She nodded vigorously. "You'd have to see Carl to understand. He's still weak—mentally and morally—because of the drug habit he had. That is, he hasn't a strong will power." She flushed, realizing what she was saying. "He'll be all right in time. You know what drugs do to a man." She went on nervously. "Now, he's still easily influenced. He's nervous. He's very impressionable."

"You see all of those defects in his character clearly," Mason said, in thoughtful speculation, "and yet you love him?"

"I love him," she said, "more than anything in the world. And I'm going to make a man of him. All he needs is time and some one strong to help him. You'd have to understand what I went through, in order to realize how I love him and why I love him. I went through hell for years after my first marriage. I wanted desperately to commit suicide, and yet I didn't have the nerve. That first marriage killed something in me. I could never love any man the way I could have loved my first husband. After that I didn't want that same kind of a marriage. I suppose there's a lot of the maternal in my love now. My first love was that of illusion. I wanted a man to worship, a man to look up to—oh, you know." She broke off.

"Does your husband," asked Perry Mason, "appreciate that kind of love?"

"He will," she said. "He's been accustomed to knuckling under to his father. He's had it drilled into him that his family name and his family position are the two main things in life. He wants to go through life carried on the shoulders of his dead ancestors. He thinks family means everything. It's become a species of obsession."

"Now," Mason told her, "we're commencing to get somewhere. You're telling me the things that are on your mind, and you're feeling better already."

She shook her head in quick negation. "No," she said. "I can't tell you all. No matter how sympathetic you might be. After all, what I wanted to find out was about the legality of my marriage to Carl. I can stand anything if that marriage is only legal; but if he can walk away and leave me, or if his father can take him from me, it will break my heart."

"If," Mason said slowly, "he's the type who would walk away and leave you, don't you think you're wasting your affection on him?"

"That's just what I've been trying to make clear," she said. "It's because he is that type that he needs me and that makes me love him. He's weak, I love him and perhaps one reason is because he's weak. I've had enough of strong, purposeful, magnetic men who sweep me off my feet. I don't want to be swept off my feet. Perhaps it's a starved mother complex, perhaps it's just being goofy—I don't know. I can't explain it. It's the way I feel. You can't explain your feelings—you can only recognize them."

"What," asked Perry Mason, "is it you're keeping from me?"

"Something horrible," she told him.

"You're going to tell me?"

"No."

"Wouldn't you have told me if I'd been more sympathetic when you called at my office?"

"Good heavens, no!" she exclaimed. "I never intended to tell you this much. I thought you'd fall for that line about the friend who wanted the legal information. I'd rehearsed it in front of a mirror. I'd gone over it hundreds of times. I knew just what I was going to say and just what you were going to say. And then you saw that I was lying, and I was afraid. I was never so afraid in my life as I was when I left your office. I was so afraid, that I went down in the elevator and walked for half a block before I realized that I'd left my purse behind. That was a terrible shock. Then I didn't dare to go back after it. I started back, but I couldn't bear the thought of facing you. I decided to let it wait until afterwards."

"Until after what?" Mason inquired.

"Until after I'd found some way out of the mess."

There was sympathy in the eyes of the lawyer. He said simply, "I wish you wouldn't look at me that way. Your husband disappeared. You married in good faith, after you thought he was dead. You can't be blamed. You can go ahead and get a divorce from him and remarry Carl Montaine."

She blinked tears from her eyes, but her lips were firm. "You don't understand Carl," she said. "If this marriage isn't good, I could never get a divorce and then remarry Carl."

"Not even if you took a chance on a Mexican divorce?" Mason asked.

"Not even then." There was a moment of silence.

"Are you going to confide in me?" the lawyer asked. She shook her head. "Promise me one thing, then," he told her.

"What?"

"That you'll come to my office first thing in the morning. Sleep on it and see if you don't feel differently tomorrow."

"But," she said, "you don't understand. You don't…" A look of decision stamped itself upon her face. A cunning glint appeared in her eyes.

"Very well," she said, "I'll make you that promise."

"And now," Mason told her, "you can drive me back to my office."

"No," she objected, "I can't. I've got to get back to my husband. He'll be expecting me. I was simply furious when I learned that you had gone to see Gregory. I didn't know what might happen. I came tearing out here to try and locate you. Now I've got to get back."

Mason nodded. His cab driver, hopeful of picking up a fare back to town, having learned from experience that merely because a man enters a car with a woman doesn't mean that he may not get out again, was waiting at the curb. Perry Mason snapped back the catch on the door. "Tomorrow morning at nine o'clock?" he asked.

"Make it nine thirty," she suggested.

Mason nodded assent, smiled reassuringly at her. "Tomorrow," he said, "you'll find that it isn't going to be hard to tell. You've told me enough now so that you can tell me the rest. I can almost figure it out for myself."

Her eyes regarded him wistfully, then hardened. "At nine thirty," she said, and laughed, a quick, nervous laugh. Mason closed the door. She snapped back the gearshift and the car growled into speed.

Mason nodded to the cab driver. "Well, buddy," he said, "you get to take me back after all."

The cabby turned away to hide his grin. "Okay, chief," he said.

Chapter 6

Perry Mason emerged from the garage where he kept his car, started to walk the half block to his office. A newsboy on the corner whipped a newspaper from under his arm, twisted it in a double fold. "Read all about it!" he screamed. "She hit him and he died! Read about it."

Mason purchased the newspaper, unfolded it, glanced at the headlines which streamed across the top of the page.

Mason folded the newspaper, pushed his way into the stream of pedestrians converging on the skyscraper entrance. As he entered a crowded elevator, a man touched his arm. "Good morning, Counselor," he said. "Have you read about it?"

Perry Mason shook his head. "I seldom read crime news. I see enough of it at first hand."

"Clever stunt you pulled in that last case of yours, Counselor."

Mason smiled his thanks mechanically. The man, having broken the conversational ice, was showing symptoms of that type of loquacity which is so well known to those who are in the public eye, a loquacity which is caused not so much by a desire to convey any particular idea, as to lay a foundation for repeating the conversation to friends, beginning in a carefully casual manner, "The other day when I was talking things over with Perry Mason, I suggested to him…"

"Nice of you," murmured Mason, as the elevator stopped at his floor.

"I tell you what I'd do, Counselor, if I were handling this case. The first thing I'd do would be to…"

Mason never knew when he might have that man sitting in a jury box as a juror, long after Mason himself had forgotten about the conversation, so his smile was cordial as the elevator door cut off the suggestion, but a look of relief flooded his features as he walked briskly down the corridor to his office and opened the door.