The Case of the Fabulous Fake

11

On Monday morning Mason fitted a key in the lock of his private office and swung back the door.

“Well, hello, stranger!” Della Street said.

Mason smiled. “It isn’t that bad!”

“Pretty close to it, what with running up and down to San Francisco and working with detectives. What do you know?”

“Not a darn thing,” Mason said, “except that this Diana Douglas is a problem. I feel like throwing her out.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Well,” Mason said, “I have a professional obligation.”

“She’s lied to you all the way along the line,” Della Street said. “And when she hasn’t been lying, she’s tried to conceal things.”

“I know,” Mason said, “but the poor kid certainly was all wrapped up in her brother.”

“The one that had the automobile accident?”

“He died early Friday morning,” Mason said. “I guess the funeral is this morning. I told Diana to take some sleeping pills Friday; to go to sleep and forget the whole mess.”

“And you went to see the Escobar Import and Export Company?”

“I met a couple of very interesting men,” Mason said. “I’d like to know something about the inside operation of that company. I met Homer Gage and Franklin Gage and there you have a couple of real characters.”

“Smooth?”

“Puzzling... Homer Gage has to control himself with an effort every once in a while. Franklin Gage is synthetically suave. He gives you the impression of having tried all of his life to keep from showing his real feelings. When he shakes hands with you you feel there’s a cushion of flesh on his hand, a sort of sponge-rubber insulation that he uses to keep any magnetic current from penetrating.”

“From him to you?” Della asked.

Mason thought for a moment, then smiled and said, “Both ways... We’re getting into a deep subject, Della, but somehow when you shake hands with a man you can tell a lot about him from his grip. There’s a certain magnetic something you can feel.”

“I know,” she said. “Some hands are firm and sincere and others are — well, sort of evasive; it’s hard to describe.”

Mason was thoughtful. “Shaking hands is a peculiar custom. It consists in clasping a part of two bodies together so that a vibration or magnetism or whatever you want to call it is exchanged from one to the other... Well, we’d better go to work.”

Della Street shook her head. “You had two appointments for this morning, and when I didn’t hear from you Friday afternoon I canceled them.”

“I should have let you know,” Mason said, “but I got up there and had this session with the Escobar Import and Export Company and I had a peculiar experience.”

“What?”

“One of the stenographers left this note with my name on it beside a piece of carved ivory I had been looking at.”

“Oh, oh,” Della Street said. “So that’s why you stayed over in San Francisco Friday night!”

Mason grinned. “It wasn’t that kind of a note. Take a look.”

The lawyer took the note from his notebook. Della Street looked at it, said, “I think it was done on an electric typewriter. Did you notice which of the secretaries had electric typewriters?”

“I didn’t,” Mason said. “I was noticing the decorations in the office — figurines, carved ivories, jade. They must have had half a million dollars’ worth of stuff on display.”

“Did they offer you anything at a discount?”

“Wholesale only,” Mason said thoughtfully. “I’d like to know something about who their customers are and I’d like to know a lot more about where they get their stuff... You say you canceled all my appointments for this morning?”

“That’s right. They weren’t important, and I rang up Friday afternoon and canceled.”

Mason said, “After I got out of the Import and Export Company I went out to Fisherman’s Wharf and had a good crab lunch — or I guess you’d call it dinner — and then went down to the airport... Friday afternoon at a San Francisco airport. I was lucky to get home at all. I didn’t get in until five-fifteen and then I didn’t want to bother you... I’m going down to Paul Drake’s office and see if our stakeout has heard anything.”

“Our stakeout?”

“Stella Grimes,” Mason said, “the operative who’s registered under the name of Diana Deering at the Willatson Hotel. Somehow I have an idea we may be a bit behind on developments.

“For your information Franklin Gage seemed to adopt a rather casual attitude toward a shortage of twenty thousand dollars. Actually it was only ten thousand, because Franklin had taken out ten thousand to use in a business deal that he hadn’t consummated, and he had put the money back when he came in the office Friday morning.”

“But he reported what he had done?”

“Yes, as soon as his nephew told him there was a shortage.”

“Well, that was opportune,” Della Street said.

