The Case of the Crooked Candle

Chapter 2

The next morning Paul Drake, long, lean, lanky and moving with double-jointed ease, jackknifed himself into his favorite crossways position in the big overstuffed leather chair and grinned at Perry Mason. “Why the sudden interest in Karakul fur, Perry?”

“I don’t, know, I might want to buy a fur coat. What have you found out, Paul?”

Drake said. “That Karakul fur company is like the rabbit in a magician’s hat — now you see it, and now you don’t. It’s right, out in the open, and yet it isn’t in the open. It’s bought up a lot of property in the Skinner Hills district.”

“For what purpose?”

“For the raising of Karakul fur sheep.”

“Why the Skinner Hills?” Mason asked.

“A staff of glib-tongued realtors have been explaining that. It has just the right amount of sunlight, just the proper amount of rainfall and has a certain percentage of minerals in the soil that are highly advantageous.”

“Who are back of the glib-tongued salesmen?” Mason asked.

“Chap by the name of Fred Milfield seems to be the main one. He lives at 2291 West Narlian Avenue — that’s an apartment house. He’s married. Wife is Daphne Milfield. They both came from Nevada with a background around Las Vegas.”

“Any more salesmen?” Mason asked.

“Man named Harry Van Nuys, thirty-five, thin, slim waisted, pale skinned, eyes dark, rather insolent, also with a background of Las Vegas, Nevada, living in room 618 at the Hotel Cornish, if you can ever find him. My men haven’t been able to so far.”

“How about Milfield?”

“We haven’t been in touch with him directly, just crossed his back trail. About forty-five, self-satisfied, paunchy, blond hair — what there is of it, wide blue eyes that are inclined to pop out a bit, giving him an expression of extreme candor. They’ve been going through that Skinner Hills district like a house afire.”

“Buying or leasing?”

“Buying and contracting.”

“Why do you say that the company is like a rabbit in a magician’s hat, Paul?”

“There’s someone back of it that you can’t smoke out. A man no one ever sees, a man whom no one knows.”

“How do you know?”

“Just various little things.”

“That,” Mason announced, “is the man I want.”

“He’s going to be hard to find. I can tell you this much: Milfield put through a deal that required a lot of cash in a hurry. He and the man with whom he was dealing went to a bank in Bakersfield. Milfield pulled a blank check from his pocket, filled it in for the amount of money he needed and shoved it through the window. There was a little hubbub about it, and the deal was stalled along while the teller went into the manager’s office and was closeted with him just about long enough for a call to have been put through to Los Angeles. The signature on the check that Milfield filled out was in a very peculiar vertical handwriting. The man who was waiting to get the money couldn’t see what the first name of the signature was, but he says the last name was Burbank. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Not a damn thing,” Mason said, “except that Burbank is pretty apt to be the man I want.”

“Just what do you want with him. Perry?”

“Specifically. I want to sell him eighty acres of sheep land for about a hundred thousand bucks.”

“What’s the idea?” Drake asked.

“Did you smell anything while you were making this investigation, Paul?”

“What do you mean?”

Mason sniffed the air and said, “I can smell it.”

“What?”

“Oil.”

Drake whistled.

“What,” Mason asked, “have they been paying for the land?”

“No more than they had to. Understand, Perry, this is Saturday noon. I’ve been working on the thing for only a little more than twenty-four hours. Even with the number of men I’ve been able to put on the job, I’ve had to hit the high spots. The ways things are now, you can’t...”

“I know,” Mason interrupted sympathetically, “but I’m working against time myself. Once they get that property pretty well sewed up, they won’t be so gun shy. While they’re getting it sewed up, anyone who can walk in and call the turn can write his own ticket. I want to write my own ticket — on behalf of a woman named Adelaide Kingman who is lying in a San Francisco hospital with a broken leg and the conviction that she hasn’t got a cent in the world.”

“Well,” Drake said, “you can get either Milfield or Van Nuys...”

“I don’t want them,” Mason said. “I want this man who’s back of the whole business, the mysterious somebody who came into his office at ten o’clock yesterday morning, found out that a man by the name of Bickler had taken down the license number of one of his trucks and worked himself into such a dither over that fact that he rang up his attorneys and told them to settle with Bickler no matter what Bickler wanted. He’s the man I can do business with.”

“Can’t you get anything from the license number of the truck?” Drake asked.

Mason laughed. “Fat chance. They gave Bickler back his notebook and his pencil, all right. It was a loose leaf notebook. One of the pages is gone. You can’t prove anything. It’s just one of those things. Okay, they’re working fast, and I’m going to work fast myself.”

“Well,” Drake said, “that’s everything I’ve got to date, Perry. My men are still working on it, but the only leads we can get point to Milfield and Van Nuys, and we can’t actually find either one of them.”

Mason looked at his watch, then drummed his fingertips on the edge of his desk, “They’re paying sheep land prices?” he asked.

“That’s all they’re paying on the record,” Drake said, “but the really smart guys who held out apparently got a spot cash bonus handed to them which doesn’t show on any of the papers. You can’t prove it. You can guess at it. Have a heart, Perry. Give me until Monday afternoon and I’ll have the whole pattern laid out for you and...”

“Monday afternoon may be too late,” Mason said. “I’m going to see Daphne Milfield. What have your men found out about her?”

“Not a damned thing,” Drake said, “except that she’s Fred Milfield’s wife, and that she lives at this apartment house on West Narlian Avenue.”

Mason nodded to Della Street. “Stick around for half an hour,” he said. “It’s probably a wild goose chase, but anyway it’s a chance.”