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Her face lost itscolor. Her eyes were big, dark and staring. Her mouth sagged open and she breathed heavily through it.
“My God!” she said.
“Exactly,” said Mason. “You were asleep last night.”
She kept her eyes on him and asked, “Would that square it?”
“I don’t know,” Mason told her. “It would square things at this end. I don’t know whether anybody’s going to make a squawk about the Georgia business or not.”
“All right. I was asleep.”
Mason got up and moved toward the door.
“You want to remember that,” he said. “Nobody knows about this except me. If you tell Locke that I was here, or the proposition I made you, I’ll see that you get the works everywhere along the line.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I know when I’ve had enough.”
He walked out and closed the door behind him.
He got in his car and drove to Sol Steinburg’s Pawnshop.
Steinburg was fat, with shrewd, twinkling eyes, a skull cap, and thick, curling lips, which were twisted in a perpetual smile.
He beamed on Perry Mason, and said, “Well, well, well. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, my friend.”
Mason shook hands. “It certainly has, Sol. And now I’m in trouble.”
The pawnbroker nodded and rubbed his hands together.
“Whenever they get in trouble,” he said, “they come to Sol Steinburg’s place. What is your trouble, my friend?”
“Listen,” said Mason, “I want you to do something for me.”
The skull cap nodded in vigorous assent.
“I’d do anything I could for you, y’understand. Of course, business is business. And if it’s a business matter, you’ve got to come to me on a business basis, and take business treatment. But if it ain’t business y’understand, I’d do anything I could.”
Mason’s eyes twinkled. “It’s business for you, Sol,” he said, “because you’re going to make fifty dollars out of it. But you don’t have to invest anything.”
The fat man broke out in laughter.
“That,” he proclaimed, “is the kind of business I like to talk—when I don’t have to invest anything, and make a fifty dollar profit already, I know it’s a good business. What do I do?”
“Let me see the register of revolvers you’ve sold,” Mason told him.
The man fished under a counter and produced a well-thumbed booklet, in which had been registered the style and make of the weapon, the number, the person to whom it was sold, and the signature of the purchaser.
Mason thumbed the pages until he found a 32-Colt automatic.
“That’s the one,” he said.
Steinburg leaned over the book, and stared at the registration.
“What about it?”
“I’m coming in here with a man sometime today, or tomorrow,” said Mason, “and, as soon as you look at him, you nod your head vigorously, and say, ‘That’s the man, that’s the man, that’s the man, all right.’ I’ll ask you if you’re sure it’s the man and you get more and more certain. He’ll deny it, and the more he denies it, the more certain you get.”
Sol Steinburg pursed his thick lips. “That might be serious.”
Mason shook his head.
“It would be if you said it in court,” he admitted, “but you’re not going to say it in court. You’re not going to say it to anybody except this man. And you’re not going to say what it was he did. Simply identify him as being the man. Then you go in the back part of the store, and leave me with the firearm register here. Do you understand?”
“Sure, sure,” said Steinburg. “I understand it fine. All except one thing.”
“What’s that?” asked Mason.
“Where the fifty dollars is coming from.”
Mason slapped his pants pocket. “Right here, Sol.” He pulled out a roll of bills from which he took fifty dollars, and handed it to the pawnbroker.
“Anybody you come in with?” he asked. “Is that it?”
“Anybody I come in with,” Mason said. “I won’t come in here unless I’ve got the right man. I may have to dress the act up a little bit, but you follow my lead. Is that okay?”
The pawnbroker’s caressing fingers folded the fifty dollars.
“My friend,” he said, “whatever you do is all right with me. I say whatever I am supposed to say, and I say it loud, y’understand.”
“That’s fine,” said Mason. “Don’t get shaken in your identification.”
The skull cap twisted, as Sol Steinburg shook his head in vigorous negation.
Perry Mason walked out, whistling.
Chapter 14
Frank Locke sat in the editorial office and shred at Perry Mason.
“I understood that they were looking for you,” he said.
“Who was?” asked Perry Mason carelessly.
“Reporters, police, detectives. Lots of people,” said Locke.
“I saw them all.”
“This afternoon?”
“No, last night. Why?”
“Nothing,” Locke replied, “except that they may be looking for you in a different way now. What is it you want?”
“I just dropped in to tell you that Eva Belter had filed a petition for letters of administration on her husband’s estate.”
“What’s that to me?” asked Locke, his milk-chocolate eyes on Perry Mason.
“It means that Eva Belter is ru
“Is that so?” said Locke, sarcastically.
“That,” said Mason, with emphasis, “is so.”
“You’re what they call an optimist.”
“Maybe I am. Again, maybe I’m not. Just take down the telephone and ring up Eva Belter.”
“I don’t have to ring up Eva Belter, or anybody else. I’m ru
“You’re going to be like that, are you?”
“Just like that,” Locke snapped.
“I might talk with you again if we went some place where I was certain that I could talk without too many people listening,” Mason remarked.
“You’d have to make better talk than you did the last time,” said Locke, “or I wouldn’t be interested in leaving.”
“Well, we might take a stroll, Locke, and see if we could come to some terms.”
“Why not talk here?”
“You know the way I feel about this place,” Mason told him. “It makes me uneasy, and I don’t talk well when I’m uneasy.”
Locke hesitated for a minute, finally said, “Well, I won’t give you over fifteen minutes. You’ve got to talk turkey this time.”
“I can talk turkey,” Mason remarked.
“Well, I’m always willing to take a chance,” Locke said.
He got his hat and went down to the street with Mason.
“Suppose we get a cab and ride around until we find some place that looks good, where we can talk,” said Locke.
“Well, let’s walk down the block here, and around the corner. I want to be sure that we get a taxi that isn’t planted,” Mason said.