've got some stuff that's way ahead of this blended caramel water the drug stores are passing out; and the price is right. He wanted to know what I was talking about, and I pulled the old stall about being a bootlegger who had been selling the place and I'd sold a guy who had the room two or three weeks ago, a fellow who told me he was going to be there permanently, so I figured this guy was a roommate."

"Did he fall for it?" asked Perry Mason.

"I think he was falling for it, all right," Spear said, "but all the time I was sizing him up, and I saw that he had the same peculiar eyes, the same long, catfish mouth that the woman had I'd trailed over there. I'd got a good look at her when she paid off the cab driver. There couldn't be any mistaking that long upper lip and those eyes."

"You figure this guy was her brother?" Mason asked.

"Sure he was her brother, and I figured I was going to pull a fast one. I remembered that her name had been Pender and that she came from Centerville. I could see that this bird wasn't going to do anything except listen to me sing my song and then slam the door in my face. I figured that if I could pull a good line on him, he'd take me into his confidence and loosen up. It was just one of those hunches that go across like a million dollars when they go across, and get you patted on the back as being a smart guy; and when they don't go across, they look like hell and get you fired. I didn't have time to think it over. I just played the hunch. I let my face light up with recognition and said, 'Why, say, don't you come from Centerville?

"He looked at me sort of strange and gulped a couple of times and said, 'Who are you? , and I got a grin all over my face and said, 'Now I place you. Hell's bells, your name's Pender! , and with that I stuck out my hand."

"What did he do?"

"There," said Danny Spear, "is where he fooled me. There's where he slipped one over on me."

"Go ahead," Mason said.

"I played him for a hick," Spear remarked ruefully, "and what a dumb boob I was! I was watching him like a hawk to see how he'd take it. For a moment, he was flabbergasted as though I'd knocked him off of the Christmas tree, and then all of a sudden his face lit up into a smile, and he started pumping my hand up and down, and said, 'Sure, buddy, I remember you now. Come in.

"Well, he kept hold of my right hand with his right hand and pulled me in the door. He was grinning like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. He kicked the door shut with his left foot, pumped my hand up and down two or three times, said, 'How are all the folks back home? and crossed his left over to my eye with a sock that damn near put me out. He let go of my right hand then, and smacked me one in the kisser that smashed me back up against the closet door. I bounced back just in time to connect with one in the solar plexus that took all the joy out of life. I remember something coming up and smacking me in the face, and realized it was the dirty carpet."