The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

Chapter 3

They sat around the little cooking fire over which a kettle of dishwater was now steaming. Salty, moving with a certain awkward efficiency, seemed to do everything without appreciable effort. There were well-cooked frijoles, a dish made of jerked venison chopped up and cooked with tomatoes, onions and peppers, cold bannock, thick syrup, and big agateware cups of hot tea.

Banning Clarke attacked the meal with relish, cleaning out his plate and passing it over for a second helping.

Salty’s eyes twinkled. “Couple o’ months ago,” he said, “he was toying with his grub — couldn’t eat.”

“That’s right,” Clarke agreed. “My heart started going bad and kept getting worse. The doctors had me taking medicine, then keeping perfectly still. Finally, they had me in bed. Salty showed up and made his own diagnosis. He said I had to get back out in the open. The doctor said it would kill me. So Salty fixed up this little camp out here in the cactus garden and moved me out here. I’ve been eating and sleeping out in the open, living on the sort of grub I’m accustomed to, and I can feel myself getting better every day now.”

“Your heart’s a muscle just like any other kind of a muscle,” Salty said positively. “You get to living soft, and your muscles all get soft. The main thing is fresh air and sunshine. I don’t mind telling you, though, this air sorta gets me down. It ain’t like the desert. It’s nice all right, but when fog comes in from the ocean — b-r-r-r!” Salty shivered at the very thought.

“Won’t be long until we’ll be getting out of here,” Clarke promised. “Miss Street has brought a portable typewriter, Salty. Mason can dictate an agreement pooling our stock. We can sign it and get it over with so Mr. Mason won’t have to make another trip.”

“Suits me.”

“What about this fraud suit?” Mason asked.

Clarke said, “I’ll have to tell you a little something about how I’m situated here so you’ll get the picture. I have a nurse who lives in the house and keeps an eye on me, Velma Starler. I have an eccentric housekeeper, Nell Sims. She kept a restaurant out in Mojave. Salty and I used to eat there whenever we were in that section of the country. After my wife died she sort of moved in.”

“There is perhaps some bond of affection?” Mason asked.

Clarke laughed. “Not in that way. She’s married and has a daughter by a former marriage around twenty years old. She’s really a character. Her husband, Pete Sims, is just as much of a character in his way as she is in hers. Pete’s a claim-salter, a bunco artist, and a periodic drunkard with an aversion for work. Hayward Small, a mining broker and promoter who has been dabbling around in psychology and the power of mental suggestion, told Pete, a year or so ago, about split personalities — and ever since then Pete has had a secondary personality for a scapegoat. It’s absolutely ludicrous, but he seems naively sincere about it. He claims Small asked permission to use him as a subject in conducting some hypnotic experiments, and that almost as soon as he became hypnotized this secondary personality began to make its appearance. What makes it so utterly ridiculous is that Pete hasn’t a sufficient idea of split personalities to make his stories even slightly plausible. He just goes ahead with his drinking and swindling and then blames all of his lapses on this secondary personality, a mysterious entity whom he calls ‘Bob.’ ”

“Makes it handy,” Mason said, and then added, “for Pete.”

“Very.”

“Does anybody believe him?”

“Sometimes I think his wife does. You never know just what Nell believes and what she doesn’t believe. She has a peculiar philosophy of her own and is given to garbling proverbs. People used to flock to her restaurant just to hear her garbled proverbs. She’s great for interpolating short comments. However, you’ll meet her.”

“They’re all living at the house?”

“Yes.”

“Also Mrs. Bradisson and James Bradisson?”

“That’s right.”

“Anyone else?”

“This Hay ward Small I was telling you about. He’s a mining broker. I think if we could uncover the actual relationship between Small and Bradisson we’d have something.”

“In what way?”

“Since I became ill, Bradisson has become president of the company. The company is spending money right and left buying new mining claims. Nearly all of them are handled through Hayward Small. Of course, on the face of it it’s all right, but I think Bradisson is getting some sort of kickback from Small. I haven’t been able to prove anything.”

“And this fraud action?”

Clarke chuckled. “Nell Sims had a string of mining claims that she’d taken in on a board bill. Everybody considered they were pretty worthless. They are. Pete Sims sold the claims to the corporation. They’re the Shooting Star group. He swindled Jim Bradisson into buying them. The corporation claims Pete salted the mines and juggled samples so that he gave the properties an entirely fictitious value.”

“Can they prove any of that?” Mason asked.

“I’m afraid they can prove every bit of it. But I want you to fight the case for Mrs. Sims. And I want everyone to know that I have retained you to do so.”

“And you expect I’ll lose it?”

