The Case of the Duplicate Daughter

Chapter Four

It was about ten minutes before three o’clock that afternoon when the telephone rang and Della Street, answering it, said, “This is Miss Street, Mr. Mason’s confidential secretary... Who?... Can you tell me what it’s about?... Just a minute, I’ll see.”

Della Street placed her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone and said excitedly, “Vera M. Martel is on the line and she wants to talk with you concerning a matter which she says is very personal.”

Mason said, “Listen in, Della.”

He picked up the telephone on his desk and said, “Hello. This is Mr. Mason talking.”

The woman’s voice was rather high-pitched. She talked so rapidly that one word seemed to be treading on the heels of the next and made it difficult to understand what she was saying.

“Mr. Mason, I just wanted to warn you that people who butt into business that doesn’t concern them usually find they have made a big mistake.”

“Are you insinuating I’m butting into business that doesn’t concern me?” Mason asked.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You’ve been retained by a man who gave the name of Edward Carter. For your information, that was E. Carter Gilman, the husband of Nancy Gilman. Don’t let him pull the wool over your eyes and don’t think that you’re going to step in and wave a magic wand and that the Gilman troubles will be over.

“I happen to know what I’m talking about. I just want to warn you that this is too complicated a matter for a simple solution, Mr. Mason. Carter Gilman is a fool. If he knew what he was stirring up he’d be the first to tell you to pocket the seven hundred and fifty dollars and forget the whole thing. I’m afraid poor Mr. Gilman is just a little stupid. He’s bringing about the very trouble he’s trying to avoid.”

Mason glanced significantly at Della Street who was on the extension phone, her pencil flying over the page of the shorthand book.

The lawyer waited until the pencil came to a pause, signifying Della had caught up with the other woman’s rapid delivery.

“Did you think that a phone call from you, Miss Martel, would be all that was necessary to make any lawyer at any time quit working for any client you might designate?”

“Of course not,” she snapped. “I’m not foolish enough to waste my time or yours. Now, simply ring up Graystone 9-3535 and ask whoever answers the phone to connect you with Edward Carter. Tell him who you are and tell him Vera Martel rang you up and said to tell him, ‘Your fingerprints are over those of the person you are trying to protect.’ Do you understand, Mr. Mason? Simply give him that message. You aren’t to tell him any more than that — and the number once more, Mr. Mason, is Graystone 9-3535 — although I feel quite certain your very beautiful secretary is either taking this conversation down in shorthand or else it’s being recorded on a tape recorder. There’s no need for any comment, Mr. Mason. Your client is a fool. Good-by!”

The phone slammed at the other end of the line.

Mason hung up and Della Street, who had been taking shorthand notes, slowly replaced her receiver.

“Well?” Mason asked.

“Good heavens, what a delivery!” Della Street said. “I guess I got all of it but it certainly was a job. She talked like a house afire. It seemed like she was going five hundred words a minute.”

“Anything else?” Mason asked.

“Miss Martel seems to keep very well informed on what happens with the people whom she decides to blackmail.”

“Doesn’t she!” Mason said.

“Any idea how she does it?” Della Street asked.

“Not yet.”

“And what about the fact that Edward Carter is really Carter Gilman?”

“That’s not news, at least to us,” Mason said.

“But how in the world could she know? He evidently gave you a name that he felt would throw you off the track just so she wouldn’t find out, and here within... within four hours of the time he left the office she calls up to warn you to lay off.”

“Well,” Mason said, “we’ll at least check her information. We owe that much to our client and to ourselves, Della. Call Graystone 9-3535 and ask for Mr. Carter.”

“Won’t that just be playing into her hands?” Della Street asked.

Mason grinned. “We’re leading from the dummy, Della.”

Della Street put through the call, asked for Mr. Carter, then nodded to Mason.

The lawyer picked up his phone. A moment later a voice sounding somewhat puzzled said, “Hello, who did you wish to speak with?”

“Mr. Carter?” Mason said. “This is Perry Mason, the lawyer.”

“What!”

“Do you wish me to repeat? This is Perry Mason, the lawyer.”

“Great heavens!... I told you not to try to call me. How in the world did you ever locate me here? What do you want?”

