The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

Chapter 11

Perry Mason awakened from a sleep of utter exhaustion. His head was clear now. A dim light at the far corner of the room furnished enough illumination to enable him to see the face of his watch. It was three-fifteen.

Mason sat up for a few moments on the edge of the bed, then put on his clothes. His stomach and abdomen felt as sore as though someone had been beating him with a club. He was weak and groggy, but the metallic burning sensation had left his mouth and throat. He felt mentally alert.

There was in the back of his mind a vague recollection that finally crystallized into clarity. Sometime during the night, Velma Starler had wakened him taking his pulse, had told him to go to sleep, informed him Banning Clarke was dead, that Dr. Kenward was resting easily, and that Della Street had been sleeping peacefully since shortly after eleven. At the time, Mason had been too exhausted to care about anything except that Della was out of danger. The rest of what Velma Starler had said had been merely words which had meaning but no significance.

Now, Mason was mentally alert once more. He felt rested, although weak as a wet kitten. His mind was already beginning to correlate various facts in to a composite whole.

He started out to search for Velma Starler.

The big house seemed ominously dormant. It retained an atmosphere of having been lived in, yet somehow conveyed the impression of having, for the moment, lost its tenants. The long, dimly lit hallway seemed a sepulchral passage rather than part of a residence. The huge room into which Perry Mason glanced might have been a section of a museum, after the doors had been closed and spectators turned away.

Mason wished to avoid disturbing anyone who was sleeping. He hoped he’d find Velma Starler cat-napping in some room with the door open. He didn’t know where Della Street was located. Velma could tell him. He had been put to bed in a downstairs room, probably one designed for occupancy by a maid. He knew generally that Della Street was somewhere on the second floor, but didn’t know where.

A reading lamp in the library cast a shielded circle of illumination which served to emphasize the deep shadows in the far corners of the big room. Almost directly under the reading lamp was a smoking stand on which reposed a telephone, a long extension cord running back to a plug in the wall. A huge chair was drawn up near by.

Mason was tiptoeing past when, seized with an idea, he turned back, dropped into the depths of the soft cushioned chair, picked up the receiver, dialed long distance, and said, “I want to talk with Paul Drake, of the Drake Detective Agency in Los Angeles. Reverse the charges. Don’t call on the regular number. Use this unlisted number, Rexmount 6985. I’ll wait on the line.”

Mason realized once more how weak he was as his head welcomed the support of the cushions at the back of the chair while he waited for the call to be put through.

At length he heard Paul Drake’s voice, thick with sleep, saying, “Hello-hello. Yes.” The connection abruptly clicked off while the operator asked his okay on the long-distance call. Then a moment later Drake was back on the line. “Hello, Perry. What the hell’s wrong with you? Haven’t you got money enough to pay for a telephone call?”

Mason kept his voice low. “I’m calling from Banning Clarke’s residence in San Roberto, Paul. I want you to get started on a job right away.”

“You always do want something in the middle of the night,” Drake said irritably. “What is it this time?”

“I want you to become a prospector, Paul.”

“A what!” Drake exclaimed incredulously.

“A prospector. A seedy old miner.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. I mean it.”

“What’s the idea?”

“Now listen,” Mason said, keeping his lips close to the mouthpiece of the telephone and his voice low. “Get these instructions straight. I won’t have a chance to repeat them. Harvey Brady, who has the big cattle ranch down below Las Alisas, is a client of mine and a pretty good egg to boot. He’ll give you a hand in putting this across.”

“I know where the ranch is,” Drake said. “What do I do?”

“Do you know some newspaper reporter who would give you a good break if he got a nice human-interest story out of it?”

Drake said, “I know reporters who would cut their grandmothers’ throats to get a good human-interest story.”

“Even if the story weren’t true?”

“They like their stuff true, Perry.”

“All right. Make it true for them then.”

“Go ahead. What’s the gag?”

“You’re a prospector,” Mason said. “You were a little down on your luck. Harvey Brady picked you up in the desert. You struck him for a grubstake. He’d been interested in some of the famous lost mines of California. He told you he’d grubstake you to find one of those lost mines if you’d set about locating it his way. He had a theory about how it could be found.”

“Which lost mine?” Drake asked.

“You’ll be mysterious about that and keep it very much under your hat, but you’ll let the information slip some way that it’s really the famous Lost Goler Diggings. You’ll be mysterious and secretive about the whole business. Harvey Brady will be jubilant. — Now listen, Paul, you’ve got to get hold of some gold — quite a bunch of gold, so you can make it sound convincing. Think you could do that?”

“I can do it,” Drake grumbled, “but I can’t do it at three o’clock in the morning. Have a heart, Perry.”

Mason said, “This story has got to break before noon. You’ll have to pick yourself up a couple of burros, a gold pan, a pick and shovel, a sweat-stained sombrero, some old patched overalls, and all the rest of it.”

“Okay. I’ll work it out some way. Then what do I do?”

“Then,” Mason said, “you proceed to make whoopee.”

“On an expense account?”

“On an expense account.”

Drake’s voice showed more enthusiasm. “This may not be so bad. You are a hard taskmaster, Perry, but you do have your good points.”

“When you get properly jingled,” Mason said, “you let it slip that the mine you’ve found is on patented property, and for that reason you’ll have to keep it a secret until your backer, Harvey Brady, can buy up the property. And then Harvey Brady claims you’re talking too much and grabs you and whisks you into oblivion.”

“How much of an oblivion?”

“I’ll engineer that,” Mason said. “I’ll be on the job by that time. But the main thing is to get started on this thing right away.”

Drake said, “All right. I’ll see what I can do. You do ask the damnedest things, Perry.”

“What’s wrong with this?” Mason asked with well-simulated surprise.

“Oh nothing,” Drake said. “Only some time, when you get a little bored with life, try rolling out of bed at three-thirty in the morning with an assignment to have a couple of burros and a prospecting outfit picked up by daylight, then in addition, to get several hundred dollars in placer gold. Then throw in a sweat-stained sombrero that looks convincing, some worn overalls and... Oh, it’s all right, Perry. I guess I’m just getting a little crabby. It sounded bad when you were talking about it, but now that I list over the things I have to do it sounds easy. You’re sure there isn’t anything else you want?”

“Never mind the sarcasm,” Mason said, and hung up before Drake could think of something else to say.

For a few moments Mason rested in the chair, getting his thoughts in order. Then as he checked back over his conversation with Paul Drake, he suddenly frowned with annoyance, picked up the telephone again and said to the long distance operator, “I was just talking with Paul Drake in Los Angeles at Rexmount 6985. There was something that I forgot to tell him. Can you get him back on the line right away? It’s very important.”

Mason held the line. Within a matter of seconds, he heard Drake’s voice again. “Hello, Perry. Something else you forgot to tell me, I suppose.”

“Yes,” Mason said.

“What is it — do you want me to be riding a white elephant when I have my picture taken, or something like that?”

“After you’ve completed your build-up,” Mason said, “be very careful what you eat and drink.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that someone will try to slip you a big dose of arsenic. And it’s not a particularly pleasant experience. It starts with a burning, metallic taste in your throat. Della and I are just recovering.”

And Mason dropped the receiver back into place before the astonished Paul Drake could think up any reply.