“And don’t tell him who you’re going with!” Harris laughed. “He’d stick a knife into me.”

Helen Warrington said to the butler, “Show Mr. Peasley in.”

“Well,” Harris said, “since I’m going to drive the car, I’ll keep sober, but there’s no reason on earth why you folks can’t have one of the famous Harris KDDO cocktails as a stirrup cup.”

“Yes,” Edna Hammer said, “give Bob one. It’ll do him good.” There was a touch of acid in her tone.

The door opened. A stoopshouldered young man of about twentyfive gave a perfunctory, generally inclusive nod, said, “Good evening, everyone,” and let his eyes turn at once to Helen Warrington.

She moved to his side. “Mr. Mason, Mr. Peasley,” she said.

“Perry Mason!” Peasley exclaimed. “The lawyer!”

“In person,” Mason agreed, shaking hands, “and about to sample one of the famous KDDO cocktails of our esteemed contemporary, Jerry Harris, admittedly the greatest bartender of the postprohibition era.”

Kent moved over to Peasley’s side. “I’m sorry, Bob, but you’ll have to excuse Helen this evening. She’s going to be very busy.”

Peasley made an attempt at a smile. “That’s all right, I only dropped in for a minute, anyway. I’ve got a hard day ahead of me at the office tomorrow. I just wanted to talk with Helen for a moment.” His eyes fastened upon Helen Warrington significantly.

“Everyone excuse us, please,” she said gayly. “Save my KDDO cocktail, Jerry Harris.”

She nodded to Bob Peasley. They left the room, and Edna Hammer heaved a sigh of relief. “Deliver me from a jealous man!” she said. “Did you notice the way he looked at you, Jerry?”

“Did I!” Harris remarked, pouring ingredients into a cocktail shaker. “One would think I was the Don Juan of Hollywood.”

Edna Hammer’s tone was slightly wistful. “Are you, Jerry?” she asked.

“Darned if I know,” he told her, grinning. “It’s hard for me to keep track of all the competition; but I do my best.”

Lucille Mays, who had been talking in a low voice with Peter Kent, suddenly laughed, and said, “I’ll bet you do at that, Jerry.”

“Sure,” he told her, “I’m not kidding. It’s the only way I can put my stuff across. You see, it’s only natural for women to want the man that all other women want Therefore, by making all women want me I make all women want me, whereas if women didn’t want me, no woman would want me.”

“I hate me,” Lucille Mays said, laughingly.

“No,” Jerry told her, “it’s a serious truth,” and then, turning audaciously to Edna Hammer, he said, “Isn’t it, sweetheart?”

Edna Hammer laughed up at him and said, “It is with me, Jerry, but when I sink my mud hooks into you, don’t forget you’ll be branded. If I see any woman hanging around I’ll stick a knife in her.”

Harris, carefully measuring the last of the cocktail ingredients into the shaker, said, “A couple more of these, sweetheart, and you’ll be more liberal minded.”

Edna said to Harris, “Hurry up, Jerry; Mr. Mason’s being courteous and gallant, but I can see he’s just seething with important thoughts… Leo’s are like that.”

“Am I a Leo?” Jerry asked. “I seethe with important thoughts.”

“You,” she told him, her eyes suddenly filled with sombre fire as her voice lost its bantering tone, “are a Taurus—and how I like it!”

Perry Mason, clad in pajamas, stood at the bedroom window, looking down on the patio which was drenched with moonlight. The big house, built in the form of a “U,” surrounded a flagged patio, the eastern end of which was enclosed by a thick, adobe wall some twelve feet high. Dr. Kelton, his huge bulk sagging one of the twin beds, rubbed his eyes and yawned. Mason surveyed the shrubbery which threw black shadows, the fountain which seemed to be splashing liquid gold into the warm night, the shaded alcoves, striped awnings, umbrellas and scattered garden tables. “Delightful place,” he said.

Dr. Kelton yawned again and said, “I wouldn’t have it as a gift. Too big, too massive. A mansion should be a mansion. A bungalow should be a bungalow. This business of building a hotel around an exaggerated patio makes the whole thing seem out of place.”