“I’m sure you will. When Pete showed up on one of his occasional homecomings and found Nell ensconced in a house where a tenderfoot had money to spend for mines, the temptation proved too much for him. He proceeded to take Bradisson to the cleaners. Pete’s an innocent-appearing chap, but he pulls some mighty fast ones. He’s a terrible liar, a whimsical crook who readily admits his own trickery, only blaming everything on his secondary personality, the unscrupulous ‘Bob’ who takes over every so often.”

“And why do you want to have it known you’ve retained me to fight the fraud?” Mason asked.

“That,” Clarke said, “is something I can’t tell you. I— Oh, here’s Miss Starler now.”

Mason turned to watch the woman who came swinging along the sandy path — a woman in her early thirties, Mason judged, with finespun hair that glinted gold in the sunlight, slate-gray eyes that seemed just a little wistful, and a mouth that could smile easily.

Clarke said hastily in a low voice, “My doctor says she’s too sympathetic to be on general duty. He likes to get her out on chronic cases where — Decided to check up on me, eh? Come on over and meet the company.”

Clarke performed introductions. Velma Starler said, “Remember, you’re supposed to lie down for half an hour after eating. Stretch out over there in the shade and relax.”

She turned to Mason with a laugh. “He’s rather an obstreperous patient. Now that Salty has entered the picture, I have my hands full trying to make him behave.”

Clarke said, “Just a little business to do today, Velma. We’ll have it over within half an hour. Then I’ll rest.”

She frowned slightly, said, “I promised Dr. Kenward I would make you rest every day.

“And Nell Sims,” Velma went on, “wants to know if you won’t please come in and have a bite of civilized grub.”

“Civilized grub!” Salty growled. “A lot of spiced-up lettuce leaves and green vegetables. He ain’t used to that stuff. He’s used to good plain grub, and that’s what he’s getting out here.”

Velma’s laughter was easy and spontaneous. It made the others want to laugh too. And Mason could see the nerve tension which had gripped Banning Clarke as he recited his business troubles relax under her easy, good-natured affability.

“The trouble with you men,” she said, “is that you’ve been partners too long. Mr. Clarke thinks that anything Salty cooks is all right. It’s like Nell Sims says: ‘The real way to a man’s stomach is through his heart.’ ”

Mason said, smiling, “Well, that’s a novel way of quoting an old proverb.”

“Wait until you meet Nell Sims,” she said. “She’s full of those things. Well, I’ll be running back to the house. I’m very glad to have seen you, and I hope you get things cleaned up so Mr. Clarke doesn’t worry about them.” Her glance at Mason was significant.

“We’ll try,” the lawyer promised.

Della Street said, “I’ll go get my portable typewriter out of the car and—”

“I’ll get it,” Salty said. “I know right where it is. I saw you put it in.”

Velma Starler said, “Well, I’ll be running along. I — Oh, oh — here comes Nell Sims with your fruit juice.”

She turned to Perry Mason, said jokingly, “There seem to be three dietitians on the job. Dr. Kenward tries to work out a balanced diet, but Nell Sims thinks he needs more fruits and salads, and Salty Bowers thinks he needs more of what he calls plain victuals.”

The woman who had rounded the patch of cactus carrying a tray on which was a big glass of tomato juice stopped abruptly.

“It’s all right, Nell,” Banning Clarke said. “This is Miss Street and Mr. Mason — Mr. Perry Mason, the noted lawyer. He’s going to represent you in that fraud case.”

“Oh he is, is he?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s going to pay him?”

“I am.”

“How much?”

“Never you mind.”

She said inclusively to Della Street and Perry Mason, “How do you do,” and added abruptly, “I’m not going to pay you anything. My husband sold that mine, I didn’t.”

Nell Sims was somewhere in the fifties, a strong woman whose shoulders had been stooped by hard toil, a competent big-boned worker who had never shirked a job in her life. Her eyes, black and inscrutable, had receded back of heavy dark eyebrows, to peer out at the world over heavy pouches; but she gave an impression of robust strength, of two-fisted competency.

“Nell insists that I don’t get the proper vitamins in my camp cooking,” Clarke explained. “She’s always following me around with fruit juice.”

“Better get fruit juice from Nature than bills from doctors,” Nell said. “I’m always telling him that a stitch in time is worth a pound of cure. I’ve got some nice lunch up at the house if you folks would like to eat.”

“Thanks. We’ve just had lunch,” Mason said.

