The Case of the Calendar Girl

Chapter Six

The cafeteria was a small, cozy place that featured home cooking.

Perry Mason, moving his tray along the smoothly polished metal guide, selected stuffed bell peppers, diced carrots, fried eggplant, pineapple-cottage-cheese salad and a pot of coffee. He moved over to a table for two by the window and settled himself for a leisurely lunch.

A shadow formed back of Mason’s shoulder. A man’s voice said, “Is this seat taken?”

Mason said somewhat irritably, “No, it’s not taken, but there are half a dozen empty tables over there.”

“Mind if I sit down?”

Mason looked up in annoyance to encounter the eyes of Lt. Tragg of the Metropolitan Homicide Department.

“Well, well, Tragg,” Mason said, getting up and shaking hands as Tragg put his tray down on the table. “I didn’t know you ate here.”

“First time I’ve eaten here,” Tragg said. “They tell me the food’s pretty good.”

“It’s wonderful home cooking. How did you happen to find the place?”

“Modus operandi,” Tragg said.

“I don’t get you.”

“So many people don’t,” Tragg said, putting a cup of consommé, some pineapple-cottage-cheese salad and a glass of buttermilk on the table.

Mason laughed. “You won’t sample the cooking here by eating that combination, Tragg. The stuffed bell peppers are wonderful.”

“I know, I know,” Tragg said. “I eat to keep my waistline down within reason. About the only pleasure I get out of being around good cooking is to have the aroma in my nostrils.”

“Well,” Mason said, as Tragg seated himself, “tell us about the modus operandi, Lieutenant.”

“I don’t know whether you remember the last time you disappeared or not,” Tragg said. “It was in connection with a case where you didn’t want to be interviewed. And after you finally showed up and got into circulation, you may remember that I asked you where you had been and what the idea was in running away.”

“I remember it perfectly,” Mason said, “and I told you that I hadn’t run away.”

“That’s right,” Tragg said. “You told me you had been out interviewing some witnesses and that quite frequently when you did that, you didn’t go back to the office but had lunch at a delightful little cafeteria where they featured home cooking.”

“Did I tell you that?” Mason asked.

“You did,” Tragg said, “and I asked you about the cafeteria. So then I went back to the office, took out my card marked Terry Mason, Attorney at Law’ and on the back of it under modus operandi made a note, ‘When Perry Mason is hiding out, he’s pretty apt to eat at the Family Kitchen Cafeteria.’

“For your information, Mr. Mason, that’s what we call modus operandi. It’s something we use in catching crooks. Unfortunately, the police can’t stand the strain of being brilliant and dashingly clever, so they have to make up for it by being efficient.

“You’d be surprised what we can do with that modus operandi filing system of ours and compiling a lot of notes. It may be that a man has certain peculiar eating habits. He may call for a certain brand of wine with his meals. He may like to have a sundae made by putting maple syrup on ice cream. All of those little things that the brilliant, flashy geniuses don’t have to bother with, the plodding police have to note and remember.

“Now, take in your own case. You’re brilliant to the point of being a genius, but the little old modus operandi led me to you when we were looking for you, when you didn’t want to be found.”

“What makes you think I didn’t want to be found?” Mason asked.

Tragg smiled and said, “Oh, I presume you were out interviewing witnesses again.”

“That’s exactly what I was doing,” Mason said.

“Are you finished?”

“With the witnesses?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Well,” Tragg said, “that’s fine. Perhaps I can be of some help.”

“And then again perhaps you couldn’t,” Mason said.

“All right, we’ll look at it the other way,” Tragg said. “Perhaps you could be of some help to me.”

“Are you seeking to retain my services?”

Tragg sipped the buttermilk, poked at the cottage cheese salad with his fork and said, “Damn, but that stuffed bell pepper smells good!”

“Go on,” Mason said, “go on and get yourself a stuffed bell pepper. It will make the world look brighter.”

Tragg pushed back his chair, picked up his check, said, “You’ve made a sale, Perry.”

Tragg returned carrying a tray on which were two stuffed bell peppers, a piece of apple pie, a slab of cheese and a small jar of cream.

He seated himself at the table, said, “Now, don’t talk to me until I get these under my belt and get to feeling good-natured once more.”

Mason grinned at him, and the two ate in silence.

