The Case of the Baited Hook

Chapter 2

Della Street was opening the morning mail when Mason came sauntering into the office.

“You’re early,” she said. “Didn’t you remember that the Case of People vs. Smithers was dismissed by the district attorney?”

“Uh huh. I came down to study the newspaper.”

She stared at him with her brows arched, laughter trembling at the comers of her lips, but her eyes grew puzzled as she saw the expression on his face. “Going in for contemporary history?” she asked.

He scaled his hat to the hat tree, pushed the mail on his blotter aside without so much as glancing through it, and spread out the newspaper on the desk. “Quite a rain we had last night.”

“I’ll say. What about the newspaper, Chief?”

“Shortly after midnight,” Mason said, “I received a two-thousand-dollar retainer and a piece out of a ten-thousand-dollar bill. I had an interesting session with a masked woman and a man who seemed very much worried about something, who intimated that some startling news would be found in the morning newspaper.”

“And you can’t find it?” she asked.

“I haven’t looked as yet,” he said with a grin. “Sufficient for the day are the business hours thereof.”

“Who were the parties?”

“The man,” he said, “was Robert Peltham, an architect. He didn’t seem particularly pleased when I discovered his real identity. He wanted me to believe that he was John L. Cragmore of 5619 Union Drive. That was the one slip he made. There isn’t any Cragmore listed at that address in the telephone book. It was a slip which I can’t understand. He had so thoroughly prepared all the other steps in his campaign that I can’t imagine him falling down on such a simple matter. If he’d only given me a name that appeared in the telephone book, I’d have fallen for it — at least temporarily.”

“Go on,” she said.

Mason told her briefly of the mysterious caller and what had taken place at the interview.

“How did he get your unlisted telephone number, Chief?”

“That is simply another indication of the care with which he’d prepared his campaign.”

“It wasn’t something on the spur of the moment?”

“I think the thing that caused him to call on me was something that happened rather unexpectedly, and apparently he’d decided some time ago that if he ever needed a lawyer he’d call on me, and he blueprinted his plans for reaching me and filed them away in the back of his mind. It’s indicative of the man’s character.”

“But how about that elevator business?” Della Street asked.

“That,” Mason said, “was a case where luck played into his hands. He owns a controlling stock interest in this building. He probably has duplicate keys to everything. Just as a matter of precaution, I didn’t leave that fragment of the ten-thousand-dollar bill in the office overnight. I figured a man who had a key to the elevator would very probably have a passkey to my office.”

“How about the woman? Do you think he’d planned to consult you in connection with her?”

“No. I think that was something that developed rather unexpectedly,” Mason said musingly. “Take that mask for instance. I’m virtually certain it had been part of a costume at a masquerade ball. It was a black mask with tinsel trimming. Evidently, it had been made to go with a masquerade costume — one of the things a woman would file away in a drawer of keepsakes.”

“Couldn’t you tell anything about her, Chief?”

“I’d say she was not over thirty,” Mason said, “and that she had a good figure. Her hands were small, but she was wearing gloves much too large. There were a couple of rings on the right hand, and one on the left. You could see the outlines through the gloves. She’d turned them so that the stones were on the inside.”

“Wedding ring?” she asked.

“I don’t think there was a wedding ring. And she was afraid to let me hear her voice.”

“Then you must know her,” Della Street said. “That is, you must have already met her, and she was afraid her voice would give her away.”

“Either that, or I’m going to meet her in the near future. Somehow I’m more inclined to the future theory than the past.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, just a hunch.”

“How do we handle it on the books?”

Mason handed her the portion of the ten-thousand-dollar bill. “That’s up to you — but that piece of ten grand you’ve got there is powerful bait.”

Della sniffed. “You know perfectly well you’re more intrigued by the Mysterious Madame X than you are by the money. Why not ‘The Case of the Masked Mistress’?”

“Well, that’s a thought,” he said, “although you may wrong the girl’s morals.”

“Did she look like a moral young woman?”

