Mason swung the cylinder out, looked at the shells.

  “Fired twice,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you want to tell me now?”

  She tossed off the last of her drink. “Would it be terribly piggish if I asked for another?”

  “It wouldn’t be terribly piggish but it would be damned imprudent.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to know what your story is before I determine how much liquor you’re going to consume.”

  “I’m not particularly hungry but I certainly could use a bracer.”

  “Tell me about it,” Mason said. “Then we’ll see about the drink.”

  “Well, I was there for about five minutes I guess after I called you, getting my room checked. I couldn’t find a trace of anything else that had been planted. Not so much as a pocket handkerchief … Could we talk about something else for a few minutes until that drink takes hold?”

  They watched Della Street returning from the telephone booth.

  “Get Paul?” Mason asked.

  “Yes. I gave him the number of the gun and he has a man working on it.”

  “Does he have any more information from Riverside?”

  “Apparently not.”

  Mason said, “I have an offer of settlement in your case, Evelyn.”

  “How much?”

  “It’s from Irene Keith. She offered a thousand dollars cash for a complete settlement of all claims.”

  “One … thousand … dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much would your fees be?”

  “Mine would be fifty dollars,” Mason said. “I would suggest two-hundred dollars as a fair fee for Neely. That would leave you seven-hundred-and-fifty dollars.”

  “It isn’t fair for you to take the small end of the fee. You did all the work, all the—”

  “And Neely had to sit in court and try your case there.”

  “I’d have been convicted if it hadn’t been for you. I think you and Neely should divide the compensation.”

  Mason reached in his coat pocket, handed Evelyn Bagby the check.

  “You have no idea what that money is going to mean to me at this time, Mr. Mason.”

  “You haven’t got it yet,” Mason said. “Turn it over and look at the back.”

  She turned it over and read the typewritten endorsement.

  “Would that affect my claim against Steve Merrill in any way?”

  Mason shook his head.

  “Well,” she said, “that’s fine. I don’t want to let Gladden, or Merrill, whatever his name is, off the hook. Since he called back and left that message I know that he’s worried. He must be in a very vulnerable position. He couldn’t afford to be arrested right at the present time and he couldn’t afford to have the facts of his embezzlement become public.”

  Mason said, “I don’t think you should accept this check, Evelyn.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think we can get more.”

  She shook her head. “That money means too much to me right now to pass up.”

  Mason returned the check to his wallet.

  “You want me to sign it?” she asked.

  “It isn’t necessary,” Mason told her. “My endorsement will be sufficient. It puts me in the position of guaranteeing the settlement as your lawyer. Ordinarily I’d prefer to have you sign with me but I don’t want anyone to sign until a few minutes before ten-thirty tonight. I want to wait for the deadline.”

  “Why?”

  “Something may turn up,” Mason said, watching her sharply.

  “What could turn up?”

  Mason laughed. “We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. Almost anything can turn up. Now tell me about your holdup.”

  “Well, as I told you, I got in my jalopy and started out in a hurry, driving down the hill, taking that short cut you told me about. I hadn’t gone very far from the turnoff from Mulholland Drive when I noticed there was a car behind me, a car that was coming very, very fast, with the headlights on the high adjustment so that they were bothering me a lot, reflecting from my rearview mirror and windshield. I pulled off to the side of the road, slowed down, lowered the left-hand window, thrust out my arm and motioned with my hand and wrist for him to go on ahead.

  “Instead of that he came almost alongside of me and then veered sharply so that he was crowding me off the road.”

  “What did you do?” Mason asked.

  “I put my foot on the gas—thank heavens I had presence of mind enough to do that—and shot ahead. I turned my head long enough for just one brief glimpse, and what I saw completely paralyzed me.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I saw a man with his head covered with a sack or pillow slip or something. There were two holes cut for the eyes and the thing was held in place around his forehead with a band of some sort, a ribbon or a rubber band. I just had that brief glimpse and that was all. Every time I think of it I get the jitters.”

  “So then what?”

  “So then I started streaking down that mountain road and this man took after me. Fortunately I remembered this gun. I got it out and about that time this man came up alongside me again, driving like crazy, and this time I knew that he was going to try to push me into the bank or off the road or something, so I just stuck the gun out of the window and fired two shots just as fast as I could pull the trigger.”

  “You were driving then with one hand?”

  “That’s right. I put my right hand on the wheel. I took the gun in my left hand, and I pushed it just as far as I could out of the window so that he’d be sure to see that I had a gun. I pointed it back in the general direction of his car and pulled the trigger twice.”

  “And what happened?”

  “That did it,” she said. “As soon as he knew that I was armed, he lost all interest in the chase.”

  “He put on his brakes?”

  “Put on his brakes so hard that he skidded. I saw the headlights weaving back and forth and falling rapidly behind.”

  “You kept on going?”

  “I’ll tell the world I kept on going. I tossed the gun onto the cushions, put both hands on the wheel, and took the curves just as fast as I dared.”