After he had finished, Tragg pushed his plate back, took a cigar from his pocket, cut off the end with a penknife, said, “I feel human once more. Now let’s get down to brass tacks.”

“What kind of brass tacks?” Mason asked.

“Arrange them any way you want,” Tragg said. “If you put the heads down, the points are going to be up and that’s going to be tough — on you.”

“What do you want to know?”

Tragg said, “Meridith Borden was murdered. You were out there. You climbed over a wall and set off a burglar alarm. Then, like a damn fool, you didn’t report to the police. Instead, you make yourself ‘unavailable,’ and Hamilton Burger, our illustrious district attorney, wants to have a subpoena issued and drag you in before the Grand Jury, accompanying his action with a fanfare of trumpets.”

“Let him drag,” Mason said.

Tragg shook his head. “In your case, no, Perry.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re mixed up in too many murder cases where you’re out on the firing line. You aren’t content to sit in your office the way other people do and let the evidence come to you. You go out after it.”

“I like to get it in its original and unadulterated form,” Mason told him.

“I know how you feel, but the point is you have to look at these things from the standpoint of other people. Why didn’t you come to us and tell us about the murder?”

“I didn’t know about it.”

“Says you.”

“Says me.”

“What were you doing out there?”

“If I told you,” Mason said, “you’d think I was lying.”

Tragg puffed contentedly at his cigar. “Not me. I might think you’d play hocus-pocus with the district attorney, I might think you’d juggle guns if you had a chance, or switch evidence. You have the damnedest quixotic idea of protecting a client, but you don’t lie.”

Mason said, “I was peacefully eating dinner, minding my own business. A man came to me and told me he’d been involved in an automobile accident. He had reason to believe someone might have been injured. I went out to the scene of the accident with him, and, while I was there inside the grounds, the iron gates clanged shut. Apparently, they were actuated by some sort of a time mechanism. It was exactly eleven o’clock.”

“That’s right,” Tragg said. “There’s an automatic timing device that closes the gates at eleven o’clock.”

“So we were trapped,” Mason said. “Moreover, a nice, unfriendly Doberman pinscher started trying to tear out the seat of my trousers.”

Tragg’s eyes narrowed. “When?”

“While we were trapped inside. We worked our way along the wall to the gate; the gate was locked tight. There were spikes on top of the gate, and we couldn’t climb over it. Somehow we triggered an alarm. Dogs started barking and coming toward us. We got over the wall.”

“Who’s we?”

“A couple of people were with me.”

“Della Street was one,” Tragg said.

Mason said nothing.

“The other fellow probably was a contractor by the name of George Ansley,” Tragg observed.

Again Mason was silent.

“And you didn’t know Borden had been killed?”

“Not until this morning.”

“All right,” Tragg said. “You’ve been out hunting witnesses. What witnesses?”

“Frankly, I was trying to find the driver of the automobile that had turned over in the Borden grounds.”

“You had Paul Drake looking for that last night. The car was stolen.”

“So I understand.”

“You’re not offering me much information.”

“I’m answering questions.”

“Why don’t you talk and then let me ask the questions?”

“I prefer it this way.”

Tragg said impatiently, “You’re playing hard to get, Mason. You’re letting me drag everything out of you. The idea is that you aren’t trying to tell me what you know, but are trying to find out how much or how little I know so you can govern yourself accordingly.”

“From my standpoint,” Mason asked, “what would you do?”

“In this case,” Tragg said, “I’d start talking.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Tragg told him, “whether you’re aware of it or not, I’m giving you a break. When I get done talking with you, I’m going to move over to that telephone, call Homicide and tell them that there’s no need to get a subpoena for Perry Mason, that I’ve had a very nice, friendly chat with him and he’s given me his story.”

Mason’s face showed slight surprise. “You’d do that for me?” he asked.

“I’d do that for you,” Tragg said.

“This isn’t a gag?”

“It’s not a gag. What the hell do you think I’m here for?”

“Sure,” Mason said, “you’re here, but you’ve got a couple of plain-clothes men scattered around. And, by the time the D.A. releases the story to the newspapers, it will be to the effect that Perry Mason was run to earth by clever detective work on the part of Lt. Tragg of the Homicide Squad.”

