The Case of the Duplicate Daughter

Chapter Seven

It was ten thirty in the morning when Paul Drake tapped his code knock on the door of Mason’s private office.

Della Street let him in.

“Hi, beautiful,” Paul said.

“How was the gambling?” Della Street asked. “And did you put it on the expense account?”

“Believe it or not,” Drake said, “I won nearly five hundred dollars.”

“No wonder you were late getting in this morning,” Mason said. “I presume you stayed all night, took the early-morning plane and—”

“I did nothing of the sort,” Paul Drake said. “Actually, I finished my gambling by a little after midnight, took the next plane in, then came up to the office to get the information from my various operatives correlated so I could submit an intelligent report.

“Incidentally, Perry, you called the turn all right on this blond babe you had me shadowing. She was visiting with Steven A. Barlow at 5981 Virginia City Avenue. I went out there and staked out for about an hour, then she came out of the house, called a taxi and went uptown.”

“Did you tail along?”

“Actually, I didn’t, Perry. I had rented a car and the only place that I could park it where I could be sure of watching the front door of the house was in a position where I had to park with my car pointed away from town.

“While I was sitting there trying to find some good excuse for ringing the doorbell so I could see who came to the door without betraying myself, a taxicab swung around the corner, pulled up in front of the house and stopped. The front door opened. A man whom I suppose was Steven Barlow and this blonde I’d been shadowing came out on the porch. She kissed him good-by, hurried down and jumped in the cab and the cab took off uptown. The man stood in the doorway watching the cab until it was out of sight. If I had tried to make a U-turn and follow, it would have been a dead giveaway, and since you had told me that if she was visiting Steven Barlow to forget about it, I just decided to call it a day.”

Mason nodded. “That’s right. I’m glad you played it that way.”

“But,” Drake said, “I ran into her again about eleven o’clock. She was in one of the casinos playing roulette and having quite a run of luck. By that time she’d changed into a clinging cocktail gown.”

“Did she spot you this time?” Mason asked.

“Not me,” Drake said. “I kept at the other end of the casino, but I was where I could watch her out of the corner of my eye. I was at one of the crap tables, and, believe me, Perry, that’s the way to win money.”

“What is?”

“Standing and watching somebody. I stood in one position and just kept putting a stack of five silver dollars down and leaving them there until somebody would either rake them in or pay me money. After a while, I bought chips and got to putting down twenty-dollar chips.”

“Did anyone notice you were spotting the girl?”

“No one. But here’s a laugh for you. Some of them thought I had a new system of playing craps by putting the money down without looking at the table and keeping my head turned, so pretty quick half of the people at the table were putting money down and keeping their heads turned away.”

“Did it work for them?”

“Not worth a damn,” Drake said. “I had all the luck at the table.”

“But you think this girl had spotted you when she ran out and jumped in the cab?”

“I’m hanged if I know, Perry. She’s the impulsive sort. She does everything on impulse. Now, last night when she got in that car and drove out of the parking lot I’m satisfied she had some other destination in mind. But about the time she got to Hollywood she suddenly had a different idea. She took a look at her wristwatch, spun the car into a turn on La Brea and started crowding traffic for all she was worth.”

“Then you think her visit to Barlow was impromptu?”

Drake nodded. “Who was this babe, by the way, Perry?”

“Glamis Barlow. She’s the daughter of—”

“Glamis!” Drake exclaimed. “Good heavens! Why didn’t I realize it!”

“You have something on her?” Mason asked.

“Lots of things,” Drake said. “I got this story from a source I can trust. It’s been kept hushed up and not a breath of it got in the papers. But here’s what happened — I should have taken a tumble when you told me to look up Steven A. Barlow in Las Vegas, but, of course, I didn’t have this information at that time. It was lying on my desk here.

“Here’s the story and it’s one for the book: Nancy Adair was living in Greenwich Village in New York as a freelance, uninhibited artist. She was taking a fling at that time at story writing as well as her art work. I guess her stories weren’t bad at that. She was making a living.

“If you knew Greenwich Village at that time, you get the atmosphere. There was a young writer there, John Yerman Hassell, who was going to write the great American novel and was going to take the world apart. He was about seven or eight years older than Nancy. He was from Texas, had an uncle down there who died and left him acres of dust.

