The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde

1

Perry Mason drew his secretary to one side. “A blonde with a black eye, Della, is intriguing to say the least — unless she’s the type who would have been in a brawl. Is she?”

“Definitely not; but she’s frightened to death about something. I can’t quite make her out. Her voice is unusual — almost as though it had been trained.”

“And you’ve put her in the law library?”

“Yes. She’s waiting there.”

“How’s she dressed?”

“Black shoes, no stockings, a fur coat, and I caught a glimpse of something under the fur coat that I think may be a black house coat, or a robe of some sort, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if that was all she had on.”

“And a black eye?”

“A beauty.”

“Right or left?”

“Right. She has very light blonde hair, rather large eyes that are bluish green, and long lashes. She could be very beautiful with the proper makeup and without the shiner. I’d place her at around twenty-six. You’d guess her age as twenty-one.”

“What’s her name?”

“Diana Regis.”

“Sounds phony.”

“She insists it’s her real name. She’s terribly excited and nervous. Altogether, I’d say she was pretty much unstrung.”

“Been crying?”

“I don’t think she has. She seems nervous and frightened, but isn’t doing any weeping. She’s a girl who would use her head in an emergency and not give way to tears.”

“That,” Mason said, “settles it. We’re going to see her, at least long enough to find out what it’s all about. Bring her in, Della.”

He opened the door of the law library.

The blonde young woman who jumped to her feet was some five feet three inches tall and weighed about one hundred and twelve pounds. Her left hand clasped her coat, holding it tightly around her. The discoloration of her right eye contrasted oddly with her light blonde hair which swept down in waves to her shoulders. She wore no hat.

“Miss Regis?” Mason asked, his voice showing his interest. “Won’t you be seated? Della, you can sit over there. I’ll sit here. My secretary keeps notes on what my clients have to say, Miss Regis; I trust you won’t mind. What was it you wished to see me about?”

Mason’s visitor began talking almost before Della Street had opened her shorthand notebook. Her words were rapid, her voice vibrant with emotion. But there was that in the manner of her articulation which indicated a type of young woman with whom one would hardly associate black eyes.

“Mr. Mason, I’m in a mess, and I’m fighting mad. I’ve been thinking things over for hours — ever since midnight in fact, and I’ve decided to do something about... well, about this,” and she gently touched her discolored eye.

“Then why didn’t you come sooner?” Mason asked curiously.

“I didn’t have any clothes.”

Mason raised his eyebrows.

Her nervous laugh was merely a mannerism, not any indication of mirth. “If you’ll listen to me,” she said, “I’d like to begin at the beginning and tell you about it.”

“I take it,” Mason said, his voice showing no more interest than courtesy demanded, “your husband is holding your clothes and there’s been the usual family fight. He accused you falsely of infidelity, and...”

“No, Mr. Mason. It isn’t that at all. I’m divorced — have been single for more than three years.”

“Done some radio work?” Mason asked.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Your voice.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Who has your clothes?”

“The person for whom I was working.”

“Indeed. Isn’t that rather unusual?”

“The whole thing is unusual.”

“In that case,” Mason said, flashing a quick glance at Della Street to make certain she was ready to take notes, “I want to hear the story from the beginning. Tell me something about yourself first.”

“I’ll hit the high spots,” Diana Regis said. “I never knew my father. My mother died when I was twelve. I decided that an orphan without money could get ahead in the world if she had the determination to improve herself. I did everything I could to improve myself. I only had a grammar school education, but I studied whenever I had a chance — night school, correspondence courses, weekends in a public library. I learned shorthand, typing, became a secretary, then an actress on the radio. Then I had some trouble with a director and was about to be out of a job.

“Then a fan letter came in. A man by the name of Jason Bartsler liked my voice, wanted to know if I would be interested in a position that would pay me very good money with very easy work.”

“What did you do?” Mason asked.

She made a little grimace and said, “We get lots of those letters, not always couched in the same language, but always with the same idea back of them. I didn’t pay any attention to it.”

“Then what?”

“Then I got another letter. Then Mr. Bartsler called me on the telephone at the studio. He had a very nice voice. He told me he was having trouble with his eyes; that he had always been an omnivorous reader; that now he needed someone to read to him; that he’d been listening to the way I handled my scripts and not only liked my voice, but was satisfied I had a great deal of intelligence. Well, to make a long story short, I went to work for him and found him a very suave, very polished gentleman.”

“What,” Mason asked, “is his business?”