“Miss Martel just rang me up,” Mason said. “She told me to call you at this number and say to you, and I quote, ‘Your fingerprints are over those of the person you are trying to protect.’

“Now, does that message mean anything to you?”

There was a long period of silence.

“You there?” Mason asked.

The voice at the other end of the phone was shaken, all but inaudible. “I’m here... I’m trying to think... I... what have you done so far, Mr. Mason?”

“I have a detective agency working on the investigation. It has representatives here and in San Francisco digging up information.”

The voice at the other end of the line suddenly snapped with decision. “Very well, Mr. Mason, I can see the matter is more serious than I supposed it was when I called on you. I’m going to have to change some of the instructions I gave you.”

“Now just a minute,” Mason said. “So far you’re just a voice over the telephone. I don’t accept instructions that way. Can you identify yourself?”

“I am the man who called on you this morning, Mr. Mason. I gave you one five-hundred-dollar bill, two one-hundreds and a fifty. I have your receipt signed by Della Street, your secretary.”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Mason said. “Is there any other way you can identify yourself?”

“Good heavens, Mason, this is a serious matter. Isn’t it enough that I have given you a substantial retainer and that you have accepted it?”

“Since you ask the question,” Mason said, “I’ll answer it. The answer is: No, that isn’t enough. I want definite identification.”

“All right,” the man said, “I suppose I’ll have to come clean. My real name is Carter Gilman. I made the appointment with you as Edward Carter. When I came to your office I told you I was a little late and you told me that traffic conditions being what they were, you always found it advisable to try to get to your appointments a few minutes early and then, if you were held up, the other man wasn’t kept waiting.

“Your secretary sat on your right-hand side at a little desk of her own with a telephone on it and took notes. She handed me the receipt immediately after you and I had shaken hands when I was leaving.”

“How were you dressed?” Mason asked.

“I had on a brown suit, a gray tie with red bars on a diagonal. I wore brown and white sports shoes and tortoise-shell glasses; that is, the so-called horn-rimmed glasses.

“Mr. Mason, the message which you have just given me has come as a distinct shock because it means that persons whom I thought I could trust are arrayed against me. I now admit my identity. I am Carter Gilman.

“I am going to give you detailed instructions which are very important and which must be followed to the letter. My daughter, Muriell, I can trust. She is very much upset over the manner in which I left the house this morning. She has driven to my office in the Piedmont Building and is making discreet inquiries of my secretary, Matilda Norman. I am going to telephone her to put her mind at ease and I am going to give her certain specific instructions. She will go at once to your office in carrying out those instructions and tell you just what you are to do.

“I want you to accept Muriell’s instructions just as though they came directly from me. She will tell you some things that are so highly confidential I don’t dare discuss them over the telephone.

“And, Mr. Mason, please do not underestimate Vera Martel. The fact that she knew I could be reached at this number at this particular time is very disturbing. The message which she gave you is one that was designed to get me to run for cover and call this whole thing off. Now that the situation is out in the open, now that she knows I have consulted you, now that she knows we are headed for a showdown, I am going to come out in the open and start fighting.

“I will no longer masquerade as Edward Carter, a friend of the family. If you will wait there at your office you will hear from my daughter, Muriell, within the next ten minutes. It shouldn’t take her longer than that to get to your office. Please do everything she says.”

“Now just a minute,” Mason said. “You’re dealing the cards pretty fast here, Gilman. You wanted me to try and find out something about Mrs. Gilman. Now suddenly you’re changing all of the instructions and dumping an entirely different case in my lap.”

“Well, does it make any difference what I ask you to do, just so I pay you for doing it, Mr. Mason?”

“It may make a whale of a difference,” Mason said. “And what you want me to do now may cost a lot more money than what you wanted me to do this morning.”

Gilman said, “Very well, Mr. Mason. I will see that you are paid. Remember that I not only gave you a retainer of seven hundred and fifty dollars, but you wanted title to all of the machinery and personal property that was in my workshop. I don’t know what put that particular idea in your mind, but I can now tell you, Mr. Mason, that if you will drive out with Muriell to that workshop you will find a large sum of money on the floor. That money should serve as additional compensation until you can hear from me again. Please wait right there until you hear from Muriell.”

The telephone connection was severed at the other end.

Mason looked quizzically at Della Street.