“I’m handing it to you straight,” Tragg said. “I looked at your modus operandi card, I got the name of this cafeteria, I felt there was a chance you’d be here, I came out entirely on my own. No one knows where I am. I simply said I was going out to lunch. As far as I know, there isn’t a plain-clothes man within a mile.”

Mason studied Tragg’s face for a moment, then said, “If you have any information that will give you the identity of my client, you’ll have to rely on that. I’m not going to admit the identity of my client right at the moment. I’ll tell you the rest of it.

“Della Street and I were having dinner. It was a little after ten o’clock. This man came up to us, he told us that an hour earlier a car had swung past him and overturned in the grounds of Meridith Borden, that the license number was CVX 266, that it had apparently been driven by a young woman who was injured.

“He had a flashlight. As it turned out, the batteries were on their last legs. He got out and walked around the front of the overturned car. He found a woman who had evidently been thrown out and had skidded along on the wet grass. He was looking at lots of legs. She was still alive but unconscious. He didn’t dare to move her because he knew that might not be the thing to do. He started toward the house and then heard a call for help behind him. He turned and groped his way back through the darkness. Apparently, the woman had regained consciousness. He helped her to her feet, she said there were no bones broken, she was bruised, that was all, and suggested he drive her home.

“He drove her home. That is, he drove her to the address she gave.

“After I questioned him about it, and he began to think things over, there were things that made me suspicious there might have been two young women in the car, that when my client started toward the house the other passenger, who may or may not have been the driver of the car, had pulled the unconscious woman along the wet grass into a position of concealment against the wall, and then had taken her place and had started calling for help.”

“Why?” Tragg asked.

“Apparently so my client wouldn’t go up to the house.”

Tragg took the cigar out of his mouth, inspected the end with thoughtful concentration, then returned the cigar, puffed on it a few times, slowly nodded his head, and said, “That might check. What did you do this morning?”

Mason said, “I tried to find out who the young woman was.”

“What did you find out?”

“I went to the address where my client had left her.”

“What was the address?”

Mason thought for a moment, then said, “The Ancordia Apartments. The woman had given him the name of Beatrice Cornell. There was a Beatrice Cornell registered. She’s some kind of a talent agent and has a telephone-answering service. A lot of people know about her and she has a lot of clients. She says she wasn’t out of the apartment yesterday evening, and I’m inclined to believe her.”

“Go ahead,” Tragg said.

Mason said, “I came to the conclusion that this young woman had given the name of Beatrice Cornell, that she had gone to the apartment house where she knew Beatrice Cornell lived, had rung Beatrice Cornell’s doorbell so as to be admitted, had kissed my client good night, then—”

“That cordial already?” Tragg interrupted.

“Be your age, Lieutenant,” Mason said.

Tragg grinned. “That’s the trouble, I am. Go ahead.”

“She went in the apartment house, seated herself in the lobby, waited until my client had driven away, then called a cab and left the place.”

“So what did you do?”

“I got Beatrice Cornell to show me her list of pin-up models — girls who rent themselves out at twenty dollars an hour to art photographers.”

“In the nude?” Tragg asked.

“I would so assume,” Mason said. “Not from the models, but from some of the calendars I’ve seen. However, it’s legal and artistic. They’re nude but not naked, if you get what I mean.”

“It’s always been a fine distinction as far as I’m personally concerned,” Tragg said, “but I know the law makes it. Go on, what happened?”

“I found a young woman who seemed to answer the description.”

“How?”

“By a process of elimination.”

“Such as what?”

Mason grinned and said, “Looking for a girl with a bruised hip.”

“Well, that’s logic,” Tragg said. “You make a pretty damned good detective for a lawyer. What happened?”

“I got this young woman to come out to Beatrice Cornell’s apartment. I paid her for two hours’ time and her taxi fare. I asked her questions and she told her story.”

“Which was?”

“That she had been at a party, that she had gone alone and was planning to return via taxicab, that when she went to the curb to pick up a cab, the party who was driving this Cadillac with the license number CVX 266 pulled in to the curb, seemed to know her by name, and acted as though they had met. This woman offered the girl, Dawn Manning, a ride home. She accepted it.

“The woman driving the car said she wanted to stop just for a moment to leave something with a man she knew, and started to turn into Borden’s driveway. Another car was coming out—”

“Your client’s?” Tragg asked sharply.

