The Case of the Borrowed Brunette

Chapter 6

It was after nine o’clock and Mason was pacing the floor when Paul Drake’s peculiarly spaced code knock sounded on the door of the outer office.

“That’s Paul,” Mason said. “Let him in, will you, Della.”

As Drake entered the office he said, “Hi, Della!” and, with a grimace at Mason, blew out his breath in a weary whistle. “Gosh, Perry, I’ve been busy!”

“Found out anything?”

“I think we’ve struck pay dirt.”

“Shoot.”

Drake dropped sidewise into the big overstuffed leather chair. “Your two women did a lot of shopping. Then they had dinner and went back to the apartment. My boys had spotted the chaps who were shadowing them and had no difficulty in trailing along behind.”

“The men who were shadowing the women followed them in their shopping and to the apartment?”

“That’s right.”

“And your men shadowed the shadows?”

“Right.”

“Then what?”

“Then all hell broke loose. Sirens, police cars, and excitement. Thanks to your tip, I got some reinforcements there in time and we were able to cover everything.”

“Just what happened?”

“Well, one of the chaps rushed out to a public telephone. My operative had a small, very powerful pair of binoculars and he was able to look through the glass door of the booth and get the number the man dialed. He looked it up, and it’s the number of the Interstate Investigators. My man telephoned me what he’d found out, and I immediately rushed men to the Interstate office, just as you’d instructed.

“Out at the scene of the crime, the Interstate men were busy trying to find someone they could pump, someone who knew the low-down. Finally, from a friendly police officer they got as much as anyone could get — the same as the newspaper men are getting. It may not be all the story, but it’s most of it.”

“Which was what?” Mason asked.

“Well, you know the identity of the corpse. What do you know about the murder itself?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, Hines had been shot in the middle of the forehead with a small-caliber gun, probably a .32.”

“Any wound of exit?”

“No.”

“Then the bullet’s still in the skull?”

“That’s right.”

“When the police” get that, they can check the gun from which it was fired.”

“Right.”

“That’ll simplify matters somewhat.”

“Or complicate them,” Drake said dryly, “depending on whether the gun was owned by your client or somebody else’s client!... Well, the Interstate boys kept going down to the phone and feeding details into the office just as fast as they could get them. Then Interstate sent a relief man out and called in one of the men who was on the job. I figured that meant the client was coming to the office and wanted a personal report. So we had everything in readiness. Sure enough, a rather prosperous-looking chap of forty-two or forty-three, around five feet ten, weight about a hundred and ninety pounds, wavy red hair, pearl-gray hat, and double-breasted gray suit with a small check-plaid pattern came bustling into the office. He was in there half an hour. When he left, our men picked him up and followed him down to his car — a big, high-powered outfit. We looked up the license number later. Our men tagged him out to one of the swank apartment houses and got his name from the janitor, and by that time we’d checked up on the car license and had the same name for that.”

“What’s the name, Paid?”

“Orville L. Reedley,” Drake said.

Mason whistled. “Any relation to Helen Reedley?”

“As soon as we got the name,” Drake went on, “I had a man look up a contact in the library of one of the newspapers. After pawing through the records he found that Orville L. Reedley married Helen Honcutt in March 1942. She gave her age as twenty-one, he gave his as thirty-eight. As nearly as we can tell from the information in these statistics, it’s the same Helen Reedley who has the apartment up there.”

“This chap, Reedley,” Mason asked, “what does he do?”

“He seems to be a broker.”

Mason drummed on the edge of his desk with his finger tips. “Where is he now?”

“Still holed up in his apartment with two of my men watching the place.”

Mason pushed back his chair. “Let’s go, Paul,” he said.

“Your car or mine?” Drake asked.

“Where’s yours?”

“Right outside.”

“We’ll take it.”

“Where do you want me?” Della Street asked.

“Right here in the office, I guess, Della. We’ll get in touch with you. It may be we’ll want you to take down a statement after a while. You don’t mind sticking around?”

“Not a bit.”

“Let’s go, Paul,” and the two men left.

Mason lit a cigarette as Drake started the car. “Now we’re beginning to see a pattern,” he said, as Drake pulled up at the first traffic signal that was against them.

“You mean the husband angle?”

“Uh-huh, and the private-detective angle.”

“It has possibilities,” Drake admitted.

“Of course, we’re in the position of taking two and two and making four out of it, and then trying to find something to add that will give us the total of ten. But we can make a reasonable guess at the figure we want.”

“How reasonable is the guess, and what’s the figure?” Drake asked, grinning.

