Click below on the title of the Novel of your choice to go directly to its synopsis.

Della Street	Bisnaga Motel manager	Selwig Hedrick
Perry Mason	Belle Freeman	Weston Hale
George (Keswick) Latty	Palm Court Motel manager, Miss Chester	Elmore's Massachusetts doctor
Linda Calhoun	Palm Court maid	Ronley Andover
Aunt Lorraine Elmore	Man in pyjamas	Henrey T Jasper
Montrose Dewitt	Duncan Crowder	Miss Selma
Paul Drake	Reporter	Drake's switchboard operator
Howland Brent	Dr Kettle	D A Baldwin Marshall
Pilot	Yuma officer	Yuma reporters & photographers
Millicent Ostrander	Yuma coroner	Judge Horatio Manly
Yuma operatives	Belle Freeman's detective	Courtroom spectators
Yuma restaurant cashier	Yuma coroner's office boy	Yuma county surveyor
Yuma waitress	Yuma artist	Hartwell Alvin

"The archenemy of the murderer is the autopsy" states Erle Stanley Gardner in his Foreword. The number of official autopsies performed in Mexico City is approximately equal to those performed in New York City. Thus, Erle Stanley Gardner dedicates this novel to Dr Manuel Merino Alcántara, Professor of Legal Medicine at the National University of Mexico Medical Schoo an editor of El Medico, the Mexican equivalent of the American Medical Association's Journal.

1.	Della Street tells Perry Mason that a pair of lovebirds are in the reception room, George Latty and Linda Calhoun, from Massachusetts on their first visit to California. They think that Linda's aunt, Lorraine Elmore, is going to be murdered by Montrose Dewitt. Linda is helping put George through law school. They are in love but, with the arrogance of youth, think their aunt shouldn't be. Aunt Elmore wrote a letter to an editor and it was published and Dewitt wrote her, and so on. She got a blood test, took thirty-five thousand dollars in cash, and headed to California. Mason says they need nothing more than a good detective, and he brings in Paul Drake.
2.	Howland Brent has flown in from Boston. He's Lorraine Elmore's financial advisor, with full power of attorney. He's worried about Lorraine's recent actions, including a major withdrawal from her account.
3.	Drake reports that Dewitt closed out his account to the tune of fifteen thousand dollars. He and a good-looking woman have driven out of town in a car with a Massachusetts license plate. Dewitt is apparently a manufacturer's agent who goes on selling trips. There was not single fingerprint in his apartment! He'd sold his five-year old car, and there wasn't a single latent in it, either. In thirteen months, the car was driven a little over eighteen hundred miles. Mason starts ordering Drake to do this and that, but Drake puts on the brakes, saying it is his job to find Dewitt. He is seconded by Della that Lorraine would go to a beauty parlor before taking off, and that way they can find what she is doing. Mason admits he was irritated at George Latty's taking Linda's money, to go through school, and to fly to California to hold her hand. Della corrects; "She was holding his hand." Drake gets a report; Dewitt and Elmore are on the way to Yuma to get married.
4.	Flying over the Imperial Valley, Mason, Drake and Street are careful not to give the pilot too much information. Mason has Dewitt's check for one hundred fifty dollars, for which no funds were available. At Yuma they are met by a detective who says that Dewitt has not reached the California-Arizona border yet. At the border, they wait. Eventually George Latty shows up! Mason suggests that maybe he is working with the con artist, but Latty says he's only trying to prevent a murder. He says he caught up with the couple, had to play cat-and-mouse, lost them when trying to get gas. Mason gives him twenty dollars, sends him to the Bisnaga Motel in Yuma. The trio go to dinner, and Drake instructs the cashier on who they are. A waitress gets an order of lobster cocktails, medium rare steaks and coffee. The salads get Thousand Island dressing. Drake is certain the phone call will come before the steaks, and he is right, but it is not urgent. The agent thinks he saw Latty driving back to California. After dinner, Mason calls the Bisnaga Motel, and is told by the manager that there is no George Latty registered. At the Bisnaga, Mason phones Linda, lets her know she'll only pay Drake for two days, he will, in "the better administration of justice," contribute the remainder. Belle Freeman is with Linda; she is Dewitt's previous fiance, and wants three thousand dollars back. A bit later, Linda calls. She's heard from Aunt Lorraine, who is no longer angry, and would see her the next afternoon. She's at the Palm Court in Calexico. Also, she heard from George, and wired him some money. Mason decides to follow the trail.
5.	At the Palm Court Motel the manager, skeptical, rents Mason and Street two units. Dewitt is in 14,Elmore in 16. Then knock on 16, get no answer. No answer at 14, either. They go to a phone booth, call Drake, tell him to fly down in the morning. Mason stays up to 3:30 awaiting anyone. At 6:30 Della awakens him. George Latty drives in, and they greet him. He admits to having arrived the previous evening. He got the unit next them, 12. He could overhear them, as the walls are thin. He tries to hire Mason, but the attorney tells him that he's "excess baggage . . . a barnacle, a sponge, a parasite. . . a green adolescent trying to act like a man." Mason calls Linda, tells him her boy friend has loused things up, he's not on the way home, but is at the Palm Court. A scream. A maid screaming. Mason takes the key she left in 14 and goes to 16. It is a mess. Then in 14 they find a dead man. A man in pyjamas wonders what the noise is about. Mason returns to his room, tells Linda that Dewitt is dead, her aunt missing. He heads to 16 in time to catch Lorraine Elmore.
6.	Mrs Elmore is near hysteria, says enemies have murdered Montrose. Her description of someone following them fits the events admitted by Latty, but ending up on a side road where Montrose got out of their car and was clubbed to death. The masked man made her drive ahead of him, then he turned and drove away. She got bogged down in sand. She then walked back to the motel. Mason has seen the body, and it has no club marks. He tells Della to get local lawyer Duncan Crowder to join them. He calls Linda, who insists her aunt wouldn't lie. He gets Linda's permission to represent her aunt, not her or George. He gives up the phone booth to a reporter with a rush story. Duncan Crowder, Junior, arrives, explains that his dad is in the hospital. Mason learns that the son is a quick learner, smart. Crowder gets a local doctor to help out, Dr Kettle, who agrees that Mrs Elmore needs total rest for twenty-four hours. Crowder goes over to the murder room to look for the money that she had, finds only coins under a cushion where she said she'd hidden it. Howland Brent shows up, and Mason sends Crowder to investigate. Brent was in unit 11, next Mason. Drake shows up in a cab, and Mason joins him.
7.	They go to the airport. Mason suggests he wants to look at some land for possible purchase, but he is, of course, looking for Elmore's marooned auto. They return to the airport, drive out to the car. Inside it is a green capsule, a barbiturate, one of the hypnotics, sometimes used as a truth serum. The trunk is empty. Mason phones a Yuma officer about the car.
8.	Gertie puts through Drake's call from Yuma. The man died of natural causes, or so the coroner ha said. Linda is in town, but Latty has skipped. Mason tells Drake to rent all the rooms, look for the missing thirty-five thousand dollars. Mason phones Crowder to suggest that barbiturates might have caused Elmore to imagine things. Belle Freeman comes to Mason. She just wants her money back, her entire inheritance that he took from her. Mason informs her Dewitt is dead. She says she met him through a letter she wrote a newspaper. He'd just returned from a year in Mexico, but couldn't speak Spanish. She hired a detective, who found nothing. She'd been a bachelor girl whose first man was killed. She doesn't want publicity and hopes Mason will keep her out of things. Mason suggests to Della that Dewitt must have written lots of letters, and their must have been "boy friends who wouldn't meekly surrender their women to some character who had a dashing manner, a black eye patch, and a mysterious background." So how could he completely disappear. Maybe he wore the eye patch only during swindles. So get Paul Drake to get someone to sketch Dewitt's glass eye. But the detective calls Mason, who learns that a Yuma coroner's office boy took a nip from Dewitt's whiskey bottle and ended up in the hospital. Mason gives instruction regarding the glass eye, learns that the car is still abandoned.
9.	Drake is back in LA. He tells Mason that the Yuma coroner is going to run for office so, when he got wind of the glass eye bit, he got the reporters in. But an artist has sketched the eye. Drake learns by phone that a Selwig Hedrick has identified the eye as belonging to Weston Hale. Crowder phones in. The locals found a capsule of Somniferal in the car and a bottle for same with hundred capsule capacity in Elmore's cabin. Her doctor in Massachusetts said she had extra pills because she'd worry too much if she didn't have enough. Mason suggests that Elmore be allowed to speak when she wakes up but only after Dr Kettle states that what she says cannot be trusted!
10.	Drake and Mason go to Hale's apartment. It is a double, and Ronley Andover, the sharer, is apparently suffering the flu. He doesn't recognize the name Dewitt, nor that Hale had anything but good eyes. Learning that Hale has a typewriter, and used it often, they want to investigate his room, but Andover, learning of Dewitt's death, says no.
11.	The two go to Hale's employer, Henrey T Jasper, who thinks Hale is in Santa Barbara. He's a good worker, especially with detail. Miss Selma suggests, when Mason asks about a glass eye, that maybe he does have one, since he doesn't shift his eyes in conversation, but turns his whole head from person to person. Back at Drake's office, his switchboard operator has him call Della. She tips off her boss that the Yuma District Attorney, Baldwin Marshall, is awaiting him, with George Latty. Mason tells Della to follow his lead. Marshall strides out to Mason purposefully. Back and forth, they go one up until Marshall admits that, if necessary, he'll book Mrs Elmore for murder and he can throw the book at Mason if he needs to. Mason contacts Crowder, asks who could be the leak, tells him to rent units seven and nine and see how much could be heard between them. When Crowder reports, it is to say the motel has been condemned, and many of the units are to be torn down or they must be repaired, for the double units have walls that are like paper. Mason now instructs him to have Elmore refuse to say anything.
12.	Morning at the office. Della tells Perry that Crowder awaits his call, and Linda wants to know where her boy friend is. Crowder reports that the case is being tried in the papers. Marshall is hinting that Elmore is a dope fiend. Ninety of her capsules are unaccounted for. The newspapers haven't mentioned any large sum of money. Mason tells Crowder to ring up the Boston doctor and explain how to handle the case. Paul joins them with his report. Howland Brent has lived it up on Las Vegas, plunging, winning a lot, quitting cold as soon as he started losing. The D A did figure eights after he left with Latty, but Drake was using an electronic device. He took Latty to Tijuana, where the county is paying his room and board and then some. Crowder phones in; it is murder, with an ice pick, from Elmore's cabin, found in her car!
13.	Mason, Street and Drake are met at the Imperial County airport by Linda Calhoun and Duncan Crowder. Mason hides his knowledge of Latty's location. Linda and Duncan are now on a first-name basis. Linda phones Marshall, asks if he knows where Latty is, and Marshall sidesteps the question adroitly, yet giving Mason a way to make him look foolish. Mason then banters with reporters, attacking rumors. Drake has heard from his operatives, and they report that Latty is living it up in Tijuana.
14.	Judge Horatio D Manly calls the packed courtroom to order and warns spectators to maintain proper decorum. Mason immediately moves to find where Latty is by stating the D A is concealing the witness. The D A says he only didn't know where Latty was "at the moment," which gets the judge annoyed over technicalities. The D A didn't want the witness tampered with, given his romantic attachment to the defendant's niece. Mason catches him on this admission that the witness is too weak to stand interrogation without changing his testimony. Marshall is forced to assure the Court Latty will be called. The Yuma county surveyor introduces various diagrams and maps. The sheriff tells of finding the car with the capsule which he produces and states contains Somniferal. He found the container in the defendant's handbag, and talked with the defendant's Boston physician who dispensed the prescription for the unusually large number of capsules.. Crowder handles the cross-examination. He leads the sheriff, step-by-step, from knowing it was Somniferal from the prescription to not having tested the capsule and only knowing its color. All this is hearsay, and the judge upholds the objection to its introduction. Crowder is only too willing to have the doctor and the druggist flown out to California to testify! Hartwell Alvin of the Calexico police is called. Chief Alvin testifies to finding the body, presents photographs, finding the car, again presents photographs, finding the capsule and the ice pick and the prescription bottle. Crowder asks if they looked for fingerprints. Of course. One set has not been identified. Crowder gets an admission that the condition of the Elmore room could be due to someone putting something into it, rather than rummaging to find and take something out. Ronley Andover identifies the body. Mason asks him how he knew Hale had fifteen thousand dollars. He took the money to the curbside and handed it to Hale as he was driven by in a car driven by the defendant. (That is all Mason needs to ask; on this the solution hinges! ) The coroner, autopsy surgeon and motel manager testify. Finally, George Keswick Latty. His testimony is long, but follows his west coast adventure chronologically. He took various actions based on a meeting with Mason, including following and losing Elmore's car, then catching up with her in Calexico. He took the apartment next Dewitt. There was a small hole in the adjoining door through which he could view Dewitt's room. In his closet he could hear conversation. He heard Lorraine get indignant with Montrose over his dislike of Linda. There was reconciliation, then they drove away. He tried to follow them, made a wrong turn, returned. Later he heard voices, a sleepy Dewitt, a heavy thud. He started to dress, heard a door slam in the adjoining unit, and a car that he couldn't identify driving away. Done with his examination, Marshall states "I can assure you there will be no objections." Of course, he makes them, but, having been given an assurance, Judge Manly considers it a stipulation and overrules all such objections. When did he last see Linda. On the street in Mexicali. Then he phoned her. When he knew she'd be out. So he let his fiance worry for a day or two because the district attorney tole him not to speak to her. He was taken to Tijuana by the D A, who mentioned Mason many times and asked him to amplify his testimony, and gave him money to do so. Yet he had told Mason he was broke, and Linda, and took money from the D A, a hundred and fifty dollars, twice, and bet on the horses, won on Easter Bonnet, and bought a camera for two hundred fifty. Did he tell Customs he had bought a camera. No. Does he know he'll have to pay tax on the money he won? It is 12:15, and the judge wants to adjourn for lunch. Mason asks Lorraine if she went back to the motel room and she asks how could she with her car stuck. She remembers talking about the money before she left, and that she was going to hide it in the overstuffed chair.
15.	Over lunch Drake says Marshall is ready to file a defamation of character suit if Mason intimates there was bribery of a witness. Drake thinks the motive is jealousy, disillusionment, frustrated rage, remembers Belle Freeman called Lorraine. Mason wonders about Brent plunging, winning, and quitting, Latty making a beeline for the race track. No, he bet with a bookie. Brent was apparently worried at the business he'd lose when Lorraine got married and had her husband act for her. Drake gets news; Easter Bonnet lost.
16.	Mason asks Latty how much he has spent and Latty cannot be sure. He has a ticket to go back to Boston as soon as his testimony is over, paid for by Marshall. Mason suggests the DA was trying to first keep the witness in isolation, then out of the court's jurisdiction. So, the witness has gotten money from somewhere. Perhaps the horses, Easter Bonnet? Yes, a rather large amount. "That house lost." Now Mason points out how he "had been dependent upon friends for money . . . had been placed in the embarrassing and humiliating position of having to ask your fiancée for money . . ." So he took the fifty thousand dollars from Lorraine's room. When Mason says he'll go so far as a court order to open his baggage to see how much money Latty has, the witness admits Mason is right, but he is not a murderer. The D A wants a continuance, but Mason will agree only if Mrs Elmore is released on her own recognizance. Marshall objects, so thee is no continuance, only a fifteen minute-recess. As Linda tells Duncan how foolish she was, photographers grab good pictures. Then they huddle. Mason says Hale intended to have Dewitt disappear. There was an accomplice who used a blackened rolled-up newspaper to beat Dewitt. The accomplice then decided he could have the fifty thousand for himself. Now Mason asks to recall Andover and confronts him with where he was the night of the murder. He says he never left Los Angeles. Then "how did it happen that your fingerprint was one of the unidentified fingerprints found in the Palm Court Motel in Calexico?" He is trapped, tries to escape, is followed by a gun-totting sheriff. Judge Manly releases the defendant on her own recognizance, and Marshall surrenders with "the case is dismissed."
17.	Andover was the accomplice. Mason figured it out when the man didn't comment on the eye patch on Hale's face when the money was handed over as he was driven by. Had he been telling the truth, the first thing he would have mentioned was that eye patch. His flu was caused by onions or some such. Lorraine explains Brent's plunging. It was an attempt to recover money he'd taken from her which he knew he'd have to pay back as soon as she got married to cover his tracks. It now becomes apparent that Duncan's desire to show off before a young woman had to do with Linda, whose face turns red. The phone rings, giving Crowder time to regain his composure. The press wants photos. Mason nods, "Anything you want is okey, Duncan, anything."

Perry Mason	Pilot	Connely Maynard
Della Street	Pilot's wife	Hamilton Burger
Adelle Sterling Hastings	Simley Beason	Judge Quincy L Fallon
Gertie	Chamber of Commerce woman	Morton Ellis
Huntley L Banner	Lt Tragg	Surveyor
Garvin S Hastings	Six women in dark glasses	Autopsy Surgeon
Elvina Mitchell	Hamilton Burger	Waiter
Paul Drake	Minerva Shelton (Hastings)	Helen Drexel
Hamburger place person	. . . Sidney Bell	Policewoman
Parking lot attendant	Maude Crump	Courtroom spectators
Melinda Finch	Rosalie Blackburn	Arthur Cole Caldwell
Harley C Drexel

Erle Stanley Gardner dedicated The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink to Russell S Fisher, M D, Chief Medical Examiner of Maryland. Here he again dedicates a novel to Dr Fisher who has brought about high efficiency to the urban area of Baltimore where two of three deaths are autopsied, versus 6%of such deaths in Pittsburgh, a similar-sized city.

This mystery would never have been good for television. It is even too complicated for the reader to be with Mason as he solves the murder, for a bit of information he needs is not given to us until the murder is exposed. The reader should, however, know one major part of the puzzle when Gertie is in the courtroom.