“Well?” she asked, as she hung up the telephone.

Mason said, “This could be a beautifully engineered trap. A man comes in and tells me he’s a friend of the family, he wants a routine investigation made. Prior to that time his daughter has been in touch with me and has me go out to the house, where I pick up ten thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. Then, having inveigled me into that situation up to my neck, so to speak, they suddenly change the instructions and tell me what else to do.”

“And what are you going to do?” Della Street asked.

“I don’t know,” Mason said. “It depends on what Muriell has in mind when she shows up. Somehow I don’t think Muriell can carry out very much of a deception. If this is some elaborate scheme that she and her father have entered into, I think I can break Muriell down. But I certainly hate to pick on her. I’d much rather have had Carter Gilman come in here and give me a chance to probe his mind.”

“Which is undoubtedly why Carter Gilman has no intention of coming in,” Della Street said.

“I guess there’s no doubt about that being Gilman,” Mason said.

“No doubt on earth,” Della Street assured him. “I listened carefully to the voice. That’s the voice of the man who was in here this morning.”

Mason regarded her thoughtfully. “And just how do we know that man is Carter Gilman?” he asked.

“You have his photograph,” Della Street said. “You had his photograph before he came in.”

“That’s right,” Mason said, “I have his photograph. And where did I get his photograph?”

“From his daughter.”

“That’s right,” Mason said. “Out at his house. Muriell opens a drawer in the darkroom. Very conveniently there is a photograph of her father there. She tells me that this is a photograph of her father, that her father has mysteriously disappeared. She ushers me into a room where there is ten thousand dollars on the floor. I pick up the ten thousand dollars and come back here to the office. The man whose photograph I have seen comes walking in and tells me he is a friend of the family. I walk right into the trap and pull the cat-and-mouse act with him and he’s probably getting quite a kick out of it. The whole thing has probably been rehearsed with him and his daughter.

“Now he lets me locate him on the phone after having a telephone conversation with a woman who says she is Vera Martel... How the devil do I know that was Vera Martel I was talking with? How do I know that I’m not being swept along in a stream of events where Muriell gives me a picture and says that’s her father, where her father rings me up and tells me to do exactly what Muriell says, and where some other person rings me up and says she is Vera Martel and gives me one of these mysterious, thoroughly cockeyed messages to pass on to Carter Gilman? So far, about all I have are voices over the telephone and a photograph handed me by Muriell.”

“I would say a great deal depends on Muriell,” Della Street said thoughtfully.

Mason said, “All right, Della. Vera Martel is a private detective who has offices here and in Las Vegas. Get her on the phone.”

“What will we do when we get her, Chief?”

“I’ll ask her what the hell she meant by ringing up my office and telling me something about fingerprints.”

“And suppose she denies the conversation?”

“We’ll have a chance to listen to her voice,” Mason said. “You have a good ear for voices. You can identify them quite accurately over the telephone.”

“I’m quite certain I can identify Vera Martel’s voice,” Della Street said. “At least the woman who said she was Vera Martel.”

“All right,” Mason said, “get busy. Call Vera Martel. If she isn’t in her office find out where she can be reached. If she can be reached anywhere in the country by telephone I want her.”

Mason started pacing the floor while Della Street went out to the outer office to put the calls through the office switchboard.

Fifteen minutes later Della Street returned. “Vera Martel’s office doesn’t know where she is. Apparently they would like very much to find out. They gave me the number of her Las Vegas office. I called there. There was no answer.”

“No secretary there?” Mason asked.

“Apparently not. From what Vera Martel’s oflice here told me, the office in Las Vegas is one that is kept for the convenience of Miss Martel and her clients. Miss Martel remains there when she’s in Las Vegas. The secretary here seems very much disturbed. Vera Martel was working on an important case and she seems to have disappeared.”

“Makes it quite a day for disappearances, doesn’t it?” Mason said.

“It does indeed.”

The phone on Della Street’s desk rang and Della Street picked up the instrument, said, “Yes, Gertie, what is it?” Della turned to Perry Mason and said, “Muriell Gilman is in the office.”

“Tell her to come right in,” Mason said grimly.