“Hassell and Nancy had an affair and Nancy became pregnant. She wanted Hassell to marry her and Hassell, I guess, was a little disagreeable about the whole situation. He pointed out to her that they were both emancipated, that they didn’t believe in the conventions, that they were living their own lives, that they were geniuses, that, as such, they must be uninhibited, that Nancy had got herself into trouble and she could damn well get herself out of trouble.”

“So what happened?”

“Nancy stuck around for about three months, then suddenly disappeared. And I mean she disappeared completely. She disappeared so completely that later on, when oil was developed on Hassell’s property and he became a multimillionaire, when he had a change of heart and looked back on his affair with Nancy and realized that he really was in love with her, when he spent thousands of dollars on private detectives, he couldn’t even get a trace of her. He put ads in the papers, did everything he could.”

“Why the sudden change of heart?” Mason asked.

“I guess he’d learned more about women in the meantime,” Drake said. “This Nancy is quite a character.”

“So I’ve heard,” Mason said.

“Well, to get back to the story,” Drake said, “Nancy took steps to cover up. She changed her name, came to Los Angeles, had her child and a few weeks later met Steve Barlow.

“Barlow lived in San Francisco. He was rather unconventional himself and Nancy appealed to him. They were married and moved up north someplace. Barlow was speculating in real estate and he turned a nice deal up there and he and Nancy went to live in Portland, Oregon. He made another deal in some timberland there and they moved to Bend, Oregon. After a while they split up. Later on, Nancy married Gilman.”

“How much of all this does Glamis know?” Mason asked.

“Not a bit of it,” Drake said. “She thinks Steve Barlow is her real father and I guess Steve is tremendously attached to her. I didn’t know he was living in Las Vegas or I’d have put two and two together. The last I heard of him he was in Bend, Oregon, but I do know that when they split up the divorce decree provided that Steve Barlow had the right to visit his daughter at all reasonable and seasonable times.”

“Now, what about Hassell?” Mason asked.

“Six years ago Hassell died. He had never married. He left an estate running into big money and he left a cool three million after all taxes to any person who could prove he or she was the child that had been born out of wedlock to Nancy Adair, formerly of New York, and he fixed the approximate date of birth and tied it all up in the will with legal strings.

“Nancy had washed her hands of him when he had refused to stand by her when she got into trouble, but the papers were full of the strange provision in the will, so Nancy quietly went to the heirs and told them she was going to file a claim on behalf of Glamis.

“The heirs were a brother and sister, and there was lots of money in the estate. They told Nancy to hold off while they made a check. And I guess they really made a check. That’s where I got my information. One of the investigators who was employed by the brother and sister told my operative the whole story a couple of years ago, and when my operative found I wanted a check on Nancy Gilman he remembered about it and went back and got the details.

“It seems that Nancy was able to show rent receipts showing she’d been living at the apartment in Greenwich Village which was mentioned in Hassell’s will. She couldn’t prove anything by a birth certificate because she’d used an assumed name when she had the child, but there was something a lot better than that. It seems that there was such a marked family resemblance that as soon as the brother and sister saw Glamis they decided she was it. They offered a million and a half for settlement and finally made a settlement of around two million bucks after all taxes had been paid. There was a proviso in the settlement that the matter should be kept secret so that Glamis wouldn’t be given the stigma of being illegitimate. By that time, Glamis was growing up and Nancy wanted her to have all the breaks.”

“That was after she married Gilman?” Mason asked.

“About a year before.”

“Where does Glamis think the money came from if she doesn’t know anything about the will and the settlement?” Mason asked.

“That I can’t tell you. Nancy has covered up in some way, but that’s generally the story.”

Mason got up and started pacing the floor. “Well,” he said, “that’s the kernel of the nut.”

“What is?”

“The blackmail,” Drake said. “This Vera Martel has found out about it in some way and she’s putting the heat on Nancy, or perhaps on Glamis, or perhaps on both of them.”

The phone rang.

Della Street picked it up, said, “It’s for you, Paul.”

Drake scooped up the instrument, said, “Hello, I’m coming right back to the office. If it’s anything that’ll wait... What!... You’re sure?... Okay, give me the details.” Drake stood listening at the telephone for a good three minutes, then he said, “Okay. Get men on the job. Find out everything you can... That’s right, give it the works. Don’t spare any expense.”