Mason said doggedly, “I’m giving you Dawn Manning’s story. She said a car was coming out; that she had known Meridith Borden and didn’t like his style; that her ex-husband was associated with Borden; that apparently they had wanted to use her in some sort of a badger game to trap a politician; for that reason her husband had delayed finishing up the divorce action. Dawn Manning wouldn’t go for it, so naturally she didn’t want to be taken into the Borden place; she pulled at the wheel; the Cadillac went into a spin, skidded, grazed the bumper of the other car, crashed through the hedge and that was all she remembered.

“She became conscious, perhaps thirty minutes later, tried to orientate herself, found the overturned car, made her way out to the highway, and—”

“Gates open at that time?” Tragg asked.

“Gates open at that time,” Mason said. “She hitchhiked home. That’s her story.”

“You think it’s true?”

“It checks with my theory.”

“All right. What about this woman who was driving the car, the one your client took to the Ancordia Apartments?”

“I feel that woman must have known Beatrice Cornell more or less intimately.”

“Why?”

“She knew her name, she knew her address, and, in some way, she knew some of the models that Beatrice Cornell had listed. It must have been because of that knowledge that she knew Dawn Manning.”

Tragg thoughtfully puffed at his cigar.

“What have you done about locating this other woman — provided Dawn Manning is telling the truth?”

“Dawn Manning has to be telling the truth,” Mason said. “She doesn’t fit the description given by my client of the young woman he drove home — at least I don’t think she does.”

“And what have you done about locating the other woman?”

“Nothing yet. I’m thinking.”

“All right, let’s quit thinking and act.”

“What do you mean, let’s?”

“You and me,” Tragg said.

Mason thought that over for a moment.

“You know,” Tragg said, studying Mason over the tip of his cigar, “you’re acting as though you had some choice in the matter.”

“Perhaps I do,” Mason said.

“Maybe you don’t,” Tragg told him. “We’re taking over now. What you apparently don’t realize is the fact that I’m giving you an opportunity to come along as a passenger and take a look at the scenery.”

“Okay,” Mason told him, “let’s go.”

Tragg pushed back his chair, walked over to the telephone booth, dialed a number, talked for three or four minutes, then came back to join Perry Mason.

“All right,” he said, “you’re clean.”

“Thanks,” Mason said.

“What’s more,” Tragg said, “we’re not going to be trying to pick up Della Street. We are going to talk with George Ansley.”

“How does Ansley’s name enter into the picture?” Mason asked.

Tragg grinned. “When he put his coat over the barbed wire on that wall, part of the lining tore out. It was the part that had a tailor’s label in it. You couldn’t have asked for anything better. All we had to do was read the guy’s name and address, then match the torn lining with the lining that the tailor knew had been put into his coat.”

“Simple,” Mason said.

“All police work is simple when you come down to it. It’s just dogged perseverance.”

“Want to go see Beatrice Cornell?” Mason asked.

“Why?”

“Because she must have a clue somewhere in her list of clients. This woman, whoever it was, must know Beatrice Cornell pretty well and is probably a client.”

“Could be,” Tragg said. “We’re trying the simple ways first.”

“What’s that?”

“Combing all the taxi companies,” Tragg said. “After all, we’ve got the location, the Ancordia Apartments. We’ve got the time, probably a little before ten. The guy got in touch with you a few minutes past ten, and you went out there and did some running around before the gates closed. What time do you suppose you got there?”

“I would say that we must have arrived around ten minutes before eleven. We were there about that long before the gates closed, and, as I remember it, the gong sounded and the gates closed right at eleven o’clock.”

“Right,” Tragg said. “Okay, we’ve got the time. Police are searching taxi calls. There’s a phone booth in the lobby of the Ancordia Apartments. It’s almost a cinch this babe went inside, waited just long enough to see Ansley drive off, then stuck a dime in the telephone and called a cab.

“What do you say we go on down to my car? I’ve got a radio on it and I’ll get in touch with Communications. They’ll have the information for me by the time we’re ready to go.”

Mason said thoughtfully, “There’s a lot of advantage being a police officer.”

“And a hell of a disadvantage,” Tragg said. “Come on, let’s go.”