Mason nodded. “The way they keep their cash is certainly cool and casual. I have an idea that Franklin Gage would a lot rather absorb a reasonable loss than have the matter come into court where he would be cross-examined about the reason they keep such a large amount of cash on hand and what they do with it... There could be an income-tax angle there, too... and I’m willing to bet there’s a lot of customs regulations that are being by-passed.”

“You think they’re smuggling?”

“I think people with whom they deal are smuggling, and there’s an atmosphere of complete irregularity about the whole thing... Some of those art objects they have on display are really beautiful... I’m going down and have a chat with Paul Drake for a minute, Della. I think he’s in this morning. Then I’ll come back and get my nose ready for the grindstone.”

“You have three rather important appointments this afternoon,” she reminded him.

“Okay,” Mason said, “I’ll take a quick look; then back to the salt mines... I guess Edgar Douglas’ funeral is this morning. After that we may hear from Diana. And then again we may never hear from her again. I have an idea our Franklin Gage will be at the funeral, and he may tell Diana the whole embezzlement idea was a false alarm.

“Diana certainly looked a wreck. She had taken a plane up from Los Angeles, gone to the hospital, was with her brother when he died about three o’clock in the morning; then had to make funeral arrangements and meet me at the Escobar Import and Export Company at ten-thirty and — say, wait a minute, I told her to get a cashier’s check. She had it for me.”

Mason took the leather wallet from his inside coat pocket, pulled out several papers, and said, “Well, here it is. A cashier’s check made by the Farmers’ Financial Bank of San Francisco to Diana Douglas as trustee in an amount of five thousand dollars. She may have cut corners with us, Della, but she followed instructions on that check at a time when her heart must have been torn to ribbons. She was really fond of that brother of hers. I guess she’s sort of been a mother to him as well as a sister... If anything turns up in the next ten minutes, I’ll be down at Paul Drake’s office.”

“No hurry,” Della Street said. “I’ll call if there’s anything important.”

Mason walked down the corridor to the offices of the Drake Detective Agency, said hello to the girl at the switchboard, and jerked his thumb in the direction of Paul Drake’s office.

She smiled in recognition, nodded, and said, “He’s in. He’s on the phone at the moment. Go on down.”

Mason opened the spring-locked gate in the partition which divided the waiting room from the offices and walked down the long corridor, flagged by little offices in which Drake’s operatives made out their reports, until he came to Drake’s office.

Paul Drake was sitting in his little cubbyhole behind a desk on which were several telephones. He was just completing a telephone conversation when Mason opened the door.

The detective indicated a chair and said, “Hi, Perry. This is intended as a place of command from which to direct multitudinous activities, not as a place of consultation.”

Mason settled himself in the chair. “What have you got on those phones — a hot line to police headquarters?”

“Darned near,” Drake said. “We handle a lot of the stuff at the switchboard, but on delicate assignments when we have cars cruising with telephones in them, there are lots of times when there just isn’t time to go through a switchboard. I give the operatives an unlisted number. They can call me direct and be absolutely certain that they’re going to get me here.”

“But suppose you’re not here?” Mason asked.

“Then there’s a signal on the switchboard and the switchboard can pick it up, but I’m usually here. When you run a job like this you have to sit on top of it, and that’s particularly true with men who are cruising with cars that have telephones... What’s on your mind, Perry?”

“This thirty-six-twenty-four-thirty-six case,” Mason said. “Diana Douglas is the sort of girl who will go to a doctor to get medicine for the flu; then go home, take the advice of the janitor, take two aspirins with a hot lemonade, and throw out the doctor’s medicine. Then a friend will drop in who’ll tell her that what she needs is a lot of vitamin C and whiskey; so she’ll take five hundred units of vitamin C and a hot toddy. Then somebody will tell her she needs hot tea and quinine and she’ll take that. Then when the doctor comes to see how she’s getting along she’ll push the whiskey bottle and the teapot under the bed so he won’t know she’s taken anything on her own and say, ‘Doctor, I feel terrible!’ ”

Drake grinned. “You’re just describing human nature, Perry. What’s she done now?”

“Nothing,” Mason said. “She was very, very much attached to her brother who was in that automobile accident. He passed away early Friday morning. But up to that point our little Miss Douglas did all kinds of things, or rather didn’t do all kinds of things. She was supposed to go up to San Francisco with me on the plane, but she didn’t make it. She said she had a feeling that someone was following her.

