“I have to,” he said. “We’re in it now — all the way. Keep your chin up.”
Mason moved cautiously into the room. He felt the blood on the bedspread, touched his finger to Steele’s wrist, lifted the arm slightly, turned and left the room. With his handkerchief, he scrubbed off the metal plate and button on the light switch, then pushed out the lights with a forefinger padded with his handkerchief.
“Don’t take chances on this,” she said. “Call the police. You’ve got to do it now.”
Mason’s laugh was sardonic. “Yes. We’re in a sweet position to call the police! I’ve told the radio squad that I live here, that my brother was Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide. You’ve taken the part of a young woman soliciting subscriptions for the San Francisco Chronicle. We can tell the police that we hadn’t been in the house long enough to have discovered the body, that we didn’t know the secret of this bedroom, that we stumbled onto the house as the result of some amateur detective work, that, as soon as we found the body, we decided we’d better cooperate and be good children. Then we’d have to tell it to a grand jury, and, perhaps even to a trial jury.”
“But it’s the only thing to do. We have to.”
He shook his head emphatically. “They’d have us exactly where they wanted us. We’d be on the defensive not only for the rest of this case, but for the rest of our lives.”
“It seems to me we will, anyway,” she muttered. “As soon as the body is discovered, police will start an investigation. They’ll ask Lieutenant Tragg about his brother. They’ll give him a complete description of the pair they found in the house, and — well, you know the answer to that.”
“Of course I know the answer to that,” Mason said. “That’s what I’m getting at.”
“I don’t get you.”
“There’s only one way to avoid being kept on the defensive. That’s to attack.”