1.	Perry Mason returns to his office to find a puzzled Della Street. While he was out, Adelle Hastings came into the office, frantic to obtain the services of Mason. Gertie got her name, nothing more. Della goes for the mail, returns with a purse in which they find a Smith& Wesson .38-caliber revolver, four loaded shells, two empty cartridge cases, recently fired. They also find $3,117.43. Attorney Huntley L Banner is on the phone, thinking Mason is Adelle's attorney in divorce action against husband Garvin S Hastings. Mason goes to Banner, is met by secretary Elvina Mitchell. Banner says he will advise his client to make a very fair settlement, and there is no community property worth discussing. Mason returns to his office, expecting a call from Hastings before his five o'clock closing.
2.	The call doesn't come. So Mason calls in Paul Drake, has him inspect the parking lot for Nevada license plates. Della calls the hamburger place and orders dinner for pick-up. Drake returns having spoken to the parking lot attendant and having found two Nevada plates.
3.	From the airport Mason gets Drake's report. The cars are registered to Melinda Finch of Las Vegas and Harley C Drexel of Carson City. A pilot with wife who doesn't like him spending time in Nevada flies them to Las Vegas. They find that one of the keys from Adelle's purse gets them into the apartment where they are accosted by Adelle coming out of the shower. She denies coming to Mason's office, says she was in Los Angeles where she stayed overnight at her husbands after receiving a satisfactory offer of settlement. She only recently discovered her purse was missing. When she goes for her gun, that is missing. Mason thinks it is an act. She can't believe that two shots were fired from her gun, given her by her husband. She calls her husband's office manager, Simley Beason, who says her husband went out of town. Mason fails to convince her to return to Los Angeles and check on her husband.
4.	The pilot is surprised, and pleased, when Mason and Street return. On the trip back he mentions a woman from the Chamber of Commerce checking passengers. Mason gets Drakes report on Finch and Drexel.
5.	Morning. Adelle phones in, in town, worried. He invites her up, via his private entry, then calls Drake to get a half dozen women Adelle's size and give them big, dark glasses, and await his signal to send them over. She has new dark glasses, a type she buys that cost ten dollars, including tax. She's talked with Simley, and her husband isn't around. Paul is having trouble getting girls. Mason calls Lt Tragg, tells him he has Adelle Sterling Hastings in his office. Her purse was stolen the previous day and her gun with it. Paul now has six women, and dark glasses. A call from Beason informs them that Hastings is dead, two bullet holes in his head. Then Banner calls, and Mason tells him to raise his offer. Banner says he'll check with his client. When he calls back, he says he has talked with Hastings, who has doubled his offer. Mason tells him his client has been dead for more than twenty-four hours. Tragg bursts in. Tragg wants Gertie to identify Adelle. Mason has her put on her dark glasses while Della, unnoticed by Tragg, dials Drake. They go into the hall, where six women with dark glasses are at the office door. The first enters as Adelle mingles with the crowd. Gertie tells the first she left her purse . . . Tragg is outraged at how he's been outfoxed. He takes Adelle out of the line and they go back into Mason's office. The gun is not in Mason's drawer. Adelle explains her staying overnight, and Banner's interference in her marriage. She will explain no more. She explains to Mason that anyone in the office could have gotten the key to the house and made a copy. His previous marriage to Minerva Shelton, a selfish, cold-blooded, scheming, grasping, cunning, two-faced--, broke up nastily. Garvin was going to change his will, but she doesn't know if he has. Garvin was fifteen years older than she, and she was his confidential secretary. Her sympathy for him was misinterpreted. She promises not to leave town.
6.	Mason gets Drake to check the register of night visitors. He finds that a Sidney Bell signed in to come to the detective's office. Maude Crump was cleaning Mason's office when a man arrived at the time Bell signed in. He went directly for what he wanted. Mason phones Simley Beason to come to his office. When Beason doesn't ask where it is, Mason is certain he is Bell.
7.	Beason tells Mason what he knows about Minerva and Adelle, but is somewhat reticent. Mason has Mrs Crump come in, and she immediately identifies Beason as "Mr Mason," since she's never seen Mason before. This has Beason cornered. Beason is in love with Adelle, but cannot compete with five million dollars. He has the gun, wrapped in paper and sealed, in the bottom of his golf bag. He asks Rosalie Blackburn to get the package and bring it to Mason. Huntley Banner calls to say he is representing Minerva, and remind Mason that a murder(ess) cannot inherit. Beason warns Mason that the business manager, Connely Maynard, is a thrusting, pushing, aggressive type, and Elvina Mitchell, Banner's secretary is his close friend. Mason tells Della to get papers ready for signing by Adelle that will put her in charge of the estate.
8.	Beason advises Mason that "Mrs" Rosalie Blackburn is divorced. Her husband failed to come home one night, and about a year ago she went to Carson City to get legally divorced. She comes in with the package, which is ripped open. Mason notes that amino acid allow good prints to be developed even off paper, and takes the gun out with a pencil, tells Della to call Lt Tragg to get the "misplaced" gun.
9.	Hamilton Burger storms into Mason's office, threatens Mason with being an accessory to murder, believes the gun has been switched. Checking the number, Tragg says this is the first gun Hastings bought, not the second he gave his wife. Burger's threats force Mason to state how the gun was removed from his office by Beason. Burger renews his threat of putting Mason in San Quentin.
10.	At the Hastings office, Burger hears the story from Maynard, Beason and Blackburn but no one volunteers information. Burger warns them this is murder. Huntley Banner arrives with Minerva Shelton Hastings who claims to have never divorced Garvin and accordingly she is now the boss, and orders Beason to leave. When Mason counters that she has not been appointed executrix, she orders Maynard to fire Beason. Mason says she is estopped from falsifying her own utterances since she led Garvin to believe he was divorced. Burger is dumbfounded.
11.	Mason suggests to Street that one of Garvin's guns might have been given to Minerva. Banner phones, says he's sending his secretary, Elvina Mitchell, over with a photostat of the will he's filed in probate. Mason feels Banner is overdoing things to get a settlement, because he's hiding something. Banner arrives, saying Elvina was afraid of a cross examination, so chickened out. He admits Minerva might have committed fraud against Garvin, but not Adelle. She's claiming the estate under terms of a will that has never been changed, witnessed by himself and Elvina. He thinks she intended to get a divorce but, while living in Carson City, got angry over Adelle's actions and changed plans. There was no property settlement. He thinks Garvin knew something damaging in Minerva's background, thus got her to settle. Tragg bursts in with the news he wants to arrest Adelle, for they found a woman's fingerprint on the gun, a clear one left by someone holding candy.
12.	Judge Quincy L Fallon calls the court to order. Morton Ellis is the trial attorney. Fallon cautions both attorneys not to bring the issue of probate of the estate into the proceedings. A surveyor and an autopsy surgeon testify. Then Lt Tragg relates his conversations with Mason which regard the gun, that eventually he got the gun and found Adelle's fingerprint on it. Mason asks the right of voir dire, and gets Tragg to admit the fingerprint could have been placed on the gun at almost any time, such as the previous Christmas. Simley Beason is evasive, refusing to answer many questions because they might incriminate him. Mason and Ellis argue over identification of the gun, Mason pointing out, and Beason agreeing, that he couldn't know if the gun he took from Mason's office was the one brought to him by Rosalie Blackburn. Ellis asks if he saw the gun in a woman's handbag. He answers "Mrs Hastings." It could have been the same gun says Ellis, or a different one, suggests Mason. Ellis pursues, but it is Mason who asks if the gun was her property, she carried it and knew how to use it, and he, Beason, knew this from conversations with Mrs Hastings. Yes. Then Mason asks if he means Adelle Sterling Hastings. No, Minerva Shelton Hastings. Ellis now thinks he has been tricked. Of course, he has, and the judge knows it, but the examination was correct. When the court adjourns for lunch, Mason asks Beason what he was afraid of, what question did the deputy district attorney not ask about which he was worried. Beason refuses an answer.
13.	Drake, Mason and Street are at their favorite French restaurant. Drake reports that Drexel is a hard-working contractor with a daughter in college back east. He rents a bungalow at the back of his own house. Minerva stayed there during the summer when Helen, the daughter, would have been home. Mason gets his theory of the crime just as the waiter delivers their lunch.
14.	A police woman brings Adelle into court, and Mason asks her where she was the day of the crime. She refuses, but he catches her with a direct, was it with Beason.? Spectators and the attorneys, including Hamilton Burger who has joined the prosecution, rise for the judge. Burger recalls Beason, forces him to admit he was having early morning breakfasts with the defendant. She had found a property in Ventura she wanted to buy, but didn't have the money. Then, the morning of the murder, she had come up with the money. Banner admits he did prepare a will, actually several for Garvin kept changing the contents as he realized his marriage to Adelle wasn't working. Mason asks him why his secretary, Elvina Mitchell, the other witness is not in court. Mason demands that, as part of his voir dire, she be brought to court, or he cannot allow the will to be entered as evidence. Banner says she is involved in important business and cannot leave the office. Judge Fallon says he's completed his testimony and can cover the office while Mitchell is in court. Court adjourns. Drake asks Mason why Adelle might have flown to Las Vegas, since she didn't head there until after she'd gone to Ventura. He says the Chamber of Commerce survey was legitimate. Arthur Cole Caldwell, a charter pilot, will testify that he took a woman in dark glasses to Las Vegas at 5:30, returned an hour later. Mason realizes he couldn't have been far behind. Helen Drexel is a friend of Connely Maynard, and he arranged with Elvina Mitchell to keep the cottage filled. This means Minerva also was involved with Helen, Elvina, and Huntley Banner. The friendship is between Helen Drexel and Elvina Mitchell, who have coffee when Helen is in town.
15.	Hamilton Burger requests that the defendant put on dark glasses, so a witness saw the defendant in dark glasses. Mason agrees only if all witnesses in the courtroom also wear dark glasses. Elvina Mitchell has been delayed, so he puts on Arthur Cole Caldwell, subject to his being removed the instant Mitchell is in the room. He testifies to taking a woman wearing dark glasses to Las Vegas. Elvina arrives and is put on the stand immediately. She testifies to being a witness to the will. Mason asks her to put on a pair of dark glasses. She resists, but the judge and Burger get her to do so. She says she objects to being ordered to wear them, so Mason tells her to give them to his receptionist. She goes directly to Gertie and gives her the glasses (Mason had earlier instructed Drake to have her sit next the jury box), then hurries to the back of the courtroom. Caldwell returns to the stand and says the defendant "has a very striking resemblance to the person who chartered" his plane. But Mason gets him to admit that he cannot be certain it is the same person. Mason asks to ask Miss Mitchell another question. Judge Fallon sends the bailiff after her. Mason whispers to the witness if she wore the glasses coming and going. Yes. Did Banner's secretary look like the passenger? Yes, and her voice was familiar. The bailiff returns empty-handed.
16.	Hamilton Burger tries to explain everything as razzle-dazzle. Mason explains. If his client is innocent, Garvin Hastings had to be killed after she left in the morning, probably between six and eight. The handbag was left in his office during noon hour. The person who chartered the plane took off at five-thirty. Most law offices close at four-thirty. So we have three time periods for someone who couldn't be absent from an office. There are two guns. The murder was committed with the older gun which was in Adelle's purse. Someone had to get to her apartment and dispose of her gun, the newer gun, before the police got there. The person put two bullets into Hastings, then put the purse in my office when the receptionist would swear it was Adelle Hastings. The person who left the bag had to be a woman, but the murder could have been a man. When Banner testified to the will, he began to wonder why Elvina didn't show up, in court or to bring him the will. When Elvina took the dark glasses directly to Gertie, he knew it was her. He doesn't know who the murder is, but thinks Mitchell will give them the answer. Burger is unconvinced, so the judge orders Tragg to get Minerva Hastings and Elvina Mitchell for interrogation.
17.	Mason, Tragg, Burger and Adelle Hastings meet in Judge Fallon's chambers. Tragg gives the story. Elvina is hopelessly head-over-heels in love with Connely Maynard and thinks he's gotten short shrift as Beason's star grows. Minerva sympathized with Elvina, and told her that when Garvin died, she'd head the business and Maynard would become chief executive. But Maynard had embezzled from the company, and Beason was getting close to the proof. (It is the bit about embezzlement that the reader needs to know to solve the crime, but it is only given here.) Elvina followed Adelle to Ventura, found an opportunity to take the bag and get duplicate keys to the apartment. Maynard killed Hastings to his embezzlement would not be discovered, then had Elvina take care of the rest which, of course, had to be done out of office hours. Banner, surprise, is clean. Elvina has admitted that a holographic will was written favoring Adelle, but she destroyed it. The will can still be valid. Judge Fallon says he's going into court and he expects Burger to dismiss the case against Adelle, who kisses Mason.

Della Street	Adelle Chester	Officers and firemen
Horace Warren	Rosalie Harvey	Lieutenant Tragg
Perry Mason	Collister Damon Gideon	Taxicab driver
Paul Drake	Drake's receptionist	Judge Romney Saxton
Lorna Warren	Rough shadow, 5 smooth shadows	Hamilton Burger
Judson Olney	Drakes two shadows	Tarleton Ladd
Warren's secretary	Helicopter pilot	Sergeant Holcomb
Lorna's banker	Used car dealer	Drummond Dixon
Gertie	Farley Fulton	Alphaeus Randolph
Warren's party goers	Steven Hooks	Alexander Redfield
Drake's caterers	Drew Kearny	Power company man
George P Barrington	Lou Pitman	Plain-clothes men

Dr Richard Ford is mentioned in several of Erle Stanley Gardner's Forewords. Here he is mentioned because he trained Dr Shigeo Ogata, to whom this Perry Mason novel is dedicated. Gardner here gives an example of what in formation a detailed autopsy can provide. A woman who was initially thought to have committed suicide had nothing on her to identify who she was. Dr Ogata determined her life style and personality so completely and accurately and in such detail that persons who had employed her could identify her from his published description.

Keep in mind that, in California, an accomplice to murder is as guilty as the murder himself.

1.	Della Street announces that Horace Warren is impatiently waiting in the outer office. He is willing to pay five hundred dollars to have Perry Mason attend a buffet dinner. That interests Mason. Warren wants Mason to judge character. He wants a detective agency -- Mason recommends Paul Drake -- to check a finger print. He and his wife, Lorna Warren, are giving a party and Mason will come as guest of the manager of his enterprises, Judson Olney. Mason points out the difficulties of identifying a single fingerprint, then suggests that Paul Drake come with a caterer. All glasses, china, silverware, crystal will be provided and, instead of being taken to be washed, will be fingerprinted. It will be expensive, but Warren says cost, as long as it is only the going rate, is no problem. Mason wants to know how to contact him; he has a personal secretary but is always busy. Mason is to protect his wife at any cost from a blackmailer. Lorna may have something shady in her background, but he doesn't want to know. According to her banker, she's withdrawn forty-seven dollars recently, and it is locked in a suitcase in her bedroom. It is arranged that Olney will invite his old friend, Della Street, and Mason will escort her. Della goes to the hairdresser for the works, on the expense account.
2.	No sooner does Della return, radiant, than Judson Olney is in the office. He is concerned. He has also made up a story of knowing Della as a high school sweetheart. Mason doesn't like the story, so he comes up with having met her on a Caribbean cruise a few years earlier. He thinks Lorna a real sweetheart, wonders why Mason is to be at the buffet, but Mason reassures him that his involvement has nothing to do that could be against Lorna's best interests.
3.	Mason and Street are met by Olney who introduces them to Lorna and Horace. The host, faking realization of who his guest is, goes to his P A system and announces to the guests that the famous Perry Mason has arrived with a friend of Judson Olney, Della Street. Drake's caterers have provided excellent food and champagne. Mason is drawn to a private meeting with Warren, who takes him into his wife's room. The suitcase is found to be filled with newspaper, not bills. As they leave, Lorna comes into the room, and Horace has difficulty explaining that he is just giving Mason a tour. As they rejoin the party, Mason notices George P Barrington admiring Della.
4.	At ten o'clock, Mason rescues Della and take their leave. Adelle Chester, Barrington's date, flashes malevolent hatred towards Della, who stole the interest of her date. Rosalie Harvey, Olney's devoted secretary, who has idolized her boss for years and gone unnoticed, was taking undue notice in Della's being there with Perry Mason. The attorney mentions the missing money. Drake joins them at the office, reports the fingerprint is that of Lorna Warren.
5.	Lorna Warren was Margaret Lorna Neely, and was the partner of Collister Damon Gideon in mail fraud of, you guessed it, forty-seven thousand dollars. She was acquitted, he not, and the FBI are still trying to get the money. He claims his safe, with the money, was burglarized, and evidence indicates he is right. He was let out of prison a few days earlier. Drake is under pressure to tell where Lorna is, but Mason points out she was acquitted, and Gideon has paid his debt. Horace Warren is paying him to protect his wife from herself. So where is the money, and where is Gideon, whom the police must have under surveillance?
6.	Collister Damon Gideon comes to Mason, suggests that Mason might wish to provide him sufficient funds so he could ditch his shadows, both his rough shadows and the smooth ones who take over when he ditches the obvious one. If Mason doesn't, he'll keep coming back to the office, and soon the police will get interested and interrogate the attorney and eventually they will find Lorna Neely and she will be exposed as his corespondent. Mason tells him there are three ways to handle blackmail; 1, pay off. 2, go to the police. 3. Kill the blackmailer.
7.	George Barrington tries to pump Della but she gets Mason to see him as she goes home early. Barrington has gotten a phone call from a woman disguising her voice, and he is worried. He took securities from Lorna, as a personal favor, converted them into twenty-eight thousand cash, when she expected seventeen thousand. Mason says in this he did no wrong, but if he's worried that Horace may sue for divorce because of his being friends with Lorna, then ask Horace.. Mason goes to Drake after the receptionist admits he's in. He instructs Drake to get the police mug shots of Gideon and have a wanted type poster made from it. He's going to use that to frame Gideon for a crime that would send him back to prison.
8.	Paul brings in the police-style sketch, and Della recognizes Gideon. Gideon phones in, says he noticed the extra shadows, and then Mason says he's sending him five hundred dollars. Drake thinks Mason is a fool, soon to be parted from his money, but Mason says you cannot catch a fish without bait.
9.	Next day. Thursday. Nothing, until Paul comes in to say Gideon has faked out his men and the government's. He bought a used car, drove to the airport, asked an attendant to watch it for him as he left it running, went into the airport. While he was there, the smooth shadows placed an electronic bug on the car. But Gideon didn't come back, instead joined a pilot, got in to a helicopter, and took off. The pilot dropped him near bus lines. He called the used car dealer and told him to repossess the car and keep the money. Back at the airport everyone was left cold.
10.	Drake reports that the Pacific Northern Supermarket was robbed of seven thousand dollars the previous night, and the night watchman, Steven Hooks, was injured. Drew Kearny was an eyewitness and, when Farley Fulton, his operative, showed the drawing, Kearny laughed. But when showed the drawing, Hooks said it looked like the robber. Kearny comes to the office, looks at the drawing, sees some semblance, but the mouth is wrong. No, it is not the robber.
11.	Drake phones in to report his men lost Mrs Warren when she made a left turn from the right lane. Then Gideon phones in demanding ten thousand dollars. He gives specific instructions as to time and storeroom Mason is to bring the money, ignoring Mason's statements that he doesn't deal with blackmailer. Mason repeats the three ways to deal with a blackmailer, tells him about the robbery and that he's been identified. Mason tells Della to phone Horace as a reporter wanting an interview. Della returns with the information that he's out until four. A call to Olney, saying she's returning his call. She says the secretary, in acid tones, said he's out until three thirty. Mason figures Mrs Warren is going to see Gideon at two-thirty, Horace at two-forty-five, Olney at three, and himself at three-twenty, getting money from each. He has Della phone a fire alarm at the place Gideon has arranged their meeting, and to have Drake send two operatives.
12.	Mason is greeted outside the storeroom by Lou Pitman, Drake's operative, while firemen and officers surrounded the place. A man was trapped inside the building, says Pitman. Mason bears down on Lieutenant Tragg , warns Warren to say not one word. Warren acknowledges the warning.
13.	Mason tells Della that apparently Warren killed Gideon, and sends her to see Mrs Warren. Horace phones in; he's been charged with murder.
14.	Horace admits to removing the forty-seven thousand dollars from the suitcase, hoping this would get his wife to confide in him, but she went looking instead for another batch of money. He knew of the blackmailing attempt, and of Lorna's being "the innocent tool of a smooth crook." When he got to the storeroom he found a gun on a table, picked it up for possible protection, then walked around the table and found Gideon, dead. He had seen Lorna driving away some five or six blocks from the crime scene, and found one of her suède gloves, which he flushed down the toilet. It is his gun that was on the table!
15.	Mason tips the taxicab driver an extra twenty for getting him to Warren's house faster than the law allows. Della is already there. Mason tells Lorna that her husband has been arrested for the murder of Gideon, and she cannot be forced to testify against her husband. She is tearful over being "completely hypnotized" by a man she thought "was one of the most wonderful men in the world, one of the most wonderful thinkers, a shred businessman, a gentleman, an idealist. a --" Mason is curt, as the doorbell rings. She gave Gideon five thousand, all she could get. Tragg bursts in. Tragg uses the old line, "It would be a lot better for both Mr and Mrs Warren if they'd make a frank statement . . ." Mason advises "No comment."
16.	Drake is scared, knows that District Attorney Hamilton Burger is coming after Mason for confusing the witnesses. Mason says the police do what he did dozens of times a day. Tarleton Ladd, investigator for the D A, comes for Mason.
17.	Burger announces he is holding a formal hearing preparatory to preferring charges before the disciplinary division of the Bar Association. He introduces Sergeant Holcomb and the artist who drew Mason's version of Gideon, Drummond Dixon. Mason says he'll walk out if he cannot cross-examine the witnesses, and won't allow the D A to conduct a star-chamber session. Farley Fulton testifies that he showed the Gideon drawing to witnesses under instructions to try to get them to identify the picture as the man they saw. Mason gets him to state that he didn't bribe or intimidate the witnesses, nor make false statements to them. Drew Kearny relates how Fulton showed him the drawing, how he later went to Drake, was taken to Mason, and how he became confused. Burger terminates the hearing without letting Mason cross-examine this witness.
18.	Mason tells Lorna that Horace knew all along of her indiscretion, but is still in love with her. She says she didn't believe Gideon was a crook, so tried to get forty-seven thousand to stake him when he got out of prison. When she confronted him at the warehouse, she realized he was a brazen, glib-tongued confidence man. She is surprised to learn Gideon was blackmailing her husband. She thinks her husband purchased the gun several years earlier.
19.	Judge Romney Saxton calls the preliminary hearing to order. Hamilton Burger announces that Alphaeus Randolph will assist him. He then gives an opening statement in which he accuses Mason of witness tampering. Mason counters that he's not guilty until proven so. Drew Kearny is called to prove motivation, and he relates his incident with the gunman at the time of the robbery and the subsequent events regarding the drawing of Gideon. Mason balks at stipulation of the sketch as being one of Collister Gideon. Burger tries then to get Kearny to say he saw a photograph of Gideon which looked like the sketch, but again Mason objects. Lt Tragg testifies to finding the body in a section of the storeroom which had been set up as surreptitious living quarters. They found the gun and the murderer, who was hiding in a dark unlit room behind boxes. Ballistics expert Alexander Redfield is replaces Tragg to testify that the murder bullet was, "considering all the factors," fired from the gun already in evidence. Mason notes that this is not the usual way he answers the question. When pressed, Redfield admits he was coached by the district attorney, and, yes, he could not without the fact the gun was found on Warren, say that the bullet was fired from that gun, but only a Smith and Wesson .38 caliber revolver. Tragg is recalled to the witness stand. Mason asks if they searched further, say, for someone who might have been hiding in one of the large boxes. No, they stopped when they found the murderer. Mason demands the electricity be turned on and that a further search be made of the place with the lights on. Judge Saxton gives them until two-thirty to search the storehouse and have Mason return for a hearing on his tampering with witness testimony. Drake is, as always, worried he'll lose his license or worse. Mason asks where Gideon got the money he was using, and tells Drake to check main banks to see if any had a forty-seven thousand dollar deposit, by mail, a decade ago.
20.	The power company man throws the switch and lights in the storeroom of the building come on. Mason sees a whole in a beam over the doorway, and Tragg, with the help of tools brought by a plain-clothes man, extracts a bullet. They go into the room where Warren was found hiding, and find a box with an oily footprint in it. Then they find a Smith and Wesson .38 caliber revolver. Burger throughout keeps making accusations that Mason or someone planted all this evidence.
21.	Tragg reports to Judge Saxton his findings, and admits to comments by Burger. Mason says this constitutes the district attorney's influencing the testimony of present witnesses. Dr Redfield testifies that the new-found gun fired the fatal bullet, and Warren's gun fired a single shot into the doorway beam. Thus, Warren did not murder Gideon.
22.	Tragg thanks Mason for his help, and the attorney explains after Drake reports that forty-seven thousand had been deposited by mail in the name of Collister Damon . Gideon had an accomplice, who got out of prison shortly after Gideon went in. The accomplice kept making small deposits to keep the account alive. Both robbed the supermarket, and it was Kearny running from the crime, not to a telephone. He couldn't identify the sketch as Gideon because that would bring his accomplice into the picture. So Hooks correctly identified Gideon, and Burger went along with Kearny's denial of identification. Kearny and Gideon argued; the storeroom hideout was Kearny's place. Gideon fired with Warren's weapon, Kearny with the murder weapon, killing Gideon. Mason wasn't influencing the witnesses at all, and Kearny as witness was throwing red herrings all over the place.