Mason grinned. “As to that,” he said, “it’s hard to tell even when you see them in complete regalia, watch the gestures of their hands, and listen to their voices. This woman kept her hands on the arm of the chair, her feet on the floor, and her mouth shut. Open up a file on ‘The Case of the Baited Hook’ and you’ll be right whoever or whatever she is.”

“And the answer’s supposed to be in the newspaper?”

“Not the answer,” he said, “but a clue.”

“Do you want me to look through it?”

“You take the first section,” he said. “I’ll take the second. Let’s not overlook anything: notices of death, or intentions to wed, birth notices, and divorces — particularly divorces.”

And Mason promptly turned to the sporting page.

Fifteen minutes later, Della Street looked up from the section of the newspaper she had been studying. “Find anything?” she asked.

“Nuh uh.”

She said, “I thought perhaps you’d find that One-punch Peltham had been signed up with Joe Louis for a fifteen-round bout.”

He grinned. “No harm killing two birds with one stone, Della.”

“We’ve thrown all our rocks, and haven’t even got a feather. I can’t find a thing. Did he act as though he expected it would be something obscure?”

“No, he didn’t,” Mason said. “I gathered that it would be spread on page one of the newspaper — something one couldn’t miss.”

“Well, it hasn’t broken then, that’s all.”

“That,” Mason said, “complicates matters. I don’t have any idea what it was he really wanted me to do. I might take a divorce case against Mrs. Jones and have Mrs. Jones walk in and shove the other half of this ten-thousand-dollar bill across the desk, and say, ‘Is this any way to treat a client?’ ”

“Or,” Della Street said demurely, “you might fire me for inefficiency and suddenly have me push the rest of that ten-thousand-dollar bill in front of you, and say, ‘Is this any way to run a law office?’ ”

Mason looked at her with sudden suspicion. “By George,” he said, “—now you have given me something to think about.”

She laughed.

Gertie, the big, good-natured blonde, who presided over the information desk and switchboard in Mason’s outer office, tapped on the door, then opened it, and slipped into the room. “Can you,” she asked, “see A. E. Tump?”

“What does he want?” Mason asked.

She shook her head. “It isn’t a he. It’s a she.”

“What’s the name?”

“Just A. E. Tump, but she’s a woman.”

“What does she want?”

“She wants to see you, and she looks like a woman who has a habit of getting what she wants.”

“Young?” Mason asked.

“Nope. She’s around sixty-five, and she still has sex appeal, if you know what I mean.”

Mason said, “Good Lord, Gertie. You don’t mean she’s kittenish.”

“No, not kittenish, and she isn’t one of those women who tries to have the figure of a young woman of twenty. But… well, she has personality and uses it. She puts her stuff across.”

Mason said to Della Street, “Go find out what she wants, Della. Give her the once-over.”

Mason returned to the newspaper, turning idly through the pages, reading the headlines, and waiting.

Della Street returned in a few moments and said to Perry Mason, “She’s white-haired, smooth-skinned, broad of beam, matronly in a seductive way. She seems to have money and poise and she has character and personality. Maybe you ought to see her.”

“What does she want?”

“It’s over a trust fund and an illegal adoption proceedings.”

Mason said, “Bring her in,” and Della returned to escort the new client into the office.

“Good morning, Mrs. Tump,” Mason said.

She smiled at him and walked across to seat herself in the big leather chair.

Mason, sizing her up, said laughingly, “You were announced as A. E. Tump. I thought you were a man.”

The woman beamed across at him. “Well, I’m not,” she said. “A is for Abigail, and E is for Esther. I hate both names. They reek with respectability and Biblical associations.”

“Why didn’t you change your name?” Mason asked, watching her with the shrewd, lawyer-wise eyes.

“Too much trouble in connection with property. My holdings are in the name of Abigail E. Tump. Well, I gave my daughter a break anyway.”

Mason raised his eyebrows.