“Mining. He’s about fifty-five or fifty-six, a man who likes the good things of life, but there’s nothing heavy and nothing gross about him. He’s... well, definitely interesting.”

Mason merely nodded.

“He claims that the great American trouble is that we are too credulous. He says our national trait is to believe everything that’s dished out to us and then, when the gilt paint wears off the gold brick, to blame everyone except ourselves. His reading is the most peculiar I have ever encountered.”

“What was it?” Mason asked, interested.

“He carefully selects articles by the best writers in the best periodicals and has me read them to him.”

“What’s peculiar about that?” Mason asked.

“He selects articles from four to twenty years old.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You wouldn’t, unless you’d read the articles. For instance, before the war there were articles on just how we could take care of the Jap Navy any Thursday morning before breakfast. And when prohibition came in, there were articles about how, no matter what happened, it would never be possible to get the prohibition amendment repealed — and articles about economics and finances, people who claimed a national debt of thirty billion dollars would bankrupt the nation; that fifty billion would bring national chaos. All of them marvelously well written articles, supported by logic that seemed absolutely irrefutable at the time. They were written by some of the best writers in the country.”

Mason’s eyes were quizzical as he glanced at Della Street, then back at Diana Regis.

“What’s the idea? Why should a man waste his time reading outdated, outmoded stuff. After all, an article writer isn’t a prophet. He merely marshals evidence and makes a logical interpretation.”

Diana Regis laughed nervously. “I’m afraid I’m not explaining it very well, but that is the way Mr. Bartsler keeps his mind in what he calls proper perspective. He claims that the only way you can keep from swallowing the stuff that is handed out to you today, couched in the semblance of irrefutable logic, is to read the fallacies of yesterday, couched in the same irrefutable logic.”

“Well,” Mason admitted, smiling, “he’s got something there — if a person wants to go to that extent to cultivate skepticism.”

“He does,” she said. “He claims that, as a nation, we’re like little children with greedy ears. Someone comes along and says, ‘You want this or that Utopian condition, don’t you? Well, the only way to get it is to do such and so,’ and no one stops to ask questions; they simply start dancing along behind the Pied Piper.”

Mason’s face showed growing interest. “I think I’ll have to talk with this man, Bartsler,” he said. “Now let’s find out what your particular trouble is.”

“It starts with Carl Fretch and...”

“Wait a minute,” Mason interrupted. “Let’s get this in proper order. Who’s Carl Fretch?”

“Mrs. Bartsler’s son by a former marriage, a spoiled brat if there ever was one, but you don’t realize it until he takes off the mask. He thinks he’s going to be a great actor and has been studying acting, thinking acting, and talking acting. He’s had all of the advantages, and they’ve given him such a beautiful veneer that at first all you can see is the polish and poise that he seems to have. Actually, he’s a spoiled, nasty, selfish, scheming, ruthless devil.”

“Mrs. Bartsler?” Mason asked.

“Bitch!” Diana Regis spat the word out expressively.

Mason laughed.

“Oh, I know. I’m bitter,” Diana said, “but when you stop to figure what they did to me, they”

“Let’s get all the rest of the ‘theys’ classified. Who else lives in the house?”

“Frank Glenmore, Carl Fretch, Mr. and Mrs. Bartsler, and the housekeeper, an old family servitor whom they’ve had for years. They work her to death. She’s deaf and...”

“Who is Glenmore?”

“I gather he’s an operator who runs mines for people at so much a ton for ore that’s removed and sent to the mill. Since Mr. Bartsler’s eyes went bad Mr. Glenmore has been there sort of helping out. I think he owns a half interest in some of the properties. He’s a man you have to like, very fair — always wants to hear the other person’s viewpoint. I like him.”

“How old?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“Did you live there in the house, or did you come in by the day?”

“I had to live there because Mr. Bartsler wanted me to read to him just before bedtime. I kept my own apartment in town, of course. I share it with another girl and we’re very congenial. I didn’t want to give it up — at least until I knew more whether this job was to be permanent.”

“Where’s your apartment?”

“The Palm Vista Apartments.”

“All right, let’s hear about Carl Fretch and the eye.”

“Well, Carl had been after me every time I had a night off, suggesting we go to a movie or something, and I’d always stalled him off, telling him that I had a slight headache, or that I wanted to do my fingernails that night, or that I had some letters to write, always being nice to him but a little distant.”

“And then what happened last night to change your attitude?”

“Well, I saw that his mother was definitely annoyed. She thought that I was being a little high hat or something. Well, after all, I was rather lonely and I couldn’t see any harm in going out to dinner and a movie, so I told him I’d go.”