Patients	Airport porter	Reporters	Saint's rest guests
Nurses	Police officer Jack(man) Andrews	Photographers	Harry Auburn
Loretta Trent	Man with press camera	Spectators	Saint's rest manager
The Trent housekeeper	Policewoman	Court clerk	Radio dispatcher
The Trent maid	Della Street	George Menard . . .	Motorist: Carson Herman
Anna Fritch	Perry Mason	Julian Bannock	D A's investigator
Boring Briggs	Virginia's aunt	Gertie	Policewoman
Diane Briggs	(Delano) Bannock	a k a George Eagan	Hamilton Burger
The cook	Virginia's husband Colton	Paul Drake	Lieutenant Tragg
The nurse	Man next Virginia on plane	Hospital nurse	Judge Grayson
George Eagan	Judge Cortland Albert	Dr Alton's nurse	Hallinan Fisk . . .
Dr Ferris Alton	Jerry Caswell	Maxine Kelvin	a k a Carleton Jasper
Virginia Baxter	Headquarters reporters	Gordon Kelvin	Bookmaker
Airline passengers	Bailiff	Headwaiter Pierre	Two torpedoes
Airline stewardesses	Two deputies	Laboratory technician	Assistant janitor
			A motorist

1.	'Murder is not perpetrated in a vacuum. It is a product of greed, avarice, hate, revenge, or perhaps fear. As a splashing stone sends ripples to the farthest edges of the pond, murder affects the lives of many people." In Phillips Memorial Hospital patients were being taken care of by nurses. Lauretta Trent asks her nurse if she is going home.
2.	The Trent housekeeper tells the maid that the doctor has asked Lauretta's nurse, Anna Fritch, to stay at home with her. "It was at this moment that a pair of hands hovered briefly over the washbowl in a tiled bathroom." "A trickle of white powder descended from a phial into the bowl." "One of the hands turned on a water faucet and the white powder drained down the wastepipe." "There would be no more need for this powder. It had served its purpose." An air of tense expectancy hovered over the house and its inhabitants; Boring Briggs, Lauretta's brother-in-law and Dianne, his wife, the housekeeper and the maid and the cook and the nurse, and chauffeur George Eagan. At the hospital Dr Ferris Alton warns Lauretta that she'll need nurse Anna Fritch's care and she must watch her diet or she could die.
3.	Lauretta Trent had for gotten Virginia Baxter, who follows passengers filing past airline stewardesses. Baxter looks for her luggage, asks a porter's help, and eventually he brings her her two bags. A policeman steps forward, asks her to describe the contents of her suitcase, then asks to look in. On top of her coat were several transparent plastic containers. A man with a press camera steps forward and makes two pictures. The police officer, Jack Andrews, takes her to his car and phones in to headquarters. A policewoman takes charge of her, but Virginia recoils over fingerprints, demands an attorney. Della Street answers, quickly gets Mason who, after hearing her story, heads to the jail.
4.	Virginia says she was visiting her aunt. Since Mr Bannock, her employer of fifteen years, left her a piece of real property I Hollywood which produces income, she has worked only bits and pieces. She is separated from her husband. She remembers a man next her on the plane, but on one else who could have planted the narcotics. Mason says it could have happened even when the luggage was on the ground before being brought into the airport, or in other places.
5.	Mason warns Virginia that it is usual for the judge to bind the defendant over. The newspaper photo and story, she says, were disastrous, for now her friends are avoiding her. Judge Cortland Albert calls the court to order and Jerry Caswell proceeds for the prosecution. The airport porter testifies to helping Virginia get her bags. Mason asks specifically about the conversation; didn't Andrews ask if she could identify articles in the suitcase. Yes. He asks about the newspaper photograph and uses the porter's response to claim that the officer was acting on a tip, and he wants to know who provided the tip. Jack, actually Jackman, Andrews, refuses to give the name, testifies to finding packages in the suitcase. Mason stops him from identifying what was in the packages, then traps him on the issue of permission to view the contents of the suitcase. He never asked to search, only to identify, which Virginia did. Then Mason springs his trap; weigh the suitcases, without, and with the packages. The defendant paid excess baggage charges for forty-six pounds. To get a scale, a short recess is called. Mason phones the headquarters press room, tells a reporter that the judge is going to weigh the evidence, on a pair of scales.
6.	A bailiff and two deputies bring in a platform scale, one used to weight prisoners when they are booked. Reporters and photographers surge into the courtroom. Spectators from county offices have joined the newspaper people. The court clerk puts the two bags on the scale. The bailiff announces forty-six and one-quarter pounds. Judge Albert has the packages put on top of the bags. The bailiff announces one pound and three-quarters. Obviously the packages were added after Virginia checked the bags. Judge Albert dismisses the case, then is very cooperative at having his photo taken by the newspapers with the bags, scales, and Virginia. Caswell tries to defend his actions, but the judge slaps him down. Mason takes Virginia to the witness room to question her. Who would want to frame her? She hasn't given her husband a divorce, because he was a sneak, liar and cheat, carrying on with another woman while she was working her head off to get them ahead. It has been a year. Mason advises her to drop the past, give him his divorce. If he is the person trying to frame her, this should stop it, or the woman who is his girl, of whom Virginia knows only her name.
7.	The newspapers give her good play, but one reporter has located her husband, Colton Baxter, and found he was an employee of the airline in which she flew from San Francisco to Los Angeles. She phones Mason who again advises her to divorce her husband and shows her why he may actually not want her to do so. When she hangs up, George Menard comes to her door. He wants to know where Delano Bannock's papers are. The best she can remember is with his brother and sole heir, Julian Bannock, somewhere in the San Joaquin Valley, Bakersfield. When he leaves by elevator, she rushes down the stairs, and catches a glimpse of his auto and license plate.
8.	Virginia finds Julian's ranch and Julian. He says a man calling himself Smith was there, wanted to see the files, and he let him He was older than Baxter. Virginia finds the files scattered all over. She goes to town, phones Mason. He tells her to get all the wills -- a filing system of items by thousands, wills being five to six thousand, was used -- and bring them to his office. She gets boxes, returns to find that Colton has been there, left when he heard his wife was returning.
9.	Gertie welcomes Virginia to Mason's office. Menard's license plate has been identified from a ticket he got parking at a hydrant; he is George Eagan, chauffeur to Lauretta Trent. Virginia is certain Bannock did a will for her, and it gives little to the relatives. Paul Drake helps bring the files up from Virginia's car. A search reveals no will for Lauretta Trent. Mason calls the hospital, and a nurse tells him how to reach Dr Ferris Alton. Dr Alton's nurse, hearing that it is Perry Mason calling, interrupts the doctor and gets him to the phone. He is initially indignant, but when Mason relates the symptoms of arsenic poisoning, and the doctor realizes that Trent's favorite spicy Mexican foods with garlic easily covers the obvious arsenic symptoms, he gets worried. At Mason's advice, he sets off to get hair or fingernail clippings from Lauretta to test for arsenic. Mason sends Virginia off with a note to string along any caller, particularly Eagan until she can reach him.
10.	Virginia sees Eagan parked in front of her apartment so drives by and phones Mason, who tells her to go to her apartment and see what he wants. Eagan, still acting as Menard, arrives shortly after, admits he is interested in two wills made out by Lauretta Trent. He offers five hundred dollars if she will make out two fake wills, the first leaving Dianne Briggs and Maxine Kelvin a hundred thousand each, their husbands Boring Briggs and George Kelvin ten thousand each, and the remainder to George Eagan. Then a second will executed shortly before Bannock's death leaving each one thousand dollars and the remainder to George Eagan. She protests, but he must have them immediately. She types on her old typewriter, using fresh carbons for each page, and Eagan takes the originals and carbon copies, saying this will flush out someone who is trying to make trouble with Mrs Trent's relatives. She phones Mason, who says she should bring him the carbons.
11.	Mason has Virginia put the carbons in an envelope backed by cardboard, seal the envelope and take it to the post office to mail it to herself, registered.
12.	Dr Alton has gotten Trent's nurse to get fingernail clippings and freshly pulled hair from Trent. He brings them to Mason, says he's told the nurse that Lauretta is to eat only bland food, eggs boiled by the nurse and served in the shell so no spices could be added. He was afraid to put more nurses on duty for he'd have to explain why. Mason says he can have lab results by nine or nine-thirty, and suggests he and Della go to dinner. Mason speculates about the mess there would be if Dr Alton were one of the beneficiaries in Lauretta Trent's will.
13.	Mason finishes a robust dinner before Pierre, the restaurant headwaiter, brings him a phone. A laboratory technician reports definite evidence of arsenic in hair and nails. Mason phones Dr Alton, who now admits he is a beneficiary in Lauretta's will, and this will cause all sorts of consternation among the relatives who will ask for a second opinion. He admits to being a beneficiary. Will Mason join him in presenting the news? Mason says yes, sends Della to report to Paul.
14.	Mason drives out to Trent's and is met by Dr Alton. They are met by Boring Briggs, who wants to know why the doctor has a lawyer with him. The family is belligerent. Lauretta is out driving with the chauffeur. So the doctor springs the mistaken diagnosis is really a poisoning on the family who, coming to a semblance of their senses, agree they should find Lauretta. Mrs Briggs protests. A phone call for Mason. Virginia Baxter, at the Saint's Rest motel where she expected to meet Lauretta.
15.	Lauretta could now die from a heart attack, the arsenic having weakened her. Mason finds a pay phone and calls Virginia who says she knows she was to stay put and call Mason, but Lauretta was insistent she tell no one, and she needed the five hundred dollars Lauretta offered. At the motel, Virginia is still alone. Mason thinks the caller may have been posing as Lauretta, and Virginia does not know the voice. They find that her car is moved. Not only that, but damaged. Mason has Virginia drive out and back in, meets her head on. Thus he creates an alibi for the damage, as motel guests come out and observe the crash.
16.	Traffic officer Harry Auburn takes the report as Mason accepts full responsibility. The motel manager insists Mason has been drinking. Auburn communicates with the radio dispatcher, then asks Virginia about an accident involving a car exactly like hers. Over the radio the chief investigator from the D A's office tells Auburn to bring Baxter in for questioning. Mason warns her to keep quiet, for she's tried to tell the officer about the forged will and such.
17.	Jail. A policewoman brings Virginia to Mason. The usual routine; the police promised she'd be let go if her story could be corroborated, then, after she poured her heart out, they said she'd have to wait until they could investigate all aspects of her story. Mason offers a what if?; what if the D A (Hamilton Burger) or Lieutenant Tragg don't believe her story? He notes that the body may never be recovered, as the car went over a high cliff into water where there are treacherous currents and a terrific undertow. The chauffeur effectively identified her car. The broken glass of her headlight matched a piece picked up at the scene of the accident. Burger and Tragg enter, and the D A says he doesn't believe Lauretta's story. Her thinks she may be tied in with the relatives in a plot to discredit Eagan. A man is brought in, the real George Eagan. Virginia doesn't recognize him, or he, her. Eagan admits to the license number given by Virginia, but his car is a Cadillac, not the Olds that she saw. Virginia says that Eagan has the general physical characteristics of the man she knows as Menard. Mason asks her if she were on a jury, would she believe her story? But she cannot change her story, because, she insists, it is the truth.
18.	Jerry Caswell is gleeful at his opportunity to confront Mason again. He calls George Eagan, who testifies to being run off the road by a car, jumping safely himself, but not knowing what happened to Mrs Trent. Mason accepts that the corpus delicti is satisfied, and Mrs Trent is dead, but by accident, not by unlawful means. Lt Tragg, however, testifies to the confession made by Virginia Baxter, including Mason's hitting her car, a forged will for George Eagan. Despite Caswell's charges of wrongdoing by Mason, the defense attorney, even after being prompted by Judge Grayson, does not object. The man she claims was Eagan is not the real Eagan. Carson Herman testifies to seeing the accident and attempting to follow the car that caused it, but becoming afraid for his own safety, so giving up the chase. He did notice that one headlight was not working. There was only one person in that car. Gordon Kelvin is next. He is called upon to present the real will of Lauretta Trent. It starts out with the usual "being of sound and disposing mind" but comes quickly to her having no children, only two married sisters who are living with her. She nominates Kelvin as her executor. She leaves fifty thousand to each of her sisters, one hundred thousand to Dr Alton to whom she pays special tribute, fifty thousand to Eagan and the same to nurse Anna Fritch. The remainder is to be divided among the two sisters and their husbands. Mason asks to see the will and Virginia says she is certain she typed it, because she remembers typing the wonderful tribute to the doctor. Mason discredits Kelvin, and Briggs, by showing that they both are indigent, living off Trent. Harry Auburn testifies to taking Baxter into custody and then finding headlight glass at the crime scene that exactly matched her car's headlight. Eagan is brought back. Mason gets him to admit he cooked for Lauretta, then charges that he can prove that after one occasion she had arsenic poisoning symptoms. He is forced to acknowledge knowing he would benefit from Mrs Trent's death. He asks him what Lauretta was wearing. "Don't you know of your own knowledge that there was the sum of fifty thousand dollars in cash in (her) handbag?" How does he know she wasn't? No handbag was found. He couldn't recognize who was driving the car that pushed him off the road. Caswell wants to finish, but Mason says he might put on a defense. Mason admits to Virginia he has no idea if Lauretta had any money, but now the police will go hunting for the purse in the ocean. Mason suggests to Drake that whoever drove Virginia's car must have been registered at Saint's Rest, so find him. Drake wonders, with a perfectly good will in hand, why would the relatives want a spurious one or two?
19.	Mason is now thinking there is someone in the background working a master plan, and has Della type questions and answers, none of which really satisfy. They go to dinner.
20.	Mason's mind wanders, but he takes Della's hands in his, notices the strength of her hands. "Years of typing have strengthened the fingers" she notes. This gives Mason inspiration. They didn't want the false wills, but did want her away so they could get to her typewriter. Notice, the residuary clause was on the first page, not the last page as is usual. The last page of the will that was read is authentic, but the earlier pages were retyped with changed conditions. Now Mason sees that whoever wanted to forge the will must have known a police informer and bribed him to pass on the information about dope in Virginia's suitcase.
21.	Drake says the man gave a false name, but his car was an Oldsmobile. Before Drake can complete a description, Mason completes it. Mason tells him to use the description to identify a police informer.
22.	Drake identifies the informer as Hallinan Fisk, currently a runner for a bookmaker, which the police ignore since he gives them tips on dope. But he's been exposed, so is hiding, but Drake knows where. It is on skid row. The go up to No 5, knock. Fisk won't open the door. Mason phones Tragg to join them. As he returns to No 5, two torpedoes come up the stairs, leave when they see Mason. Tragg joins them. Fisk lets Tragg in after Mason starts reciting his background loudly in the corridor. Mason recognizes a family resemblance to George Eagan. Fisk is his half-brother. Now it comes out. He switched license plates from Eagan's Cadillac to his Oldsmobile. Mason points out that when he puts him on the witness stand and the newspapers publish his picture and history of activities as stool pigeon and double-crosser, the underworld will take care of him. Fisk begs for Tragg's help in getting out of town. It was Anna Fritch who came to him. She'd teamed up with Kelvin. They used arsenic to hurry Lauretta over the divide, knowing that her heart would give out. When Kelvin found the will, knew he had to forge one favorable to him. Their idea was to get the Baxter woman discredited on dope charges so, even if she remembered the original will, her testimony would be meaningless. They also wanted her in the cooler so they could get into her apartment and to the old original typewriter. He planted the dope in the suitcase. Later he was forced to take Virginia's car and force Eagan off the road. He asks Tragg to take him into custody; he can't beat the big boy's torpedoes. He won't rat on the big boy, now anyway, but safely in a cell.
23.	The trio return to the office to await Virginia's arrival. The assistant janitor says there is a "rather aristocratic-looking" woman in her sixties awaiting them. Drake goes his way, Mason and Street to their office where shortly a knock is heard. It is, of course, Lauretta Trent. She says that when the nurse asked for fingernail and hair samples, she knew it was to check on poisoning, so she got out of the house right away. When George yelled "jump," she jumped. She was picked up by a motorist, phoned in the accident, then laid low, but couldn't wait any longer watching Virginia. She was shocked when she heard the will; the first page, perhaps two, were false. She was going to leave the two sisters only enough so the men would have to go to work! She suggests a fee of twenty-five thousand for Mason, and a check for fifty thousand to Virginia to compensate her for all she's been through.