Mrs. Tump needed no prompting. She went on smoothly in the effortless voice of one who is an easy, fluent talker. “I christened her Cleopatra Circe Tump. I guess it embarrassed her to death, but at least she wasn’t chained to a life of mediocrity by having names that were a millstone of conventional respectability around her neck.”

Mason flashed a swift glance of amusement at Della Street. “Do you then associate respectability with mediocrity?”

“Not always,” she said. “I haven’t any quarrel with respectability. I just hate the labels, that’s all.”

“Did you want to consult me about your daughter?”

“No. She married a banker in Des Moines — a stuffed shirt, if you ask me. She’s a pillar of respectability, and hates her names as badly as I hated mine. None of her friends even know about the Circe part of her name.”

Mason smiled. “What was the matter you wanted to discuss?”

She said, “It goes back to 1918 shortly before the Armistice.”

“What happened?”

“I was a passenger on a British boat sailing for South Africa. On the ship were two Russian refugees — traveling incognito, of course. They had been high officials under the old regime — that is, he had. It had taken them years to escape from that awful nightmare of Bolshevism, and their little daughter had been left behind.”

Mason nodded and offered Mrs. Tump a cigarette. “Not right now,” she said. “Later on, I’ll join you. Now I want to get this off my chest.”

Mason lit a cigarette and glanced across to where Della Street was holding a pencil poised over her notebook ready to take skeleton notes on the conversation.

“The boat was torpedoed by a submarine without warning,” Mrs. Tump said. “It was a horrible experience. I can see it yet whenever I close my eyes. It was night, and a heavy sea was running. The boat had a bad list almost as soon as she was struck. A lot of the lifeboats capsized. There were people in the water, only you couldn’t see them — just arms and clawing hands coming up out of the dark waves to clutch at the slippery steel sides of the boat. Then the waves swept them away. You could hear screams — so many of them, it sounded just like one big scream.”

Mason’s eyes were sympathetic.

“This couple I was telling you about,” Mrs. Tump went on, “—I’m just going to hit the high spots, Mr. Mason — they told me their history. The woman was psychic if you want to call it that, or just plain frightened and worried if you want to figure it that way. She felt certain the boat would be torpedoed. The man kept trying to kid her out of it… laughing at her, making a joke of it. The night before the ship sank the woman came to my cabin. She’d had a horrible dream. A vision, she called it. She wanted me to promise that if anything happened to her and I lived through it, that I’d go to Russia, find the daughter, and work out some way of getting her out of the country.”

Mason’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

“She gave me some jewels. She didn’t have much money, but lots of jewelry. She said that if the boat reached port safely, I could give the jewelry back to her. Her husband wasn’t to know anything about it.”

“And she was drowned?” Mason asked.

“Yes. They were both in the first boat which went over. I saw it capsize with my own eyes. Then a big wave came up and smashed the second lifeboat against the side of the ship. However, Mr. Mason, all this is just preliminary. I’ll only sketch what happened. I was saved. I went to Russia, located the child, and brought her out. It doesn’t matter how. She was a wonderful girl with the blood of royalty in her veins. I wanted my own daughter to adopt her. My daughter was just getting married at the time. Her husband wouldn’t listen to it. So I… I’m afraid I did something which was unpardonable, Mr. Mason.”

“What?” he asked.

“I wasn’t where I could keep her myself — that is, I thought I wasn’t. I put her in a home.”

“What home?” Mason asked.

“The Hidden Home Welfare Society.”

“Where was that?” Mason inquired.

“In a little town in Louisiana. They made a specialty of caring for children whose parents couldn’t keep them.”

She paused for a moment as though trying to get the facts straight in her mind.

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

She said, “I have to tell you a little something about that home, Mr. Mason, things I didn’t know at the time but found out afterwards. It was a baby brokerage home.”

“What do you mean by that?”

She said, “There’s always been a great demand for children to adopt. Childless couples are always on the lookout. Well, this home didn’t care how it got its children. I found out afterwards that most of the women who were employed on the premises were expectant mothers. They’d have children and leave. Some of them would arrange to pay for the child’s care and maintenance, and some of them couldn’t.”