“A wife comes to a city and starts living by herself. A husband wants to get a divorce. She’d like to have a property settlement, but her husband doesn’t want to be that generous. She says, ‘Okay, then we’ll get along without a divorce.’ He waits a while, finds that the shoe is pinching, and decides to employ some detectives to get something on her. She’s running around with a boy friend, but she’s smart enough to know when the dicks are going to be put on the job. No — wait a minute, Paul! There has to be a leak somewhere. She has to know that her husband is going to employ detectives before he actually employs them.”

“How do you figure that out?”

“Because as soon as he employed them, he’d give them her address and they’d pick her up and start following her. But, knowing that he’s going to employ detectives, she makes arrangements to give them all a run-around. She turns the apartment over to a brunette who looks like her, and she’s just as anxious as the substitute is to make sure there’ll be a chaperone on hand at all times. Then everything is done with the utmost propriety. The husband’s detectives are probably shown a photograph that’s a fuzzy snapshot, given a description, and told to go to that address, pick up Helen Reedley, and shadow her day and night. They get on the job, the address is right, the apartment is in the name of Helen Reedley. A brunette who answers the description of the woman they want is living there. They start shadowing her. There’s a chaperone living there with her, and the two are inseparable. The husband gets a steady string of reports showing the greatest decorum all around. He gets discouraged and tells his lawyers to make the best settlement possible in the circumstances.”

“And in the meantime the real Helen Reedley is out playing around?” Drake asked.

“Well,” Mason said, “she’s probably being a little discreet about things, but my guess is that she isn’t spending the long evenings by the fireside with her crocheting and knitting.”

“Then this man Hines must be the boy friend.”

“Somehow I don’t think so,” Mason said. “I think she’d be too smart to let the boy friend be around the apartment, because the husband’s detectives might start tailing him. No, I have an idea this fellow Hines is a stooge of some sort.”

“Was,” suggested Drake.

“Was is right,” Mason amended.

“Well, what do you propose to do with this husband when we get there?”

“I’m going to ask questions.”

“Suppose he doesn’t answer them?”

“Then I’ll have to guess at the answers from his manner and the way he handles himself.”

“And that may be hard,” Drake pointed out.

“It may be impossible,” Mason conceded, “but in any event we’ll have made a try... Any idea what time the guy was murdered, Paul?”

“Apparently early in the afternoon. But you know how the police are, Perry. They aren’t putting out too much along that line right now. They’ll have the autopsy surgeons making examinations, but they won’t stick their necks out with the answer until after they’ve found a suspect who fits into that particular schedule pretty accurately. You know how it is. The same way the police give out that someone has made a ‘tentative identification’ of a suspect — which means that they haven’t a case, but aren’t burning any bridges in case they can’t find a better bet.”

Mason nodded.

Drake piloted the car around a corner and found a parking place. “Looks like the only parking place in the block,” he said. “The apartment we want is that swanky one down there about half a block.”

He locked the car and put the keys in his pocket, and he and Mason walked down the sidewalk, past expensive residences, and turned in at the rather ornate front of a high-class apartment house.

The lobby had that subdued, deep-carpeted hush so frequently associated with the outward semblance of ultra-respectability. A quiet-voiced clerk on duty at the desk inquired the name of the tenant they wished to see.

“Orville Reedley,” Mason replied.

“Is he expecting you?”

“Probably not. The name is Mason.”

“Yes, sir — and the other gentleman’s name?”

“Drake,” Mason said. “Tell him I’m a lawyer.”

“Oh, you’re Perry Mason!”

“That’s right.”

“Yes, Mr. Mason, just a moment.”

The clerk scribbled a note, pushed it through the wicket to the telephone operator, waited a few seconds, then turned and nodded to Mason. “Mr. Reedley will see you,” he said. “The boy in the elevator will direct you to his apartment.”

Mason and Drake entered the elevator. The boy took them to the fifth floor. “It’s Apartment 5-B,” he said, “the third door down on the left.”

Here again in the corridor was an atmosphere of quiet seclusion. Drake turned to Mason with a grin. “It stinks of dough,” he said.

Mason nodded as he pressed the mother-of-pearl button at Apartment 5-B.

The man who opened the door answered the description that had been given to Drake’s operative. But, dominating the physical characteristics of age, height, weight, and complexion which would have appealed to a professional detective, was the surging, dynamic power emanating from the man even as he stood there on the threshold.

Hot, smoldering eyes regarded his two visitors. “Which one of you is Mason?”

“I am,” Mason said stepping forward and extending his hand.

Reedley hesitated a moment, took the hand, but turned almost at once to Drake. “Who’s the other one?”

“Paul Drake.”

“What does he do?”

