“What did he say?”
“He didn’t say anything. He had evidently been given a hypo. He’s going to live, but the doctor’s trying to keep him out of circulation.”
“How did he get to San Francisco?”
“Wenston flew him up.”
“Wenston! Then he’s double-crossing Karr...”
Mason interrupted Drake to say, “No, he isn’t. Karr and Hocksley are one and the same person.”
Drake pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Perhaps I’ve had too much coffee, Perry, or perhaps you have. One of us certainly is cockeyed. Hocksley is a red-headed man with a limp who...”
Mason said, “I’ll put it this way. The one who rented the apartment was Johns Blaine dressed up with a red wig and purposely walking with a limp. In renting the apartment, however, under the name of Hocksley, he was acting as Karr’s agent. Don’t think for a minute that a man of Karr’s shrewdness would establish a hide-out in a two-flat building without controlling the lower as well as the upper flat.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Drake admitted, “but what makes you think Karr’s flat is a hide-out?”
“Karr’s engaged in getting munitions over to China through a leak in the blockade. Naturally, he doesn’t want publicity.”