  “You don’t think he continued to follow you?”

  “I know he didn’t because I was watching in the rear-view mirror. His headlights never showed up around the curve.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” Mason said. “You frightened him off. However—perhaps it isn’t so fine.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mason said, “You have a gun which was planted in your drawer and which has now been discharged. If later on you should be called on to explain the circumstances under which that gun had been discharged, there would, of course, only be your word for it. That wouldn’t be so good. I think we’ll notify the sheriff’s office that someone tried to hold you up and that you had a gun and fired a couple of shots that frightened him off. Della, would you mind letting me out? I think I’d better be the one who telephones.”

  Della Street slid over on the cushioned seats so that Mason could get out.

  He went to the telephone, called the sheriff’s office and said, “This is Perry Mason, the lawyer. I am at the moment out at the Joshua Tree Cafe. I have a client with me who had an annoying experience up on the mountain roads back of Hollywood. Someone tried to hold her up. A masked man. He tried to either run her off the road or to crowd her into the guardrail at the side of the road so she’d be forced to stop. Fortunately she had a gun with her and she fired a couple of wild shots which served to frighten this man off. Do you want to do anything about it?”

  “You bet we want to do something about it,” the man at the other end of the line said. “I’ll have a couple of deputies out there to talk with you within the next ten or fifteen minutes. We’ve been having a lot of trouble on mountain roads. There have been a good many sex cases that we’ve had to keep out of the papers because of consideration for the victims. This may be the break we’ve been looking for. You say she fired a couple of shots?”

  “Just a couple of warning shots,” Mason said, “wild shots, but—”

  “I’d give two weeks out of my own salary if she’d taken time to aim and really hit him,” the man said. “The fellow who is operating up in that country is a bad actor.

  “Now where can we find you, Mr. Mason?”

  “At the Joshua Tree Cafe. Just ask the headwaiter.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll have someone out right away, within fifteen minutes, twenty minutes at the latest.”

  “We’ll be here,” Mason said.

  Mason hung up and walked back to the table. The waiter was bringing their food.

  “Let’s have this understood,” Mason said. “Evelyn Bagby was carrying this gun at my request. She was coming down a dark road. I suggested that she have this gun with her. If anyone wants to think that I gave her the gun it’s quite all right with me. Right at the moment we don’t discuss the gun or how she happened to find it. Is that straight?”

  “You mean the officers are going to question me?” Evelyn Bagby asked.

  Mason nodded. “They’ll be out here within ten or fifteen minutes. It won’t be any kind of an ordeal. It seems they’ve had some trouble on the isolated roads, other cases of this sort, and they’re very, very anxious to get information that will enable them to run down the culprit. They’ll want a description of the car and anything else you may have noticed, and they’ll probably want to have you show them exactly where the attack took place.”

  “Gosh, I can’t tell them anything about the car,” Evelyn Bagby said.

  “Well, you know whether it was an open car or a closed car, whether it was a small model sports car or a standard or—”

  “Oh yes, I know it was a medium-sized car, one in the medium-priced field, and it was a closed car. I don’t think it was a coupe. I think it was a sedan. But that’s about all I can tell them.”

  “What about the driver? Could you give a description of him?”

  “No, I can’t. That sack or pillow slip, or whatever it was, was over his head and down on his shoulders, and you just couldn’t tell a thing about him. He had on an overcoat. The top of the sack was held in place around his forehead with some kind of a dark band, which may have been an elastic or may have been a piece of ribbon.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” Mason told her. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Oh, I’ll get over it all right. I’ve got over worse things than this, but I’m a little shaky, and—well, I hope they do go back to look at the place and ask me to point it out to them. That will give me an opportunity to have an escort back up to the tavern. I think, Mr. Mason, that from now on I’m going to use the well-traveled roads and lay off of that short cut.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Mason said. “Apparently it’s rather dangerous, judging from what they said over the telephone. There’s been a lot of trouble. Well, let’s forget all about stick-ups and officers and all of that and concentrate on eating.”

  “Mr. Mason, if I don’t have a chance to tell you again you’ll accept that compromise offer, won’t you?”

  “Well,” Mason said, “let’s leave it this way. We’ll wait until the last minute.”

  “It’s all right to wait until the last minute, but don’t wait too long. That money will mean a lot to me.”

  “You’re hard up?”

  “I’m desperate for ready money.”

  “Well, what about Steve Merrill, or Staunton Vester Gladden?”

  “I think I’ve thrown a scare into him. I doubt if he has any great amount of cash. He’s probably on a shoestring himself.”

  “That’s right,” Mason said. “He never did get in the big-time stuff—just second-rate—but, of course, he’s trying to shake down Helene Chaney. He may be able to get something there.”

  “In which event I want my share.”

  Mason said, “I notice that he refers to himself as Stephen V. Merrill. I wonder if he’s kept the middle name of Vester? You don’t know whether that’s a family name, do you?”