Drake hung up the telephone. Mason, grinning, said, “You’re spending a lot of someone’s money, Paul. I’d hate to be the client in that case.”

Drake looked at him with troubled eyes. “You are,” he said. “Police found the body of Vera Martel early this morning. She was in her automobile and the automobile had apparently gone out of control and gone over a mountain grade back up around Mulholland Drive somewhere.

“However, there are lots of things about the case that are suspicious. The cops started with the idea that the car had been deliberately driven off the road at a place where there was an almost perpendicular drop of more than a hundred feet. Then they got the body to the coroner’s office and a couple of hours ago the coroner gave them the information that it was murder, that there was a broken hyoid bone, distinctive petechial hemorrhagic spots and that Vera Martel had been quite dead when the automobile was pushed over the cliff.

“So the police started doing some high-class detective work and they found sawdust ground into Vera’s skirt and some sawdust in the inside of her shoes. It wasn’t the ordinary kind of sawdust but the sort that comes from a workshop where someone deals in rare woods — the kind one has as a hobby.”

“How long has she been dead?” Mason asked.

“The best guess is that she died somewhere between seven o’clock yesterday morning and noon. If the police hadn’t found the body when they did — in other words, if the body had remained there for a couple of days longer — police would have had great difficulty in fixing the time of death. The body was discovered because of good work on the part of a highway patrol who happened to notice peculiar automobile tracks in the dirt shoulder of the road. If it hadn’t been for that, the body could have been there for days or weeks, because it was impossible to see the car unless someone got off the road and climbed partway down the mountain. The car had rolled over into a clump of scrub oak and was almost completely concealed.”

Mason said, “How long have the police been working on this thing, Paul?”

“Since a little after daylight. They didn’t let the news leak out for a while and now they’re really closing a lot of loose ends. They—”

The telephone from the outer office rang. Della Street picked up the instrument and said, “Yes, Gertie.” And then she said to Mason, “It’s Muriell Gilman. She’s on the line and Gertie says she’s all but hysterical. She wants to talk with you right away.”

“Put her on,” Mason said, “I’ll talk with her.”

The lawyer picked up the telephone, said to Della Street, “You stay on the line, too, Della.”

Della nodded, said, “Put her on, Gertie.”

Mason heard a click and said, “Hello, Muriell. This is Mr. Mason.”

“Oh, Mr. Mason, the most terrible thing has happened,” Muriell said.

“All right,” Mason said. “Now, keep calm and tell me in as few words as possible what it is. We may not have much time.”

“The police were out here with a search warrant, Mr. Mason.”

“All right,” Mason said. “Who was home at the time?”

“All three of us. Nancy was asleep. Glamis got home in the small hours this morning and she was asleep. But I was up.”

“All right,” Mason said. “The police served the warrant on you?”

“Yes. They asked me who was in charge here and I said I guessed I was and they said they wanted to look in Daddy’s woodworking shop.”

“Did they?”

“Yes.”

“What did they do?”

“They had a man who had some sort of a vacuum-sweeping attachment and he got sawdust off the floor and they looked at the broken chair and at the upset paint and they took some powder and dusted the can of enamel and there were fingerprints on it and they photographed those, and then they told me I had better wait outside but not to go near a phone.”

“How long ago was that?”

“It must have been half or three quarters of an hour.”

“Then what?”

“Then they left and... well, they were very nice, but they wouldn’t answer questions. I kept asking them if there was some trouble, but they said they couldn’t answer questions, that their job was to get information and not give it out.”

“All right,” Mason said. “Where’s your father?”

“He’s been in Las Vegas. He was supposed to be back on an early-morning plane and was supposed to be at the office at nine o’clock, but Mr. Calhoun called at nine thirty and said Daddy hadn’t shown up and asked if I knew where he was.”

“What did you tell Calhoun?”

“Mr. Mason, I... I lied to him.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I didn’t know where Daddy was at the moment. I left the impression Daddy had been here for breakfast.”

“Did he ask if your father had been home last night?”

“No, he didn’t ask that specifically. He asked me if Daddy had intended to be at the office this morning and I told him I was quite sure he was going to be there.”

“All right,” Mason said. “Now, the police left there how long ago?”

“About ten minutes ago.”

“Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

“I was just completely flabbergasted. I didn’t know what to do. I felt as though my knees had turned to rubber. I didn’t know whether to tell Glamis and Nancy or what to do.”

