The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom

Four

Frank C. Livesey was a pudgy, jovial individual, with a stubby red mustache, popeyes and a partially bald bullet head. The tightness of his clothes indicated that he had put on weight since buying his suit. His figure indicated that this process had been going on for years, but had not affected the optimism which always possessed him when buying new clothes.

He was around forty, and his eyes lit with the appreciation of a connoisseur as he glanced at Della Street.

“Well, well, Mr. Mason, how are you?” he said, with genial cordiality, but his eyes dwelt on Della Street.

He advanced across Mason’s office, hand pushed out in front of him, grabbed the lawyer’s hand and wrung it heartily.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting, Mason. I’m very sorry indeed. But I wanted to check up on a couple of things before I came down to talk with you. Frankly, Mason, the situation is incredible.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Mason asked.

“It’s incredible, absolutely incredible. Things are in a hell of a shape.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Well, now, the setup of the Garvin Mining, Exploration and Development Company is a little peculiar, Mason. I can’t go into details but Garvin, of course, is the big shot. For legal purposes he likes to keep in the background. On the advice of counsel, he’s kept off the board of directors and doesn’t hold any elective office. Because of certain deals with a partnership his interests in that are perfectly all right as long as he’s only a stockholder, but might be questioned if he were a director.”

Mason nodded.

“But, of course,” Livesey went on, “you understand the situation, Mason. We’re all of us Garvin’s men. In fact, we’re — well, I may say we’re dummies for Garvin... Now, I shouldn’t put it that way. That sort of slipped out. But, after all, Mason, you’re Garvin’s lawyer and you’re nobody’s fool.”

“And, I take it,” Mason said, “after I telephoned you, you delayed coming to see me until you could have a talk with Mr. Denby?”

“Exactly,” Livesey said, “After all, you’re a busy man. There’s no use taking up your time talking about something unless I know what I’m talking about. I wanted to find out.”

“And did you find out?”

“I did indeed. That woman! That Ethel Garvin! She’s smart, Mason. She’s smart as a whip!”

“Exactly what has she done?”

“Well, we sent out proxies in the usual form, made out to E. C. Garvin, and I’m damned if she didn’t send out other proxies made out to ‘E. C. Garvin, holder of Certificate of Stock 123.’ Well, you’ve guessed it, Mason, Certificate of Stock Number 123 was made out to Ethel Garvin four years ago when she and Ed were all hunky-dory and everything was sitting pretty.”

“What happened to the original proxies?” Mason asked.

“They’re all in order, all right,” Livesey said. “They’re filed in alphabetical order, just as neat as a pin. You’ve met Denby. You know how he’d go about it, filing ’em all in order with cross references to the stock ledger and all that.”

Livesey threw back his head and laughed.

“But it would certainly seem to me that someone would have realized the situation when these other proxies began to come in,” Mason said. “Certainly Denby must have known that he didn’t send those proxies out, and when a new proxy, made to E. C. Garvin, holder of Certificate 123, came in, you’d certainly think Denby would have checked up on it.”

“You would, for a fact,” Livesey said. “But the funny part of it is that Denby doesn’t know when those proxies came in. They’re there all right; they’re signed, all right, and they’re filed neatly, in apple-pie order. But they must have come in all at once and some filing clerk did the job. Denby swears they never went across his desk. He says he’d have known about them if they had.”

“And the stockholders’ meeting’s day after tomorrow?”

“That’s right, and I don’t mind telling you, Mason, there’s hell to pay. We can’t get hold of Garvin. He’s off on a second honeymoon, all wrapped up in that new redhead of his. Doesn’t want anyone to know where he is. Doesn’t want to be disturbed by business. And he is faced with the loss of his whole company! I’m worried. I’m frightened.”

“What will happen if Ethel Garvin gets control?”

“What will happen? Good Lord, she’ll have the books audited! She’ll shake down this, that and the other. She’ll put in her own board of directors. She’ll sue the Garvin partnership for fraud on a couple of deals that haven’t panned out so well. She’ll call in the income tax people and point out certain things that we’ve been keeping covered up. She’d wreck the whole damn business. She’d collapse the whole house of cards!”

“Has Denby checked with any of the filing clerks, to see who filed those other proxies?”

“Well, in a quiet sort of a way he’s snooping around. He doesn’t want any of the help to know that anything’s wrong. He’s asking a few guarded questions and...”

The telephone on Mason’s desk, that had an unlisted number known only to Della Street and Paul Drake, sounded strident summons.

Mason picked up the receiver, heard Paul Drake’s voice saying, “Excuse me for ringing on the emergency line, Perry, but I thought you’d want this right away. I’ve located Ethel Garvin.”

“The deuce you have! How did you do it so fast, Paul?”

Drake said casually, “Just used my head and the telephone. I keep a lot of odds and ends of information such as membership lists of the principal women’s clubs. When she was living with Garvin, she was a member of a well-known book study club. I started ringing up all the members on the list, asking them if they knew where I could get in touch with Mrs. Ethel Garvin about a rare book she had been searching for. The second rattle out of the box I struck pay dirt. The woman said Mrs. Garvin had been out of town for a while but she’d happened to run into her on the street and learned she was staying at the Monolith Apartments. I started checking from there, found her hairdresser, and picked up a little gossip.”

