The Case of the Cautious Coquette

Chapter 1

Promptly at nine o’clock, Perry Mason joined Paul Drake for breakfast.

The tall detective, head of the Drake Detective Agency, grinned at the lawyer, said, “You’re thirty seconds late, Perry.”

Mason shook his head. “Your watch is thirty seconds fast. Have you ordered?”

“I’ve ordered,” Drake said. “Double pineapple juice, ham and eggs, toast and coffee. It’ll be coming right up. Have you seen my ad in the paper?”

“No,” Mason said. “What ad?”

“In that Finchley case.”

“I was going to ask you about that.”

“I have an ad in the morning papers. I also have one that came out in the Blade yesterday afternoon.”

The waiter, entering the booth with the pineapple juice, said, “Good morning, Mr. Mason. Mr. Drake told me to go right ahead and put your order on the stove. The ham and eggs will be right up. He said you’d be here.”

“I’m here.”

Drake took a long drink of the pineapple juice, then put down the half empty glass, reached in his brief case and took out a newspaper. “Here it is,” he said.

Mason looked at the classified ad indicated by the detective.

“That should produce some results,” Mason said, putting down the folded newspaper. “That Finchley kid was badly hurt... I hate a hit-and-run driver.”

“Probably he’d had a few cocktails and didn’t dare to stick around,” Drake said. “Of course the people in that parked automobile may not have seen anything.”

“As I get the story, they did,” Mason told him. “There were a man and a woman in the car. It was a light-colored sedan fairly new. They’d evidently just finished changing a tire. The man was putting the flat tire back in the trunk when the accident happened. The woman wrote something down in a notebook. Apparently it was the license number of the automobile that speeded away from the scene of the accident after slamming the Finchley Ford over against the lamppost.”

The waiter brought ham and eggs, coffee, golden brown toast.

“Suppose their testimony should be adverse to your clients?” Drake asked.

“It can’t be if they’re telling the truth. I want to know who they are, anyhow. I don’t want them held in the background where they might show up someday as surprise witnesses, testifying on behalf of the defendant”

The waiter popped his head back into the booth and said apologetically, “Your office is on the line, Mr. Drake. Your secretary said I was to tell you there’d been a reply to that ad in the paper, and that you’d want to know about it while you were breakfasting with Mr. Mason.”

“Have someone bring the reply down here,” Drake said. “Tell my secretary to put a messenger in a taxicab and rush it down here.”

Mason grinned. “Shows what advertising will do, Paul.”

“Shows what money will do,” Drake commented.

“That Finchley boy has a broken hip,” Mason said. “He was planning on graduating from college. I’d sure like to stick the driver of that car.”

Drake sipped coffee, and said wearily, “It probably won’t work out that way, Perry. The driver of the other car was drunk. If you could have nabbed him at the scene of the accident, you could have proved he was drunk. The way it is now, he’ll have a beautiful fairy story about how the Finchley car crashed into him, that he looked back and felt certain there was no damage done...”

“And then I’ll tear into him on a hit-and-run charge,” Mason said.

Drake grinned. “You just think you will. You’ll find that the chap has an influential friend or two who has rung up the district attorney. You’ll find influential people all over town who’ll get busy on the telephone telling what a fine chap he is, good to his family, considerate of his dogs and cats, a person who makes substantial donations to religious causes — and to the right political party.”

“Nevertheless, I’ll tear into him,” Mason said. “I’ll get him on the witness stand and rip him wide open.”

“You won’t even get to do that,” Drake said. “A representative of some insurance company will get around to Bob Finchley and say, ‘Look, if you go to court, even if you recover a big judgment, you’ll have a lot of lawyers’ bills to pay, and by the time you get done, you’ll have all the uncertainty of a lawsuit, you’ll have to fight clean through to the Supreme Court, and the net result to you wouldn’t be half as good as though we took over and paid all the doctor and hospital bills and gave you a little money that you could put into a new car. In fact, by using connections we have, we can get you one of the late models...’”

“Shut up,” Mason interrupted, grinning. “You’re spoiling my breakfast.”

“I was just telling you how it’ll go,” Drake said.

“I know how it’ll go,” Mason told him, “but you let me find out who was driving that black sedan and I’ll give him something to think about, anyway.”

They ate for a while in silence. The waiter appeared once more. “A messenger from your office, Mr. Drake. He said I was to give you this envelope and ask you if he should wait for any instructions.”

“No,” Drake said. “This letter should speak for itself.”

Drake slit open the Manila envelope, which had been sent through the mail addressed to the Drake Detective Agency, said, “There’s something heavy in it, Perry.”

Drake shook the envelope over the table. A key fell out on the tablecloth.

Drake looked at it with surprise.

“Probably the key to the situation,” Mason said.

“Don’t do that so early in the morning!” Drake told him, wincing.

“What’s the letter?” Mason asked.

Leaving the key on the tablecloth, Drake pulled out the letter, typewritten in elite type on a good grade of tinted stationery.

“It’s dated yesterday,” Drake said, “and is addressed to the Drake Detective Agency. Here’s the letter, Perry:

Drake looked at Mason, said, “Of all the cockeyed things.”

“Any handwriting at all?” Mason asked.

“Not a bit. The signature is in typewriting, the same as the letter.”

“Let me take a look at it,” Mason said.

Drake passed Mason the letter.

“That’s a ragged job of typing, Paul,” Mason said. “The letters are spaced irregularly, the keys weren’t struck with a uniform touch, there are a couple of strikeovers — altogether, I would say, the work of an amateur typist.”

Drake nodded. “It looks like a two-finger job. Lots of speed though. That’s where the skips and uneven spacing come from. What do you make of it?”

“I’m darned if I know,” Mason told him. “It looks like a trap to me. We’ll let Della Street cast her feminine eye over it and see what she thinks.”

Mason picked up the key, inspected it, saw the number “208” stamped on it, dropped it into his vest pocket and said, “However, it’s a lead we can’t afford to pass up.”

Drake said, with sudden apprehension, “Don’t go messing around that apartment, Perry. That’s dangerous. If anyone should catch you snooping around in there they could...”

“Could what?” Mason asked, smiling. “In order to constitute a burglary, the entrance must be made for a felonious purpose, or...”

“Or,” Drake said, significantly, “someone could mistake you for a housebreaker, shoot first, and ask questions afterwards.”

“But,” Mason told him, “you certainly don’t expect me to pass up this lead, do you?”

Drake pushed back his plate and picked up the check. “Hell, no,” he said. “Do you want to pay the exact amount of this check at the present time, Perry, or have it presented on my expense account later on and take a chance that the amount will be about ten per cent higher at that time?”

Mason took the check, said with a grin, “I think it will be a damn sight smarter to pay it now... That letter bothers me, Paul. If it were on the up-and-up the writer would have copied the license number from the notebook and asked for the hundred bucks.”

“It’s a trap of some sort,” Drake said.

“Well the bait interests me, Paul.”

“That’s the theory on which traps are constructed,” Drake said.