“What did you do?”

“I haven’t wakened either Nancy or Glamis.”

Mason said, “I want to talk with Nancy and I want to talk with Glamis. It’s probably better for me to go out there than to have you come in here. I—”

The door from the outer office opened and Lt. Tragg of Homicide, his distinctive black hat tilted somewhat to the back of his head, entered the room. A plain-clothes officer followed behind him.

“Well, well, good morning, folks,” he said. “I see you’re busy as usual here.”

Mason said in a sufficiently loud voice so Muriell would have no difficulty hearing him, “Well, well! What brings the Lieutenant of Homicide to my office this morning, and why don’t you ask to be announced? It’s only a trifling formality but it indicates a certain consideration for the conventions.”

“I’ve repeatedly told you, the taxpayers don’t pay me to be considerate of conventions,” Lt. Tragg said. “I could waste a lot of the taxpayers’ time waiting in people’s outer offices. And then again, Perry, it would give people an opportunity to prepare for my visit. They could perhaps remove evidence or think things over a little bit, or sometimes they might even slip out of the side exit door and then their secretary would be able to say quite truthfully that the man I wanted to see was gone and she didn’t know just where he could be located.

“I think I’ve got my singulars and plurals all mixed up there somehow, Mason, but I’m quite certain you get the idea. Now, go right ahead with your telephone conversation.”

“I had just about completed my telephone conversation,” Mason said. And then said into the telephone, “Was there anything else?”

Muriell said, “Oh, Mr. Mason, something terrible has happened. I know it has. I—”

Mason interrupted to say, “Well, that’s most interesting. Now, a matter has come up which is going to keep me occupied for some little while. I’ll probably have to call you back when I can get at the documents in the case. As it happens, a Homicide inspector has appeared at the office. They are a little troublesome at times because they always insist on their affairs being given the right-of-way. It may take me a little while to find out what this is all about.

“I’ll be calling you back as soon as I have a reasonable opportunity, but I’ll have to investigate those documents first. Now, those matters which I suggested you keep in confidence are, I take it, still confidential. You haven’t told anyone about them?”

“You mean about the—?”

“About any of them,” Mason interrupted firmly.

“No, Mr. Mason, they didn’t ask too many questions. They were asking about Daddy and I told them that he was in Las Vegas and was due in on the early-morning plane.”

“Well, I’ll be calling you back,” Mason said. “Just hang around the telephone so you don’t miss my call. I am sorry that I’ve been interrupted because I had hoped to clear this matter up with you on this telephone conversation, but, as I say, the police insist on having the right-of-way.”

Mason hung up the telephone and turned to Lt. Tragg. “What can I do for you this morning, Lieutenant?”

Tragg turned to the plain-clothes man and said, “I guess you know Perry Mason. That’s Paul Drake, his detective, and Della Street, the very estimable secretary who chaperones his affairs. Don’t underestimate the intelligence of any one of them, particularly don’t be misled by that look of innocence on the part of Miss Street or those very, very beautiful eyes which somehow seem to get your thoughts off things you’re trying to accomplish.

“Would you mind telling me with whom you were talking, Perry?”

“A client,” Mason said.

“Good heavens!” Tragg exclaimed in mock surprise. “I thought from what I heard of the conversation it was a total stranger, someone who rang you up and wanted to know how to get to the post office from here or if you happened to know what the bus fare was to San Diego.”

“It just goes to show a person can be misled jumping at conclusions. A good detective should never jump at conclusions,” Mason said.

Tragg said, “Mason, I understand you have a client by the name of Gilman, Carter Gilman.”

Mason said, “If you say you have a certain understanding, I see no reason to doubt the statement.”

“Well, then, let me ask you — do you have a client by the name of Carter Gilman?”

Mason frowned as though trying to prod his memory. “Gilman... Gilman,” he said, “Carter Gilman. Do you happen to know his address?”

“6231 Vauxman Avenue,” Tragg said.

“Well,” Mason said, “we could look it up and... no, Tragg, I don’t think I should answer that question.”

Tragg turned to the man in plain clothes and said, “Notice the cleverness of the guy. He acts as though he hadn’t heard of Carter Gilman in a month of Sundays and then, having put on that act, he tells me that he isn’t going to answer the question. In that way, he hasn’t lied to me, he hasn’t said anything that wasn’t so, he simply played it cute.”

