Chapter 13

The long table ran the length of the visitors‘room in the county jail. On each side of this table, chairs were grouped. Dividing the table, running lengthwise along it, and from one end of the room to the other, stretched a meshed screen of heavy wire, extending from the ceiling to the floor. This screen was supported by steel frameworks which contained two doors. Access to the room was through a species of anteroom which was separated from the visitors’ room by iron bars. In this anteroom, two men were constantly on guard, a locker, containing riot guns and tear gas bombs, close at hand.

Perry Mason entered the anteroom and presented a pass to the attendant. The attendant scrutinized it, stepped to the telephone, and said, “Send Alden Leeds up.” He stamped the pass with a rubber stamp, unlocked a steel door, ushered Mason into one side of the divided room, and locked the door behind the lawyer.

Mason strolled over to one of the chairs, sat down, and lit a cigarette. At that time, there were no other visitors in the room. Morning sunlight, striking the barred windows at an angle, filtered weakly through to form oblong patches of barred shadow on the floor.

When Mason’s cigarette was half consumed, a door at the far end of the room opened, and Alden Leeds stepped directly from the elevator into the visitors’ room. He saw Mason, nodded, and walked across to seat himself in a chair on the opposite side of the table and on the other side of the screen.

Mason studied the other man’s face, a face which was within five feet of his own, separated by a table and a wire screen. It was possible, by leaning on the table, for a prisoner to get his lips within a few inches of the screen, possible for the lawyer on the other side of the screen, to place his ear within a corresponding distance.

Mason, however, made no attempt to lean across the table. Lowering his voice so that it was inaudible to the deputies, who were busily engaged working with their books, Mason said, “Well, Leeds, in an hour court opens. In order to represent you, I ought to know where I stand.”

Leeds sat quietly, with none of that nervous fidgeting which so frequently characterizes a prisoner. The morning sunlight showed the pouches under his eyes, the calipers which stretched from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth, the seamed skin which had been cracked in Arctic frosts, baked by tropical suns. His eyes were cool, steady, and cautious. “What,” he asked, “do you want?”