The Case of the Calendar Girl

Chapter Two

Perry Mason and Della Street, enjoying a leisurely dinner, had sat through the floor show, had danced twice and were finishing up on brandy and Benedictine when Della Street looked up with a slight frown of annoyance at the young man who was approaching their table with a businesslike directness which indicated he had some definite objective in mind.

“Mr. Mason,” the man said, “my name is George Ansley. I was finishing a cocktail here earlier this evening just as you came in. I know you by sight. I dislike to intrude in this way, but... well, I’m in need of some legal advice. It’s a minor matter, something you can tell me offhand. Here’s my card. If you’ll just answer a question and then send me a bill, I’ll... well, I’ll certainly appreciate the favor.”

Mason said, “I’m sorry, but I’m—” Suddenly, at the look in Ansley’s eyes, he changed his mind. “Sit down, have a drink and tell us about it. This is Miss Street, my confidential secretary. For your information, Ansley, I do mostly trial work and I only take the cases that interest me. Somehow or other that has led me to gravitate toward the defense of persons accused of murder, and, unless you want to go out and commit a murder, I’m afraid you’re not going to interest me.”

“I know, I know,” Ansley said. “This is just a minor matter, but it may be important to me.”

“Well, what is it?” Mason asked.

“I was driving my car. I left here to keep a business appointment. The roads were wet, and a car driven by a young woman skidded into me and overturned.”

“Much damage?” Mason asked.

“Virtually no damage to my car, but the other car was, I’m afraid, pretty completely wrecked. The car was in a skid when it hit me, and it went off the road, through a hedge and rolled over.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“No, and— That’s what bothers me.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“A young woman was driving the car. She seems to be a delightful personality and she... well, I guess she liked me and somehow I— To tell you the truth, I don’t know how I feel about her, Mr. Mason. When I was with her I felt that I liked her, and she certainly was attractive.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

“After I had left, I began to realize that there was something terribly peculiar about the whole episode. She sort of led me along and... I kissed her a couple of times and I didn’t think of too much else. I... well, here’s the point, Mr. Mason. She was unconscious for a while, and then she came to. She seems to be feeling quite all right, but I’ve heard a lot about these cases of concussion. I suppose I should notify my insurance company. I’ll take care of that all right, but what about the police? That’s the thing that bothers me. Should I report the accident to the police?”

“The young woman was unconscious?” Mason asked.

“That’s right.”

“And the car was damaged?”

“Yes.”

“What kind was it?”

“It was a good-looking Cadillac, a late model.”

“Get the license number?”

“Yes. It was CVX 266.”

“Notify the police,” Mason said. “Where did the accident happen?”

“That’s just it, Mr. Mason. I... I don’t want to notify the police unless I absolutely must.”

“Why?” Mason asked.

“Well,” Ansley said, “that’s something of a story and— Look here, Mr. Mason, I know you’re a busy man, I know you work under quite a strain, I know you’re trying to relax here tonight, and I feel like a heel, but the man who handles my legal business is out of town at the moment and I don’t know anyone else. I saw you here and... well, this may be very, very important to me. I need the best in the line of legal advice.”

“Why is it important?” Mason asked. “And why don’t you want to report it to the Highway Patrol?”

“Because I’m a contractor. I’m contracting on some city jobs and they’ve put the bite on me.”

“Who has?”

Ansley shrugged his shoulders and said, “How do I know? All I know is that the inspectors are making life impossible for me. I’ve been told to tear out a whole section of wall because a couple of pieces of structural steel were less than an inch out of place. I have inspectors hanging around the job looking things over with a microscope... Well, I knew the answer. I put off doing what had to be done as long as I could, but now it’s a question of whether I make a profit on the job or whether the thing wipes me out. This is one of my first big jobs. I’ve stretched my credit to the limit, and everything I have is riding along on that job.”

“I still don’t get what you’re trying to tell me,” Mason said.

“I was given the tip that the remedy for my troubles was to see Meridith Borden. I went out and saw him. The accident occurred just as I was leaving his grounds. The other car has rolled over and is on his grounds. I don’t want to make a report to the Highway Patrol which will show I was leaving Meridith Borden’s house. If it should get written up in the newspaper and— Well, you can see the position I’m in.”

“Forget it,” Mason said, “but notify your insurance carrier. And, of course, you’ve got to take a chance that the girl wasn’t hurt. She seemed all right?”

