Страница 26 из 47
"Going to buy me a drink?" Drake asked.
"What do you want?"
"Scotch and soda, if you've got it. And, just to show you I'm a good scout, I'll buy a bottle of Scotch and bring it up the next time I come. It'll be on the expense account as entertainment, and neither Perry nor his client will know who got it."
"Swell," she told him, and went to the ice box, brought out ice cubes, Scotch and soda, poured two drinks and clicked glasses with the detective.
"Confusion to our enemies," she toasted.
Drake gulped down three big swallows of the light amber drink. "You don't need to wish any confusion on them. The whole case is worse than a jigsaw puzzle." He slipped his arm around her waist and said, "Gee, Della, you're a good kid! I wish I could get someone who had just one percent as much loyalty for me as you have for Perry. How does he work it?"
Della laughed. "Take your arm away, Paul. Experience has taught me that when a man sticks around my apartment about daylight, drinking Scotch and soda and talking about my wonderful loyalty, he's getting ready to go out of control."
Drake sighed. "I see you're a good judge of character as well as a darned efficient secretary. Going to kiss me good-by when I leave, Della?"
"No. If I did you wouldn't leave."
"Well," Drake said, "there's no harm in asking. I'll drop in at the office later on and give you all the dirt I can dig up. So long, Della, and thanks for the drink."
"Don't forget that bottle of Scotch," she told him as she closed the door behind him.
Perry Mason stepped out from behind the screen where he had been sitting. "The big palooka, trying to kiss my secretary! Where the hell does he get that nerve?"
Della Street laughed at him. "If you're going to spy on my unguarded moments you'll hear a lot worse than that. He was positively platonic."
"And padding his expense account," Mason gri
CHAPTER 10
PERRY MASON was sleeping soundly when Della Street pulled up the shades and let sunshine filter into the apartment. She was trimly dressed in a neat-fitting gray tailored suit, as freshly radiant as though she had been in bed by nine o'clock.
"Hi, Chief," she said, "I hate to do this, but it's necessary."
Mason muttered a mumbling protest in a voice which was thick with sleep.
"Hurry up," she said, "I have to get to the office, because I'm working for a slave driver who insists on my being there by nine-thirty every morning and prefers to have me there to open the mail at nine o'clock."
Mason opened his eyes, blinked in protest against the sunlight and said, "Fire the boss, Della, and get a new one. Why not work for me? I'll let you stay in bed until noon every day."
"Well," she said slowly, as though deliberating his proposal, "I should give the other boss notice, shouldn't I?"
"To hell with the notice," Mason said sleepily, "give him two weeks' salary. And how about my breakfast?"
"All laid out on the table for you," she said. "Coffee in the percolator, orange juice in the ice box, eggs all ready to drop in the boiling water that's on the stove, and a plate of bread by the electric toaster, plenty of butter, strawberry jam and broiled bacon being kept warm in the oven. I let you sleep just as long as I dared, Chief."
Mason sat up in bed, rumpled his hair with his fingers and said, "Young woman, you're begging the question. How about quitting your other boss and going to work for me?"
"I'd have to get in touch with him first," she said, "and no one knows where he is."
He gri
"The newspaper," she said, "with an account of the crime, a diagram, a cross marking the spot, a statement from Perry Mason, the attorney, seems to have disappeared, and an awful wallop right between the eyes: one of Drake's men sold out."
"Give me that paper," Mason commanded.
"Not yet, Chief. You shower, breakfast, and think it over. Don't do anything until you've gone over it carefully. I'm going to open up the office. If I don't do that, some smart detective may figure I'm with you and start frisking my apartment."
"Who sold out?"
"George Belgrade."
"Whom did he sell us out to?"
"The newspapers. They paid a top price for his story."
"Let's see, Belgrade was the one who knew Duncan, wasn't he?"
"Yes, he was the man who was shadowing Sylvia Oxman. He sure put both of you in a sweet spot. She was in those offices when you went in, and she came out before you did. Therefore, she must have been in there either when the murder was committed, after it was committed, or before it was committed."
He gri
"No," Della Street said, "I'm serious, Chief. This is the way the newspaper has doped it out: If she went in there after the murder was committed, there would have been no reason for you to have protected her. If she was in there while the murder was being committed, she must have done the killing. If she left before the murder was committed, you must have done it.
"Belgrade admits he was hired as a detective by Paul Drake, that he knows Paul Drake does your work, and thinks he was working for you on this case; that you apparently were representing Sylvia Oxman because you're trying to cover up for her. The newspaper's dishing out a lot of dirt, and it's putting you in an awful spot.
"Now, here's something else: the eight-thirty Newspaper-of-the-Air a
Mason flung his legs out of bed and made a grab for the newspaper.
She tossed him the paper and said, "That isn't in the newspaper. It came over the radio as a news flash."
"How do they know she committed suicide?"
"They found her fur coat wrapped around the anchor chain of the gambling ship when it came daylight. Her name was in the coat, and it's been identified by some of her friends."
Mason laughed. "I know the answer to that. It isn't suicide."
"Okay, Chief, have breakfast and read the paper. I'm going up to the office and go through the motions of frantically wondering where you are. Now I won't dare to come back here before five o'clock tonight. You may want to get in touch with me in the meantime. If you want to give me any instructions, you can telephone Paul Drake and leave the message with him. He'll see that I get it. I've brought in my portable radio. There's a card with station numbers and the hours of news broadcasts beside it."
"What time is it?" Mason asked.
"Twenty minutes to nine. I want to be up at the office early so I can answer questions about you."
He nodded and said, "Where's the breakfast, Della, in your apartment or here?"
"Here," she told him. "I brought supplies over from my place. You lock the co
"Okay, Della," he told her, drawing up his feet to sit cross-legged on the bed while he spread the newspaper open.
"Go on and get your breakfast," she told him. "You'll probably want to explode into some action, and you'll need food in your stomach. You can read while you're eating. I'm on my way. Toodle-oo." She blew him a saucy kiss and gently closed the co