“Damn it,” Mason said, “every time you tell me how you do this stuff it sounds so simple I hate to pay you for it.”

“You can go right on paying! You want me to do anything else, Perry?”

“Yes, keep a shadow on her twenty-four hours a day.”

Mason glanced out of the corner of his eye at Frank Livesey who was now sitting forward on his chair, his ear craned forward, eyes wide. “Whenever I get hold of a witness in an automobile accident,” Mason went on casually, “I don’t want to lose sight of her. She’s probably the only one who can testify as to which car was first at that intersection. I want to get a written statement from her just as soon as I can clean up some of this other stuff.”

There was a moment’s silence at the other end of the line, then Drake said, “Some client in the office where he can hear, Perry?”

“That’s right,” Mason said.

“I take it the first part of that, about putting a shadow on her twenty-four hours a day, is what you really want, and the rest was a stall?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay,” Drake said, “it’s done.”

Mason hung up the telephone, said to Livesey, “I’m sorry, but that was an important call. I’m working on an automobile collision case where there were very serious bodily injuries... Well, now let’s see. Let’s get back to this thing. You think there are some skeletons in the closet of the Garvin Company?”

“Well, now,” Livesey hedged, “I’m trying to use my best judgment in the absence of Ed Garvin, Mr. Mason, but — well, let’s just consider that I’ve told you everything I can... Matter of fact, Mason, I’ve told you too damn much.”

“You’re a heavy stockholder in the company?” Mason asked.

Livesey grinned, and said, “Don’t make any mistake about me, Mason. I hold one share of stock in the company, just enough to qualify for the board of directors and be president.” He grinned at Mason, then added, “The salary’s good and the duties of office consist mostly in signing my name and furnishing entertainment for the visiting firemen.”

“You don’t happen to have anyone working in your stenographic department by the name of Colfax, do you?”

“Heavens, Mr. Mason, I wouldn’t know. I don’t think so. We keep a few girls busy, not too many.”

“This one is a girl about twenty-two or twenty-three, long-legged, slim-waisted, smooth-hipped, high-breasted, with steady, slate-gray eyes, fine blond hair, and...”

“Stop it!” Livesey groaned. “You’re killing me. I can’t take it. You’re breaking my heart.”

“You know her?” Mason asked.

“Gosh, no, but I sure wish I did! If she’s someone you’re looking for, cut me in on it, will you, Mason?”

And Livesey threw back his head, laughed roguishly and then preened his stubby red mustache.

Mason said, “If you have to do quite a bit of entertainment you perhaps have a list of young women who can be called in as partners.”

Livesey chuckled. “I see you know a bit about selling stock, Mr. Mason.”

“And perhaps this girl’s name and address are in your little black notebook. Perhaps she’s available for dinner dates, or a dancing partner?”

“Could be.”

“But you don’t remember her?”

“I wish I did.”

“If you should recall her later will you let me know?”

“I will for a fact, Mason. I most certainly will.”

Mason said, “What are you going to do about those proxies?”

“Frankly, Mason, I’ll be damned if I know. It looks as though there’s going to be a regular free-for-all at that annual stockholders’ meeting and I’m frank to tell you I haven’t the faintest idea what to do about it.” Mason said, “If you know of any way to get in touch with Garvin, you’d better go to work on that angle.”

Livesey looked glum.

“And in the meantime,” Mason went on, “you’d better investigate your own organization and see if you can’t find who filed those new proxies.”

“I’d give a lot to know that one,” Livesey said. “It looks to me as though someone was double-crossing us.”

Mason said, “I wish you’d check your entire organization and find out if anyone was working last night about eleven o’clock. See if anyone was in the office.”

“I’ll do that.”

“And then let me know,” Mason said, standing up to indicate that the interview was over.

“Okay, thanks,” Livesey said.

He heaved himself up out of the big chair, and seemed reluctant to leave. Twice as he walked toward the door, he hesitated as though about to turn back and attempt to renew the conversation, but he reached the door, turned, smiled, bowed, caught Della Street’s eyes, gave her a special smile and then backed out into the corridor.

Della Street waited until the door had closed, then made a little grimace. “God’s gift to women,” she said, and then added bitterly, “put that in quotes and sign it Frank C. Livesey.”

Mason laughed. “He’s probably Santa Claus to a certain type of party girl.”

“A certain type,” Della said, “but he’s forgotten that Santa Claus only picks the chimneys where stockings are hung.”

Mason smiled, picked up his phone, dialed Paul Drake’s number, and then, when he had the detective on the line, said, “Here’s another job for you, Paul. That fool client of ours seems to have decided this is a good time to take himself out of circulation.

“He can’t be very far because he must be planning on attending that stockholders’ meeting day after tomorrow. But he’s out with his new wife on the second installment of a honeymoon.

“I want him. Find out what car he’s driving, get the lowdown on the places he likes to go, see how much baggage he took and — hell, find him, that’s all.”

“Okay,” Drake said in a bored voice, “if a client wants to pay me money to find him, it seems a cockeyed way to spend his money, but I should worry about that.”

“And let me know at once, no matter what hour of the day or night it is,” Mason went on.

“Okay, you’ll hear from me,” Drake said and hung up.