"A heavy rain in Scotland had swollen the streams" begins the Foreword to this novel by Erle Stanley Gardner. Parts of bodies began showing up as the streams subsided. John Glaister, D Sc, M D, F R S E and author of Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology pieced the decomposed parts and identified two bodies leading to discovery of the murderer. This novel is dedicated to Dr Glaister.

No matter how you read this one, it is not routine in any way, from the short first two chapters, to the late appearance of Mason, the later appearance of Paul Drake, and the delay in anyone getting murdered. Further, the list of characters is enormous even before we get to the murder.

Della still has steak, but Mason has an extra-thick cut of prime ribs, a large bottle of Guinness Stout, tossed salad and stuffed baked potato.

Despite a lot of obfuscation up front, I enjoy this as much as any Perry Mason novel, for I know half the solution almost as soon as the "murder" is discovered. You know when a murder is suspected when Lieutenant Tragg arrives on the scene. Look at the characters list above, and see how late that is.

Perry Mason	Drake's receptionist	Coroner
Della Street	Drake's man (Tom Fulton)	George Washington Holbrook
Gertie	Jefe of Policia	Holbrook's wife, Doris
(Frank) Kerry Dutton	Pinky Brier	Holbrook's sister, Edith
Templeton Ellis	Lieutenant Tragg	Carleton Kenny
Desere Ellis	Roger Palmer	Ralph Woodley
Rosanna Hedley	Jim, service station manager	George Tillman
Fred Hedley	Hamilton Burger	Bailiff
Jarvis Reader	Judge Eduardo Alvarado	Barclay C C golfers
Steve, Mason's broker	Jurors	Barclay C C manager
Paul Drake	Stevenson Bailey	A Drake operative with metal detector
Waiter	Autopsy surgeon	Newspaper reporter & photographer
Headwaiter	Several witnesses	Another Drake operative at phone
Woman on balcony	Ballistics expert	A Drake operative at city dump
Radio-dispatched cops	Firearms dealer	Armed police

"A man is smoking in bed. The house burns and the body is charred beyond recognition. Did the man have a heart attack, drop a cigarett and so cause the fire; or was he intoxicated when he met his death through suffocation or from the flames?" This is but one of the questions Erle Stanley Gardner raises to point out the kinds of questions a medicolegal expert can answer. Leopold Breitenecker, M D, professor and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Vienna, was sent by U Thant (UNO) into the Congo in 1962 to clarify circumstances of the death of three members of the International Red Cross. This is but one example of the high esteem Breitenecker , to whom this book is dedicated, is held in his profession.

Erle Stanley Gardner is patently unfair with his readers in this novel. Mason puts into effect a plan to catch the murderer without giving us the background information that would allow us to solve the mystery. Even once we know who the murder is, we do not know why or how until Mason tells us. Gardner is going too far to find something new for Perry Mason, and here it is having Mason have to put on defense witnesses, rather than solve the mystery by cross-examining prosecution witnesses. Thereby, Hamilton Burger gets a chance to cross-examine defense witnesses.

Here is a rare instance of Mason defending a man, not a beautiful woman.

1.	Perry Mason is grinning as he enters his office and finds Della Street sorting the mail. Gertie is busy creating a romantic story around Kerry Dutton, who is waiting in the office. Dutton is quick to say he is a criminal; he's trustee of a spendthrift trust left by Templeton Ellis to his daughter Desere four years earlier. He left a hundred thousand dollars, and he's already given a hundred and ten to Desere. By buying and selling, under his own name, he's increased the capitol. In particular, he sold a dog, Steer Ridge Oil & Refining Company stock, and invested the proceeds. The trust terminates in three months and he will have to provide a reckoning then. He's in love with Desere, who only feels sorry for him. He wants to protect her from a beatnik nogood who is moving in on her. "Someone should shoot the guy."
2.	Della tells Perry he cannot play Dan Cupid. Rosanna Hedley and son Fred are in the office, with Desere Ellis. Fred says he's "not a visionary: I'm not a goof. I play around with a bunch of poets and artists but I'm essentially an executive type." He thinks the world should help artists, poets, writers and thinkers develop their genius. "They're starving to death. You can't develop anything on an empty stomach except an appetite." Desere admits Kerry gave her to much money, most of which she's frittered away, so there is perhaps $15,000 left in the trust. She has decided to take a business course to make a living. After the trio leaves, Mason tells Della "I am not my client's conscience -- only his lawyer."
3.	The morning newspaper announces that Steer Ridge Oil & Refining Company has brought in a gusher and its stock should stop its steady decline, according to president Jarvis Reader. Della gets no answer as she tries to call Dutton. Mason then speaks to his stock broker, Steve, and tells him to by fifty shares of Steer Ridge. Della notes that the stock is skyrocketing and Desere thinks she has a block of it, but she doesn't. Hedley is on the phone, ecstatic at the stock news. Now he can create future Rembrandts, only not stuffy like Rembrandt.
4.	Mason tells Della that, as a stockholder in Steer Ridge, he's entitled to protect his interests. He gets Paul to come by, hires him to find Dutton. Then Jarvis Reader shows up, says he will accept a full page newspaper ad as an apology.
5.	As they are about to close the office at seven-thirty, Drake calls in. He says Dutton is playing hard-to-get an a process server is trying to get him. Mason tells Della that Dutton says he's embezzled money from the beneficiary of the trust, but he's made restitution, but he acts as if he hasn't. He suggests dinner to Della.
6.	The waiter asks Mason if he's accepting calls, and Mason says he told he was. Drake reports that a broad-shouldered man is watching the entry to Dutton's apartment building. Mason and Street discuss the situation. "salud y pesetas y amor sin suegras" is Mason's final comment (suegras is mother-in-law, the rest you should figure out for yourself). They finish dinner, then hear from Drake that all hell has broken out. At the apartment, Drake says the fellow with a beard (Hedley) left, Dutton went in, then Hedley came back. A woman on a balcony was soon screaming. Radio-dispatched cops came up, went in, came out with Hedley who they had tricked into admitting had started the fight.
7.	Drake's receptionist tells Mason that Dutton is in Ensenada, Mexico. Drake reports that his man lost Dutton, but succeeded in planting a wire recorder on the phone booth where Dutton was calling a contact. He listened to the recorder, then went to the Barclay Country Club. He couldn't get in, but waited twelve minutes until Dutton came out. Near a culvert, he stopped, got out. Then he drove to the Siesta del Tarde Auto Court in Ensenada and registered as Frank Kerry.
8.	Mason and Street go to Ensenada where they are met by Drake's man. The attorney and his secretary go directly to Dutton's room. He is surprised, and Mason warns him that, in California, flight is considered as evidence of guilt. A knock on the door, and Jefe of Policia enters and, politely, arrests Dutton, to be deported as an undesirable alien. Mason has no credentials in Mexico, the chief of police points out. Mason tells Dutton to zip his lip.
9.	Mason and Street are contacted on the phone by Drake, who says a body was found at tee seven at the Barclay Country Club. Everything which might identify him had been removed, including cutting labels out of coat pockets. Drake has a general description of the man, and it might be the on watching Dutton's apartment. Mason ask him to have "Pinky" Brier waiting for them at the airport..
10.	Pinky brings them to the Tri-City Airport where they are met by Drake. He is worried that he knows the murdered man, and must report his information. Mason agrees, asks Drake to have Pinky take them to L A airport and have Lieutenant Tragg meet them. Tragg takes them to the morgue, listening to the story of Drake's man on the way. Drake identifies the man. Tragg passes information on, hears back that the man is Rodger Palmer, an employee of Templeton Ellis until the latter died. Tragg asks to see Drake's man, Tom Fulton, as soon as he returns.
11.	Mason tells Drake he must see Fulton before Tragg does. Jim, the service station manager where Drake's men fill up when trailing suspects, says Fulton has not shown, but soon he does. Mason learns directly from the operative of his tailing efforts and the wire recorder's message. Mason suggests he tell the truth, but volunteer nothing. They learn of Dutton's stopping at a culvert on the way from the country club, drive to the culvert, but find nothing.
12.	Jail. Dutton says he's told the police nothing. He knows, however, that Rodger Palmer was engaged in a sneak attack on the management of Steer Ridge. When Palmer came to him for proxies, he went out and bought twenty thousand shares at ten to fifteen cents a share (he'd sold earlier at a dollar a share). He gets very upset when told of the wire recording (Wire tapping is illegal!). He admits he went to the seventh tee, in the dark and, after waiting several minutes, he tripped on something which was the body. He is further upset when Mason mentions the culvert and the gun. He picked the gun up, determined it was his with a pocket flashlight. Mason plays prosecutor to show Dutton what he is up against if he faces Hamilton Burger but Dutton says he's not guilty, no matter how implausible his story.
13.	Mason confronts Desere with the fact he's Kerry's attorney, no one else's. She acts surprised when her gun given her by Dutton, is not in the drawer in her bedroom. She knows it was there two or three days before. She relates the story of Fred's returning and the fight between him and Kerry. How Fred called Kerry a moneygrubber. When Fred told his story to the police, he lied, and that was when she began to see him for what he was. Hedley wants an endowment for a new school. He paints, colored drawings that are close to cartoons, but he has to develop.
14.	Drake reports that Palmer believed in Steer Ridge but hated Reader. There was a lot of similarity in their appearance, but Palmer believed in developing the company along proven structures, while Jarvis was a plunger. As to Hedley, he had an alibi for the time of the murder.
15.	Judge Eduardo Alvarado says he hopes they can get a jury this second day of the trial, and is pleased when both Stevenson Bailey, prosecutor , and Mason say the jury can be sworn. Hamilton Burger is sitting with Bailey, who gives the opening statement, recounting Dutton's situation as trustee and Palmer's blackmail of him; five thousand dollars were found on Dutton when he was picked up. The autopsy surgeon sets time of death, and Mason stretches it to forward to eight-thirty. Several witnesses give evidence without Mason cross-examining. Desere testifies that over four years Dutton never made a formal accounting. She got the impression that there was little left, and also that the Steer Ridge stock had not been sold. Mason asks carefully, "did the defendant ever tell you in so many words that the trust fund would be exhausted at the time the trust terminated?" "I can't remember his ever having said that." Bailey and Mason go through cross, redirect, recross and another redirect trying to resolve what Dutton did or did not say. Rosanna Hedley is called to show what Dutton said, but Mason picks on her description of Dutton's smile as "oily." "Greasy?" "Oily!" Which is her feeling toward the defendant. She says Dutton deceived Desere. She thinks there is two hundred and fifty thousand available. So she didn't lie, says Mason. A ballistics expert, a firearms dealer and the coroner then testify. Finally Lt Tragg testifies to finding and identifying the murder weapon and picking Dutton up at the border. He'd been registered as Frank Kerry, his full name being Frank Kerry Dutton. Thomas Densmore Fulton then testifies to his following Dutton, recording his phone conversation -- which is then played -- following him to the country club and on to Mexico.
16	Back in jail, Mason warns Dutton that he had to go on the stand and convince the jury he's telling the truth. If they catch him in a single lie, it is all over.
17.	Paul Drake has found a witness. George W(ashington) Holbrook still smokes and goes outside because he wife, Doris, cannot stand the smell of tobacco. He heard a single gunshot right about nine in the evening. He didn't think anything about it, because he had to go to the airport to pick up his sister, Edith, and then she, and his wife, as if already planned, decided to go on a trip without stopping. So they did, and only when he got back did he think to report this. He knows the time because of the news shows he watches, and he was just a bit late in tuning in the television on the nine o'clock news. Mason dances a jig and takes Paul and Della out to a champagne dinner.
18.	Bailey rests the prosecution's case. Mason calls Desere, asks if the defendant gave her a gun? Yes. Was it the one in evidence? Yes. Did he show her how to use it? Yes. Did she know it was a double-action revolver, namely one with which you could pull the trigger it cock the gun, then pull it farther and fire it? Yes. She last saw it two or three days before the murder. Hamilton Burger now gets a very rare treat, the opportunity to cross-examine a Perry Mason witness. Burger rips her apart on the identification of the gun, then shows through her testimony that the defendant was in her bedroom on an excuse which allowed him to get the gun. Mason can but point out that it was Hedley who started the fight and ran into the bedroom. Mason calls Dutton, leads him along skillfully through the arrangements regarding the trust. He dolled out money sufficient to let her "exhibit herself favorably on the matrimonial market." He dispersed ninety-six thousand dollars from a hundred thousand dollar trust, but now has about two hundred and fifth thousand dollars in the trust. He felt Hedley was a fortune hunter. He never discussed the condition of the trust with Desere. He got a tip from Palmer that, for five thousand and proxy rights, information could be provided that would make it impossible for Hedley to marry Desere. He followed this to the country club where he found the dead body a bit after ten, took the gun and disposed of it, went to Ensenada. Burger masks "his true feelings behind a façade of extreme courtesy" to get Dutton off the guard Mason had put him in. Bit by bit Burger traces the time element, eventually showing that Dutton had ten or more minutes in which he did nothing but stand beside a dead body. Dutton had to use a flashlight to identify the gun, but didn't use it to look at the body. Then, though Desere had express specific interest in the Steer Ridge stock, he sold it for ten thousand dollars, then later bought the same quantity that is now worth two hundred thousand. And he's never made an accounting to Miss Ellis? Why didn't all this come out before? Because he wasn't asked! Burger walks "back to the counsel table with the triumphant air of a man who has at last gratified a lifelong ambition."
19.	Mason calls Holbrook, who tells his story of the gunshot occurring earlier than the autopsy surgeon claims for death. Burger asks him who his favorite television newscasters are. He names Carleton Kenny. When asked who he listens to at nine, he answers Ralph Woodley. But Woodley is a ten o'clock newscaster. Holbrook corrects himself; George Tillman. The damage is done, as Burger suggests he could produce two witnesses who would say they heard a gunshot about ten. Would that change Holbrook's testimony? No Holbrook is not certain what time he heard the gun shot. As the bailiff comes for Dutton, Mason manages a "reassuring smile" and leaves the courtroom, "his manner confident, his chin up, his stomach cold."
20.	Mason tells Drake to get the best metal detector money can buy, and orders Della to get a golfing outfit which "has to be a city editor's dream."
21.	The Barclay Country Club. Mason, Drake and an operative move out with the metal detector, and Della, "attired in a form-fitting skirt which the wind whipped about her knees," which brought the golfers running. The club manager is concerned about the disruption, but sees that the men are happy, so disappears. Mason lets slip bits in half sentences, just enough to get interest. The metal detector does its work, and a bullet casing is found, not from a revolver, but from an automatic. They await the arrival of a newspaper reporter and photographer, give them their story, and let Della pose for them. Then Mason makes a point that there were two shots, and this casing is from an automatic.
22.	Drake takes the stand, testifies to finding the casing. Of course, Burger points out that it could have been planted while they were searching, or could have been there since the previous Christmas. This is after Burger gets Drake to admit that perhaps seventy-five percent of his business, at fifty dollars a day and expenses, means he tries to find what Mason wants him to find. The judge allows the jurors to go home after cautioning them, as before, that they are not to discuss the case with anyone or read the newspapers. "You think the jurors are going to refrain from reading the newspapers?" is Drake's question to Mason, who answers, "Come on, Paul, let's both quit being näive."
23.	Della takes a good picture, and Hamilton Burger is peeved at the newspaper reports. Now Mason brings up reports that Palmer was once a suspect in hotel stocking murders, but he has been cleared. They look at the report on Palmer, and something Mason sees gives him an idea. Mason tells Della to put an ad in the paper under "Too Late To Classify" or something, and to get it in no matter the cost. "The thing that was too hot for the grass on the golf course is now even more valuable than ever. Call this number at nine o'clock sharp and follow instructions." The number is to be a telephone booth to which they'll send an operative. Drake say a place such as Mason wants for a secret meeting would have to be a golf course, which Mason says no to, suggesting a city dump.
24.	Tragg is inveigled, distrustingly, into joining Mason, Street, Drake and an operative at a city dump. No phone call comes, but plan number two works. The suspect follows the operative from the telephone booth when he leaves and drives to the dump. A car comes, its occupant gets out, walks thirty-five steps, drops to the ground. Then a car without headlights on comes. Five minutes pass before they see a figure silhouetted against the sky. Mason turns a powerful flashlight on the person who shields eyes, then fires a gun at Mason. They consider safety first, and the figure gets in the car, drives away as Tragg radios cars to shut off the area. They follow and, when the fugitive is stopped by a police car and police with drawn guns, Mrs Hedley, venomous hatred in her eyes, is caught with the automatic in her car.
25.	Mason explains all to Della, Drake and Dutton. Palmer was killed at nine, and the murderess needed a Patsy, got Dutton to be that. Palmer was considered as a suspect because he'd been at two hotels where stocking strangulation murders had taken place. They never thought of him as a witness, but he was. He'd seen Hedley in both instances. Mrs Hedley has a fierce protective instinct and was willing to kill to protect her boy. It was this Palmer was going to sell to Dutton. When Hedley ran into the bedroom he was looking for a nylon stocking, Dutton would have found him an expert garroter, one with lots of practice. Mason tells him to get out of his office, go to Desere, tell her he loves her and wants to marry her. Dutton says this "is probably the best advice "I've ever had."

Della Street	Dr Alma's nurse	Dr Selkirk
Perry Mason	Middle-aged receptionist	Taxicab driver
Daphne Shelby	Doctor Tillman Baxter	Gas station attendant
Horace Shelby	Court attaché	Drake operative in telephone car
Bordon Finchley	Ballinger's secretary	Bill Hadley
Ralph Exeter . . .	Sanitarium cook	Police matron
Aunt Elinor Finchley	Inskip, Daphne's shadow	Harvey Miles
Bank teller Jones	Purple Lion waitress	Stanley Freer
Bank cashier	Purple Lion headwaiter	Marvin Mosher
Paul Drake	Purple Lion waiter	Judge Linden Kyle
Judge Ballinger	Cops at Northern Lights Motel	Drugstore clerk
Gertie	Lieutenant Arthur Tragg	Francisco Munoz
Darwin Melrose	Northern Lights proprietor	Mexican taxi driver
Stanley Paxton	Northern Lights occupants	Two psychiatric specialists
Housekeeper	Doctor	Hamilton Burger
Marie Raymond	Deputy coroner	Courtroom spectators
Court clerk	Chinese restaurant waitress	Newspaper reporters
. . .a k a Bosley Cameron	Chinese cook	Las Vegas gamblers
Gambler	Hotel elevator operator
Dr Grantland Alma	Desk clerk

Erle Stanley Gardner is effusive in praise of Tanemoto Furuhata, M D, M J A, Professor Emeritus Tokyo University in his dedication of this book. In a four-page Foreword, Gardner praises this bilingual scientist, over seventy years old, for his contributions to serology and his complete dedication to impartial proof.

All too often, the title of a Perry Mason mystery is itself a bit of a mystery. Here, however, Daphne Shelby is beautiful and, when she visits Mason, she has no money, so sees herself as a beggar.