“You, of course, made arrangements for the care of this child?”

“Oh, yes. I sent them regular monthly remittances. I have my old cancelled checks to prove it. Thank God I kept them.”

“And the child?” Mason asked.

“A year later,” she said, “when my own affairs were in order, I went to the home to get her out. And what do you think I found?”

“That she wasn’t there?” Mason asked.

“Exactly. They’d sold that baby for a thousand dollars. Think of it, Mr. Mason! Sold her just as you’d sell a horse or a dog or a used automobile.”

“What was their explanation?”

“Oh, they were frightfully sorry. They claimed it had been a mistake. At first they said I hadn’t paid them a cent. And then I confronted them with the cancelled checks — and they tried every means on earth to get those checks from me. I made a lot of trouble. The district attorney took it up, and The Hidden Home Welfare Society simply dissolved and vanished into nothing. I learned later what those places do. Whenever there’s trouble, they simply move to some other state, give themselves another name, and begin all over again.”

“But surely,” Mason said, “their records would show what became of this child.”

“They did, but the Home wouldn’t admit it. They lied about those records. I should have hired a lawyer and gone right into court, but in place of that I started making complaints to the authorities, and I suppose they were dilatory. You know how public officials can be at times. The district attorney was taking his vacation, and he stalled me along. I went back to New York and waited to hear from him. He wrote me a letter and seemed very pleased with himself. He said that thanks to my efforts, The Hidden Home Welfare Society had been put out of existence, that there had been previous complaints, and that I was to be congratulated on having saved my checks and all that sort of stuff.

“I went right back down to Louisiana and told him that wasn’t what I wanted, that I wanted the child. He said I’d have to engage private counsel, that his office was concerned with the broader aspects of the case. Think of it! The ‘broader aspects of the case.’ I could have choked him.”

Rage glittered in her cold gray eyes.

“You employed private counsel?” Mason asked.

“I did. That’s where I made my next mistake. It was too late for lawyers then. I should have employed good detectives. The lawyers took my money and puttered around. They said that the home had destroyed all of its records, fearing criminal prosecution, that it had scattered — as they said — to the four winds… Four winds nothing! They’d simply moved to Colorado and started all over again under another name. That was something else I didn’t know.”

“How did you finally get the information?” Mason asked.

“By persistence and a little luck,” she said. “One of the men, who had been in their bookkeeping department had, of course, remembered the entire transaction because of the commotion I’d raised, finally got in touch with lawyers who in turn got in touch with me… They wanted to sell the information of course.”

“What did you do?” Mason asked.

“I suppose I should have gone to the authorities, but I’d had a bitter dose of that medicine so I paid through the nose and got the information.”

“Which shows?” Mason asked.

“The child was given the name of Byrl. She was adopted by a Mr. and Mrs. Gailord. They lived here in this city.”

“How long ago was that?” Mason asked.

“Within two months of the time I’d left the girl at the orphanage, the Gailords came there looking for a child. They became completely infatuated with this girl. They insisted on having her. The Home told them that she wasn’t as yet free for adoption, but they felt certain she would be within a few months, as their experience had convinced them that very few people kept up the payments, and the understanding was that whenever the payments ceased, the child was free for adoption.

“The Gailords couldn’t wait. They offered to pay a fancy price — a thousand dollars. And I suppose there was a little bribe money passed at the same time. They said that if there was any trouble, they’d return the girl… Perhaps they meant to at the time, but they’d become attached to her — and — well, you know how those things are.”

Mason said, “But surely, Mrs. Tump, the girl has now arrived at the age of majority. She can do anything she pleases. She’s free, white, and twenty-one. She…”

“That part of it’s all right,” Mrs. Tump said. “I’ve straightened all that out, but here’s what happened. The Gailords were wealthy. Frank Gailord died. He left property, half to his widow, half to Byrl. Byrl’s half was in a trust fund. She was to get it when she was twenty-seven. In the meantime, the trustee was to pay her such sums as he thought necessary for care, maintenance, and education.