Nell Sims surveyed the empty plates piled on the sand, and all but sniffed. “That Salty’s going to be the death of you yet,” she said to Banning Clarke. “ ‘Ptomaine Stew’ they used to call the stuff he cooked up when he was cooking out at the Desert Mesa Mine. I’ve known him for thirty-five years. He ain’t never—”

Salty came around the big cactus clump carrying Della Street’s portable typewriter and her brief case. “What’s that you’re saying about me?”

“Drat this cactus,” Nell exclaimed irritably. “You can’t see around the stuff and it don’t give you no privacy. Land sakes, you can’t even talk about a body without him sticking his ears in on the conversation. Well, it just serves you right, Salty Bowers. They say an eavesdropper never gathers no moss.”

Salty grinned good-naturedly. “Professional jealousy,” he explained to Perry Mason.

“Jealousy nothing,” Nell said. “That slum you cook would kill a horse.”

“I’ve always thrived on it.”

“Yes, you have! — You used to come sneaking into my restaurant so as to get some decent home-cooked food. The trouble with you, Salty Bowers, is that you ain’t scientific. You don’t know nothing about these here vitamins, and you cook everything in grease. Taking that stuff into the system is just loading it up with so much poison.”

Salty grinned and let it go at that.

“Nell has just so much sputtering to do,” Clarke explained; “but she’s fond of Salty, aren’t you, Nell?”

“Crazy about him,” she said sarcastically. “He’s without an equal in his field — so’s sandpaper. As a cook I think he’s one of the best burro packers in the business. Well, give me that empty glass and I’ll be getting out of here. Don’t want me to take those dishes up to the house and give them a decent wash, do you?”

Salty pulled a brier pipe from his pocket, tamped tobacco into it, grinned up at Nell and shook his head. “You get ’em all soapy.”

“Know what he does to dishes?” Nell asked Della Street. “Spreads them out on the ground, rubs sand in them until the sand comes out dry, then he scalds them off with about a cupful of water.”

“Only way on earth to get dishes really clean,” Salty said, puffing contentedly at his pipe. “Out in the desert you have to wash ’em that way because you haven’t much water; but if you come right down to it, that cleans ’em. You take good clean sand and scour ’em out, and then wash the sand out, and you’ve got a clean dish.”

“Clean!” Nell sputtered.

“And I mean good and clean.”

“Just plain poison,” Nell insisted. “I don’t know what bad influence brought you back to poison Banning. You’d ought to be up at the house cooking for that brother-in-law of his. A little poisoning would do that man good.”

Salty twisted his mouth into a smile. Little puffs of white smoke emerged at regular, contented intervals. “Why don’t you poison him, Nell?”

Of a sudden, her face became utterly wooden in its lack of expression. She took the empty glass from Banning Clarke, started away, then turned and said meaningly to Salty, “Many a time in jest we cast pearls of wisdom before swine,” and marched away.

Mason, grinning broadly, opened his cigarette case, passed it to Della Street, offered one to Banning Clarke. “I’d say,” he announced, “she’s quite a character. Where does she get the garbled proverbs?”

“No one knows,” Clarke said. “Sometimes I think she twists them unintentionally; and then again, I think she’s done it deliberately to make them conform to a philosophy of her own. At any rate, she’s made a lot out of her stuff. The boys around Mojave used to come in to hear her talk as much as to eat her grub. Can you fix up that agreement here?”

Della Street opened the portable typewriter, balanced it on her lap, opened her brief case, fed in paper and carbons. “I’ve never typed out a pooling agreement in an imitation desert in the millionaire row of San Roberto,” she said, “but I can certainly try. It may not be a very neat job.”

“We don’t care what it looks like,” Banning Clarke said, “just so it’s binding.”

Mason nodded, asked a few questions, and started dictating the agreement to Della Street. When he had finished, he handed a copy to Clarke and one to Salty Bowers.

Clarke studied the paper carefully. Bowers didn’t even bother to read his copy.

“You’ve got to read it,” Mason told him.

“Why?”

“It might not be legal unless you did.”

Bowers picked up his copy, laboriously read through it, his lips moving as he silently pronounced the words.

“All right?” Mason asked.

Banning Clarke whipped out his fountain pen, scrawled a signature across the agreement, handed the fountain pen to Salty Bowers.

Bowers signed both agreements, gravely handed the pen back to Banning Clarke, picked up his pipe, started to put it back in his mouth, then changed his mind, let his eyes bore into those of his partner. “She’s going to fool you,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Clarke asked with that quick nervousness which showed embarrassment.

“You know what I mean,” Salty said, and then put the pipe to his lips and scraped a match into flame. He paused with the flaming match held over the bowl of the pipe, shifted his eyes once more to Banning Clarke.

“She’ll stick,” he announced, and then sucked flame down into the crusted brier bowl of the pipe.