He walked to the elevator, the white bundle under his arm, and pressed the «up» button.

"If we have luck," he said, "we can…"

A light glowed, a door slid smoothly back. Mason and Drake entered the elevator, just as an adjoining elevator, coming down from the sixth floor, stopped, and its door slid open. Sergeant Holcomb ran into the corridor.

"Floors?" asked the elevator boy, as he slid the door shut.

"Top floor," Mason said.

As the elevator shot upward, Mason said conversationally, "A roof garden, isn't there?"

"Yes, sir."

"Fine," Mason said. "We'll go out there and sit down for a while."

He left the elevator at the top floor, led the way to the roof garden, tossed the white uniforms behind a potted plant, and said, "Have you got that passkey, Paul?"

"Sure."

"Get it ready," Mason said, leading the way to the room corridor.

He picked an inside room, knocked on the door. There was no answer. He nodded to Drake. The detective turned the key in the lock. The door opened, the two men entered, and Mason twisted the knurled brass knob which shot the bolt into position. He took a cigarette case from his pocket, tapped a cigarette on his thumbnail, and grinned at the detective.

"Well," he said, "we're still out of jail."

"How the devil are we going to get out of this?" Drake asked, his face lugubrious.

Mason stretched out on the bed, pulled up pillows back of his head, blew smoke up toward the ceiling. His face was wreathed in a smile of serene satisfaction.

"They'll think we're playing tag in the corridors," he said. "After a half an hour or so, when they can't find us, they'll think we got down the freight elevator, or took the stairs, and gave them the slip. And, in the meantime…"

His voice trailed off into silence.

"In the meantime, what?" Drake inquired.

"I didn't get very much sleep last night," the lawyer said. He took one long, last puff of the cigarette and ground it out in the ash tray. "Call me at six o'clock," he said, "if I'm not awake by then," and closed his eyes.

The detective stared at him in openmouthed amazement for a moment; then moved toward the couch.

"Hey, you damned hog," he said, "give me one of those pillows. I didn't sleep at all."

Perry Mason sprawled his signature over the paper which Della Street handed him, pressed a buzzer, and, when one of his assistants entered the office, said, "Here are all the papers for habeas corpus on behalf of one Peter Brunold. Get some fast action."

"You want Brunold out?" the assistant asked.

"They won't let him go," Mason said, "but I want to force their hands and make them put a charge against him. They probably don't want to charge him with murder right now. But that's the only charge they can put against him, so we'll force their hand with a habeas corpus."

Mason turned to Della Street, as the assistant took the papers and went out. "Did you ask Drake to come in here?" he inquired.

"Yes. I told him to come directly to your private office. He should be here… That's he at the door now."

A shadow hulked on the frosted glass panel of the door. Della Street glided across the office, opened it, and Paul Drake grinned at Perry Mason.

"Got a hunch?" he asked, sliding into the big overstuffed leather chair, his knees draped across one of the arms, the small of his back propped against the other.

"Yes," Mason said. "This Fenwick woman."

"What about her?"

"One of three things happened to that woman," Mason said. "Either she was kidnapped by the murderer, or she met with some accident, or she skipped out.

"The murderer didn't know her—that is, he hadn't seen her first. If she'd met with an accident, the police would have spotted her by this time. Therefore, I think she skipped out."

"That, of course," the detective said slowly, "is acting on the assumption she told the truth about what she had seen the night of the murder. She may have skipped out because she knows something that would put Dick Basset on the spot."

Mason nodded his head moodily and said, "There's a diamondshaped panel of plate glass in the door of Hartley Basset's entrance room. She'd been slugged and was groggy. When she got up from the couch, she staggered and slapped both of her hands against the glass in order to catch herself. She must have left ten perfectly good fingerprints on that glass.

"Now, I'm just wondering about that girl and don't want to overlook any bets. She has some powerful motive for skipping out. Either she's protecting someone, or she's concealing something she did the night of the murder, or she has a record and doesn't dare to stand police questioning. She could have gone into the room, found Hartley Basset dead, lifted a bunch of money from his pocket, then socked herself on the head with something and pretended to be out.

"She could have seen Dick Basset commit the murder and skipped out to keep from testifying.

"She could be a crook, with a criminal record. Let's investigate all the possibilities. Skip out to Basset's house, develop those latent fingerprints on the glass of the door, photograph them, and see if you can get an identification."

Drake nodded slowly. "Anything else?" he asked.

"Not right now. Let's get the lowdown on this Fenwick woman."

As Paul Drake turned the knob of the door which led to the corridor, he said, with a droll smile, "There isn't any chance that the cops are right and you have this woman tucked away some place, is there, Perry?"

Mason grinned and said, "You might look under my desk, Paul."

The detective looked puzzled and said, "You sonofagun, if you're sending me on a runaround, I'll never trust you again."

He closed the door, and Mason turned to Della Street.

"Make a note," he said, "to look up how glass eyes are held in place, and how easily they can be jarred loose."

She finished making swift lines in her shorthand notebook, glanced up at Mason and said, "How about your fingerprints on that gun?"

Mason chuckled, and said, "I think the cops have overlooked a bet there. They fingerprinted everyone in the house, but they overlooked me."

She asked thoughtfully, "Is Hamilton Burger a shrewd district attorney?"

"I don't know yet," Mason said. "It's too early to tell. This is the first murder case that's come up since he's been in office."

"Do you know him personally?"

"I've met him, that's all."

"If he thinks you're responsible for getting this Fenwick witness out of the jurisdiction of the court, won't he take some action against you?"

"He may."

"What can you do if he does?"

"Simply tell the truth, which won't be enough."

"What do you mean by that?"

"If I told any jury on God's green earth that I had taken the key witness in a murder case, spirited her away from the officers, and sent her up to my office so I could find out exactly what she knew and get a written statement before the officers got hold of her, and then tried to explain that she'd disappeared and I didn't know where she had gone, it would indicate two things to the average newspaper reader: First, that I was a liar; second, that her statement had clinched the case against my client, that I was keeping her under cover for that reason."

Della Street nodded sympathetically.

The buzzer rang the code signal which announced that she was wanted on the telephone for an important message. She glanced at Perry Mason. He nodded. She picked up the receiver and said, "Hello." Her eyes narrowed. She placed her palm over the transmitter.

"Hamilton Burger," she said, "the district attorney, is in the office and wants to see you."

"Is he alone?" Mason asked.

Della Street repeated the interrogation into the transmitter, then nodded her head.