Muriell entered the office and said, almost as soon as Della Street had ushered her through the door, “Oh, Mr. Mason, I’m so relieved. I’ve heard from Daddy and he had to leave this morning on a very delicate, difficult matter. He’s in some sort of trouble and he needs my help and he wants me to work with you.”

“Did you tell him you’d called me earlier in the day?” Mason asked.

“No,” she said. “You told me not to, and I... I didn’t, although I probably would have if he’d have talked longer, but Daddy reached me on the telephone and said he only had time to give me a few very brief instructions.”

“All right,” Mason said. “First let’s have the instructions.”

“I was at Daddy’s office trying to locate him or, failing in that, to talk with Tillie Norman, his secretary.”

“Describe her,” Mason said. “Young, attractive, curvaceous or...?”

“Heavens no! She’s very young-looking for her age and very competent, but I know she’s well past fifty and she’s not at all curvaceous. She’s rather the beanpole type.”

“All right,” Mason said, “pardon me if I interrupt you with questions from time to time, but you’re talking to a lawyer and I have to have a clear picture in my mind. Go on and tell me the rest of it.”

“Daddy called in almost as soon as Tillie came in... she’d been out on a shopping trip. He learned I was there and told Tillie to have me put on the phone without letting anyone in the office know he had called in.

“Something had happened which upset Daddy very much indeed, something in connection with a telephone message which he told me you would know all about. He said that he’s in a very precarious position. He said I was to come here just as fast as I could and that you were to accompany me out to the house, that I was to give you his brief case — he had left it home — that there were documents in that brief case, that you were to go directly to his office and surrender those documents to Roger C. Calhoun, his business associate, and accept Mr. Calhoun’s receipt for the documents.”

“Did he describe the documents?”

“Simply the agreements that were in the green Bristol-board folder in his brief case. He said that you were also to tell Mr. Calhoun that you were acting as Daddy’s attorney and that Mr. Calhoun was to go ahead and complete negotiations on the agreements and execute them.”

“Was I supposed to read the agreements?” Mason asked.

“Daddy didn’t say anything about that.”

Mason said, “Look, Muriell, I don’t like to be brought into a situation where I’m groping in the dark. I’m a lawyer. If your father wants me to represent him in a business transaction, that’s fine. If he wants me to try and head off blackmail, that’s fine. If he wants me to protect your interests, that’s fine.

“But I want to know what it is I’m supposed to do, and I want to work out my own plan of campaign. I don’t want to be a legal messenger-boy who tries to do the things that your father thinks should be done. If he’ll come to me with the problem I’ll work out a solution of the problem with him. But I don’t want to be sent around doing this and doing that in accordance with some plan he’s worked out. Do you understand that?”

“I can appreciate your position,” she said, her eyes clouding and seemingly close to tears, “but, Mr. Mason, my father would never want you to do anything that was the least bit wrong; and he’s in some sort of serious trouble.”

“Will you get hold of him and tell him that I want to have some cards put on the table before I go running around here doing a lot of things that—?”

“Mr. Mason, please she said. “There won’t be time. Daddy told Tillie to make an appointment with Mr. Calhoun. He’s going to wait for you. We’ll just about have time to run out and get those papers in the brief case and then deliver them to Mr. Calhoun and take his receipt — and there’s a lot that I’m to tell you about Mr. Calhoun. Daddy said I was to tell you everything. I’ll have to do that while we’re driving out to the house.”

Mason glanced at Della Street, frowned thoughtfully for a minute.

Muriell impatiently looked at her wristwatch.

“Where’s your father’s office?” Mason asked.

“In the Piedmont Building.”

“That’s only a couple of blocks from here,” Mason said.

She nodded.

“Where’s your car?”

“I parked it in the parking lot next to this building.”

“All right,” Mason said abruptly. “I’ll go this far with you. I’ll go down and get my car. I’ll drive you out to the house and then you can ride back with me and pick up your car. You can tell me what it’s all about while we’re going out to the house. I’m going to ask you lots of questions, Muriell. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Daddy said I was to tell you everything.”

Mason glanced at Della Street and said, “You stay on the job until I get back, Della. I’ll probably go directly to the Piedmont Building and see Mr. Calhoun before I get back to the office.”

Mason opened the exit door of his private office. “Come on,” he said to Muriell, “let’s go.”