“Then what?”

“Once that boy got out of the house,” she said, “he was a different individual. At first I was definitely amused. He quite evidently was acting a part — living up to some sort of a pattern he’d established for himself, very much a man of the world.

“We went to a café, and Carl ordered vintage wines, and bossed the waiter around, and had the ingredients brought in and mixed his own salad dressing, and did everything with such an air...”

“How old did you say he was?” Mason asked.

“Going on twenty-two.”

“Classification?”

“Four F, and no one knows why. I guess one is not supposed to ask questions. I think a friendly doctor looked at him with a magnifying glass and found a mental quirk that exempted him.”

“And after dinner?” Mason asked.

“The usual thing — in an unusual manner.”

“What happened?”

“I tried to be nice to him and set him straight, but all of a sudden the mask slipped and I saw the little brat for what he was.”

“What did you do?”

“I slapped his face hard, and got out of the car and started walking.”

“What did he do?”

“Damn him, he let me walk.”

“How far?”

“Miles and miles it seemed. Then I finally picked up a ride and got to where I could get a taxi and drove out to the house, and then I realized that when I’d jumped out of Carl’s car I’d left my purse in the car and I didn’t have a cent with me. I usually carry a five dollar bill in my stocking for mad money.

“I told the cab driver that if he’d come up to the house with me I’d get the money so I could pay him. Another cab was just pulling away from the curb at the time, and when I started up the stairs to the porch, I saw the passenger — a matronly woman in the fifties with a slight limp and motherly eyes. She had heard our conversation and she insisted on advancing the money for my cab fare. Then she rang the bell before I could get her name and Frank Glenmore opened the door. She said she’d telephoned, and Mr. Glenmore said ‘Oh yes, about that mining deal’, and invited her in. I never did get her name.

“I’m ashamed of myself for not stopping to thank her, but I was somewhat upset. I asked Mr. Glenmore if he’d please refund the money the woman had paid the cab driver, and ran right upstairs to my room, turned the knob. And there was Carl Fretch standing in my room, big as life.

“Well, then was when I became fighting mad. I told him to get out. He just smiled at me with that cold, superior smile and said, ‘No, I think I’ll stay. If I can’t work it one way I will another. I want to say something, and you’d better listen.’”

“Then what?” asked Perry.

“Then,” she said, “I made my big mistake. I grabbed him by the coat and started to push him.”

“What did he do?”

She said, “He tore himself loose, whirled and faced me. I’ll never forget the look I saw in his eyes — cold, deliberate, calculating. I had no idea what he was going to do, but there was something in his look that frightened me, a cold cruelty, a carefully thought out meanness. He said, ‘All right, if you want it the hard way, here it is.’ He struck me then, very deliberately, very efficiently.”

“Knock you down?”

“Sat me down,” she said, “hard. I saw shooting stars and my knees gave way, and then I was sitting there on the floor and the room was going round and round, and Carl Fretch, standing in the doorway, bowed with a mocking, sardonic smile and said, ‘Next time don’t be so damned upstage,’ and then he closed the door and walked out.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I was angry and I was jarred. There’s something about that little devil that makes cold chills run up and down your spine. And it definitely does something to a woman’s morale when a man hits her. I went to the bathroom and put cold compresses on my eye, saw I was getting my clothes all wet, so I went back and locked the door, took off my clothes, got into the bathtub, took a long warm bath to relax me, and take the ache out of my feet, and all the time kept cold compresses on my eye. After a half hour, I felt better. I got up, dried myself off, put on a house coat, and because I’d neglected to take my bedroom slippers into the bathroom with me, put on my shoes. And then I realized that I still didn’t have my purse. I was good and mad by that time.”

“What did you do?”

She said, “I marched down to Mrs. Bartsler’s room and knocked on the door.”

“Was she asleep?”

“No. She was sitting up talking with Carl. She came to the door and looked at me as if she were surveying a caterpillar that had somehow crawled up on the dinner table. She said, ‘I was just talking with Carl, deciding what to do about you.’ I told her, ‘Well, I’m doing a little debating myself as to what to do about Carl. I had at least assumed that your son would be something of a gentleman, but beneath the polished veneer that has been so expensively applied, he’s just a rotten little bounder.’”

“How did she take that?”

“She looked down her nose at me and said, ‘Just what do you mean?’ And I told her that he’d made passes at me and then struck me, and she called me a liar right to my face, said that Carl had caught me stealing, and that I’d tried to overpower him to get the evidence.”

