The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

Chapter 7

When Mason and Della Street had finished their pie, Mason said, “Well, I guess we’d better go have a talk with Banning Clarke. Hope he didn’t get too excited.”

Salty Bowers fidgeted uneasily, suddenly blurted, “I wish you’d wait for just a minute.”

Mason elevated his eyebrows in a silent question.

“The woman I’m going to marry is coming in — Lucille Brunn. I told her to be here by eight-thirty, and she’ll be right on the dot. I — well, I’d like to have you meet her.”

Mrs. Sims, clearing off the table, said, “Trouble with Banning Clarke is he’s always been active and he can’t slow down. If he would just take life real easy for a while, he could get well but about the time he gets half cured, he goes and tears himself down again. Gets right back to where he started.”

“He’s coming along all right,” Salty said defensively.

“I ain’t so certain. He looked bad tonight. And if Miss Brunn is coming here, Salty Bowers, you get out of my kitchen so I can get my work done. It’s a wonder,” she went on, sputtering as she attacked the stacked dishes with swift competence, “that I get any work done at all, what with people using my kitchen for directors’ meetings and what not. Police find poison in the food and ask me how it got there. How should I know, with everyone traipsing around the kitchen? And that slick promoter — whisks my daughter right out of the kitchen and leaves her Ma with all the dishes. Now that boy friend she had who went in the Army, Jerry Coslet, wouldn’t ever do anything like that. Girls used to do the dishes before they’d go out, back when there was some consideration shown to parents...”

Salty Bowers grinned across at Mason. “We may as well go into the living-room. She’ll go on and on like this...”

“Seems like men don’t have no consideration for women nowadays,” Nell Sims went on. “They just don’t stop to think. Lucille wants to make a good impression on your lawyer friend, and you bring her into a kitchen! — Land sakes! What’s this?”

Mrs. Sims picked up the sugar bowl, and under it a folded paper began slowly straightening out as the weight of the bowl was removed from it.

“Looks like a note,” Della Street said.

Mrs. Sims spread it open, held it out at arm’s length, and squinted her eyes. “There,” she said, “I’ve gone and forgotten my glasses again. Something’s written on it all right, but I can’t read it without my specs.” She handed it to Della Street. “You’ve got young eyes. Suppose you read it.”

Della Street glanced through it hastily. “It’s from your daughter, Mrs. Sims. Do you want me to read it out loud or—”

“Certainly I do. What’s the idea of Dorina slipping notes under the sugar bowl? Why didn’t she come right out and say anything she had to tell me?”

Della Street said, “The note says: 'Dear Mom — Hayward has been after me to go to Las Vegas and get married. I’ve been trying to make up my mind all day. I still don’t know the answer. But if I’m not home by midnight, you will know what’s happening. If you don’t like it, don’t try to stop us, because you can’t. Love—. And it’s signed with just the initial D.”

Mrs. Sims slowly dried her hands on the dish towel. “Can you beat that!” she demanded.

Salty Bowers said, “Well, if she is in love with him, and—”

Nell Sims sputtered. “If she’s in love with him! The idea of a girl leaving a note like that when she’s going away to get married. Land sakes! If she’d been in love with him, she’d tear the house down getting started. Been thinking it over all day and can’t make up her mind! It’s a wonder she wouldn’t ask her Ma for a little advice. I could have told her. Looks good to her now because all of the younger men are in the Army. These birds that are left look like picture actors to the girls, because the girls ain’t seen any young men in civilian clothes for so long they’ve forgotten what they look like. You wait until these young men start coming back. Why, land sakes, when Jerry Coslet gets back, this Hayward Small will look like an old dodo to Dorina. — That’s the way with girls these days, won’t ask their mothers for any advice. Think they know everything. Soak up a little sophisticated patter and think they can brush life off to one side with wisecracks.”

Mason said, “Your daughter seems to be a very level-headed young woman, Mrs. Sims. Perhaps she’s been taking all of these things into consideration.”

“She’s a good girl,” Mrs. Sims said positively. “A mighty good girl, and she’ll be all right. You just can’t make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse, no matter how hard you try.”

“That’s right,” Mason observed, smiling.

Salty Bowers, standing awkwardly ill at ease, said, “Lucille is just about due and...”

“You get out of my kitchen,” Nell Sims said. “Go on, all of you now. Get out of the kitchen.”

Della Street said, “Let me help with the dishes, Mrs. Sims. There’s quite a stack here, and after all, I’m not trying to make any romantic impression.”

Nell Sims’ black eyes swung to Della Street. “Well, if you’re not, you should be,” she snapped. “Land sakes! The way some educated people are so blind they can’t see... Go on, all of you. Get out of my kitchen.”

“She means it,” Salty grinned.

Della Street flashed her a quick smile. “It was a very nice dinner, Mrs. Sims. And I’m quite certain your daughter will be all right.”

“Of course she’ll be all right. I just wish you could have seen Jerry Coslet the day... That’s the worst of it, she hasn’t seen her friends. Been hanging around the kitchen too much. Just a case of absence making the heart grow fonder of the bird in hand. — Wait until I see that Hayward Small. I’ll give him a piece of my mind. Son-in-law or no son-in-law, I’ll tell him. — Go on now. Get out, all of you. Lucille Brunn’s going to come any minute and if she gets into this kitchen she — go on, get out of here.”

In the living-room. Mason grinned at Salty Bowers. “She even shook her apron at us,” he said, “shooing us out of the kitchen as if we were a bunch of chickens.”

“She’s a character,” Salty grinned. “Out in Mojave the boys used to come in and egg her on just to hear her talk. She—”

He broke off as the doorbell sounded.

