“Nevertheless,” Mason said significantly, “I think Dr. Kelton would appreciate it if we called him.”

“Oh, I see,” she exclaimed quickly. “Yes, yes, you’re quite right. Let’s call Dr. Kelton.”

They walked toward the stairs. She said in a low voice, “I didn’t get you for a minute. You want to look in Uncle’s room?”

“We might as well.”

“I can’t understand it. You don’t suppose there’s any possibility… that…”

As her voice trailed away into silence, Mason said, “You didn’t look in the drawer last night before we locked it.”

“Nnnno,” she said, “I didn’t, but the knife must have been there.”

“Well,” Mason said, “we’ll see what we’ll see.”

She ran up the stairs ahead of him, her feet fairly flying up the treads, but when she had approached the door to her uncle’s bedroom she hung back and said, “Somehow, I’m afraid of what we’re going to find here.”

“Has the room been made up yet?” Mason asked.

“No, the housekeeper won’t start making beds until around nine o’clock.”

Mason opened the door. She entered the bedroom a step or two behind him. Mason, looking around him, said, “Everything seems to be in order—no corpses stacked in the corners or under the bed.”

“Please don’t try to keep my spirits up, Mr. Mason. I’ve got to be brave. It’s under the pillow, if it’s anywhere. That’s where it was the other morning. You look, I don’t dare.”

Mason walked to the bed, lifted the pillow. Under the pillow was a long, blackhandled carving knife. The blade was discolored with sinister reddish stains.

Mason dropped the pillow, jumped backwards and clapped his hand over Edna Hammer’s mouth. “Shut up,” he said, stifling the screams she had been about to emit. “Use your head. Let’s find out what we’re up against before we spread an alarm.”

“But the knife!” she half screamed as he lowered his hand from her lips. “It’s all bbbbloody! You can see what’s hhhhappened. Oh, I’m so ffffrightened!”

“Forget it,” Mason told her. “Having hysterics isn’t going to help. Let’s get busy and find out where we stand. Come on.”

He strode out into the corridor, walked down to the door of his room, tried it, found it locked, banged on it, and, after a moment, heard the sound of heavy steps, the clicking of a bolt, and Dr. Kelton, his face covered with lather, a shaving brush held in his right hand, said, “I’m already up, if that’s what you came for. The smell of broiling bacon filters through that window and…”

“That,” Mason told him, “isn’t what we came for. Get the lather off your face and come in here. You don’t need to put on a shirt, just come the way you are.”

Dr. Kelton stared steadily at Mason for a moment, then went to the washstand, splashed water on his face, wiped off the lather with a towel, and, still drying his face and hands, accompanied them across the corridor to Peter Kent’s room. Mason raised the pillow. Dr. Kelton leaned over to stare at the bloody blade, so eloquent in its silent accusation. Kelton gave a low whistle.

“It’ll be Maddox,” Edna Hammer said, her voice hysterical. “You know how Uncle Pete felt toward him. He went to bed last night with that thought in his mind… Oh, hurry, let’s go to his room at once! Perhaps he isn’t dead—just wounded. If Uncle Pete was groping about in the dark… perhaps he…” She broke off with a quick, gasping intake of her breath.

Mason nodded, turned toward the door. “Lead the way,” he ordered.

She led them down the corridor, down a flight of stairs, into a corridor on the opposite wing of the house. She paused in front of a door, raised her hand to knock and said, “Oh, no, I forgot Maddox changed rooms with Uncle Phil. Maddox is over here.”

“Who’s Uncle Phil?” Dr. Kelton asked.

“Philip Rease, Uncle Pete’s halfbrother. He’s something of a crank. He thought there was a draught across his bed and asked Maddox to change rooms with him last night.”

She moved down to another door, knocked gently and, when there was no answer, glanced apprehensively at Perry Mason and slowly reached for the door knob. “Wait a minute,” Mason said; “perhaps I’d better do this.” He pushed her gently to one side, twisted the knob and opened the door. The room was on the north side of the corridor. French doors opened onto a cemented porch some eighteen inches above the patio. Drapes were drawn across these windows so that the morning light filtered into the room, disclosing indistinctly a motionless object lying on the bed. Mason stepped forward and said over his shoulder to Dr. Kelton, “Be careful you don’t touch anything, Doctor.”

Edna Hammer came forward a doubtful step or two then walking rapidly to Perry Mason’s side, clung to his arm. Mason bent over the bed. Abruptly the figure below him stirred. Mason jumped back. Frank Maddox, sitting up in bed, stared at them with wide eyes, then, as his surprise gave way to indignation, he demanded, “What the devil’s the meaning of this?”

Mason said, “We came to call you for breakfast.”

“You’ve got a crust,” Maddox said, “invading the privacy of my room this way. What the devil are you trying to do? If you’ve been through any of my private papers, I’ll have you arrested. I might have known that Kent would resort to any underhanded tactics. He poses as a bighearted, magnanimous individual, but it’s all pose with him. Dig below the surface, and you’ll find out just what a damn skunk he is.”

Mason said in a low voice, “How about Mrs. Fogg, Maddox—is she a skunk, too?”

Maddox’s face showed sudden dismay. After a moment he said, “So you know about her?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s what you came to see me about?”

“On the contrary,” Mason said, “we came to call you for breakfast. Come on, let’s go.”

“Wait a minute.”

Maddox thrust his feet out from under the covers, groped for his slippers. “About this Fogg business, Mason, don’t believe everything you hear. There are two sides to that.”

“Yes,” Mason remarked, “and there are two sides to a piece of hot toast. Right now I’m interested in both of them. We’ll discuss the Fogg matter later.”

He led the way from the room, holding the door open until the others had stepped into the corridor, then pulling the door shut behind him with a bang. “What’s the Fogg case?” Edna Hammer asked.

“An ace I was keeping up my sleeve; but when he started making a fuss I had to play it. He’ll be a good dog now.”

“But what is it?” she asked. “If it concerns Uncle Pete, I…”

“While we’re here,” Mason said, “I think we may just as well take a complete census.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s just make certain none of the others are—indisposed. Who sleeps here?”

“Mr. Duncan.”

Mason pounded his knuckles on the door. A booming voice said suspiciously, “Who is it?”

Mason smiled at Dr. Kelton and said, “Notice the legal training, Jim. When I knocked at your door you opened it. When I knock at a lawyer’s door he wants to know who it is.”

“Perhaps he’s hardly presentable to ladies,” Dr. Kelton pointed out, but Duncan, fully dressed, even to his necktie and scarf pin, flung open the door, saw who it was, and glowered at them in belligerent appraisal.

“Well,” he asked, “what do you want?”

“First call for breakfast,” Mason told him.

“Is this,” Duncan asked, adjusting his spectacles, and raising his head so that he could regard them through the lower part of the bifocals, “a new innovation which Mr. Kent has instituted?”

“You may consider it such,” Mason replied, turning away from the door.

“This room,” he asked Edna, “is, I suppose, where your Uncle Phil sleeps.” He indicated the door before which she had first paused.

“Yes. Maddox slept there until last night, then Uncle Phil changed with him.”

“Well,” he said, “let’s call your Uncle Phil.”