1.	Della Street pleads with Perry Mason to see the woman in the outer office, twenty-two year old Daphne Shelby, niece of seventy-five year old Horace Shelby. She shows Mason a letter from Horace in which he tells her that, when her boat arrives, she should go straight to Perry Mason and have him go with her to cash the enclosed check (for $125,000 dollars), have Mason prepare a will leaving everything to her and bring it to the house for his signature. She's been three months in Hong Kong, during which half-brother Bordon Finchley, and a friend, Ralph Exeter, joined Bordon's wife Aunt Elinor Finchley to live in the house with Horace. She was acting as Horace's manager, knows there should be $140,000 in the bank. She goes to bank teller Jones, who returns with the bank cashier, who says the entire amount in the account was withdrawn after a Court order appointed a conservator. Mason gives Daphne twenty dollars and tells her to take a cab to her uncles, then report to him.
2.	Daphne returns to say the three interlopers have "put Uncle Horace away." She relates how she got the letter from her uncle when the boat was passing Diamond Head, rather than before she disembarked, or she'd have flown back. Paul Drake answers Mason's summons in time to hear about her return to the Shelby home. It was quiet, Uncle Horace was not there, and her room was locked. Aunt Elinor appeared and told her to vacate by the next day. She left in tears. Mason tells Della to get information on the court order, and Paul to find Horace. Aunt Elinor is a nurse, so drugs might be involved. Della has learned that Judge Ballinger issued the order. Mason tells Della to go through his secretary to get an appointment. Mason tells Della to get a couple of hundred dollars for Daphne, who says she doesn't want to be a beggar. Mason says she's "been the victim of a very clever conspiracy," but he's "an officer of the court, a high priest at the temple of justice . . . As a matter of principle" he's going to try to rectify the wrong done her.
3.	Mason meets with Judge Ballinger, suggests he has something to put forth, and the judge says "The order is subject to review with additional facts," and sets a time for Mason to bring his facts and get the other parties in the courtroom. Mason nods to Gertie on his return, gives Della instructions. Darwin Melrose of Denton, Middlesex and Melrose, is the attorney. Drake reports that Stanley Paxton, VP of the bank, wants to help. He'll say Horace is of sound mind and the interloping trio was unheard of until Daphne went on her trip. Exeter is "a kind of barnacle on the ship" with no relation to Shelby, but is owed a large sum by Borden. Daphne, who knew exactly what Horace wanted, did the cooking until Elinor took over. A housekeeper overheard Exeter saying to Borden he wouldn't wait forever for his money.
4.	Mason presents Judge Ballinger with several affidavits, stating Shelby's good health when she left by Daphne, competent according to Paxton and that Borden Finchley had tried to wheedle financial information out of him. Mason calls Borden as witness, makes the presence of Exeter look rather out of place. Finchley states he read the letter to Daphne and decided he didn't want a total stranger steal his brother's estate. He says Daphne Shelby is actually Daphne Raymond, daughter of the housekeeper, Marie Raymond, but Horace took her as his so she'd not be illegitimate, saying she was the daughter of his younger brother and wife who were killed in an auto accident. Marie died two years ago. Finchley has stated that the thought never entered his mind that Shelby would make a will disinheriting him, yet the letter he read states exactly that. When Elinor butts in, she slips up, revealing that they had to open the already-sealed envelope to read it. The judge checks with the clerk for another open date, takes the name of the place Horace has been sent, tells Melrose that his wish to have Mason disqualified will be taken under consideration but, if agreed to, he will welcome Mason's services as amicus curiae.
5.	Daphne is devastated by Borden's pronouncement. She feels finished, nobody. Mason asks her if she can type, and she has learned the touch system, so can get a job. Mason takes the letter and check from her after she endorses the check. He wonder if there is a holographic will, and explains what that means to her. He tills her his money to her is an investment. When he returns to his office, Stanley Paxton joins him and says how much he'd like to help. He explains that Bordon Finchley drew a check for the exact amount of the balance on hand in Shelby's account. Now a deposit for fifty thousand has come in; must he notify Finchley. Yes, says Mason, but then puts into effect a plan. He borrows seventy thousand from the bank, deposits it to Shelby's account, then presents Daphne's check for $125,000. With that money in hand, he pays back his loan, plus twelve dollars and thirty-two cents interest. Now he has fifty thousand for Daphne. He got to her, tells her she's "no longer a beautiful beggar."
6.	Drake reports that Ralph Exeter is really Bosley Cameron, a gambler who holds Borden Finchley's IOUs for over a hundred and fifty thousand. He's hiding out from the Las Vegas crowd. He got the Massachusetts car from a gambler who owed him. They traded automobiles. Then he got wiped out. Melrose phones it; he's learned of the two deposits and the single withdrawal, and thinks it is sharp practice. Mason points out the error in his withdrawal of funds. He's too specific, and never thought any more money might be deposited. Mason tells Drake the Daphne is now provided for; they wonder if behind her naïve exterior is a very smart girl. Dr Grantland Alma is appointed court doctor. Mason has Della get Dr Alma's nurse on the phone and asks if his seeing the patient before the doctor would be a problem. No.
7.	The Goodwill Sanitarium and Rest Home at El Mirar was two buildings including a motel converted to current usage. There was a wanted sign for a well-adjusted woman at the entrance. A middle-aged receptionist ignores Mason until he asks about Horace Shelby. It is past visitor hours, but she'll tell Doctor Tillman Baxter he came. As he leaves, Mason is accosted by a man who wants to know if he is the Court-appointed doctor. The man takes off quickly when Mason identifies himself, and Mason is unable to get his license plate number. Back at his office, he gets a call from Dr Alma, who explains the instructions he's given the sanitarium to protect Horace Shelby until he sees him the next morning. He's aware of what goes on in some of these places, and will check for drugs.
8.	Della is sorting mail into Urgent, Important and Unimportant when Mason arrives in the morning. Daphne has not phoned in. An hour later they get no answer calling Daphne. Dr Alma phones; Shelby has disappeared from the sanitarium. Mason drives to El Mirar, is sent to Shelby's room where he meets Dr Alma and Dr Tillman Baxter. Baxter is licensed to run the sanitarium, but is not an M D. Mason learns that Shelby was "strong-armed" into the sanitarium and given a hypodermic by his nurse, who is registered in Nevada. Mason finds straps, used to hold a person to his bed. They have been cut with a sharp knife. Drake arrives, and Dr Alma insists that Shelby left, while Alma says he was taken. How could he have taken himself if, as Dr Baxter insists, he was "aged, infirm, senile and unable to take care of himself." Mason orders Drake to put men on surveillance of everyone.
9.	Judge Ballinger opens court by calling Dr Grantland Alma. Darwin Melrose interposes, says Mason has circumvented the Court's order by taking monies he should have. The judge turns instead to Dr Alma, who explains why he didn't see Shelby. Melrose insists he doesn't know where Shelby is, and the trio he is representing don't know, either. Just as "Daphne is missing" is brought up, she walks into the courtroom. The judge turns to Mason's taking money out of the bank, but Melrose cannot show that Mason violated any specific court order. The judge is concerned with "sinister possibilities" if Shelby has been spirited out of the sanitarium. Daphne explains that freeway traffic was awful. Mason wonders what she's been up to. Mason orders her to keep in touch with his office. She was using a friend's car, another car belonging to Shelby, so it turns out. A court attaché brings Mason the phone. Drake tells Mason to get rid of Daphne until the next morning. Mason gets the idea. When he returns to the witness room, Daphne is gone. Ballinger's secretary ushers Mason in to the judge's private chambers. Mason admits he may now have a lead to Shelby. Daphne may have purchased a car, taking immediate delivery, and driven directly to El Mirar, signed on as a night nurse, then helped Shelby escape. The judge won't let Mason go any further; neither of them was born yesterday.
10.	Drake reports that a girl who answers the description of Daphne bought a new car, took the job at the sanitarium, worked the night shift but left early, after being seen by the sanitarium cook at five forty-five. A phone report tells Drake that Daphne's shadow lost her. She made a quick U-turn on a crowded side street where he had no chance to follow her. Mason tells Drake to look for her at a motel in El Mirar.
11.	Drake enters the office as Mason and Street are heading out to dinner. He's found Daphne, in the Serene Slumber Motel, but she's alone. They have little difficulty talking Drake in to joining them. At the Purple Lion Restaurant, hey order the cocktails to be delivered immediately, asking the waitress for a bowser bag and fresh sourdough French bread, so Paul can make a steak sandwich if he has to run out. The headwaiter brings a phone after they finish cocktails. Drake's shadow has followed Daphne to a Chinese restaurant. Drake finishes his steak before the headwaiter returns with the phone. She took Chinese to the Northern Lights Motel. They have a leisurely dessert. After summoning the waiter and signing the check, Mason tips and speaks to the waitress and headwaiter on the way out. They return to the office. Later Drake phones to say Daphne has returned to her motel. They go there. Inskip, Daphne's shadow says she's still there. They knock, three times, before Daphne comes to the door. Mason tells her what she did and eventually she admits she found uncle Horace strapped to his bed. He acted pretty normal. She explains how, while she was gone, the trio harassed him, drugged him. She has him hidden. She gave him forty thousand dollars of his money. She bought her car with some of the rest. He's made an holographic will. Mason says she is playing into the trio's hands, takes the document. Mason says he's taking her for a ride, since she won't say where Shelby is. Paul follows. As they cruise by the Northern Lights, Drake snapped his lights off and on and tapped his horn. He pulls up, says "Cops. Other end of the motel. Two cars." Mason chides Daphne, looks for a place to park, as Lieutenant Tragg pulls aside, says he's investigating the homicide of someone who ate Chinese food drugged with a barbiturate, then died of stove gas while asleep. The proprietor discovered the body when adjacent occupants smelled the gas. Back at the Serene Slumber, Mason asks Daphne if she had anything to do with her uncle's death. He points out that the police way of looking at things makes it pretty black for her. She said they ate most of the food, and Horace promised he'd flush the remainder down the toilet. Drake reports that the guy had been eating Chinese, and a doctor riding with the deputy coroner suspected Barbiturates, so they made a quick test. Daphne admits she gave Horace some sleeping pills, given her by his doctor. Drake pulls Mason aside, reads him the riot act regarding Daphne and how she, realizing she's not related to Horace, got him to write a will, and suggests Mason burn it up. Just then Tragg arrives, brings in the motel proprietor, who identifies Daphne as the woman who rented Horace's unit. Mason tells Daphne to answer only those question to which he nods. This gets Tragg nowhere, so he decides to take Daphne to headquarters. He wants an identification of the body. (The reader by now should know it can't be Horace, for he is the good guy. It must be someone we don't care about, or the bad guy, or both.) They go to the Northern Lights; the body is that of Ralph Exeter. Mason suggests to Drake that he get to the proprieties and make certain she doesn't identify Ralph Exeter as the man Daphne brought to the motel.
12.	Daphne says she was waited on by a girl, the cook was Chinese. Mason continues the questioning, suggests that Exeter probably came into Horace's room, made demands, and Horace used the sleeping pills to get rid of him. Daphne says Horace wouldn't kill a fly. Mason tells her to go to her hotel room, or she'll be charged with murder. She insists she's been perfectly frank.
13.	Drake reports that the police found a tumbler with white powder. A toothbrush case had been used as a pestle to grind Somniferone, a quick-acting barbiturate, which was combined with another that was more lasting. Mason insists Daphne bought the Chinese for Horace, but Drake says he was long gone by the time the Chinese meal was served. Bordon Finchley and Elinor have alibis. Mason phones Daphne, gets no answer. So they go to her hotel, take the elevator to the right floor, wait until the operator has left, then go to the room. No answer. Mason sends Della to get the room key from the desk clerk. When they try the key, they find the door bolted from the inside, but just then Daphne opens the door, and almost immediately collapses to the floor. They do their best to revive her, get the house doctor, Dr Selkirk, in. Then Mason tricks Daphne. He makes her think she is going to be put in a bath of warm water, but the water is cold. She screams, comes out of the bathtub, "pushing, clawing, fighting mad." Mason is, however, caught when Tragg shows up, and Selkirk lets the cat out of the bag, noting that he pumped her stomach and found undissolved pills, probably ingested the moment Mason arrived. Daphne's pulse is strong and regular, respiration perfect. Tragg fishes pills out of the stuff pumped. Tragg says she'll let the girl sleep overnight before he questions her. Daphne is angry at Masons thorough professionalism.
14,	Hoping to find Horace in the room next Daphne's, they go back after Tragg leaves with the suspect. Horace is not there. For five dollars, the hotel elevator operator takes them straight to the lobby. The desk clerk points to a man leaving the hotel, who has just checked out of the room next Daphne. The get a taxicab driver to follow the man walking down the street. Mason has Drake use his operatives with cars which have telephones to get on the job. Ten minutes later, Horace emerges in Ralph Exeter's car. They follow on to the freeway. He stops for gas, so do they. The pay the attendant to take care of them first, head out just as the operative arrives. They join him, follow Shelby to a motel in San Diego. Drake sends for relief. They rent a car and head back to Los Angeles.
15.	Della arrives at ten o'clock, exhausted, to find Perry already there. Mason has learned that Shelby has purchased a car and is driving on to Ensenada. He gets in touch with Bill Hadley, a physicist detective, to go the murder room, which is occupied by a Drake operative, and check the pipes to prove how the gas pipe was disconnected. Then he goes to jail, and a police matron brings Daphne to him. He warns her that he is protecting her, not Shelby. After this, Drake reports that Stanley Freer of Las Vegas, who registered as Harvey Miles, probably a collector, was registered at the Northern Lights, may have put the pressure on Exeter to pay now.
16.	Trial deputy Marvin Mosher is to try the preliminary hearing before Judge Linden Kyle. He makes an opening statement in which he says Daphne Shelby is not Horace Shelby's niece, and she thus plotted to get him to leave his money to her, and he may now be dead. She drugged the decedent, went to her hotel, drugged herself to make it look as if the same person who murdered Exeter had tried to murder her. Mason responds that Borden and Elinor Finchley, urged on by Ralph Exeter, colluded to bleed Shelby dry of his estate by drugging him and committing him to a sanitarium. Tillman Baxter testifies first, then Lt Tragg, followed by a drugstore clerk who sold Daphne things her uncle needed. Finally the Chinese restaurant waitress. Tragg returns, and Mason asks about the gas pipe, and about a wrench that would be needed to loosen a pipe tightly screwed and secured with a compound that prevents leakage. Such a wrench leaves identifying marks, which Tragg did not examine. Court adjourns overnight.
17.	Drake reports that Shelby is enjoying himself in Ensenada. He gets drake to have Pinky ready to fly him to San Diego. He will pick up Francisco Munoz at Tijuana. He and Della will fly to Mexico for dinner while Drake removes the gas pipe and substitutes another.
18.	A Mexican taxi driver deposits Perry and Della at the Casa de Mañana Motel. Inskip points out where Shelby is, and Mason confronts him. His story is what we already know except, after leaving his motel room, he returned. Exeter came to the room, hungry, and he put contents of sleeping pills in the Chinese leftover and soon Exeter was asleep. He left.
19.	Mosher recalls Tragg, who introduces the pipe he has found. Tragg admits that the tool which disconnected the pipe can be identified. Mason calls Horace Shelby, which causes Mosher to ask a short recess. During this, Mason assures Daphne that he's had three expert psychiatrists check her uncle and he is sane. Hamilton Burger comes in as Judge Kyle returns. Burger objects to Shelby, warns he is a suspect and is also incompetent to testify. Mason rejoins that if he is incompetent to understand what he is doing, instructing him that anything he might say could be used against him would be an empty act. So the judge examines him, and he tells how he was forced into the sanitarium. Mason report that the court-appointed doctor, Grantland Alma, has pronounced him competent and sane, as have two other psychiatrists. Judge Kyle gives Shelby proper warnings. The first thing he admits to is that the defendant is his daughter, by a housekeeper whom he deeply loved, but who was prevented from marrying him due to legal complications. So he created the fiction of her being his niece. He mad a will leaving everything to Daphne's mother, and intended to write another when the mother died. He has no made such a will. He then explains his abduction, and his rescue by Daphne. Burger has been taken by surprise, gets an extension. Newspaper reporters take the news to telephones. Drake reports that Borden Finchley drove his car to a vacant lot and left a wrench there, then drove back to the courthouse to attend the remainder of the trial session. Mason takes Lt Tragg aside, tells him of the ruse, sends him it the vacant lot with Drake's man.
20.	Hamilton Burger announces that, due to brilliant detective work on the part of Lieutenant Arthur Tragg, they have a written confession from Borden Finchley. He has admitted to finding Exeter unconscious, so he disconnected the gas feed line to get rid of his nemesis and the gambling debt. Tragg says that Finchley told him it was Las Vegas gamblers who located Shelby for Exeter, who was to handle everything to get money he owed them. Tragg thanks Mason, and Mason tells reporters that Tragg had told him he'd never have had to arrest Daphne had he put his cards on the table a little sooner. "Well, why didn't you?" As Mason sees Horace Shelby writing a check; "And cheat myself out of a good fee?"

Perry Mason	Drake's informant	Drake's golfing enthusiast
Della Street	Tracy	Two police officers
Kelsey Madison	Madison headwaiter	Desk sergeant
Katherine "Kit" Ellis	Gillco receptionist	Judge Morton Churchill
Aunt Sophia Atwood	Gillco switchboard operator	Hamilton Burger
Kit's father and mother	Mr Gillman	"Blind" operative
Gerald Atwood	. . . Mrs (Edith) Gillman	Lt Tragg's partner
Bernice Atwood	Hubert Deering	Fingerprint expert
Paul Drake	Lt Tragg	Mildred Addie
At least two taxicab drivers	Atwood neighbor	Jerome Gillman
Stuart Baxley	Kit's cabby	Spencer Gillman
Levering Jordan	Drake's Bunion-Foot shadow	Plainclothes detective
Wolverine Motel manager	Minerva Gooding
Blind Mrs Bunion-Foot . . .	Nevin Cortland

Usually Erle Stanley Gardner dedicates his foreword to a close friend. In this instance, he takes the word of a friend to whom he's already dedicated a novel, Marshall Houts (cf. The Case of the Shapely Shadow), to make the dedication to Don Harper Mills, M D, LL B.

In the previous novel, The Case of the Beautiful Beggar, Mason used his own pocket money to help his client. It is now clear that wherever he goes in Los Angeles, people recognize him, as his cases have made him famous, and rich.

Hasn't Perry Mason always defended someone accused of murder? Yes. Here, the defendant is accused of assault with intent to murder, with a murder charge IF the assaulted person, in a coma, dies.