Salty Bowers excused himself, hurried to the door, returned with an air of beaming pride. “Lucille, this is Mr. Mason,” then suddenly realizing that he should have introduced Della Street first, corrected himself hastily, “Miss Street and Mr. Mason.”

Lucille Brunn had a small face, dark, intense eyes and a quick, nervous manner. She tactfully turned to acknowledge the introduction to Della Street first, then gave Mason her hand.

Bowers said, “We’re getting married day after tomorrow and going to head out into the desert for a honeymoon.”

“You’ve lived in the desert?” Della Street asked Miss Brunn.

“No. I’m getting acquainted with it through Salty,” she laughed.

“The desert,” Salty announced, “is the best mother a man ever had. You do what she wants you to and she’s kind to you. She trains you to do your thinking for yourself, too, and that’s good; but just you forget about her laws, and you’ve got trouble on your hands — lots of trouble. A man don’t make a mistake only once in the desert.”

It was a long speech for Salty, and showed the depth of his feeling.

Della Street said politely to Lucille Brunn. “I hope you’ll be happy out in Salty’s desert. He makes it sound very tempting.”

“I’m certain I will,” and then, with a quick, nervous laugh, “I’ll be happy anywhere with Salty.”

The door from the hallway opened and Velma Starler, hurriedly entering the room, brought up to a sharp stop at sight of Perry Mason and Della Street.

“Oh, hello. I didn’t know you were planning to be here. It isn’t... I mean my patient hasn’t had any trouble?”

“None whatever,” Mason said. “He simply asked me to come up on a business matter.”

“Oh! I’m relieved. Dr. Kenward insisted I should take an afternoon off. He said he’d send out another nurse for the day, but Mr. Clarke made such a to-do about it that the doctor let it go. You see,” she went on to explain, “we had a rather hectic night. But how about you folks? You’ve been at the beach?”

“Riding,” Mason said. “That accounts for the sunburn. We were in the saddle all day.”

“I love to ride,” Velma said, and then, turning to Lucille, “Been here long, Lucille?”

“Just arrived.”

“What’s happened? Anything new?”

“I haven’t heard of anything. Try and get Salty to tell you anything, even if he knows it.” She laughed. “When it comes to information, he’s a one-way street.”

Mason said, “It seems that this was the date for the regular stockholders’ meeting of the mining corporation. They brought up their attorney and tried to use an olive branch as cover for a little scheme.”

“Moffgat?” she asked.

Mason lit a cigarette, nodded. “Rather an energetic schemer.”

“I’m afraid of him,” Lucille Brunn said, in a low voice to Salty.

“Why?”

“I don’t like his eyes.”

Mason cleared his throat, ground out his cigarette in the ash tray, said nothing.

“Well, I’ll run along and take a look at my patient,” Velma said cheerfully, “before I change my clothes — just make certain that he’s all right. I’ll have to run up and get a flashlight.”

“Nice girl,” Salty remarked when she had left. “Well, Lucille and I will be on our way — be seeing you folks again.”

Della Street watched them out of the door, said musingly, “He certainly is terribly in love with her.”

“You’d think she was the only woman on earth to watch him,” Mason agreed. “His eyes keep feasting on her.”

“She is, as far as he’s concerned,” Della said. “It must be nice to be loved like that.”

Mason smiled. “They say all the world loves a lover. I’d say that all the feminine part of it does. Show a woman a romance and her eyes begin to sparkle.”

Della laughed. “I wonder what Mrs. Sims would do to that proverb to twist it around and still make sense. I wasn’t aware my eyes were shining. As a matter of fact, I’m feeling low, terribly low. While you are driving me home I am going to—” She broke off to clear her throat.

“Probably you’ve had too much exertion,” Mason said. “That long horseback ride and...”

“No, it isn’t that type of fatigue. I–Is your throat all right?”

“Yes, why?”

“There’s a peculiar burning sensation in mine — a metallic taste.”

Mason, suddenly solicitous, said, “Whoa! Wait a minute. You are not letting your mind play tricks on you, are you?”

“I don’t think so.”

Mason looked at her face, stepped forward and placed his hand over hers.

“Della, you are sick!”

She tried to smile. “Something I’ve eaten has most certainly disagreed with me. I am — I am a little nauseated. I wonder where they keep the bathrooms in this house.”

Mason strode across to the plate-glass window, pulled back the drapes, looked out into the shadowy darkness of the big yard. The little spot made by a flashlight bobbing along marked the place where Velma Starler was walking. She had not as yet quite reached the stone wall of varicolored rock.

Mason flung up a side window. “Oh, Miss Starler,” he called.

The beam of the flashlight stopped abruptly.

“As soon as it’s convenient can you take a look at Miss Street?” Mason asked.

“What’s the matter?” she called.

“She’s been taken suddenly ill.”

For a moment the flashlight hesitated, then became a spot of brilliance as the nurse whirled in her tracks and started running towards the house.

A few moments later, breathless and plainly alarmed, she was in the dining-room. “Where is she? What’s the matter?”

“She went in search of a bathroom. She has nausea and was complaining of a metallic taste—”

Velma Starler dashed from the room without waiting for Mason to finish.

It was a good ten minutes before she returned. Her face was grave. “I’ve telephoned for Dr. Kenward. He’ll be over right away.”

“What is it?” Mason asked.

She said gravely, “I’m afraid it’s serious, Mr. Mason. It has all of the symptoms of arsenic poisoning. She — But, Mr. Mason, you’re looking... Are you all right?”

“Do the symptoms of arsenic poison,” Mason asked with calm dignity, “include a burning sensation, nausea, griping pains in the abdomen, and a metallic taste in the throat?”

“Yes. Are you—”

Mason said, “When Dr. Kenward comes, tell him he has two patients,” and collapsed into a chair.