“Mrs. Gailord married again — a man by the name of Tidings. They lived together five years, and then the woman died, leaving all of her property to Byrl under the same sort of trust and making Mr. Tidings the trustee without bonds. Tidings is no good. He married again, and there’s been another separation… You don’t need to concern yourself with all these preliminaries, Mr. Mason. I’m giving them to you just so you’ll have the background clear in your mind. The point is, that Albert Tidings is now trustee for Byrl’s property, and it’s a tidy little fortune. He has absolutely no right to be trustee. He’s an improper person. He’s a crook, if you want my opinion.”

“You’ve seen him?” Mason asked.

“Naturally. I went to him and explained matters to him.”

“What did he do?”

“He said, ‘See my lawyer.’ ”

“And so you decided to come to me?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve explained matters to Byrl — about her parents?”

“I most certainly have. It came as something of a shock to her. She’d always considered the Gailords were her real parents.”

“Where is she now?”

“Here in the city.”

“What,” Mason asked, “do you want me to do?”

“I want you to go after Tidings,” she said. “I want you to prove that the original adoption was illegal, that it was a fraud, and was the result of bribery and corruption. I want Tidings out of there as trustee.”

Mason’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Meaning,” he asked, “that you want to be appointed trustee in his stead?”

“Well, I certainly think Byrl is entitled to more of her money. She should travel, see something of the world, come into her own inheritance, and marry.”

“She’s free to marry whenever she wants to, isn’t she?” Mason asked.

“Yes, but she can’t meet the sort of people she should meet… You can take one look at Byrl and realize that she has a most unusual heritage.”

Mason said, “So far as the past history is concerned, Mrs. Tump, it has but little bearing on the legal situation. The trust doesn’t depend on the adoption. Byrl is now of age. You have no legal standing in the case. You aren’t related to her. The parents asked you to get the girl and protect her. You got her out of Russia. After that — I’ll be frank with you, Mrs. Tump — a shrewd lawyer would make it appear that, having received the jewelry and smuggled her out of Russia, you suddenly lost interest in her. Beyond making your monthly payments, you were, to be frank, rather lax.”

“I wasn’t lax,” she said. “I wrote the Home regularly asking how she was getting along, and they answered by telling me that she was a bright girl, and was doing well.”

“You’ve kept those letters?”

“Yes.”

“Of course,” Mason pointed out, “Tidings wasn’t a party to the original fraud, and as far as Byrl is concerned, she’s in no position to complain. She has inherited property because of those adoption proceedings.”

“But she never was formally adopted,” Mrs. Tump said.

“No?”

“No.”

“How did that happen?”

“Well, you see when they first took her, they knew that she wasn’t eligible for adoption, and then, later on, when I made so much trouble, the attorneys for the Home wanted it kept entirely under cover. They were afraid that if adoption proceedings ever went through the courts, I’d find out about it and take Byrl away from them. As nearly as I can get it, their lawyer told them they could take care of Byrl’s interests financially through a will, and simply let the child go on believing they were her parents. They’d gradually instilled that into her mind, making up a story to account for some of her childish memories.”

“How,” Mason asked with interest, “did you get her out of Russia?”

“That’s a story I can’t tell you right now. Some very influential people who were friends of mine were traveling on a passport with a child. The child died and — well, Byrl got into the United States all right. I suppose I could be prosecuted for my share in that, and the other people could, too. I’ve promised to protect them in every way. Byrl knows all about it now, and all about her real parents.”

“Well,” Mason said, “I can force an accounting in that trust matter. I can probably make Tidings give Byrl all of the income, and perhaps a part of the principal. Then, within a year or two, the young woman can take over the entire trust fund under the terms of the trust. If Tidings has been guilty of any misconduct, we can get him removed.”

Mrs. Tump said, “That’s all I want. I wanted you to get the picture. If you want to know anything about Albert Tidings, you can find out from a man who’s very close to him. He’s associated with him in some other trust matters — one of a board of three men who handle endowment funds for a university.”