1.	Perry Mason and Della Street are joined by Kelsey Madison, proprietor of Madison's Midtown Milestone restaurant, as they have lunch. He's worried that Kit (Katherine Ellis), a new waitress may bother Mason with her personal problems. Kit "bought" Mason's table from the assigned waitress. Lot serves them well, hesitates but is unable to confront Mason. The attorney leaves a dollar tip plus ten dollars with a note telling her to come to his office for a consultation that will cost ten dollars.
2.	Kit shows up, tells a long story about her Aunt Sophia Atwood, her father's sister, whose actions are mysterious. Kit is mostly broke. She was raised rather in style, for her father, a real estate salesman, made lots of money but spent it as quickly as he got it. He and her mother died in an auto accident six months earlier. She couldn't face her friends in her penniless condition, so accepted an offer by her Aunt Sophia to come west. It was always thought she was well off. Gerald had first married bitchy Bernice, and they had separated. She was supposed to get a divorce, but apparently never did. Gerald and Aunt Sophia went to Mexico, and said they were married when they came back, but she doesn't think that they did marry, and even Aunt Sophia says it was probably not legal. Gerald had deeded most of his property to Bernice in Palm Springs. One day he went to play golf there, and died on the course. The golf club, of course, contacted Bernice, who was still listed as his wife. She took charge, and Aunt Sophia only caught on when Gerald didn't return, and then she got Bernice on the phone in his house. Aunt Sophia had turned all her money over to Gerald as an outright gift. She refuses to have anything to do with Bernice. Also, she goes around as if poor, going to one store to save three cents on a pound of butter, another to save five cents on a pound of bacon. But she goes there by taxicab, and has the driver wait. The final leg of her return is by bus. Well, one day, while she was doing house work, she found Aunt Sophia's closet open and, in hatboxes, she found fifty and hundred dollar bills, lots of them! Also, the house is haunted; she hears steps at night but the hallway is pitch black. Mason tells her she is in danger, and should get out immediately, that very evening, after her five to nine shift. Phone him when she has a motel room.
3.	Mason regards Della quizzically, wondering why Aunt Sophia would use a taxi except for the last leg of her journey. He can afford to hire a detective, Kit cannot, so he calls in Paul Drake. He tells Drake to put a tail on the aunt, and make sure she doesn't know it.
4.	Drake reports that Aunt Sophia sells pencils! Outside the offices of the Gillco Manufacturing Company. She goes there by taxicab. A different, taxi driver takes her shopping, though that one may change from day to day. Kit phones in and says Mason must come to her aunt's house; "it's almost a matter of life or death. . ." Stuart Baxley, who claims to be a friend of the family, wants her arrested. Mason and Street rush to the big two-and-a-half-story house and are confronted by Baxley, who won't let them in, and who will arrest Kit if the police won't. Levering Jordan, detective from Moffatt and Jordan, Investigators, cautions Baxley against rash action, and Kit joins Mason, who takes her to a motel down the street. Now she admits that Aunt Sophia has charged her with theft of only one hundred dollars, but all the boxes but one are gone! They were at dinner, Baxley and herself, when her aunt went to her room, then was heard screaming. Baxley brought in Levering Jordan who said he could get fingerprints off the box. Mason thinks Baxley is a snooper, looking for hidden assets to reveal to the Internal Revenue and get a reward. The manager of the Wolverine Motel recognizes Mason and is pleased to have him visit. Mason cautions Kit on what to say, and what not to say unless asked directly. She picks up quickly (she was hoping to go on to law school, and here we see she has the mind for it!). Mason phones Drake, who says Moffatt and Jordan, Investigators, are a reputable detective agency, above average, but a bit heavy-handed. Mason asks about getting fingerprints off boxes, and Paul says Jordan probably cannot, for the iodine fume method is chancy, and they probably don't know about the black magnetic dust technique. Mason wants the lowdown in case he sues the agency for defamation of character.
5.	Mason is met at Atwood's by Stuart Baxley, who is decidedly unfriendly. He claims to represent Atwood. Mason and says he'll use force to keep Della from entering the house. Jordan, however, takes him aside, then looks at the letter Kit has given him for Aunt Sophia, and soon Della is on her way upstairs. Mason goes to the library, and is soon joined by Sophia. She admits she accused Baxley first, but he pointed out that Katherine had the most opportunity. Mason asks about fingerprints and why, if Baxley's fingerprints are on the box, she accuses Kit. She doesn't, until she has proof. Nor is Baxley representing her. She made a withdrawal of exactly one crisp hundred-dollar bill from an account into which she'd occasionally deposit five dollars, put it in the hatbox. He and Della leave with a suitcase and overnight bag. Mason thinks Atwood put her fortune somewhere, then staged the theft. The return to Kit's motel, give her what they have, but she asks about a plaid skirt and alligator-skin shoes.
6.	Drake reports that Atwood did withdraw a hundred-dollar bill. Second, there are two women who sell pencils, the other Mrs Bunion-Foot because of a bunion at the base of the right big toe which makes it necessary for her to have special shoes. Atwood is Mrs Neat-Foot. Drake's informant has provided the information. He's already had his shadow tail Bunion-Foot home. Mason has Della order a used car from the Tracy outfit.
7.	The headwaiter tells Mason that they cater to a businessman's luncheon, so he'll have to wait for a table that Kit is serving. They have lemonades while waiting. Kit suggests the scallops. Mason notices that Kit is wearing alligator-skin shoes, so must have gone to Atwood's. They discuss how Madison 's Midtown Milestone uniforms are constructed. Drake comes in, is happy to order a hot corned beef sandwich. Mason ask Drake how he keeps in touch with his operatives, and is told the new cars have field telephones, the old cars which blend in with the scenery don't but the operatives call in whenever they need to go to the rest room. Drake leaves to put a second operative on the blind beggar. When Della and Perry return to their office, Drake reports that Sophia is in critical condition at a hospital. Stuart Baxley discovered her. She'd been hit with a five-cell flashlight.
8.	Mason and Drake go to the Gillco Manufacturing Company offices. A receptionist and a switchboard operator are on duty. They speak to the former, who explains that two women work out on the property line, selling high quality pencils and nice ballpoint pens. She comes by taxi; how else can a blind woman travel. She gets a special rate. Mr Gillman is too busy to see them. Hubert Deering enters, is sent right up to Mr Gillman. As they are leaving, Drake informs Mason that the blind woman's name is also Gillman, an eccentric, but he doesn't know if she's related to Gillman of Gillco. Drake thinks her cabbie spotted them following her and told her. Mason phones Madison to have Kit visit him.
9.	Three-thirty and Kit is there. Mason informs her of the assault on Aunt Sophia. She admits to going to the house around midnight to get the skirt and shoes she needed. The five-cell flashlight is hers. Lt Tragg bursts in, charges Kit with assault with intent to commit murder. He knows about Kits trip to the house, for a neighbor took the taxi license and they got to the cabby. Mason gives her his usual warning against saying anything.
10.	Drake reports that one car at GIllco was registered to Hubert Deering. Mason suggests that he check out Bernice Atwood. At Bunion-Foot's apartment, they get no response to the buzzer. Drake's shadow says the blind woman is in. They try the buzzer again, then the speaking tube. The motel manager, Minerva Gooding, challenges them and, after much discussion, leads them to Edith GIllman's apartment. She is not there. They check the other apartment, and it is empty. Edith has a phone, and one other person with the number, Sophia. There is a back way out of the apartment building. They ask Gooding to try to have Edith call when she returns. Mason has Drake put four men on watch of the building, for Edith's return, and safety.
11.	Drake is surprised when it is reported that Edith Gillman is back at Gilco. She walked out of her apartment and into a cab this morning. She must have gotten back before he got extra men on the job. Mason says they've been waiting, but haven't baited the trap. He dictates a letter to Gerald Atwood, dated four days before he died, and giving all details of how to write a holographic will that requires no witnesses. He then tells Drake to plant the letter in Atwood's golf bag at the Four Palms Country Club where Attwood died and where Bernice has left his clubs for sale. Then Mason makes an appointment with the pro, Nevin Cortland, for golf lessons.
12.	Mason is taken to the course first for driving instruction by Nevin Cortland. Then they go to the pitch and putting green. After this, Mason asks to be fitted up with clubs. Cortland suggests new clubs, but Mason looks at used bags full of clubs, particularly likes Atwood's bag. He makes a low offer, which Cortland relays to the widow, who rejects it. A short way from the club Drake is waiting. He says his golfing enthusiast friend went through everything in the shop, distracting the pro, and he planted the letter.
13.	They go in the dark of the night to Atwood's, where Mason says it may be a long wait. Drake says that it may not be long, for his operative says Bernice Atwood tore out to the Four Palms and picked up the bag with the planted letter. They go directly to Kits room and Drake falls asleep. Mason hers something much later, wakes Drake. There is a crash and the sound of breaking glass and they catch Stuart Baxley, who stumbled and broke a glass water bottle. He has a gun, which they take. Drake phones the police and two men arrive, take all three to headquarters. The desk sergeant questions them until Lt Tragg arrives. Baxley has jimmied the back door, which is held only by a spring lock. Tragg discovers that, of course, Baxley has a crisp hundred-dollar bill, which he got just that day, and which Mason says could have been planted in Kit's room. Tragg advises Baxley that Mason had a legitimate reason to be in the house, which Baxley did not, then lets Baxley go, admonishing him to stay away from the Atwood house. He tells Mason he can go there any time with a police escort.
14.	Mason and Drake head back to their offices. Mason want to look through all of Kit's things, those items she stripped herself down to when she came west. Della has found a photo album, some good photos, lots of fuzzy ones. Mason gets the idea of having a female operative impersonate the blind woman, and phones Drake to do it.
15.	Judge Morton Churchill opens the preliminary hearing. Hamilton Burger says there are "certain aspects of evidence in this case which we wish to have perpetuated." He calls Stuart Baxley who relates the incident at dinner involving Kit. During his late night visit, he heard a "peculiar slithering sound," (A major clue, Reader) then a terrific crash which scared him into running, and he was caught by Drake and Mason. Mason rakes him over the coals regarding his carrying a revolver illegally, attempting to plant a hundred dollar bill and so forth. He denies upsetting the water cooler. The judge also examines Baxley, then tells Burger that he thinks the witness's testimony is worthless. Now Baxley blurts out that he actually wanted to plant the bill in the closet, which would get Katherine off the hook. The Court is recessed overnight.
16	Outside the courthouse, Mason explains to Drake that Baxley is telling the truth, not the whole truth, but a good part of it. The cooler had been moved. (Why? How? Here are major clues, Reader.) The blind woman crashed into it! (Katherine had said the house was haunted.) She was walking in slippers. To a blind person, the dark means nothing. They go to Gillco, where the "blind" operative says a man came out and dropped a paper in her cup; it had two rows of figures. Mason thinks this is the current status of a proxy fight at Gillco.
17.	Mason sees no sign of a police car outside the Atwood home, so uses his key to get in. The broken cooler has not been cleaned up. Mason follows the tracks of its moving to its original location, finds a trap door under the rug. In the trap are packets of hundred dollar bills, fifty to a pack. Mason recovers the trap. He and Drake argue over what to do with the money. Mason says they have to leave it and not tell the police, while Drake worries that Baxley or someone else might find it and steal it. Lt Tragg and a partner have heard it all, and make Mason and Drake wait while they count the booty. $300,000. As they leave, Mason says Drake must serve a subpoena on the blind woman, for she'll be his whole case. He asks why, if she were getting information from the company, couldn't it be mailed? Because she was giving instructions to the person who brought her information!
18.	Tragg testifies to catching Mason through a stake-out. A fingerprint expert says Katherine's prints were on the flashlight. The Atwood neighbor and the cab driver testify to Katherine's late visit. When the judge appears ready to bind the defendant over to trial before the Superior Court, Mason says he wants to put on a defense. He calls Mrs Gillman, and Minerva Gooding brings her in. Mrs Gillman announces that she is Katherine Ellis's aunt Sophia! (Reader, hadn't you guessed it?) The woman living in the house was Mildred Addie, her onetime nurse, and she was posing with consent. Sophia Ellis Gillman had only a brother, a spendthrift. She had married Jerome Gillman, founder of Gillco, and he left her considerable property including a big block of stock in Gillco Manufacturing Company. He left a worthless son, Spencer Gillman, by an earlier marriage. When she became blind she arranged with Mildred for a place of concealment in the house, of which she knew every foot. Mildred fell in love with Gerald Atwood, and this forced her to write her brother Spencer and say she had married Atwood. Then her brother and his wife were killed in an auto accident and George died and Bernice stepped in and took everything she could get her hands on. Spencer knew his father had left her stock, but he didn't know where she was, and he came to think Mildred was her, since they looked quite alike. By posing as a blind woman she kept in touch with those in the Gillco company who knew what a crook Spencer was, but Spencer got Baxley to cultivate Mildred, who fell for his line. She does not know who clubbed Mildred, for she had to hurry down the back stairs to Minerva who was waiting for her. As she leaves the stand, Kit rushes to her and they embrace. Mason recalls Tragg, who admits there were other fingerprints on the flashlight, but he doesn't know whose. Mason calls Hubert Deering, son of Bernice Atwood. Mason hands Deering a metal clipboard to which is attached a carbon copy of the letter about a holographic will that he had Drake slip into the golf bag. The witness looks at the carbon copy, admits to seeing the original. Holding the metal clipboard by its edges, he gives it to Tragg and says that if he will compare the fingerprints on it with those on the flashlight and the glass water bottle he'll have the solution to the problem. Burger asks a half-hour recess. Deering pushes his way to the door. Mason reminds Burger that flight is evidence of guilt in California.
19.	Tragg testifies that Hubert Deering's fingerprints were on the glass water bottle and the flashlight. He know's where Deering is because a plainclothes detective in a plain car with a radio-telephone is following him as he drives towards the border. Burger reports that Mildred Addie has regained consciousness and stated that her assailant was a man. Deering is shown to have motive and means. He moves to dismiss the case of the People versus Katherine Ellis. Kit flies across the courtroom into the arms of the blind woman. Hamilton Burger shakes Mason's hand.

Della Street	Blue Ox waitress	Partner in car
Receptionist (Gertie)	Stephen Lockley "Slick" Garland	Lieutenant Tragg
Perry Mason	Harmon Haslett	French, Coleman and Swazey Secretary
Ellen (Calvert) Adair	Ezekiel Haslett	Judge Dean Elwell
Managing editor, Cloverdale Gazette	Bruce Jasper	Stanley Cleveland Dillon
Harry Leland Berry	Norman Jasper	Courtroom crowd
Jarmen Dayton	Duncan Z Lovett	Court reporter
Paul Drake	Maxine Edfield	Dr Leland Clinton
Drake's operative (shadow)	Melinda Baird	Ralph Corning
Taxi driver	August Leroy Baird	Donna Findley
Ruth, Drake's receptionist	Agnes Burlington	Lawyers, courtroom attachés and officers
Decoy "Ellen Smith" (Jessie Alva)	Wight Baird	Bailiff
Blue Ox headwaiter, Pierre	Police officer

In his shortest Foreword ever, Erle Stanley Gardner honors Professor Leon Derobert with the dedication of this book.

Conversely, there is much repetition in the novel. 2 tells 1 her life story. Then 3 tells 1 2's life story. Then 4 confirm's 1's life story, and so on.

For the first time Paul Drake's receptionist has a name; Ruth.

Now Perry and Della are drinking Bacardi cocktails. They still like steak.