“He assists me in some of my cases.”

“Lawyer?”

“No.”

“What?”

“Detective.”

Reedley thought that over, his eyes moving from one to the other. Abruptly he stepped back in the doorway and said, “Come in.”

Mason and Paul Drake crossed the threshold. Reedley’s powerful shoulders swung in a smooth pivot, pushing the door shut.

“Sit down.”

Mason and Drake found comfortable chairs in a living room whose Venetian blinds, Oriental rugs, and comfortable, well-chosen chairs bespoke taste and wealth.

“Well,” Reedley said, “what’s it all about?”

“Your wife’s living here in town?” Mason asked.

“What business is it of yours?”

“Frankly,” Mason said, “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It may be important in a case I am handling.”

“You’re a lawyer?”

“That’s right.”

“You have clients?”

“Exactly.”

“They pay you?”

“Yes.”

“You represent their interests?”

“Right.”

“And only their interests?”

“Naturally.”

“I am not your client. Somebody else is. Therefore you’re representing somebody else. Those interests may be adverse to mine. If they are, you’re my enemy. Why the hell should I answer your questions?”

“Any reason why you shouldn’t?”

“I don’t know.”

“Could any circumstances exist that would give you any possible reason for not telling me about where your wife is living now?”

“I don’t even know that. Why should I tell you about it?”

Mason said, “I’ll put it this way. Certain circumstances have caused me to take an interest in a Helen Reedley who is living at the Siglet Manor Apartments on Eighth Street. I’m wondering whether she is your wife?”

“Why?”

“I’m trying to find out something about her background.”

“What about her background?”

“Oh, who her friends are, for instance.”

“Found out anything?”

“Not yet.”

“But you will?”

“I may.”

“I might be interested in that.”

“Then she is your wife?”

“Yes.”

“You’re separated?”

“Obviously.”

“How long have you been separated?”

“Six months.”

“You haven’t filed suit for divorce?”

“No.”

“She hasn’t?”

“No.”

“Do you intend to?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Does she intend to?”

“Ask her.”

“Any chance of a reconciliation?”

“That also is none of your business.”

“You’re not being very cooperative.”

“Because I don’t propose to show ray hand without finding out what kind of game you want to play. What’s the object of this visit? What are you after?”

“You’ve been in communication with her recently?”

“No.”

“May I ask when was the last time you talked with her personally?”

“It was about three months ago. I’m telling you certain things that you can find out from other sources, Mason, but I certainly don’t intend to let you pump me for information, get up and say ‘Thank you,’ and walk out.”

“Of course,” Mason said, “you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

“An obvious fact,” Reedley said dryly. “What’s the occasion of your interest in my wife?”

“Not so much in your wife as in her apartment.”

“What about her apartment?”

“A man was murdered there this afternoon.”

“Who?”

“A man by the name of Robert Hines.”

“You defend people who are accused of murder?”

“Sometimes.”

“I take it you’re defending someone in this case?”

“No one has been accused, so far as I know.”

“Someone who might be accused, then?”

Mason smiled. “Any person might be accused of murder. Records show that many innocent persons have been so accused.”

“You’re swapping words with me.”

“You’ve been swapping words with me,” Mason said. “When you get the best of the trade you seem to think that’s perfectly fair. When you break even, you crab about it.”

Reedley frowned.

“The murder,” Mason went on, “doesn’t seem to be a surprise to you.”

“It’s not always easy to tell when I’m surprised and when I’m not.”

“I said it didn’t seem to be a surprise to you.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Frankly, I wanted some information about your wife.”

“Why?”

“I think you can give it to me better than she can.”

“What sort of information?”

“You’ve had detectives shadowing her for the last few days. What have they found out?”

Reedley sat perfectly motionless, his eyes fixed steadily on Mason’s face. “Is that a bluff?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know — that’s why I’m asking.”

“Asking me if I’m bluffing on the theory that if I am I’ll be frank and tell you?” Mason asked.

Again Reedley frowned. “I think you’ve asked a question I’m not going to answer.”

“What I am particularly interested in finding out,” Mason said, “is what your wife was doing this afternoon.”

“What made you think I’d hired detectives to watch her?”

“Haven’t you?”

“I would certainly say that was none of your damn business.”

“There are other ways of finding out.”

“What?”

“I might tip off some of my friends on the Homicide Squad, or in the D.A.’s office, that if they’d subpoena the head of the Interstate Investigators they could get some interesting information.”

Orville Reedley thought that over. Then he asked abruptly, “What good would that do you?”

“Put me in solid with the police, and then they’d let me know if they found out you’d put men on the job of shadowing your wife.”