Tragg turned back to Mason. “Mason,” he said, “I am asking you now an official question. Have you removed any incriminating evidence from the premises at 6231 Vauxman Avenue — from any part of the premises?”

“Incriminating evidence,” Mason said. “Now, let’s see what we mean by that. Evidence, of course, is something that is legally admissible in the way of proof, and that, of course, calls for legal definition.

“Now, incriminating is something else again. I would have to ask incriminating to whom.

“You see, Tragg, since you want to play games this morning, there are lots of things that you might consider evidence which a court wouldn’t technically consider evidence because it wouldn’t be admissible.”

“I know,” Tragg said. “Hearsay, for instance.”

“Well, there again,” Mason said, “you are up against certain exceptions. For instance, if a man asked you how old you were and you’d say fifty-five, perhaps — now, of course, you have no way of knowing that you’re fifty-five except because of something someone has told you. So you’d be testifying to something that was purely hearsay. Yet that is one of the exceptions to the hearsay evidence rule which the layman never stops to think about.”

“Well, now,” Tragg said, “I see we’re going to have rather a prolonged visit. I—”

The telephone rang again. Della Street picked up the receiver, said, “Yes,” then gave Mason a meaning glance. “Perhaps you’d better take this call in the law library,” she said.

“Oh, now, you don’t have to do anything like that,” Tragg said. “We’re not trying to eavesdrop, but we are in something of a hurry and the business might be described as official, so perhaps you’d just better answer the phone, Perry, and tell whoever is calling to call back.”

Mason caught the expression on Della Street’s face, picked up the telephone, said, “Hello,” and heard the voice of Carter Gilman.

“Mr. Mason, this is Carter Gilman. I am being held on suspicion of murder. They’ve interrogated me at the district attorney’s office and I am now being booked. They told me that I had a right to call my attorney, so I’m calling you.”

Mason said, “I’ll be right down to see you. Now, in the meantime, I don’t know what you’ve said to anybody, but from now on you aren’t to say a thing unless I’m there. Do you understand? You’re not to open your mouth unless I give you permission — not even to talk about the weather. Don’t give anyone the time of day. I’ll be there just as soon as I can get there.”

Mason hung up the telephone.

Tragg turned sadly to the man standing beside him and said, “That’s what comes of all these recent decisions about depriving a man of due process of law; when you restrain him without taking him before a magistrate, when you don’t give him an opportunity to call his attorney before you’ve even talked with him.

“The whole law-enforcement business has gone completely cockeyed. They’re taking the handcuffs off the wrists of the criminals and putting them on the wrists of the law-enforcement officers.

“Well, I guess the cat’s out of the bag, Mason. I presume that you’re not going to answer any more questions, that you’re going to clap on your hat, shoot out of that door and dash down to the jail to confer with your client. Well, we can’t stop you, Mason. So far, we don’t have anything on you, but we’re looking around, Perry, we’re looking around.”

Mason said, “Keep on looking, Lieutenant. By the way, I presume you have your official car out here and you’re probably on your way to the jail. Now, if you wanted to be really hospitable and a good sport about this thing you’d give me a ride with you and I’d save quite a bit of time.”

“To say nothing of taxi fare,” Tragg said. “It’s quite all right, Perry. Just to show you that we’re good sports, we’ll take you right through traffic and right up to where you can visit your client.

“Of course, you understand, Perry, I can’t use the code signal that calls for red light and siren. I’ll have to go just as an ordinary law-abiding citizen, but we know our way around and we can expedite things for you. It will look nice in case you should claim your client was deprived of due process of law or that the police restrained him unduly trying to get a confession out of him.

“Come right along with us, Perry, and we’ll see that you’re delivered F.O.B. the county jail, where you can talk with your client, who is being held on suspicion of murdering Vera Martel. And I don’t mind telling you privately and confidentially, Perry, that this time we have an ironclad case, and unless you’re very, very careful you’re going to find yourself involved along with your client — right up to your necktie.”

Mason bowed. “Thank you for the warning and the ride, Lieutenant.”

Mason turned to Della Street and said, half jokingly, half seriously, “If you don’t hear from me within an hour make an application for a writ of habeas corpus.”

Della Street nodded solemnly.

Paul Drake, who had been a silent spectator, held the door open for the three men to go out.