“That,” Mason said, “will be valuable. Who is this man?”

“He’s very influential and very wealthy,” she said. “Incidentally, he’s a great admirer of yours, Mr. Mason. He’s the one who sent me to you.”

“The name?” Mason asked.

“Robert Peltham,” she said. “He’s an architect. His address is 3212 Oceanic Avenue, but he has a downtown office, and you can reach him there.”

Mason carefully refrained from even glancing in Della Street’s direction. “That,” he said, “is fine, Mrs. Tump. I’d like to get in touch with Mr. Peltham before I decide about taking your case.”

“Why, I don’t see what he has to do with it, except as he can give you some information. Why don’t you take the case and then get in touch with Mr. Peltham? I’ll pay you a retainer right now.”

Mason thoughtfully flicked ashes from his cigarette. After a moment, he said, “Of course, Mrs. Tump, you have no legal standing in the matter. As I have pointed out, you aren’t related to Miss Gailord. Any action would have to be instituted by Miss Gailord herself.”

“I suppose that’s right.”

“And,” Mason said, “before I started anything, I’d have to see Miss Gailord and have her give me a direct authorization to act.”

Mrs. Tump, suddenly businesslike, glanced at a jeweled wrist watch. “At two o’clock tomorrow afternoon?” she asked. “Would that be convenient?”

Mason said, “I’d be very glad to give her an appointment for that time.”

Mrs. Tump pulled herself out of the deep recesses of the leather chair. “I’ll get busy right away,” she said. “—Oh, by the way, Mr. Mason, I may have done something wrong… Perhaps I got the cart before the horse.”

“What?” Mason asked.

She said, “When Mr. Tidings told me to see his lawyer, I told him that he could see my lawyer, that Mr. Perry Mason would call on him at eleven o’clock this morning. I hope that was all right.”

Mason did not answer her question directly. He said, “You’re a resident of this city, Mrs. Tump?”

“No, I’m not,” she said. “I came here recently because Byrl was here. I’m living at the St. Germaine Hotel.”

Mason said, with elaborate unconcern, “Do you have her address, Mrs. Tump?”

“Why, of course — the Vista Angeles Apartments… She’s going to take a trip with me as soon as we can get matters straightened out. I’m financing her in the meantime. Understand, Mr. Mason, you’ll make all arrangements through me. She’ll be your client, of course, but I’ll be the one who pays the fees, and therefore the one you’ll look to for instructions.”

“Is she,” Mason asked, “listed in the telephone book?”

“Yes.”

Mason said, “Thank you, Mrs. Tump. I’ll see you at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

“And how about this appointment with Mr. Tidings?”

“I’ll get in touch with him,” Mason said, “and explain that I’ve been consulted, that the hour isn’t convenient for me, and ask for a later appointment.”

She gave him her hand. “You give me a real feeling of confidence, Mr. Mason… You’re so different from those other lawyers. I built up a phobia about the legal profession. But Mr. Peltham told me you’d be like this. He seemed to know a great deal about you… You’ve met him personally, perhaps?”

Mason laughed. “I meet so many people — and so many people know me whom I don’t know, that at times it’s embarrassing.”

“Yes, of course. That’s what comes of being a famous lawyer. Well, I’ll see you at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

Mason and Della Street remained motionless, watching Mrs. Tump walk across the office with firm, competent steps. She made no effort to leave by the door through which she had entered, but walked directly to the door which opened from Mason’s private office into the outer corridor. She twisted the knurled knob which released the catch, and turned on the threshold to smile once more at them. “Don’t forget about that eleven o’clock appointment with Tidings, Mr. Mason,” she said, and pulled the door shut behind her.

When the latch had clicked into place, Mason trusted himself for the first time to look at Della Street.

“Ain’t we got fun!” she said.

Mason grinned. “I knew there was going to be a joker in the thing somewhere.”

Della, suddenly serious, tried to reassure him. “After all,” she said, “the coincidence may be just that and nothing more.”