“Ordinarily I’d have accepted that as the gospel truth, but in view of her record I’m inclined to doubt it. Anyway, Paul, we’d better get our double out of the Willatson Hotel, and then we’ll sit tight on the case for a while.”

“Can you tell me any more about it without violating ethics?” Drake asked.

Mason shook his head. “Remember, Paul, I was your client in this case and all that you found out about Diana Douglas came from the detective work you did.

“Let’s give Stella Grimes a jingle. Tell her to pack up and come on home.”

Drake picked up the telephone, said, “Call the Willatson Hotel and get Room Seven-sixty-seven for me.”

A moment later he said, “Hello, Stella. I guess the job’s over. You’d better pack up and — What’s that?... Are you sure...?

“Hold on a minute, Stella.”

Drake looked up at Mason and said, “Stella thinks there’s something funny going on. She went out to get breakfast and a man followed her. She’s pretty certain there’s a man on duty at the end of the seventh-floor corridor keeping an eye on the elevator.”

Mason looked at his watch. “Tell her we’re on our way down there, Paul.”

“Gosh, Perry, I can’t get away. I can send an operative if—”

“I can handle it,” Mason said. “I just thought you might like to go along. I’m free this morning, and if our friend Moray Cassel has got one of his little pimp friends waiting to throw a scare into the occupant of Room Seven-sixty-seven, it’ll be my great pleasure to tell the guy where he gets off.”

“Take it easy, Perry,” Drake warned. “Some of these guys are vicious.”

“I’m vicious myself,” Mason said, “when some pimp starts shoving a woman around.”

Mason left Drake’s office, said to the girl at Drake’s switchboard, “Ring my office, will you please, and tell Della Street that I’m out on an errand for an hour, that I’ll be back then.”

“An errand?” the girl at the switchboard asked. “Just that?”

“Well,” Mason said, grinning, “you can tell her it’s an errand of mercy. Also, if she gets inquisitive, tell her that I’ve had to sit in a position of command and let the troops do the fighting for so long that I’m getting rusty. I think I need to get out on the firing line myself.”

“You want me to tell her that?”

“On second thought.” Mason said, “you’d better not. Tell her that I’ll be back in an hour.”

The lawyer took the elevator to the ground floor, picked up a taxicab, gave the address of the Willatson Hotel, went up to the seventh floor, and noticed a man with a hammer and chisel doing some work at the end of the hall. Otherwise he saw no one.

The lawyer walked down to Room 767, tapped gently on the door, and said, “Oh, Diana.”

Stella Grimes opened the door. “Come in, Mr. Mason. And don’t ever give me any more assignments like this one.”

Mason said, “You mean you’re alarmed because somebody is following you?”

“Heavens, no,” she said, “I’m bored stiff. Did you ever sit in a hotel room hour after hour waiting for something to happen and nothing happens? You turn on the radio and have a choice of two stations. You listen to a lot of inane jabbering until you get tired. You move from one chair to another. You have meals served in your room, and don’t leave the phone because you’re afraid that someone may want you on something important. You don’t dare to call up anyone because you don’t want to tie the telephone line up in case the boss wants you. I’ll bet I’ve slept enough in the last two or three days to last me for a month. I went out this morning for the first time in days. The chambermaid was getting suspicious, so I phoned the office switchboard that I’d be out for forty-five minutes and went out for some air.

“Next time I hope you can give me a job that’s got some action to it.”

“Where you’ll have a chance to use your official bra?” Mason asked.

She smiled and said, “I never have had to actually use it. I’ve pulled it a couple of times when the going got tough. I...” She broke off as knuckles sounded on the door.

“Don’t tell me nothing ever happens,” Mason said. “We’re calling things off too soon. Even money that’s our friend Moray Cassel.”

“And if he finds me here again?”

“Look guilty,” Mason said. “Be the party of the second part in a surreptitious assignation... And then be very careful. The guy will want to sign you up as a part of his stable of call girls.”

Knuckles sounded heavily on the door again. Mason nodded to Stella Grimes. “It’s your room,” he said.

She crossed over and opened the door.

Two men who were standing on the threshold pushed their way into the room. They were not the same officers who had called previously.