“She seemed all right,” Ansley said, “and yet there’s something that isn’t all right.”

Mason glanced across at Della Street’s disapproving face. “Now you’ve got me interested,” he said. “Tell me about it. Do you know the girl’s name?”

“Oh, yes, of course. I got her name.”

“What is it?”

“Beatrice Cornell. She lives at the Ancordia Apartments.”

“See her driving license?” Mason asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Well, that’s one of the things that I got to thinking about later. She acted so peculiarly about the entire accident. The— Well, it was a funny thing, but I know she lied about one thing. She was deliberately turning her car into the driveway to Borden’s house when she lost control of it, and it went into a skid. But she tried to tell me she didn’t know Borden and was simply driving along the highway when she swerved to avoid a cat or something on the road, and—”

“Tell me about it,” Mason said. “Start at the beginning and tell me the whole thing.”

Della Street sighed, produced a shorthand notebook from her purse, pushed the half-emptied glass of brandy and Benedictine to one side and started taking notes.

Ansley told the entire story.

Mason’s forehead creased in a frown. “You say this girl was unconscious?”

“Yes. There was a steady pulse, but it was thin and weak.”

“Then you started for the house and she screamed and you ran back?”

“Yes.”

“And the minute you ran back she seemed to be in full possession of her faculties?”

“Yes.”

“You saw this young woman when she was lying there unconscious with her legs and thighs exposed. Your flashlight was working then?”

“Yes.”

“What did she look like?”

“Well, of course, I had only a very general impression while she was lying there on the ground. Later on in the car I had a chance to see more of her.

“She was nice-looking, rather young — oh, say twenty-four or five and her hair was sort of a reddish brown. I think her eyes were dark brown.

She had even, regular teeth which flashed when she smiled, and she seemed to smile easily.”

“Now,” Mason said, “let’s concentrate on her shoes. Can you remember anything about her shoes?”

“Her shoes? Why?”

“I’m just asking,” Mason said.

“Why, yes, they were sort of a brown. They were sort of dark with open toes.”

Mason said, “All right. She told you she didn’t want a doctor. I’m going to let her tell me. I’m going to ring her up and tell her I’m your attorney, that I want to send a doctor around to look at her and make certain she’s all right.”

“She’ll refuse,” Ansley said.

“Then we’ll have made the offer,” Mason told him. “Up to this time, it’s your word against hers. Now I’ll call up as your attorney, and she’ll refuse to see a doctor and that will be that.”

Mason nodded to Della Street. “Look up Beatrice Cornell, Della. See if she has a phone listed. If she doesn’t, we’ll have to get her through the Ancordia Apartments.”

Della Street nodded, pushed back her chair and went to the telephone booth.

A moment later she beckoned Perry Mason, and, when the lawyer crossed over to the booth, Della said, “May I speak with Miss Beatrice Cornell, please? Yes... This is Miss Street. I’m the secretary for Mr. Perry Mason, the attorney. He wants to talk with you... Yes, Perry Mason... No, I’m not fooling. Will you hold the line a moment, please...? Yes... My name is Street. S-t-r-e-e-t. I’m speaking for Mr. Mason. He’s right here. Will you hold the line, please?”

Mason stepped into the booth. “Miss Cornell?” he asked into the telephone.

“Yes.”

“I’m Perry Mason, the lawyer.”

“Say, just what sort of a gag is this?” the voice on the line demanded.

“I thought I’d heard them all, but this is a new one.”

“And why does it have to be a gag?” Mason asked.

The voice over the telephone was pleasing to the ear, but an element of humorous skepticism was quite apparent. “My friends,” she said, “know of my admiration for Mr. Mason. I make no secret of it and I suppose this is someone’s idea of a gag. But go right ahead. I’ll ride along with it. Let’s suppose that you’re Mr. Perry Mason, the attorney, and I’m the Queen of Sheba. Where do we go from here?”

“As it happens,” Mason said, “I’m calling you on behalf of a client.”

The voice suddenly lost its humorous skepticism and took on a note of genuine curiosity. “The name of the client?”

“George Ansley,” Mason said. “Does the name mean anything to you?”

“Should it?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t.”

“He is the one who took you home a short time ago.”

“Took me home?”

“From the automobile accident.”