“Stealing!” Mason exclaimed.

“That’s right. Do you know what he’d done? He’d taken my purse in to his mother and showed her that in it was an article of jewelry she’d been missing all that day. Do you know, I believe that he planned things so that if I didn’t do what he wanted he was going to pin that theft on me.”

“Seems to be a very nice young man,” Mason said.

She laughed bitterly. “Well, I was so utterly dazed I couldn’t think of anything to say. And then Carl said, with that studied close-clipped enunciation of his, ‘I think, Mother, it might be a good plan to search her room before we let her go.’”

“Then what happened?”

“Then Carl and his mother walked down the corridor to my bedroom and when I tried to go in Mrs. Bartsler just pushed me out and slammed the door of my own room in my face.”

“And then?”

“Then,” she said, “I ran downstairs to see Mr. Bartsler, but he was still talking. My fur coat was hanging in the coat closet. I put that on, and was starting for the library where I could wait until Mr. Bartsler was at liberty, when the door abruptly opened and I saw this woman coming out. I didn’t want her to see my swollen eye, so I ducked into the coat closet and waited for the coast to get clear. I guess I waited five or ten minutes, then I opened the door and popped out, and at that exact moment the other door opened and both Mr. Bartsler and Mr. Glenmore were ushering this woman out.

“I had the start on them, so they could only see my back as long as I kept moving toward the front door. So I kept on walking right out the front door, down the steps and down the street. I made up my mind I’d phone Mildred Danville, the girl who shares my apartment, and get her to take my car and drive out to get me — and, of course, I didn’t even have telephone money with me. By that time, I was a little hysterical and my eye had puffed way out. So I decided to walk to my own apartment and get Mildred to let me in — as though I hadn’t walked enough already!

“I guess it was over a mile and a half, but I made it finally — and Mildred wasn’t home! What a night!”

“What did you do then?” Mason asked.

“Of course, I could have rung for the manager, got her up out of bed, and got her to let me in with a passkey, but she’s pretty strict, and the way I was dressed, my eye and... well, I was pretty low. My morale was below zero. So I walked on to the bus depot and sat there the whole blessed night. I mooched a nickel from a sympathetic man and called the apartment every hour for a while. There wasn’t any answer. There still isn’t any. I feel absolutely lost. It seems as though everyone’s staring at me... I’d heard of you. It took hours to screw up my nerve to come to see you in this condition but I felt myself becoming hysterical — so here I am... I guess I couldn’t have handled the whole thing any worse if I’d tried. I’m supposed to be a thief, and it looks as though I’d run away, and... and...”

“Della,” Mason asked, “think you can do something about this young woman?”

“Certainly,” Della said, and smiled reassuringly at the girl. “I think I can loan you some clothes that will do pretty well until you get yours. And how about some eats?”

Diana Regis said, “You... you’re both very kind. However, I think I’ll be able to...” Abruptly she collapsed in the middle of the office floor.

In two quick steps, Mason was at the side of the limp figure. He and Della Street raised her to put her back into the big overstuffed leather chair. Mason caught Della Street’s reproachful eyes.

“After all,” he said somewhat apologetically, “I don’t go in for this kind of practice, Della. I want murder cases and mysteries. But — since you insist.”

“I haven’t said a word,” she said smiling.

“No, you haven’t said anything,” Mason announced.

Diana Regis stirred in the chair, opened her eyes, said with some consternation, “Oh, I’m sorry... I... I guess I flopped.”

“You’re all right now,” Mason said. “A good cup of coffee will fix you, but in the meantime, you’re going to have just one little drink.”

Mason crossed over to the bookcase, pulled out a bulky volume, and from behind it took a bottle of brandy. He poured a glass half full of brandy, handed it to Diana Regis.

She thanked him with her eyes, drank the brandy. Mason took the empty glass, rinsed it out under the tap, returned it and the brandy bottle and the book to their place on the shelves.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“I’ll say I do. I haven’t eaten anything and... well, I’m just unnerved. Being hit like that has rattled my sense of assurance and I haven’t the same confidence in my ability to handle any situation. I’m sorry I passed out on you, Mr. Mason. If you can only fix things so they will give me my clothes and keep them from branding me as a thief... But I can’t take that charge of being a thief lying down, Mr. Mason, although I realize how things look — now.”

Mason said to Della Street, “Get her fixed up with food and clothes, and a good hot bath, Della. Then let her sleep for a couple of hours. I’m going out.”

Mason closed his right eye surreptitiously at his secretary.