Karr said somewhat scornfully to Blaine, “You can keep your gossip to yourself. Your ideas of what I’m doing are crazy.”
Blaine shrugged his shoulders, said, “I’m hired by you. I do a good job for you. I want to keep on doing a good job for you, but I know which side of the bread has the butter. I’m not going to tangle up with the police department.”
“Where, may I ask, did you get your information?” Karr asked coldly. “Been snooping?”
Blaine said indignantly, “I haven’t been snooping. I got it from you.”
“What do you mean?”
“From little things you did, little hints you let drop, the expression on your face,” Blaine said impatiently. “After all, I’ve been a private detective, and I was a cop before that. What the hell do you think? That I’m going to associate with someone for a year and then not know what I’m hired to protect him against? Nuts!”
Tragg got up, walked over to the window, stood looking out, his hands pushed down into his pockets; then he whirled to regard Perry Mason. “Personally, Mason, I think it’s a runaround. I’m not saying anything — not yet. It’s getting so that whenever we’re working on a case and you come into the picture, the hot trail we’re following develops a habit of running back to the starting point so that we’re tearing around in circles. It’s nothing except coincidence, yet — but it’s a hell of a lot of coincidence.”
“Speaking of running around in circles,” Mason said, “did you come up here to pay this visit simply because you thought Miss Wickford was here and could give you some information on Karr’s past connections?”
Miss Wickford said, “Don’t be silly. Lieutenant Tragg couldn’t have known I was going to be here, because I didn’t know it myself until the moment I picked up the paper and...”
“I came up here to ask questions,” Tragg interrupted.