“It may be,” he admitted, in a voice that showed his skepticism. “One chance in ten million if you want to make it mathematical.”

“Well,” she said, “I suppose that Mrs. Tump would hardly be the woman who holds the other part of that ten-thousand-dollar bill.”

“No,” Mason said, “but what do you want to bet that Byrl Gailord isn’t?”

“No takers,” she told him. “This is your personally conducted excursion into the realm of mysterious women and masked mistresses… Of course, if Byrl Gailord knew that Mrs. Tump was going to call on you and arrange for an appointment, she’d have been careful to keep you from hearing her voice… But I don’t see why all the secrecy.”

Mason said, “Because she doesn’t want Mrs. Tump to know that she’s intimate with Peltham — if Byrl Gailord is the one who’s intimate with him.”

“And if she isn’t?” Della Street asked.

Mason said, “Forget that. Ring up that Contractor’s Journal. Tell them we have a personal ad which must go in their next issue. Look up the position of Byrl Gailord’s name in the telephone directory, and compose a code ad asking if it’s all right to represent her… And somehow I feel as though I’m walking into a trap the minute I do that.”

“Couldn’t you go ahead and represent her without it?”

“I could,” Mason admitted, “but I don’t want to. That ten thousand dollars looked as big as the national debt last night, Della, but it looks like trouble now. Go ahead and work out that ad. Tell Paul Drake to look up Tidings, and get Tidings on the telephone for me.”

A few moments later, she popped her head in the door to say, “There’s a one-thirty dead-line on that ad, Chief. I’ve got it ready and will rush it down. Albert Tidings is coming on the line in just a moment. His secretary’s on now.”

Mason picked up the telephone, and a man’s rather high-pitched voice said, “Hello.”

“Mr. Tidings?” Mason asked.

“No. This is his secretary. Just a moment, Mr. Mason. Mr. Tidings is coming right on… Here he is.”

A booming, resonant voice said, irritably, “Hello. Who the devil is this?”

“Perry Mason, the lawyer,” Mason said. “I’m calling in regard to an appointment a Mrs. Tump made with you. She said I’d call on you at eleven… Is this Albert Tidings?”

There was a moment of silence, then the voice said cautiously, “Yes, this is Tidings. I know all about what you want, and…”

“Mrs. Tump has just left my office,” Mason interposed as the man at the other end of the line paused uncertainly. “She said she’d made an appointment for me to meet you at eleven o’clock this morning. That appointment was, of course, made without consulting my own convenience and…”

“I understand perfectly, Mr. Mason,” the booming voice interrupted. “I was going to call you myself… Hadn’t got around to it yet. It’s all damn poppycock. You don’t want to waste your time on it, and I don’t want to waste mine. She said eleven o’clock… I knew you wouldn’t drop your business and come running around to peddle a lot of old woman’s gossip, but I didn’t say anything to Mrs. Tump. I just figured I wouldn’t hear any more about it, but I told my secretary to call you up just to make sure.”

“It’s quite possible,” Mason said, “that I’ll want to talk with your attorney — if you can tell me who he is.”

“I have several attorneys,” Tidings said, evasively.

“Can you tell me which lawyer will be handling this particular case?”

“None of them,” Tidings said. “It’s all bosh. I tell you there’s nothing to it, but one thing I will tell you, Mason. If that woman doesn’t quit her whispering campaign of poison propaganda, I’m going after her. Byrl’s a swell girl. We get along fine, but that old buzzard is poison and she’s laying up trouble for herself. She’s a chiseler and is just trying to make Byrl dissatisfied so as to feather her own nest. I’m going after her if she doesn’t quit. You can tell her that straight from me.”

“Tell her straight from yourself,” Mason said. “I only called up to cancel an appointment.”

Tidings laughed. “All right. All right. I didn’t mean it that way, Mason, but I’m getting irritated… All right. Call up whenever you want to see me. Your secretary and mine can doubtless get together. Good-by.”

Mason dropped the telephone receiver into place, pushed back his chair, got to his feet, and started slowly pacing the office.