He noticed that the locked, dark elevator was still on the seventh floor. He rang the elevator bell, and after a few moments, the janitor came shooting upward in the cage.
Mason indicated the dark elevator. “One of your elevators stalled on this floor?” he asked.
The janitor stepped out of the cage to stare at the elevator. “Ay be a son of a gun,” he said in an astounded voice which seemed to Mason to be thoroughly genuine.
Mason entered the lighted elevator. “Okay, Ole,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 2
Della Street was opening the morning mail when Mason came sauntering into the office.
“You’re early,” she said. “Didn’t you remember that the Case of People vs. Smithers was dismissed by the district attorney?”
“Uh huh. I came down to study the newspaper.”
She stared at him with her brows arched, laughter trembling at the comers of her lips, but her eyes grew puzzled as she saw the expression on his face. “Going in for contemporary history?” she asked.
He scaled his hat to the hat tree, pushed the mail on his blotter aside without so much as glancing through it, and spread out the newspaper on the desk. “Quite a rain we had last night.”