1.	Della Street takes the receptionist's (Gertie's) call in Mason's office. A woman calling herself Ellen Adair needs to see him, without an appointment, now. Perry Mason is bored with his work, has Della check her out. The report; a woman in late thirties or early forties, regal, tall, well formed. Della has a fifty-dollar retainer. Miss Adair is admitted, says she wants to ask the questions. What is the right of privacy? "The right of a person to be left alone" with a few exceptions. She explain that twenty years earlier she won first prize in a bathing-beauty contest when she was eighteen. She got a Hollywood screen test. Then she disappeared, to have a baby (note the book is copyright 1967). Now a hometown paper in Cloverdale is looking for the contest winner. Times have changed, but when she had the baby it meant deep shame. Since then her father died and her mother remarried, then the second husband (Harry Leland Berry) died and her mother died. She went to Indianapolis, established her identity, and collected on her mother's will. Cloverdale has grown. The Cloverdale Gazette recently ran a letter wondering what became of the beauty contest winner, Ellen Calvert. She took the name of Adair when she disappeared, but won't tell Mason her boy's surname. She wants the paper stopped from searching for her. Mason has Della get the managing editor of The Cloverdale Gazette on the phone, tells him to kill the story and have his attorney get in touch. The editor agrees to kill the story. Mason gets Ellen's phone number. Mason and Street wonder about the boy, who would be nineteen.
2.	Jarmen Dayton, a pudgy fellow, arrives the next afternoon, says he just got into town, averts Mason's specific questions, particularly those about to whom he is beholden. He wants to find Ellen Calvert, and is willing to pay a substantial sum. Mason will think it over. He is a private detective, and carries a gun, Mason tells Della. Then Mason phones Paul Drake, arranges for an agent to shadow him. They meet on the elevator and Drake says things are in place. A taxi driver takes Mason to Union Depot where he phones Drake, gets Ruth the receptionist. Drake then reports that Mason is wearing a tail, thin with high cheekbones. Mason orders a decoy to play the part of Ellen. While waiting, he heads out, turns back and nearly bumps in to the thin man with high cheekbones. Mason phones Adair, tells her of the offer of a reasonable sum of money, arranges for dinner at The Blue Ox. Ellen admits she is the head buyer for French, Coleman and Swazey. A return call to Drake, and the decoy has been arranged. Mason asks Paul to debug his office and, when he returns, Della says the office has been given a clean bill of health. They surmise that the interest in Ellen might have to do with her baby. "Ellen Smith," the decoy, is given instructions on how to behave. Mason is happy to have something other than routine to play with!
3.	Ellen is awaiting Mason and Della at the Blue Ox. The headwaiter, Pierre, takes orders for Bacardis for Mason and Street, a dry Martini for Ellen, which a waitress quickly brings. Ellen now explains that her boyfriend was the son of a very wealthy man. Her pregnancy was taken care of by the company public relations man, who sent her an unmarked envelope with ten hundred-dollar bills. The boyfriend went to Europe for a year, married when he returned. The wife died a year and a half earlier. The boyfriend inherited the company when his father died a decade ago. Mason asks about her child, a question she didn't expect. She says she is going to protect her son. When she came west, she could get only housework. The couple she worked for were childless, couldn't adopt for some legal reason, so took her son as theirs. There are two half brothers who would inherit should the boy's father die and no one knew that there was a son. Ellen wants Mason to build a fence around her, but Mason wonders about the boy's rights. Ellen pays Mason off, says he's no longer her attorney, and leaves.
4.	Drake reports. Rental autos have the backs of the rear view mirrors painted as identification of the agency. There are two cars watching the decoy, from the same agency. One is heavyset, Jarmen Dayton, the other Stephen Lockley Garland, thin, cadaverous, both from Cloverdale. Dayton is a former police chief, Garland the public-relations man -- lobbyist, private detective, gumshoe artist, fixer and troubleshooter -- for Cloverdale Spring and Suspension, which owns the town. Harmon Haslettt, who is head of the company, was lost at sea during a storm. Mason asks for more detailed information.
5.	Drake reports that Harmon Haslettt ran the company until his death. His father Ezekial Haslettt founded it. There are two half brothers, Bruce Jasper and Norman Jasper. Rumor says a will leaves everything to the Jaspers unless Haslett has left issue. Gossip talks about Haslettt getting a girls in "trouble" and Ezekial would have raised the roof if he knew. "Slick" Garland took care of things with a thousand dollars, and a European vacation for Harmon. The half brothers want to prove there was no child, or that it wasn't Haslettt's. Garland apparently sized-up the girl wrong, for she never returned.
6.	"Slick" Garland comes to Mason. He is troubleshooter for ColvervilleSpring and Suspension Company. He knows where Mason has hidden Ellen Cavert. Heexplains how he misjudged Ellen and botched the job. Haslettt has been lost at sea. Either Ellen's child, if there is one, inherits, or two half brothers inherit, and he'll work for whichever, an wants to solve the problem before anyone else does. The half brothers, represented by Duncan Lovett, want to prove there was no illegitimate child. A call from Paul Drake interrupts them; awoman and Lovett have gotten in to the decoy's apartment. Mason tells Garland, and they head out together.
7.	Mason, Street and Garland enter the apartment along with Dayton whom they gather at the door. Mason introduces the four of them to Duncan Z Lovett who is representing the half brothers. He introduces Maxine Edfield, who claims to be a school friend in whom Ellen Calvert confided. She recognizes the decoy as Calvert, says she merely used a claim of pregnancy to try to get Haslettt to marry her, but was never pregnant. Mason demands the right of cross-examination, asks if her identification is mistaken, then would other parts of her testimony also be mistaken. Trapped, she flusters about and claims it is Calvert. Mason has the decoy identify herself, Jessie Alva. Lovett looks at Alva's credentials. Garland admits his mistake. Maxine says she can't be gypped out of her money that easily, which is all Mason needs to know.
8.	Mason tells Della that Edfield's mistaken identification is less harmful to her than her admission of receiving payment forher testimony. The real Ellen Calvert is awaiting Mason. She has changed her mind. Mason goes over the situation, including Haslettt's being lost at sea and Lovett's trying prove she was never pregnant. She says she wants two million dollars for her son. She has talked with her son, Wight Baird, and told him the real situation. Mason says she "could be a very, very, very clerver woman working incomspiracy with a young manof the proper age . . ." and their relationship of client and attorney no longer exists. When she came west, pregnant, she couldn't put her office experience to use, but she got housework with Mrs Melinda Baird, and had her baby under that name with August Leroy Baird who kept her son as theirs. Agnes Burlington, a nurse at the hospital, suspected something, and would recognize her. Not only that, she is now trying to blackmail her with photos of her in the hospital. Now she wants to turn the tables to her advantage. She thinks her wild son would settle down if he had a responsible business position. Agnes has already called on Wight, probably hoping to blackmail the Bairds, which she eventually did. Ellen says she gave the Bairds the money to pay Burlington to keep quiet, but now she wants her to talk. Maxine is lying, she found out about the pregnancy when Ellen had morning sickness. Masonis not satisfied. Both Bairds are not dead. Mason arranges to pick Ellen up at eight and go to Burlington.
9.	Ellen directs Perry and Della to Burlington's. Mason refuses to drive into the driveway because it looks soft and there are deep tracks in it. They get no answer with the bell. Peering through a window, Mason sees a woman's foot, toe pointed up. Ellen thinks they should find out what it is about, not call the police. Maybe she's drunk and passed out. They go to the back, avoiding a soaked front lawn, enter, find a dead woman. Ellen goes into hysterics, runs around, puts her fingers on all sorts of things and has to be stopped by Mason. He sends Della to phone for the police. An officer arrives and questions them, tells his partner in the police car to call homicide.
10.	Lieutenant Tragg asks Mason how it was he discovered the body and Mason relates seeing the foot, then finding the body. Mason keeps Tragg from asking Ellen too many questions.
11.	Mason tells Ellen that Agnes was probably murdered a day earlier. Mason is struck by how cool she is now, after having hysterics. Tragg will not like finding her fingerprints everywhere. Mason suggests that she knew Agnes was dead when she came to his office earlier in the day, and she's in trouble if she did. Why did she insist he park in the driverway, where he saw distinct tire prints. Did she want him to obliterate the tracks. And so on. If so, she will face a first-degree murder trial. She slumps "over against Della Street's shoulder" with an "It's true."
12.	Mason calls Ellen a "little fool" and says that Lt Trgg will prove her car made the tracks in the driveway an that she killed Agnes Burlington. She admits tobeing at Agnes's a bit after noon. There was no gun. She took Agnes's diary, which seemed to be in code. She's hid it and, as an officer of the court, Mason doesn't want it.
13.	They arrive at the Baird's, where Wight is living. Mason notices Wight's low-slung, expensivesportscar. Only after ringing, waiting, ringing again does he show up. Ellen questions this, then a motor is heard in the driveway. He learns that Agnes Burlington has been murdered, and admits she's beento see him and offered to keep quiet about his real mother for ten percent of the estate he'd inherit from the Bairds, which he paid. Then she showed up again and said now he could inherit much more. Mason searches for the diary, finds a partially emptied quart bottle of whiskey on the floor and two glasses which still had ice cubes, one with lipstick. Mason calls Wight's bluff about studying, says he had to get his girl out the back before letting his mother in. Mason shakes the truth out of him; he agreed to ten percent of his Cloverdale inheritance for Burlington. No agreement was signed, but he did give her a binding memo.
14.	Lt Tragg does his usual direct walk-in without giving Gertie a chance to warn Mason and thereby saving taxpayer money. He announces to Mason he's going to pick up Ellen for murder and, due to the law, perhaps Mason would like to come along. They take a squad car to French, Coleman and Swazey where Ellen is head buyer. They sweep by a startled secretary and pick up Ellen. She wants to assert her innocence, but Mason shuts her up. Tragg reveals he knows she was at Burlington's because of the tire tracks. The body was dead twenty-four to thirty hours before discovery. They'd like to know when she ingested her last meal to be more specific. Then he jolts Ellen with the fact they have the diary, which was in an envelope addressed to her in her handwriting care of General Delivery at the post office. Mason warns Tragg that there are things in Ellen's background which must not be disclosed, so she'll say not one word. Mason gets five minutes alone with Ellen, who admits she got the diary from a top bureau drawer. There was no gun. She owns a thirty-eight-caliber Colt, which she loaned to Wight. He probably put it in her glove compartment.
15.	Mason tells Drake that the police probably have Ellen's gun and he expects that it fired the fatal bullet. He wants Drake to find out about Burlington's last meal, by checking at a nearby supermarket. The bullet must be somewhere in the room, and it must be found. Mason asks Della to play the part of a juror and ask him questions. Thus it is figured out that Agnes was dead before a heavy thundershower struck, or she'd have turned off the water to her lawn. Ellen Adair parked her car after that. Did Ellen's gun fire the fatal bullet, and could Wight have fired it?
16.	Judge Dean Elwell calls the Court to order and chief trial deputy Stanley Cleveland Dillon, who prided himself upon having sent more defendants to their deaths than any other trial deputy in the State of California, becomes visibly annoyed when Judge Elwell admonishes him for trying to instruct the Court on its duty. He is obviously aware of the crowd in the courtroom. Lt Tragg exlains finding the dead body of Agnes Burlington. He found a thirty-two-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver under the body. The court reporter is asked to read back that statement. On cross, Mason finds that the gun had not been recently discharged, and the fatal shot was probably from a thirty-eight. Dr Leland Clinton testifies that the cause of death was a gunshot wound, the bullet ranging upward. Since there were no powder burns, the shot could not have been close. Mason forces disclosure of the contents of the dececent's stomach, and death took place about a half hour after eaten. Tragg is recalled, says he fund fingerprints of Burlington's boyfriend Ralph Corning and those of the defendant. He also recovered a diary from the mail. A thirty-eight caliber revolver was found in Ellen's glove compartment, and it had been recently fired. No bullet was found in the body or room (key clue!). Maxine Enfield is called, to show motivation. Judge Elwell thinks this unnecessary. She is bursting to tell her story, about Ellen's using a fake pregnancy to get Harmon to marry her. She admits under cross that she at first made a false identification. Mason gets her to admit that she is being paid by Lovett for her testimony. Then Mason gets her to admit she saw Burlington and had warned her she'd call her a liar. As his case, Mason calls Paul Drake. He followed clues to the Sunrise Special Supermarket where Burlington bought her groceries. Donna Findley testifies to Burlington's buying a TV Special Dinner which had in it the same things found in the decedent's stomach. She bought it about five thirty the day she was killed. Mason argues that, if the frozen dinner carton was in the garbage, then the defendant's tire tracks were made after the decedent was dead. He asks the court for time to see the murder site.
17.	At the site, Mason wonders about the windows. What if they had been up at the time of the murder. The sudden thunderstorm would have caused the decedent to shut the windows, turning her back on the one who shot her. Mason suggests that they unseal the windows and open them. They find a small hole in the screen. Dillon offers a solution, but the judge thinks he is the one now indulging in fanciful theories. A search of the grounds outside the window is ordered.
18.	Lawyers, courtroom attachés and officers leave and Mason draws Tragg aside. He explains the situation as a "cat burgler" type, where someone had discovered what Agnes knew and, while Agnes was showering, the burglar tried to get in, but was caught, and had to shoot Agnes. It was someone who would ordinarily carry a gun. Such as a private detective. Such as Jarmen Dayton. Della interrupts; a phone call from the Azores. Harmon Haslettt has just been landed in the Azores from a ship that did not have wireless and he's taking a jet to Los Angeles.
19.	The bailiff rapps his gavel. The judge explains what happened when the police investigated the murder site with Mason, and that Jarmen Dayton has been apprehended with the murder weapon in his possession. He dismisses the case against Ellen. A man pushes he way through the crowd, and Ellen recognizes Harmon, and Harmon his son Wight. Harmon and Ellen embrace as the flashlights of newspaper photographers flooded the courtroom.

Selma Anson	Herman J Bolton	Hamilton Burger
Her shadow	Fowler Arlington	Rosemary Arlington
Della Street	Lolita Arlington	Two police with photographer
Perry Mason	Marvin Arlington	Office janitor
Paul Drake	Drake's operative	Cab driver
Dorothy Gregg	Helen Ebb	Newsmen at headquarters
Ralph Bell Baird	Tucson operative	Deputy District Attorney
George Findlay	"Pinky" Brier	Unnamed judge
Gertie	Paso Del Norte clerk	Judge Leland Crowder
Mr Smythe	Bill Pickens	Alexander Hilton Drew
Delane A "Dee" Arlington	Hotel waitress	Dr Boland C Dawes
Douglas Arlington	Lieutenant Tragg	Rayburn Hobbs
Oliver Arlington	Sid Russell	Thomas Z Jasper
Mildred (Arlington)	L A reporter with photographer	Spectators
Daphne (Arlington)	Duncan Harris Monroe	Deputy sheriff
Bill (William Harper) Anson	Leonarde Keeler

Erle Stanley Gardner points out that the law has four categories into which all deaths fit; natural causes, accident, homicide or suicide. Which it may be is a medical question, yet it is often decided by a Justice of the Peace, a non-medical person. John Pilcher, M D, Forensic Pathologist in Corpus Christi, Texas, has worked to get Texas to require forensic pathologists throughout the state, and to him is dedicated this book.

1.	Selma Anson finishes breakfast, heads thru the luxurious lobby of her apartment hotel, followed by a man. She stops, confronts him, tells him if he keeps following her, she's going to slap his face each time she sees him. He tells her if she does that he'll get her for compensatory and exemplary damages.
2.	Della Street advises Perry Mason that a woman wants to know what will happen if she slaps a man in the face. Mason gives in, invites her in. Selma Anson relates the incident with the man that morning, want's help. She's been a widow for a year. Mason advises a private detective, gets Paul Drake to join them. He and the attorney explain the difference between a rough shadow and a smooth shadow, as well as the use of a roper, who gets friendly with the woman so as to get her to admit to something they want to know. Her only recently acquired friend is Dorothy Gregg, a widow of similar age, with interest in Mayan civilization. Drake arranges to put a tail on her shadow.
3.	Drake reports that the shadow was an amateur, Ralph Bell Baird. He was reporting to a used car salesman,George Findlay. When Drake told this to Selma, she clammed up. As he leaves, Gertie announces Selma, again. Mason is awaiting a Mr Smythe, but gives Selma a moment. She's fallen in love with widower Delane Arlington. Douglas Arlington and Oliver Arlington, his brothers, are dead, so only nieces and nephews survive. Niece Mildred wants to protect Delane, and she's the girlfriend of Findlay, who is trying to learn enough about interloper Selma to get in the good graces of Mildred. Daphne, the other niece, straight-from-the-shoulder and honest, thinks Delane should do as he wants. Findlay has told Mildred that she's a gold digger and murdered her husband. She wants Mason to protect her interests.
4.	Delane A Arlington and Daphne come to Mason. Herman J Bolton of Double Indemnity Accident and Life is looking back into the death of Bill Anson. He died shortly after a party given by Fowler Arlington and wife Lolita, to which he and wife Selma were invited. A crab salad had been left out all day, and everyone got food poisoning but Bill, who had his mind on an investment in which he was to have had a share, overate, and died. Selma took a hundred thousand in insurance money and made good use of it, going into real estate and the stock market. He wants to marry Selma, but she won't marry while the family disagree, so he wants Bolton stopped from investigating. Mason says there is nothing he can do for him, that it is Selma who should sue. Only Daphne understands. Mason has Drake put a rough shadow on Ralph Baird, a roper on George Finday. Then he phones Selma, warns her that a Herman Bolton might try to interview her, and have a dispatch case with him. She should accuse him of having a recorder in the case and throw him out.
5.	As soon as Mason enters his office, Della tells him that the eight o'clock news announced that the District Attorney's office has ordered exhumation of the body of William Harper Anson, and arsenic has been found. Selma Anson phones in; Herman Bolton is asking her for a statement. He gets Bolton on the phone and is told she should make a good faith statement. Mason suggests then they'd try to recover the money they paid Selma. He tells them to get a letter from the legal department or bring an attorney. After Bolton leaves, Selma calls back and is warned that the police might get involved. Yes, he had a dispatch case with him.
6.	Selma and Bolton come to Mason's office. Bolton asserts that his company paid too quickly. He asserts that Anson might have wished to take his own life but, knowing a suicide would not be paid, disguised it as food poisoning. The company can recover principal and any profits made therefrom. Mrs Anson has made good on the insurance money, quintupling it. Mason catches him off guard with the accusation that he is taping their conference. Bolton has talked with witnesses, and Mason asserts he should, too, before Selma talks. Then Bolton tells Mason that his client has been buying arsenic, Featherfirm, which she used to mount birds. Mason forcibly motions him out. Then he asks Selma about Featherfirm. She used to mount strange birds as a hobby, but gave it up when Bill died. Selma is worried about a roper, for a neighbor believes she poisoned her cat. He sends her home with Della, then phones Drake to put a tail on her.
7.	Drake reports that Selma went to the bank for half an hour, then went to apartments where George Findlay lives for twenty-three minutes, and is now headed for the airport, according to his operative. Mason tries to get involved in his backlog of work, but cannot. Drake then reports that Selma went straight to a gate that was loading passengers and bought a ticket for a big premium from a woman, Helen Ebb, in line. The plane is on the way to El Paso via Tucson. Mason tells Drake to get an operative on in Tucson. He has Della get Pinky to ready her plane for them.
8.	"Pinky" Brier was Mason's charter flyer north of the Mexican border. Mason wants to get to Phoenix where he can get a commercial jet flight to El Paso. They listen to the six o'clock news. "A Los Angeles heiress . . ." Mason (at this point, Erle Stanley Gardner's alter ego) discusses the beauty of the desert. At Phoenix they switch to a jet in from Las Vegas, and Mason sleeps to El Paso. There the find the hotel at which Selma is staying from Paul Drake.
9.	They go to the Paso Del Norte Hotel, a famous cattlemen's place. There is an International Exchange Club banquet, but no conventions, announces the desk clerk. They go to Selma's room, startle her, of course. Mason warns her that being sold a bill of goods by George Findlay, namely to disappear, was the one thing she should have avoided. She has sixty thousand, and Mason takes two.
10.	Mason quietly introduces himself to the toastmaster for the International Exchange Club, gets five minutes to speak. He says he's there on behalf of a Los Angeles heiress who wants to support such organization as this. He gives two thousand dollars on behalf of his anonymous client. On his way out he has the desk clerk phone Helen Erb that he is on the way, thus tipping off a following newspaper reporter where to come. He does. He is Bill Pickens of the Chronicle. Mason suavely leads him on, revealing Selma as the heiress who wants to remain anonymous so she can give to many organizations without being hounded by others. The reporter is elated at having bested Perry Mason (or so he thinks).
11.	Mason has read the article and Mason tells the waitress Della will be joining him, but Lieutenant Tragg gets there first. He is with Sid Russell of the El Paso Detective Bureau, to pick up a fugitive. Mason joins him and is introduced to Russell. Then Tragg pilots Mason over to a just-arrived Della Street before Mason can get her aside. Mason calls Della's attention to the newspaper article by Bill Pickens. Russell knows him, a bit too well, as a thorn in the flesh. Tragg is wary. His worry is justified when Mason's client is identified. Mason explains his hush-hush reason for being in El Paso, which ruins Tragg's appetite. Mason, of course, explains why Selma took an assumed name. She is wanted for murder? Bill Pickens has noticed them in the restaurant, and Mason uses this to get Tragg to give up with nothing more than telling the waitress to claim a good tip..
12.	Mason goes to Selma, tells her she is wanted for questioning on a murder and that she played into the hands of George Findlay and the woman he intends to marry, Mildred Arlington. She now thinks she can never see Delane again,out of pride. Mason has a plan but, if Selma is lying, what he is going to do will be suicidal. He checks out and the three fly back to Los Angeles where they are met by a reporter with a photographer. Mason tells the reporter he intends to have Duncan Harris Monroe interrogate Selma. The reporter says "lie detector" and Mason says it will be a polygraph test to determine Selma's innocence.
13.	Mason introduces Selma to Monroe, explains the situation, and the photographer makes a few photos. Mason asserts that he has the right to prove innocence by any means, even as the courts frown on polygraph evidence of guilt. Monroe explains how he will conduct the test, then hooks Selma up, and asks her questions, then repeats the test, and a third time. Monroe says Selma is telling the truth. The reporter dashes for the door, followed by his photographer.
14.	WIDOW EXONERATED screams the headline. The story includes information about polygraph inventor Leonarde Keeler. The phone rings; Hamilton Burger! He threatens citation for contempt of court. Mason points out that the courts cannot cite a person for proclaiming his innocence. Next; George Findlay is in the outer office, terribly angry. He calls Selma a "scheming adventuress" "who has already killed one husband." He doesn't like the lie detector gambit; Mason corrects with "truth detector." He says he can help Mason's client. Mason says he only wants to keep Delane's money intact for Mildred to inherit. He says he can give the insurance company and the District Attorney the evidence they want, but he'd rather make a deal. Mason throws him out of the office.
15.	Daphne Arlington is back. She says George has Mildred hypnotized and she's worried because they were huddled together but stopped talking when she entered the room. She heard George say "And we'll let your uncle discover the evidence that . . ." Mason asks about who is living at the house, and of what the grounds consist. Tennis court, swimming pool, barbecue arbor . . ." Then he asks about the family barbecue. Lolita made the salad early in the day, put it in the refrigerator, then took it out to put some other food in, and never got the salad back. Uncle Dee has not barbecued since. Everyone was there; Mildred (before Findlay), Marvin and wife Rosemary, Fowler and Lolita, Uncle Dee and Mr and Mrs Anson. Two police plainclothesmen thoroughly searched the grounds with a photographer. Mason assures Daphne he'll try his best to prevent anyone from framing Selma for murder.
16.	Paul Drake phones Perry to inform him that the Grand Jury has indicted Selma for the murder of her husband. Mason phones Selma, tells her to bring her checkbook and be prepared to write two large checks. He then tells Drake to put a twenty-four hour tail on Findlay. Next he phones Tragg, asks him to wait for him in his office. Selma arrives, is told she's been indicted for murder, and he's going to try to get her out on bail! Mason takes Selma out the back way with a twenty-dollar tip to the janitor at the freight elevator. A cab meets them and the driver is told to take them to Police Headquarters. Mason surrenders Selma to Tragg, asks that "she be booked and taken to the nearest and most accessible magistrate at once." Newsmen have gathered and Tragg is left no choice. They are joined by a Deputy District Attorney. Mason points out to the judge that bail is at the discretion of the court. Is the D A going to ask for the death penalty? The deputy doesn't know. Then a first-degree murder penalty should not be assessed. $50,000 asks the judge. The deputy thinks this inadequate. So the judge doubles it, and Selma pays with checks which she can have certified.
17.	There is no jury. Judge Leland Crowder will hear the case. Mason believes him to be fair and open-minded. Alexander Hilton Drew calls Dr Boland C Dawes as his first witness. The doctor testifies that Mr Anson died of arsenic poisoning, though he signed a death certificate indicating food poisoning. Bolton testifies, telling about the preparation of the crab salad. Lolita Arlington identifies photos of the house and surroundings, then says that while talking with Selma she learned of her bird taxidermy and the use of Featherfirm. She says Selma served many of the guests their crab salad, but dropped the plate from her husband and it broke. The pieces were put in the hard garbage can. After this, Uncle Dee put a lock on the barbecue arbor, which hasn't been used since. She has taken Lt Tragg there, and he retrieved the broken plate. Tragg then says he went with Lolita, found the broken plate. Fingerprints of Selma and William Anson were on it. Mason gets him to admit he has no idea how long the prints have been on the plate. Rayburn Hobbs testifies to finding Featherfirm on the plate. His company had trouble with competition, so put an obscure chemical element into batches of their powder, so he is certain of his finding. They discontinued this six months earlier. Thomas Z Jasper testifies that Selma bought Featherfirm from him, but not after the death. During a recess, Daphne tells Mason that some evidence has been planted and found by Uncle Dee. He found a jar with Featherfirm deep in a dark corner of a cupboard under a sink. Mason suggests, indirectly, of course, that if Uncle Dee really loves Selma he should marry her so he won't have to tell the police about his find. He tells her about Pinky, as a way to get the two to Nevada and married. Since Selma is out on bail, she can go!
18.	Mildred Arlington is called and says she saw Selma stop, fuss with the salads, before delivering them. She believes Selma deliberately dropped William's plate. Mason gets her to admit she doesn't like the defendant. Drew asks for an adjournment until afternoon, and Mason asks for a recess until the next morning. Mason argues for, and gets, continuation of bail.
19.	The trio, Mason, Street and Drake, are having lunch. Mason is not holding something up his sleeve, but up his arm. He is certain Findlay will worry that Selma may be acquitted and marry Delane, so he won't sit idly by. Who, besides Selma, could have a motive for murdering Bill Anson is the question. Della says that Pinky left for Las Vegas with a man and a woman.
20.	Hamilton Burger is in the courtroom when court is reconvened. He charges Perry Mason with taking steps to obstruct introduction of important new evidence. The judge cancels Selma's bail. Burger calls Daphne and asks her if Delane told her anything. Hearsay evidence, points out Mason. So Delane is called. Mason stops him from testifying; he is the accused's husband! Then Mason says he will stipulate that the witness did find a half-filled jar of Featherfirm in a cupboard. He wishes to introduce the jar as a Defendant's Exhibit! Burger is astounded. Mason now recalls Lt Tragg, who asserts that he did search all of the arbor. There is no possibility that the jar was there when he searched. Mason calls Hobbs, who testifies that, at Mason's insistence, he analyzed the contents earlier that morning. The product in the jar was manufactured within the past six months! Jasper is recalled and, as Mildred Arlington and George Findlay try to leave, he identifies Findlay as one who purchased Featherfirm about a week earlier. Daphne is then asked about the serving of the salad. Yes, she remembers, the bigger plate for Delane was switched to William! Mason now states that the poisoning of William Anson was accidental, the murder victim was Delane Arlington. The prosecutions rests. "The defense rests and submits the case without argument." Burger passes on argument. Judge Crowder finds the defendant not guilty and directs that Mildred Arlington and George Findlay be taken into custody not only for tampering with evidence but "for murder as principal and accessory after the fact." As the judge rose, "spectators burst into uproarious applause." Selma and Delane are in each others arms. Findlay, in a rage, tries to strike Mason, but is grabbed from behind by a Deputy Sheriff who informs him "You're in custody."

