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Mason!" Peasley exclaimed. "The lawyer!"
    "In person," Mason agreed, shaking hands, "and about to sample one of the famous K-D-D-O cocktails of our esteemed contemporary, Jerry Harris, admittedly the greatest bartender of the post-prohibition era."
    Kent moved over to Peasley's side. "I'm sorry, Bob, but you'll have to excuse Helen this evening. She's going to be very busy."
    Peasley made an attempt at a smile. "That's all right, I only dropped in for a minute, anyway. I've got a hard day ahead of me at the office tomorrow. I just wanted to talk with Helen for a moment." His eyes fastened upon Helen Warrington significantly.
    "Everyone excuse us, please," she said gayly. "Save my K-D-D-O cocktail, Jerry Harris."
    She nodded to Bob Peasley. They left the room, and Edna Hammer heaved a sigh of relief. "Deliver me from a jealous man!" she said. "Did you notice the way he looked at you, Jerry?"
    "Did I!" Harris remarked, pouring ingredients into a cocktail shaker. "One would think I was the Don Juan of Hollywood."
    Edna Hammer's tone was slightly wistful. "Are you, Jerry?" she asked.
    "Darned if I know," he told her, grinning. "It's hard for me to keep track of all the competition; but I do my best."
    Lucille Mays, who had been talking in a low voice with Peter Kent, suddenly laughed, and said, "I'll bet you do at that, Jerry."
    "Sure," he told her, "I'm not kidding. It's the only way I can put my stuff across. You see, it's only natural for women to want the man that all other women want Therefore, by making all women want me I make all women want me, whereas if women didn't want me, no woman would want me."
    "I hate me," Lucille Mays said, laughingly.
    "No," Jerry told her, "it's a serious truth," and then, turning audaciously to Edna Hammer, he said, "Isn't it, sweetheart?"
    Edna Hammer laughed up at him and said, "It is with me, Jerry, but when I sink my mud hooks into you, don't forget you'll be branded. If I see any woman hanging around I'll stick a knife in her."
    Harris, carefully measuring the last of the cocktail ingredients into the shaker, said, "A couple more of these, sweetheart, and you'll be more liberal minded."
    Edna said to Harris, "Hurry up, Jerry; Mr. Mason's being courteous and gallant, but I can see he's just seething with important thoughts… Leo's are like that."
    "Am I a Leo?" Jerry asked. "I seethe with important thoughts."
    "You," she told him, her eyes suddenly filled with sombre fire as her voice lost its bantering tone, "are a Taurus – and how I like it!"

CHAPTER VI
    PERRY MASON, clad in pajamas, stood at the bedroom window, looking down on the patio which was drenched with moonlight. The big house, built in the form of a "U," surrounded a flagged patio, the eastern end of which was enclosed by a thick, adobe wall some twelve feet high. Dr. Kelton, his huge bulk sagging one of the twin beds, rubbed his eyes and yawned. Mason surveyed the shrubbery which threw black shadows, the fountain which seemed to be splashing liquid gold into the warm night, the shaded alcoves, striped awnings, umbrellas and scattered garden tables. "Delightful place," he said.
    Dr. Kelton yawned again and said, "I wouldn't have it as a gift. Too big, too massive. A mansion should be a mansion. A bungalow should be a bungalow. This business of building a hotel around an exaggerated patio makes the whole thing seem out of place."
    "I take it," Mason remarked, turning to face Dr. Kelton, and grinning, "you didn't have a particularly pleasant evening."
    "I did not, and I still don't know why the devil you didn't let me go home after I'd looked Kent over."
    "You forget that you're going to get up at daylight to see the bridal party off."
    Kelton's head shook in an emphatic negative. "Not me. I'm going to stay right here. I've practiced medicine long enough to value my sleep when I can get it. I don't get up any morning to see any bridal party off on any airplane."
    "Don't be such a damned pessimist," Mason said. "Come take a