“When I got to the door of Apartment 702, I pushed the doorbell and heard the sound of the buzzer on the inside of the apartment. Almost instantly the door of an apartment across the hall opened, and a woman complained that she had been unable to sleep because of people ringing the buzzer of that apartment, and stated, in effect, that other people were in there with Mr. Clements. So we left immediately.”

“Now, then, Your Honor,” Stewart Linn said, “I propose to show that the two people referred to by the person living in the apartment across the hallway were none other than Mr. Mason and Miss Street, who had actually entered that apartment and were in there with the dead man and the evidence for an undetermined length of time.”

“Go ahead and show it,” Judge Jordan said.

“Just a moment,” Mason said. “Before you do that, I want to cross-examine this witness.”

“Cross-examine him, then.”

“When you arrived at the Mandrake Arms, Mr. Ralston, the door to the street was locked, was it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did you do?”

“We went up to the seventh floor and—”

“I understand that, but how did you get in? How did you get past the entrance door? You had a key, didn’t you?”

“No, sir.”

“Then how did you get in?”

“Why you let us in.”

“I did?”

“Yes.”

“Understand,” Mason said, “I am not now referring to the time you came up from the street in the custody of the radio officer. I am now referring to the time when you first entered that apartment house on the morning of the tenth of this month.”

“Yes, sir. I understand. You let us in.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, because you and your secretary were in Carver Clements’s apartment, and—”

“You, yourself, don’t know we were in there, do you?”

“Well, I surmise it. We met you just after you had left the apartment. You were hurrying down the hall toward the elevator.”

Mason said, “I don’t want your surmises. You don’t even know I had been in that apartment. I want you to tell us how you got past the locked street door.”

“We pressed the button of Carver Clements’s apartment, and you—or, at any rate, someone—answered by pressing the button which released the electric door catch on the outer door. As soon as we heard the buzzing sound, which indicated the lock was released, we pushed the door open and went in.”

“Let’s not have any misunderstanding about this,” Mason said. “Who was it pushed the button of Carver Clements’s apartment?”

“I did.”

“I’m talking now about the button in front of the outer door of the apartment.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And having pressed that button, you waited until the buzzer announced the door was being opened?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long?”

“Not over a second or two.”

Mason said to the witness, “One more question: Did you go right up after you entered the house?”