Perry Mason	Helen Albert	Jail deputy
Della Street	Joyce Baffin	Judge Charles Jerome Elliott
Unnamed, then Diana Douglas	Ellen Candler	Ralph Gurlock Floyd
Gertie	Stewart Garland	Hamilton Burger
Paul Drake	Stella Grimes	Chambermaid
A young Negro lad	Bookstore clerk	Police officer responding to murder
Three eyewitnesses	Moray Cassel	Deputy coroner
A Deputy District Attorney	Two plain-clothes L A police	Fingerprint technician
The Judge	Willatson bellhop	Autopsy surgeon
The jury	Willatson cashier	Miss Smith
Plain-clothes officer	Taxi driver	Airline cleaning man
Bailiff	Airport porter	His supervisor
Robbed pawnshop proprietor	Airline gate attendant	Eight o'clock airline stewardess
Store robber	Airline hostess	Ballistics expert
Drake's switchboard operator	Escobar switchboard girl	Edgar's apartment house manager
Edgar Douglas	Two new plain-clothes officers	Cassel's doorman
Drunk driver	. . . one of whom is Bill Ardley	Irene Blodgett
Willatson desk clerk	Man with hammer and chisel	Cassel's tailor, Mr Ballard
Franklin Gage	San Francisco policeman	Cassel's woman friend "in trouble"
Homer Gage	Another taxicab driver	Judge Elliott's bailiff
Homer's bitchy wife	Officer in charge

The cause of death is always a medical question, but the manner of death is never a medical question. Jack Cadman, Director of the Orange County Sheriff's Criminalistics Laboratory in Santa Ana, California, is an expert on determining the manner of death, who believes "we can raise the present 'solved' and 'conviction' rated from maybe 10 percent to 90 percent" with proper crime fighting tools. He developed the Cadman-Johns method for detecting alcohol in the blood stream, the fastest method for such tests. Erle Stanley Gardner dedicates this book to Cadman.

Previously, Mason has noted the Supreme Court decision requiring a suspect to be advised of his rights. Here what is to become the Miranda act is used specifically. Erle Stanley Gardner kept up on court decisions -- he often gives specific legal citations -- and this is just on obvious instance.

Erle Stanley Gardner is now able to use his novels, along with his non-fiction, to make important legal points. In chapter three he shows how eyewitness identification can be the most faulty testimony. Deleting all but the last page worth of text of the chapter would make no difference to the mystery of the fabulous fake, and that could be the beginning of the next.

Perry Mason has also used a credit card before this novel, but here he uses it for the first time to charge a telephone long distance call. He also has an air travel card.

Paul Drake has been using a few radio phones in his operatives' cars, here he finally has them in all the cars. Though police had been using them in fairly early Perry Mason novels, they had not gotten into the public's hands. These are, of course, the predecessors of today's much-too ubiquitous cel phones.

Paul has often complained of being stuck in his cubby-hole office eating soggy hamburgers. He does it here again, but finishes the novel enjoying a meal with Mason, Street, the client and her boss.

Much as I liked the previous novel, I dislike this one, for there is NO opportunity for the reader to solve the crime until Mason gives us facts we could hardly have deduced along the way.

Cigarette smoking has become rather uncommon, but here two police officers, Mason and a Drake operative share silence while smoking.

The restaurant near the courthouse at which Mason, Street and Drake usually have lunch is now described as "Italian," then named "Giovani's." Where has Pierre gone?

1.	Perry Mason sees Della Street standing in the office doorway. "We have a young woman in the outer office who won't give her name." Della teases Mason into seeing the girl. The unnamed woman stammers her way into "I'm going to have to disappear." Gertie frantically gets Della to leave the conference. She returns and takes her boss with her to Gertie. The receptionist with romance involved with every idea she ever gets, has seen that the unnamed woman has a black bag full of hundred dollar bills, in packs. Mason cross-examines her, accepts that the bag is full of money, but maybe not hundred-dollar bills, for Gertie only saw them in the mirror in the lid of the bag. So, the woman wants a lawyer who would represent her in case she needed an attorney. What code could they use to identify her call. 32-24-36. Mason wants to know what they could accuse her of and, when he mentions embezzlement, her face flushes. She gives Mason a three hundred dollar retainer. She refuses a receipt. Della points out that the woman is not 36-24-36, but maybe 32-24-36, so is already "sailing under false colors."
2.	Gertie is excited over finding an ad in the classifieds: AM HERE READY TO CONCLUDE NEGOTIATIONS ON STRAIGHT CASH BASIS. NO CHECKS. SPOT CASH. CONTACT ME AT WILLATSON HOTEL. 36-24-36. Della gets Paul Drake on the phone and he comes to the office, happy because he's "dined out on good, freshly cooked meat now for six days in succession." It is because business is not bad, but lousy. Mason says he can't identify anything about the client, who has diagnosed the case and prescribed the remedy. So he wants to know more. After Drake reads the classified ad, he is told to find out about the person who placed it, possibly, he suggests, by placing a dummy ad of his own. He sets a five hundred dollar limit. Della notes that he is now only two hundred dollars worse off than when he started the day.
3.	Mason spends the day defending a young Negro lad accused of robbing a pawnshop. Three eyewitnesses could not be shaken in their identification and the Deputy District Attorney rests his case. They saw "a tall, young Negro with a mustache and carrying a paper bag" which is really all they remember, asserts Mason. When the jury returns from its deliberations, apparently ready to render a verdict of guilty, the Judge is confronted by a plain-clothes officer. The Judge orders the bailiff to hold the jury. In chambers, the Judge announces that the police have apprehended a man holding up a store and he had a bill on him that bore the number of one of the bills taken from the pawnshop proprietor. He says he could direct the jury to return a verdict of "not guilty," but a better course is to dismiss them before a verdict is rendered. The Deputy District Attorney is angered. The jury is astounded, but shake hands with Mason, then with hesitancy, the defendant. Mason tells the boy to shave his moustache and avoid paper bags. Mason stops by the office on the way home, finds a note from Della, and a newspaper. There is an ad asking 36-24-36 for a meeting.
4.	Mason takes Drake's switchboard operator's nod as indication that he is in his cubbyhole office and heads down the corridor. Drake reports that his ad got the girl to walk by him and his female operative in their car, an untraceable taxicab, but no acknowledgement. She is registered as Diana Deering, and is Diana Douglas with a brother, Edgar, who is unconscious from an auto accident in which he was hat by a drunk driver. He and Diana work for Escobar Import and Export Company in San Francisco. They agree to put a loose shadow on Diana.
5.	Mason goes to Diana's hotel, the Willatson, and gets the desk clerk to announce him as 36-24-36. Diana is, of course, surprised she's been found. She gets upset when he grabs her bag, announces that Escobar has called an auditor to go over the books. She's the cashier and bookkeeper. Mason says she's dealing with a blackmailer. She has five thousand dollars. She found a note in her brother's bags, packed for a trip, after the accident, demanding that amount of money. So she came to Los Angeles with money that was in his briefcase. She doesn't know where he got it. Escobar is a one-man operation; Franklin T Gage. Next is Homer Gage, his nephew. Edgar, who had been out of work a half year, went to work about six months after she did. Where did he get the money? Homer didn't think he was needed. Homer is married to a bitch, and isn't happy. He often keeps her after hours, and sized her up but not directly propositioned her. Franklin is courteous and considerate. Besides herself, the other girls are Helen Albert, Joyce Baffin and Ellen Candler. It would be easy to embezzle for those with the combination to the cash safe. The Gages, tax man Stewart Garland and herself have that combination. Mason explains how to cover the five thousand when she gets back to the office. Mason calls Drake and asks for an operative to pose as Diana Deering. Drake says Stella Grimes will do; she's worked for, but never met, Mason. Then Mason sets up how Diana will get back to San Francisco, with a cashier's check for the five thousand.
6.	Mason goes to a baggage store, buys a suitcase, goes to a secondhand bookstore. The clerk leads him to California history. Mason fills his suitcase for $27.85. Back at the Willatson, he gets a room on the same floor as Diana. Stella joins the two. Mason briefs her. She shows she's prepared with a "working bra in which is concealed a "wicked-looking, snub-nosed revolver." Mason then sends Diana to his room. (Moray) Cassel arrives, and Stella is given the hint to follow him when he leaves. Cassel then tries to get to the money without admitting blackmail, finally recognizes Mason. They go back and forth and Cassel gets nowhere but angry. He'll call Mason. Mason phones Diana and tells her to sit tight.
7.	She can't. She's frightened. Mason tells her to wait. Stella returns, having followed Cassel, got his license number, which Mason passes on to Drake. He then goes to Diana. She has no clue as to why Edgar was coming to Los Angeles other than to deal with the 36-24-36 situation. He was in impulsive gambler, but not big time. Mason instructs Diana on how she's to get to the six twenty-seven plane back to San Francisco. He then explains Cassel and his type of blackmailer to Diana, noting there is something strange here. Mason phones for the airline tickets, uses an Air Travel Card. They leave the hotel.
8.	Back with Stella. Two plain-clothes Los Angeles police want to question Diana Douglas. Mason learns more from them than they from him. San Francisco police are investigating a twenty-thousand dollar embezzlement! Mason calls for a bellhop to take his bags, pays the cashier, tells a taxi driver to take him to Union Station, then changes his mind and goes to the airport. A porter takes his bags which he reclaims after the cab leaves. After paying for his and Diana's ticket, he has a drink, gets to the gate just before flight, and is told so by the gate attendant and the airline hostess. Diana Douglas is not on the plane. At his San Francisco hotel, he calls Stella, who has not heard from Diana.
9.	Mason waits outside Escobar Import and Export. Diana arrives five minutes later. She reports that Edgar died in the morning. Perry informs Diana that twenty thousand is now the amount of embezzlement. She claims she missed the plane because she thought someone was following her, and she tried to elude him, then came on a later flight. After noting that a second embezzlement can almost always be tied to the first embezzler, he takes her five thousand dollar cashier's check and sends her home to get some sleep.
10.	Mason enters Wholesale Only Escobar's doors, asks the switchboard girl to see Franklin Gage, but he's on a business trip, so he sees Homer Gage. Mason immediately confronts him with his false representation of Diana's embezzlement. Homer becomes very defensive, particularly when Mason suggests a suit for defamation of character. Mason then goes into the business of embargoes from places like Mexico on ancient artifacts. Gage explains he never allows that, but something already in the United States, which has no law against such imports, is fair game, and usually must be done in cash, which is why they have so much on hand. They deal with the middle man only. Franklin Gage arrives, and glad hands Mason with his "flesh-cushioned hand." He took ten thousand on his recent trip, so the embezzlement is now down to ten thousand, and he asserts that Diana has been a very loyal employee. He also wouldn't know if his artifacts are smuggled. He is sympathetic when Mason says Edgar has died. They agree to settle things after the funeral. On the way out Mason pauses to look at a piece of carved ivory. A slip is attached to it and it reads: Don't let them pull the wool over your eyes. Diana is on the level and tops. There are things going on here that they don't want you to know about. Be sure to protect Diana. The note is typed, and unsigned.
11.	Two days later, Monday, Mason is back in his Los Angeles office. He reports to Della, including that Franklin Gage took the shortage rather casually. He goes by Drake's receptionist to the cubbyhole where Drake is surrounded by telephones, many radio types in his cars. They phone Stella, who reports she is being shadowed. Mason goes to the Willatson and, no sooner is he with Stella than two new plains-clothes officers show up and shove a credit card under Stella's nose and ask if it is hers. Mason stops them in their tracks; it is Diana Douglas's card. They want to question the young lady about the murder of Moray Cassel. Mason asks them to ask the man down the hall with hammer and chisel, but he is one of theirs! He triggered their response, as they are looking for a male accomplice. Stella now shows them her credentials. When Mason tries to phone Diana, one of the officers, Bill Ardley, blocks him, then phones San Francisco police headquarters, tells the answerer to pick up Diana Douglas. Now they ask questions, but Mason says nothing. Stella has to speak up, and tells why she was hired and how she followed Cassel. The other officer eventually offers everyone cigarettes, and they smoke in silence until a phone call releases them.
12.	Mason rushes the taxicab driver to his office. He is awaiting Diana's call, and relates events to Della. A call from San Francisco police brings Diana to Mason, who advises her to use two words; "no comment." Mason tells the officer in charge that Diana is to be transported to Los Angeles with no questioning in San Francisco.
13.	Los Angeles County Jail consultation room. Diana tells Perry how nice the police have been to her, and he warns her this is standard practice to get her talking until she goes beyond what she should say. Mason tells her she went to Cassel and lost her BankAmerica credit card there. She says Cassel was dead when she got there, then admits she picked up the gun because she recognized it as Edgar's by its long barrel and wooden handle, one he had taught her to use. She has hidden it where it cannot be found. Mason says the police can still match the murder bullet with shells in Edgar's target! She thought she could pay off the blackmailer and get the negatives and prints, not realizing even negatives can be duplicated, and she wanted to protect Edgar. Mason leaves her with a deputy.
14.	Mason tells Paul Drake how Diana has been foolish, and asks him to get even more information, particularly about Moray Cassel and his women. Drake says Mason will get his usual trade discount.
15.	Judge Charles Jerome Elliott admonishes trial deputy Ralph Gurlock Floyd and Mason that he won't have any nonsense, he won't test the credibility of witnesses. Floyd had been responsible for more death-penalty verdicts than any prosecutor in the state, and was proud of it, and thought a preliminary hearing beneath his dignity, but had been assigned the case by District Attorney Hamilton Burger. He calls Cassel's chambermaid, who reported the murder. Then a police officer and a deputy coroner, and Ardley. A fingerprint technician found the expected prints, and a bloody towel. An autopsy surgeon says the victim lived several minutes beyond the gun shot. Miss Smith testifies to Diana's coming to her ticket counter and, when she fumbled for her credit card, a long-barreled gun with wooden handle was noticed. An airline cleaning man testifies to finding a gun concealed under a pile of towels in one of the lavatories. He gave it to his supervisor who passed it on to the police. The gun is placed in evidence after Mason shows no one knows how long it had been concealed. Then an airline hostess on the eight o'clock flight testifies that Diana went into the lavatory with her purse, stretched by some object, came back with the object gone. A ballistics expert testifies that the fatal bullet came from this gun. The manager of Edgar's apartment house testifies that, after the car accident, Diana had a key to her brother's apartment. The doorman at Cassel's apartment testifies to Diana coming out with her purse stretched to the limit. Judge Elliott thinks a sufficient case has been made to bind the defendant over for trial in the Superior Court. Mason, however, says he wants the defendant to have her day in court and the Judge adjourns the case overnight. Mason talks to Diana, but gets no useful information.
16.	Mason, Street and Drake are having lunch as they discuss the case. Drake reports that Cassel was always armed, carrying a thirty-eight-caliber, snub-nosed revolver in a shoulder holster under his left armpit. His tailor-made clothes hid the bulge. (This is key to Mason's cracking the case.) The gun was on him when his body was found. He dealt only in cash. He thinks Joyce Baffin wrote Mason the surreptitious note. She is very popular, and Homer has a predatory eye on her. Cassel dealt a lot with Irene Blodgett at the Underwood Importing Company. They have had dealings with Escobar. Drake has been in Cassel's apartment after the police left. Every suit was tailor-made. There was one overcoat with labels removed. (Another key clue!) Mason makes a credit card call to Franklin Gage. He asks him to bring Joyce Baffin and Homer with him to court the next day.
17.	Floyd rests the prosecution's case as soon as Court is convened. Mason asks first to recall an officer, the one who testified about the gun. He asks him to put it in the purse. It is a tight fit, and only goes in upside down. It takes many seconds to retrieve it, then turn it over so it can be used. Since it is single-action, it has to be cocked before firing. Mason then asks about Cassel's clothing, and asks that the overcoat be brought to court. Mason concludes his cross-examination by getting an admission that the gun had been covered all over with blood which had to be washed off. Mason calls Stella Grimes. She relates seeing Diana from Drakes car, meeting her the next day and following Cassel to his apartment. Mason puts the gun in Diana's purse, and Stella says it was not there when she was at the Willatson. Mr Ballard, Cassel's tailor, measures the overcoat which has been brought to the courtroom, says it could not fit his client. Mason asks Franklin Gage to try it on; it fits sloppily. Mason asks Homer Gage to try it, and he hesitates, but tries it on and it was a perfect fit. (Now we have the solution, but can you name it?) Mason now shows Diana could not have killed Cassel, and who did. Diana never could have gotten the murder weapon out of her purse before Cassel would have responded with the one in his shoulder holster. Mason makes his opening statement. A woman friend of Cassel was "in trouble" by someone at Escobar. Cassel moved in. Mr X was married, went to Edgar Douglas and persuaded him to play the father, gave him the money to pay Cassel. Then Edgar was hit, he had to take over himself, thus the missing second five thousand. He went, with Edgar's gun, not knowing that, however, to Los Angeles to pay off. He held the gun under the overcoat which was draped over his arm. He recognized, as a man of the world, a shrewd blackmailer when he met him, killed him, left the gun in a pool of blood created by hemorrhaging. The defendant found the man dead, recognized her brother's gun, washed it off and took it with her. Mason turns to Joyce Baffin (here's the part the reader couldn't have to solve the case) and asks her if Edgar Douglas might have loaned her the gun, and Mr X might have seen it in her apartment. Homer Gage gets up and starts hurrying out of the courtroom, until the judge has him stopped by the bailiff.
18.	Perry, Della, Paul, Franklin and Diana are at Giovani's in their private room. Homer was in a situation which would have cost him his position, his social prestige and a lot of alimony. Cassel found out about it, but wasn't' sure which man at Escobar was the one he wanted. Edgar took the rap, because he could argue that he could hardly pay the five thousand, so there would be no second bite. The accident, however, changed everything, forcing Homer to go to Los Angeles. Franklin suggests Diana sign her cashier's check over to Mason as his fee. Paul says he'll drink to that.