“What automobile accident are you talking about, Mr. Mason?”

“The accident in which your car was overturned. You have a Cadillac, I believe, the license CVX 266?”

She laughed. “I am a working girl, Mr. Mason. I haven’t had a car for several years. All I have is an interest or an equity or whatever you want to call it in the public buses. I have been here in my apartment all evening, reading, as it happens, a mystery story, and hardly anticipating that I was going to be called in connection with one.”

“And you live at the Ancordia Apartments?”

“That’s right.”

“Miss Cornell, this may be a matter of some importance. Would you mind giving me a physical description of yourself?”

“Why should I?” she asked.

“Because, as I told you, it may be a matter of some importance. I think perhaps someone has been using your name.”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “I’ll give you the description that appears on my driving license, acting on the assumption that perhaps this is Mr. Perry Mason. I am thirty-three years of age, I am brunette, my eyes are dark, I am five feet, four inches in height, I weigh 122 pounds, and I’m trying to take off five of those pounds. Now, is there anything else I can tell you?”

“Thank you,” Mason said, “you have been of the greatest help. I am afraid someone has been using your name. Do you know anyone who might have used your name?”

“No.”

“Someone perhaps who lives in the same apartment house?”

“I know of no one, Mr. Mason... Tell me, is this on the level? Is this really on the up-and-up?”

“It is,” Mason said. “A young woman was in an automobile accident earlier this evening. Mr. Ansley offered to drive her home. She gave him the name of Beatrice Cornell, the address of the Ancordia Apartments. This man drove her to that address. She thanked him and went in.”

“Can you describe her?”

Mason, suddenly cautious, said, “I haven’t as yet checked on her physical description with my client, but I might be able to call you back later on. Say perhaps tomorrow sometime.”

“I wish you would,” she said. “I’m very curious, and if this is really the Perry Mason with whom I’m talking, please accept my apologies for my initial skepticism. May I say that this was due to the fact that all my friends know I am a fan of yours. I have followed your legal adventures with considerable interest and enjoy reading about your cases in the newspapers.”

“Thanks a lot,” Mason told her. “I’m honored.”

“I’m the one that’s honored,” she said.

“You’ll probably hear from me later,” Mason told her. “Good night.”

Mason hung up the phone, frowned at Della Street, said, “Ring up Paul Drake at the Drake Detective Agency, Della. Ask him to get busy at once on a car having the license plates of CVX 266. I want to find out about it fast. I’ll go back and rejoin Ansley.”

“Well?” Ansley asked as Mason returned to the table.

Mason smiled. “She says she wasn’t in any automobile accident, that she’s been home all evening, that she doesn’t know what it’s all about. The description, according to her driving license, is age, thirty-three, brunette, dark eyes, height, five-feet-four, weight, 122 pounds.”

Ansley frowned. “I don’t think the woman in the car could have been more than thirty. I’d say maybe twenty-eight. That weight is a little heavy, and I’m quite certain the hair was reddish brown. I... well, I just don’t know.”

“What about the height?”

“That’s another thing. I think she was more than five feet, four inches. Of course, I don’t remember all the details. She jumped in the car and then I—”

“But she was standing alongside of you,” Mason said. “What happened when you said good night?”

“I kissed her.”

“All right,” Mason said, “get a visual recall of that event. How was she when you kissed her? Did she tilt her chin up, or was her face more nearly on a level with yours? How tall are you?”

“Five-feet-eleven.”

“All right. Did you bend over when you kissed her?”

“Slightly.”

“You think five-feet-four is about the right height?”

“I... I’d say she was taller. I saw her legs, and they seemed to be... well, they were long legs.”

“Slender or chunky?”

“Well formed. I... I suppose I should be ashamed of myself, but when that flashlight gave its last flicker of light and showed her lying there, I realized how beautiful a woman’s legs can be. I thought there were lots of them — the legs I mean.”

“You would, under the circumstances,” Mason said. “You were standing at her feet and looking up. The legs would look longer under those circumstances. Your best way to estimate her height is how she stood when she was close to you and you were kissing her good night. Was she wearing shoes with fairly high heels?”

“Let me think,” Ansley said, frowning.

“Oh-oh!” Mason said. “Here’s Della with something important.” Della Street came hurrying toward the table from the phone booth.

“What?” Mason asked as he saw the expression on her face.