  “I don’t know anything about him, Mr. Mason. That is, I know a lot about him, but everything I know is false. All of the stuff he told me about knowing his way around Hollywood and all of the stuff he told me about his vast experience as a dramatic coach, was just that much hooey.

  “Of course, as a young girl I believed that he could direct me through scene after scene, that he could tell me what was wrong and how to hold my hands, where to look with my eyes, and just what expression to put in my voice, and—I thought he was wonderful.”

  She laughed bitterly.

  “Well, let’s go on with our dinner,” Mason said, “and forget the disagreeable subjects.”

  For some minutes they ate in silence, Evelyn Bagby obviously nervous, Della Street watching her thoughtfully, Mason apparently thinking only of the fine food.

  Mike, the headwaiter, came to the table escorting a rather studious-looking individual who seemed much more like a statistician than a deputy sheriff.

  “Good evening,” the man said. “My name’s Ferron, from the sheriff’s office.”

  He produced a leather folder which contained a badge and identification as a deputy sheriff.

  “Sit down and join us,” Mason invited. “Can I order you something?”

  “No thanks. I’m on duty. What’s this about a holdup?”

  “I’m Perry Mason,” the lawyer said, getting to his feet and shaking hands. “This is Miss Street, my secretary, and Miss Evelyn Bagby, my client.”

  “I’ve seen you in court several times, Mr. Mason. I’m glad to meet you, Miss Street. What about the holdup?”

  “Miss Bagby was held up,” Mason said. “That is, someone either tried to hold her up or crowd her off to the side of the road.”

  “Where?” Ferron asked, taking out a notebook.

  “Miss Bagby,” Mason said, “has just started to work up at the Crowncrest Tavern. You know where that is?”

  The deputy nodded.

  “She was coming down the back road, that steep grade that—”

  “I know.”

  “Not many people use that and she was driving down there—”

  “What time?”

  “What time was it, Evelyn?”

  “I didn’t look at my watch, but I would say it was about forty-five minutes ago.”

  “What happened?” Ferron asked, looking directly at her.

  Mason said, “She’s a little upset. I think I have the picture fairly clearly. Someone tried to crowd her off the road and almost did it.”

  “What stopped him?”

  Mason said firmly, “Miss Bagby fired two shots.”

  “Two shots from what?”

  “From a gun she was carrying.”

  “You carry a gun?” the deputy asked Evelyn Bagby sharply.

  “Not ordinarily,” Mason said, “but I think she will now. As a matter of fact, this was a gun that Miss Bagby was carrying at my request.”

  “You have no permit to carry a gun, Miss Bagby?”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake,” Mason protested, “what is this?

  We call to report an attempted holdup and possible attempt at murder, and you start trying to put the victim on the defensive. Skip it. Cancel the report. Say the victim refuses to make a complaint.”

  “I have to report the facts. I was just trying to get them.”

  “Well, she had a gun. It was at my request she was carrying it. I had a special reason for asking her to carry it—and on my advice she isn’t going to answer any more questions about the gun.

  “Now then, do you want to know about the holdup?”

  “Of course we do. That’s why I burned up the roads getting out here. We’re very much interested in these holdups on the dark roads above Hollywood. We’ve had some bad crimes. Speaking unofficially and off the record, Miss Bagby, if you took two shots at this individual I’m hoping that both shots were bull’s-eyes.”

  “Oh, but they weren’t,” Evelyn said. “I just shot wild in order to frighten him and keep from being crowded off the road.”

  “Now then, Miss Bagby, here’s the important thing. Can you give us any kind of description of the car or the man who was driving it?”

  Evelyn Bagby said, “The car was a closed car. I think it was in pretty good shape. It looked shiny. The bright lights were on and they had been flashing from my windshield and rearview mirror right into my eyes. I wanted the car to go on past, so I opened my window, put out my arm and motioned with my wrist and hand for him to go on by.”

  Ferron nodded.

  “And,” Evelyn Bagby said, “he came up rapidly behind me. I put on my brakes and slowed. He still had the bright lights on. Then, all of a sudden, he swerved over directly against my car.”

  “What did you do?”

  “If I’d continued to put on the brakes I think he’d have pushed me right over the grade. As it was, I stepped on the gas and shot ahead and I think that disconcerted him. I had turned to shout at him, caught a glimpse of a hooded man, and got cold in the pit of my stomach. I saw that he was deliberately trying to crowd me off the road.”

  “What’s this about a hooded man?” Ferron asked.

  “He had a flour sack or pillow slip over his head. There were two round holes cut for the eyes and the thing was held in position around the forehead with a rubber band or a ribbon of some sort. It was the weirdest, most awful thing you could imagine.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I pushed the throttle all the way down to the floorboard and almost without thinking I grabbed this gun and—”

  “Where did you have the gun?”

  “In my purse, on the seat, right beside me.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I put it in my left hand and I shot once out of the window, just as I got the gun pushed out of the window. I think that must have been about at right angles to the road, and then just as fast as I could pull the trigger I turned the gun a little back and shot again.”

  “Shooting at the person?”

 

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