“What?” Drake inquired.
“The fact that the woman in the picture shop mentioned that Evelyn Whiting had purchased a picture frame, an oval desk frame which would take a picture which had been trimmed down from an eight-by-ten print?”
Della Street grabbed his arm. “Chief, do you mean that she was the one...”
Mason grinned at Paul Drake. “I’m commencing to feel natural again, Paul,” he said. “Scudder has been so smug and complacent throughout this entire business that it’s time we exploded a dynamite bomb under him.”
“And I take it,” Drake said, “we’re going to violate a law?”
“Well,” Mason told him, “the legality of our position is going to be rather technical, Paul. We’re going to break and enter, but not for the purpose of committing a felony.”
“For what purpose, then?” Drake asked.
“For the purpose of leaving a choice assortment of fingerprints,” Mason told him.
Drake said, “Good Lord, Perry. If you only knew how nice and peaceful it was when you were in Bali!”
Mason climbed the wooden stairs which led up the back of the flat on Stockton Boulevard. Behind him, Paul Drake was a silent shadow. Della Street, seated in a rented car, with the motor running, was parked in the alley.