“I take it,” Mason remarked, turning to face Dr. Kelton, and grinning, “you didn’t have a particularly pleasant evening.”

“I did not, and I still don’t know why the devil you didn’t let me go home after I’d looked Kent over.”

“You forget that you’re going to get up at daylight to see the bridal party off.”

Kelton’s head shook in an emphatic negative. “Not me. I’m going to stay right here. I’ve practiced medicine long enough to value my sleep when I can get it. I don’t get up any morning to see any bridal party off on any airplane.”

“Don’t be such a damned pessimist,” Mason said. “Come take a look at this patio in the moonlight, Jim, it’s beautiful.”

Dr. Kelton stretched out in the bed to the tune of creaking springs. “I’ll take your word for it, Perry. Personally, I don’t like the place. I’ll feel a damn sight easier when I get out of here.”

“Worried about someone sticking a carving knife in your ribs?” Mason asked.

Dr. Kelton, sucking in another prodigious yawn, said, “For God’s sake, turn out the light and come to bed. Listening to you two lawyers wrangling I got so sleepy I…” There was a faint scratching sound on the panels of the door. Kelton sat bolt upright, said in a low voice, “Now what?”

Mason, finger on his lips, motioned for silence. After a moment, the same scratching sound was repeated. “Sounds,” Mason said, grinning, “as though someone with a carving knife were standing just outside your door, Jim.” He opened the door an inch or two, and showed surprise. “You!” he exclaimed.

“Well, let me in,” Edna Hammer said in a hoarse whisper.

Mason opened the door, and Edna Hammer, clad in a filmy negligee, slid surreptitiously into the room, closed the door behind her and twisted the key in the lock.

“I say,” Dr. Kelton protested, “just what is this?”

“I thought you went to Santa Barbara,” Mason remarked.

“Don’t be silly. I couldn’t go. Not with Uncle Pete walking in his sleep, and this the night of the full moon.”

“Why didn’t you say so, then?”

“Because I was in a spot. You and Uncle Pete wanted Helen Warrington to go so she could help your assistant up there. Naturally she wouldn’t go unless I went. I might have explained, but Bob Peasley showed up, and if he’d thought Helen had been planning to go to Santa Barbara alone with Jerry… Well, he’d have killed Jerry, that’s all.”

“But I still don’t see why you couldn’t have said frankly that you didn’t care to go,” Mason said.

“I didn’t want Uncle Pete to be suspicious. He’d have realized something was wrong.”

“So what did you do?”

“So I went out to the car, explained to Jerry and Helen exactly how things were. They were very nice about it, as soon as they understood.”

Dr. Kelton said, “Is that any reason why you two should put on night clothes, and hold conferences in my bedroom?”

She looked at him, laughed, and said, “Don’t be frightened. I won’t bite. I want Mr. Mason to come with me while I lock Uncle Pete’s door and the sideboard drawer.”

“Why can’t you do it alone?” Mason asked.

“Because if anything should happen, I’d want you as a witness.”

“I’d make a poor witness,” Mason laughed. “Dr. Kelton makes a swell witness. Get up, Jim, and help the girl lock up.

Kelton said in a low voice, “You go to the devil, Perry Mason, and let me sleep.”

“I haven’t a robe with me,” Mason said to Edna Hammer. “Do I go wandering around the house in slippers and pajamas?”

“Sure,” she told him. “Everyone’s in bed.”

“If it’s okay with you, it is with me,” he told her, “let’s go.”

She unlocked the door, looked cautiously up and down the corridor. Moving on silent feet, her progress accompanied by the rustle of silk, she led the way to her uncle’s bedroom door. Kneeling before the lock, she gently inserted a key, taking care to make no noise. Slowly, she turned the key until, with an almost inaudible click, the bolt shot home. She nodded to Mason, resumed her progress toward the stairs. Near the head of the stairs she whispered, “I oiled the lock so it works smoothly.”