“Is this your credit card?” one of the men said. “Did you lose it?”

He handed Stella Grimes a BankAmericard credit card, then saw Mason and said, “Who’s your friend?”

“Better ask your questions one at a time,” Stella Grimes said. “Which comes first?”

One of the men turned belligerently to Perry Mason, said, “Who are you?”

The other man kept pushing the credit card at Stella Grimes. “All right,” he said, “is it your credit card or isn’t it?”

Stella Grimes glanced at Mason, said, “This seems to be a BankAmerica credit card issued to Diana Douglas.”

“Is it yours or isn’t it?”

“I...”

“Don’t answer that,” Mason said, his voice sharp as the crack of a whip.

“Now, just a minute, Mac,” the man said. “you’re sticking your nose into a...”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, Bill,” the second man warned, “this is a lawyer. I recognize him now. This is Perry Mason.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” the man asked.

“What are you doing here?” Mason countered.

“We’re trying to find out whether this credit card is the property of this young woman.”

“A credit card made out to Diana Douglas?” Mason asked.

“That’s right. Diana Douglas.”

Mason, suddenly thoughtful, said, “If you are investigating any crime it is incumbent that you warn the suspect and tell her of her constitutional rights.”

“All right,” the man said, “we’re plain-clothes police. Homicide squad. Here are our credentials.”

He took a leather folder from his pocket, opened it, and displayed a badge and an I.D. card. “Now then, young lady, you’re entitled to remain silent if you want to. If you answer questions anything you say may be used against you. You’re entitled to have an attorney at all stages of the proceedings.”

“She has an attorney,” Mason said. “I’m her lawyer. Now, tell her the specific crime of which she is accused.”

“She isn’t accused of anything yet,” the man said, “but we’re following a hot lead. For your information we want to question her about the murder of Moray Cassel, who lived in the Tallmeyer Apartments in Apartment Nine-o-six. Now then, you want to talk or don’t you?”

“Just a minute,” Mason said, “let me think.”

“You’d better think fast,” the man said. “We’re not out to frame anything on anybody, but unless this young lady can explain what her credit card was doing in the apartment with the murdered man she’s in trouble. If she can explain it, we’re perfectly willing to listen and to check on any leads she gives us.”

Mason said, “When was this man, Cassel, murdered?”

“Now, you’re asking questions,” the man said. “We’re the ones who are asking questions and we want some answers fast.”

Mason said, “If you want some answers fast, you’d better grab that man at the end of the hall who’s working down there with a hammer and chisel and find out where he fits into the picture.”

The man grinned and said, “Don’t worry, buddy, he’s one of our men. We’ve had this room under surveillance since early this morning, hoping that somebody would come in. We were sort of looking for a male accomplice. You triggered our visit.”

Mason said to Stella Grimes, “Show him your credentials, Stella.”

Stella Grimes reached for her purse.

“Now, take it easy, you two,” one of the officers said, “nothing fast or there’s going to be a lot of trouble. Just hand me your purse, sister, and I’ll look in it first.”

She handed him the purse. He looked through it, then handed it back to her and said, “Okay, pull out your credentials.”

Stella Grimes pulled out her license as a private detective.

Mason said, “For your information, I’m baiting a trap myself. Stella Grimes is a private detective, an employee of the Drake Detective Agency, and she’s been here masquerading as Diana Deering from San Francisco.”

The officer regarded the credentials thoughtfully. Then said, “And Diana Deering is an alias for Diana Douglas?”

“I didn’t say that,” Mason said.

“You didn’t have to.”

There was a moment of silence. Mason said, “I believe I have a professional obligation as an attorney and as a citizen to cooperate with the police in investigating serious charges.

“Since you apparently thought this was Diana Douglas I advised you as to her true identity and occupation. That’s as far as we’re going.”

“Why did you want a double?” the officer asked.

“No comment.”

“Anything to do with Moray Cassel?”

“No comment.”

“Now, look,” the officer said, “if this Diana Douglas happens to be your client — oh, oh, that’s the angle, Bill... Or is it?”

The officer addressed as Bill disgustedly pushed the credit card back in his pocket. “Well.” he said, “we’ve tipped our hand now.”

