Perry was awoken three times by Annette during the course of the night. Each time, the nurse took Della's pulse and blood pressure and gave him an encouraging report. In the early hours of the morning, his secretary's heart rate was fifty beats per minute. Perry offered up a silent prayer of thanksgiving.
Then, just before six o'clock, his legs were roughly displaced by a strong shove of the door. Alert in a second, Perry sat straight up and saw Paul Drake practically barreling into the room.
It only took the lawyer one look at the detective's face to recognize that his demeanor had undergone a great change over the last several hours. In place of the pitying looks that he had given him the previous evening, Paul looked horrified, and angry.
"Is she alright?" he asked, rather gruffly, as he looked at Della.
"She is doing better," the defense attorney replied, taking his friend by the arm and steering him into a corner of the room, so that the sound of their voices would not wake Della. "What did you find out?"
Paul Drake took a deep breath.
"Well, Perry, I don't mind telling you, now, that when you asked me to do all those jobs for you yesterday evening I thought that you were surely off your rocker. But, as always, your hunch was correct."
"So there was something mixed with that milk!"
"Yes, there was. Aaron says that it is a compound which he is not familiar with, but there definitely was an ingredient in the beverage besides milk and Vitamin D. He is running further tests on it as we speak, trying to determine its chemical structure; that, however, could take days. He was able to isolate the same compound, albeit in far smaller concentrations, from Della's thermos bottle and the two bottles of milk I retrieved from her refrigerator at home. The milk in your office's icebox, however, was negative for it. And the glue on the outside of the milk carton did not match the glue on the inside."
Perry nodded, feeling very vindicated.
"But Perry," Paul's voice dropped even lower, "it gets worse. When Aaron realized that it might take a while, or even be impossible, for him to identify the chemical, he decided to take a shortcut, so to speak, to see if it had any biological activity. He borrowed a couple of laboratory rats from a researcher friend of his and gave them small doses of the milk from the carton that was served to Della yesterday afternoon. Within ninety minutes, both rats had died from cardiac arrest."
A shudder swept through Perry Mason's entire body. He instinctively turned and looked at Della, restraining himself from dashing over to her, throwing his arms around her and clasping her to his heart protectively. Someone was trying to harm his darling! Right in front of him, someone had been poisoning her for weeks! And they had come within a hair's breadth of fully succeeding!
Taking a deep breath, he inquired,
"And what about the nurse?"
"One of my operatives trailed Janice Hoffman from the hospital to a phone booth about three blocks away from here. He watched as she made a frantic phone call, and then, once she left the booth and was out of sight, went into it himself and asked the operator for the last number that the phone had called. That is how we found out that she had been calling the Scorpion Nightclub – hardly a place for an upstanding, courteous medical professional to be involved with! Once I started down that road, I soon uncovered that Janice had been to the Scorpion many times, as she is the sister of one of the notorious mobsters who frequent it. And do you remember Timmy the Shark? Well, rumor has it that he and Janice Hoffman had quite a romance going until the day you helped him get charged with first-degree murder, just over a month ago."
So there it was! Beads of sweat appeared on Perry's brow. If Timmy the Shark's girl had managed to infiltrate the hospital and become Della's nurse, there was no telling who else in their midst had been preying on her life!
"How in the world did the sister and sweetheart of mobsters manage to get a job as a nurse in this hospital?" the lawyer asked, endeavoring to keep the tremor out of his voice.
"Apparently she did do a few semesters of nursing school in her youth before she began to make very bad decisions and started spending more time at her brother's place of business, but she dropped out before completing her degree. She probably learned enough to be able to act the part of a nurse convincingly, however. I checked, and the diploma the hospital has on file for her is a forgery. A good forgery. Interestingly, however, she has only worked in the hospital for five weeks."
"That is hardly unexpected. Why would a woman like that fool around with honest work unless she was using it as a front?" Perry said, starting to recover his self-control. "Who hired her?"
"The Human Resources Department, but it seems that she came highly recommended by one of the hospital administrators. I haven't been able to piece together why they vouched for her, yet, but in the next few hours I should have more answers for you. However, I did do a quick background check on the night nurse, Annette Ciaro, Dr. Liao and even your own physician, Bill Hawley. They all appear to be principled and righteous people and uninvolved in Janice's schemes."
The criminal defense attorney gazed lovingly upon the sleeping invalid.
"Thank you, but I already have a theory about how Janice managed to worm her way into this hospital. I would rather that you concentrated your men and energy on finding out why Della was targeted, instead of me! She did not play any key role in that trial, other than that of my secretary. She did not even know that I suspected Timmy the Shark until I cross-examined him on the witness stand! If they breached her apartment and tampered with the contents of her icebox and planted one of the most loyal members of their mob in a hospital as her nurse, they surely could have easily come after me!"
Paul had to stop himself from laughing in his friend's face. For the first time in their long acquaintance, he was one step ahead of Perry Mason!
"Perry, tell me something," he said, conversationally and innocently, "in your opinion, which is worse: you dying of cardiac arrest, or watching Della die?"
"Watching Della, of cour-," Perry gasped and broke off mid-sentence, realizing what the detective was trying to tell him.
"I think that is why the milk in her refrigerator was poisoned, and the milk in your office left untouched," Paul Drake said, wrapping a comforting arm around his friend's shoulders. "You've always been very gentlemanly and discreet, but if someone ever observed one of those looks which you give Della on occasion, it would be easy for them to realize that you had the highest opinion of her!"
Self-reproach suffused over Perry's mind. He had put Della in danger! If only he had been a little more diligent about wearing his poker face in public!
But after a few seconds, reason prevailed. No, he should not be required to forever disguise his feelings for Della, in public or otherwise. The only people at fault were those who were so base as to take their desire for revenge out on a sweet girl!
And Perry Mason would see to it that they would not get away with it!
"Paul," he said, "be so good as to go out and procure a light breakfast from a random restaurant for Della. She's not eating another bite of hospital food if I have anything to say about it. And then call a couple of your best operatives and tell them to come to the hospital."
"Right, Perry," the detective agreed, patting him on the back and taking his leave.
As soon as the door had closed behind his best friend, the attorney walked to the phone. Picking up the receiver, he dialed a number which he knew by heart.
"Hamilton?" He asked once he heard a sleepy 'hello' on the other end of the line. "It's Perry. I know it's early, and I'm sorry, but I am going to need you and Tragg at St. Mary's Hospital within the hour. In your official capacities."
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