“Paul Drake took a short cut on getting the ownership of that automobile,” she said. “I told him you were in a hurry so he decided to work through a friend in police headquarters.”

“And what happened?” Mason asked.

“CVX 266,” she said, “is the license number of a Cadillac sedan that was stolen about two hours ago. The police have broadcast a description, hoping they could pick up the car. It seems it belongs to someone rather important and was stolen from the place where it had been parked at some social function. Quite naturally, when Paul Drake telephoned in and asked for the registration report on a Cadillac, CVX 266, and the man at Headquarters found out that the car was hot and police were trying to locate it, you can imagine what happened.”

“In other words, Drake finds himself in a spot,” Mason said.

“Exactly,” she said.

“What did he do?”

“He told the police that he thought the car had been involved in an accident of some sort, that a client of his had telephoned in asking him to check the ownership, that he expected the client to call back again in a short time, and at that time Drake would tell the client to report to the police at once.”

“The police are satisfied with that?” Mason asked.

“They’re not satisfied,” she said. “They’re accepting it temporarily because they have to. Drake told me he’s had trouble enough with the police because of things he’s had to do for you in the past, and he doesn’t want any more.”

Ansley said, “Good heavens! I don’t want to have it known that I was out there at Borden’s. Can’t we—?”

Mason said to Della Street, “Call Paul Drake, tell him he can tell the police that the client he’s working for is Perry Mason, that Mason is going to call in after a while, and Drake will tell Mason to report to police everything he knows about the car. That will put Paul Drake in the clear.”

“Where will that leave you?” Della Street asked.

“I’ll be all right,” Mason said. “I’ll report to the police where the car is, but I won’t tell them the name of my client. I’ll simply state that I happen to know the car tried to turn into the driveway and was going at too fast a speed and rolled over.”

“That wasn’t what happened,” Ansley reminded Mason. “She was dodging something in the road.”

“That’s what she told you,” Mason said. “Now let’s think a little more about that woman who was driving the car. We were talking about shoes. What sort of heels?”

Ansley said thoughtfully, “You suggested she must have been wearing high heels. She wasn’t. The shoes were— Say, wait a minute. She must have— She couldn’t have changed shoes!”

Mason’s eyes were level-lidded. “Go on,” he said.

“Why, I remember now. I saw one of the shoes when she was lying unconscious. When she got out of the automobile, they weren’t the same kind of shoes.”

“What do you mean?”

“When she was lying there I saw... let’s see, I guess it was the right shoe. It was open at the end. You know, open over the end of the toe. But when she got out of the car, her shoes were solid over the toe. She couldn’t have had one shoe on one foot and another on another foot, and yet she couldn’t have changed shoes. She—”

Mason pushed back his chair from the table. “Come on,” he said, “we’re going out and take a look at that car.”

“At the car?”

“Sure,” Mason said. “There were two women.”

“What!”

“One woman was lying there unconscious,” Mason went on. “You saw her, then you started running toward the house and yelling for help. The other girl didn’t want that. She must have dragged the unconscious girl to one side, taken her place, assumed the same position of the other girl, then called out for help. When you came back, she gave you just enough of a glimpse so that you would see she was lying in the same position the other person had been. Then she scrambled to her feet, said she was all right, told you she’d been driving the car by herself and asked you to take her home... You said you didn’t see her driving license, didn’t you?”

“That’s right. I remember she laughingly said something about the fact that it was only when people were formal that they were supposed to show their driving licenses and all that, but that we were getting along informally.”

“And she let you kiss her in order to show that it was informal. I take it, it was an informal kiss?”

“Well,” Ansley admitted, “it distracted my attention from such things as her driving license.”

“Come on,” Mason told him. “Let’s go. I want to see how deep you’re into this thing before I start cutting any corners.

“Della, ring up Paul Drake. Tell him he can tell the police I am the one who made the inquiry, but have him tell the police that he doesn’t know where I can be reached. That will be technically true.

“I’ll be getting the car while you’re phoning, and we’ll run out there and take a look at the situation.”

“Then what?” Ansley asked anxiously.

“If that other young woman isn’t hurt too badly,” Mason said, “you may be able to keep from reporting the accident. If, as I rather suspect may be the case, we find another woman rather badly injured, we’re going to have to do some tall explaining and you’re going to have to answer a lot of questions.”