“How did you get your lead?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“You can’t tell me the things I want to know, but you want me to tell you the things you want to know.”

“Exactly.”

“That strikes me as being unfair.”

“Perhaps it is. You don’t have to tell me these things. I can go about finding out the hard way.”

“Meaning through the police?”

“That’s one way.”

“Wait a minute,” Reedley said, “let me think this over. Don’t talk to me for a minute.”

He heaved himself out of the chair, paced nervously back and forth across the rug for a few moments, then went over to stand at a window. He adjusted the Venetian blinds so that he could see out, stood moodily staring out of the window for a few seconds, then walked back to the other side of the room, lit a cigarette, took two or three puffs at it, and threw it away.

The telephone rang. “Excuse me a moment,” Reedley said. He strode to the telephone and jerked the receiver off the hook. “Well — what is it?”

He was silent for a moment. The words that came over the receiver were faintly audible in the apartment as a steady metallic rattle. When they stopped, he said hesitantly, “I don’t know... ”

Again there was sound from the receiver, followed by a one-word reply from Reedley: “Information.”

Another interval of sound, and Reedley said, “Yes... That’s right... Not entirely... Getting close to it, I think. Okay, thanks. Keep an eye on things. Okay, good-by.”

He hung up and walked back to stand by the table, frowning down at Mason. Then abruptly he turned to Paul Drake. “What are you here for?”

“I just came along.”

“You’re a detective?”

“Yes.”

“You’re hiring Mason?”

“Other way around — Mr. Mason hires me.”

“For what?”

“For the thing a person usually wants out of a detective agency: information.”

“You gave him the lead to me?”

“Ask him.”

“How did you get it?”

“Ask him.”

Mason broke in. “What’s the use?” he demanded. “We’ll never get anywhere beating around the bush. I learned that detectives had been employed to shadow Helen Reedley. I got Paul Drake to put his men to work shadowing the detectives. The trail led to the Interstate Investigators, and through them to you. They telephoned you when the police discovered the murder of Hines, and you rushed over there and were given information right up to the minute. Then you drove back here.”

“Don’t you know it’s a crime to tap a telephone wire?”

Mason looked him full in the eyes. “No,” he said; “is it?”

For a moment there was the suggestion of a twinkle in Reedley’s eyes. Then he said, “All right. You’ve put some cards on the table. I’ll match them. I heard that my wife was interested in someone else. I wanted to find out. I put shadows on her. They’ve been on her for two or three days. This man Hines apparently has been in and out. He’s taken her and her chaperone out to dinner, but my wife has never seen him alone. I couldn’t figure the deal. However, one of the detectives picked up some information from the police which interests me. When they made a search of the body, they found that Hines had a key to my wife’s apartment. It’s important to the police and it’s important to me to find out how long he’d had it, and how he got it — and why.”

“What do you think?”

“Use your imagination.”

“It sometimes leads me astray.”

“My wife didn’t want to give me a divorce. She’s not the type that would retire from circulation and live the life of a recluse. She’s had six months. She spent a lot of money having me shadowed. I decided I’d return the compliment.”

“She’s having you shadowed now?”

“Not now. Up to a couple of months ago she made my life miserable. There was some private detective on my trail every time I turned around. She quit because she couldn’t get anything.”

“When did you hire these detectives?”

“Two or three days ago.”

Mason said, “I think we could swap information to some advantage if you’d be more specific.”

“I never make a trade without looking over what I’m going to get.”

“The woman your men were shadowing wasn’t your wife,” Mason told him.

“Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll put it this way. When you decided to have your wife shadowed, you got in touch with a detective agency. You told them that you wanted to arrange for a twenty-four-hour shadow job, on a woman who was around twenty-three or twenty-four, a brunette, height five feet four and a half inches, weight one hundred and eleven pounds, waist measurement twenty-four inches, bust measurement thirty-two. She lived at Apartment 326 in the Siglet Manor on Eighth Street. You wanted them to keep an eye on the apartment, and pick her up and shadow her every time she went out. You also wanted to know what visitors came to the apartment house and went to see her.”

“All right,” Reedley said. “So what?”

Mason took a wallet from his pocket, extracted the folded copy of the ad, handed it to Reedley. “That,” he said, “is the answer.”

Reedley read it through twice before he got its significance. “Well, I’ll be doubly damned!” he said slowly.

“You see what that means,” Mason went on. “There was a tip-off. Someone knew in advance that you were going to hire a shadow to trail your wife. Your wife didn’t want to be shadowed, so she sidestepped and ran in a ringer. Your detectives put an eye on the apartment you designated. A woman was living there who answered in every way the description that you had given; a woman who could very well have been the person pictured in the snapshot you gave the detective agency.”

“I didn’t give them any photographs.”

“That made it a lot easier,” Mason said. “The point I’m making is that here was a tip-off. Someone knew you were going to employ the detective agency two or three days before you actually got the men on the job. Now I want to know where that leak came from.”

“You want to know,” Reedley said angrily. “How the hell do you think I feel about it?”

“I thought you’d feel the same way,” Mason said. “We might pool our information.”

“What information do you have?”

“I’ve put some of my cards on the table. After you’ve followed suit, we’ll try another lead.”

“Look here, Mason,” Reedley demanded abruptly. “Don’t detective agencies sometimes sell you out? Isn’t there a double cross?”

“Sometimes.”

“What do you know about the Interstate Investigators?”

“What do you know about them?”

“They were recommended to me by a friend.”

“When did you go to them?”

“What do you mean?”

“How soon did you have them put men on the job after you approached them?”

“Almost immediately.”

“Then it couldn’t have been a leak through the Interstate Investigators. There must have been time for this ad to be inserted, and time for the women to get installed in the apartment; and that must all have been done before the Interstate men got on the job. Therefore, there must have been a tip-off two or three days before you went to the detective agency. Who was the friend who recommended that agency?”

“Does that make any difference? I didn’t tell him what I intended to do.”

“Perhaps you didn’t need to. Perhaps you were just asking about some detective agency?”

“I asked him what he knew about the Interstate outfit.”

“All right, who was he?”

“I don’t think I care to tell you that.”

Mason shrugged his shoulders.

There was silence for several seconds. Then Mason turned to Drake and nodded. “I guess that’s about all, Paul.” And Mason got up.

“Don’t go yet,” Reedley said. “Sit down.”

Mason said, “Hines had a key to your wife’s apartment. Have you met Hines?”

“No.”

“I’ve met your wife. She seems to be rather high-voltage.”

“High-voltage is right.”

“Hines was not exactly a weak sister, but he was sort of nondescript. I can’t imagine his appealing to your wife.”

“It takes all sorts of people to make a world. You can never tell who is going to appeal to whom.”

“That’s right. Just the same, Hines impressed me as being rather weak.”

“Mason, let’s be frank. I don’t give a damn if the man was the anemic ruin of a misspent past. If he had a key to Helen’s apartment, that’s all I want.”

“If he’d lived, you’d have named him in a divorce action?”

“I can still use that key business to soften up my wife’s demands.”

“It might be a two-edged sword,” Mason warned him.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Hines was murdered.”

“Meaning that... Oh, I see.”

There were several seconds of silence. Then Reedley said, “Don’t be foolish, Mason. I didn’t even know the man. I don’t like your insinuation.”

“I’m not being foolish, and I’m not making any insinuations.”

“You’re coming damn close to it.”

“Not at all. It makes no difference to me. I was merely interested in what course you’d pursue under certain circumstances. Therefore I was pointing out all the facts.”

“Well,” Reedley admitted, “you pointed out a fact that hadn’t occurred to me.”

“And that may be important,” Mason added.

“It may be damned important,” Reedley grudgingly conceded. “Have you any suggestions?”

“About what?”

“About the way to handle that business of the key?”

Mason shook his head. “Ask your lawyer.”

“I haven’t a lawyer.”

“Then I’d suggest you get one. How about the reports you received from the Interstate people?”

“What about them?”

“You have them here?”

“Yes. That is, the ones sent out yesterday. They mail them out twice a day.”

“I’d like to look at them.”

“Why?”

“You might say it was merely as a matter of curiosity.”

“Just whom do you represent?”

“It might be the brunette who got the job.”

“Posing as my wife?”

“I wouldn’t say that. She was simply given a job.”

“You say you’ve met my wife?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“At my office.”

“When?”

“Within the last forty-eight hours.”

“How much ‘within’?”

Mason smiled and shook his head.

“What did she want?”

“It wasn’t what she wanted — it was what I wanted.”

“Well, what did you want?”

“I don’t think I’m entirely in a position to tell you that.”

“Then I’m not in a position to show you the reports of the agents from the Interstate.”

“Well, I guess that covers the situation,” Mason said with a smile as he got to his feet. “You know where my office is in case you want to give me any information.”

“What would I get if I did give it to you?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On the information that you had, and on the information that I had, at the time.”

“Okay, I’ll think it over.”

“Good night,” Mason said.

Reedley escorted them to the door, his manner that of a poker player who has sized up a bet and doesn’t know whether to quit, raise, or call, but wants a little time to think it over.