The other officer said to Mason, “Any attempt on your part to communicate with Diana Douglas will be considered as a hostile act by law-enforcement officers and may make you an accessory.”

Mason said to Stella Grimes, “Take the phone, Stella, put through a call for Diana Douglas.”

The officer called Bill threw a shoulder block and pushed her out of the way of the telephone. He picked up the phone, said to the operator, “This is a police emergency call. Get me police headquarters in San Francisco immediately.”

The second officer stood guard, protecting the telephone.

A moment later the officer at the telephone said, “This is the Los Angeles police, Bill Ardley talking. We want you to pick up a Diana Douglas for questioning. She works for the Escobar Import and Export Company. She has a BankAmerica credit card issued in her name... You folks gave us a tip that she was in Los Angeles at the Willatson Hotel, registered as Diana Deering. That’s a bum steer. She’s probably in San Francisco at the present time. Pick her up for questioning, and then notify us in Room Seven-sixty-seven at the Willatson Hotel... You got my name okay? This is Bill Ardley of— Oh, you know me, eh?... That’s right, I worked with you a year ago on that Smith case... Well, that’s fine. I’ll appreciate anything you can do. Get on this immediately, will you? And when you pick her up ask her first rattle out of the box where her BankAmerica credit card is. If she says she lost it, find out when she lost it... Okay. G’by.”

The officer depressed the connecting lever with his finger rapidly several times until he got the hotel operator. Then he said, “This is the Los Angeles police, operator. Put this phone out of service until we stop by the switchboard and give you instructions to the contrary. We’ll take all incoming calls. No outgoing calls, no matter who makes the call, unless it’s identified as being police business. You got that? Okay.”

The officer hung up the telephone, settled himself spraddle-legged across one of the straight-back chairs. “Okay, my lawyer friend,” he said, “now suppose you start doing a little talking.”

“On the other hand, suppose I don’t,” Mason said.

“We wouldn’t like that,” the officer said.

“Start not liking it, then,” Mason said. “I’m leaving.”

“Oh, no, you aren’t! Not for a while.”

“Do I take it,” Mason asked, “that you’re intending to hold us here?”

The officer smiled affably, nodded. “I’m going to do the best I can.”

“Now, that might not be very smart,” Mason said. “If you put me under arrest you’re laying yourself open for suit for unlawful arrest, and this young woman is—”

“Take it easy,” the officer interrupted. “I’m making this play for your own good. You may thank me for it later — both of you.”

“That credit card,” Mason said, “is that a clue in the murder?”

The officer said, “What do you think of the Dodgers’ chances this year?”

“Pretty good,” Mason said.

“Now then,” the officer went on, “we’d like to know when was the last time you saw Diana Douglas, what you talked about at that time, and what you told her.”

“You know I can’t betray the confidence of a client,” Mason said. “What do you think of the Dodgers’ chances?”

“Pretty good,” the officer said. He turned to Stella Grimes. “You don’t have any professional immunity,” he said. “You’re a private detective, you have a license. You have to cooperate with the police. What brought you here?”

Stella Grimes looked helplessly at Mason.

“He’s right,” Mason said, “tell him.”

She said, “Mr. Mason telephoned the Drake Detective Agency where I work and asked for me to come over here and go under the name of Diana Deering, and if anyone asked for me at the desk using the code figures thirty-six twenty-four thirty-six I was to answer.”

“Anybody come?” the officer asked.

Again she looked at Mason.

“Tell him,” Mason said. “You’re a witness. He’s investigating a homicide.”

She said, “A man came here and acted rather peculiarly.”

“In what way?”

“He acted as if he might be trying to put across some sort of a blackmail scheme.”

“And what did you tell him?”

She said, “I didn’t tell him anything. I let Mr. Mason do the talking.”

“And what did Mr. Mason tell him?”

“I wouldn’t know. I left the room. I got a signal to act as Mr. Mason’s girl friend who had been enjoying a rendezvous in the hotel and I went over to him, kissed him, and walked out.”

“Leaving Mason and this man alone?”

“Yes.”

“What did the man look like?”

“He was about — well, in his middle thirties. He had slick, black hair and was — well groomed. His trousers were creased. His shoes were shined, his nails manicured.”

The officer frowned. “Did that man give you any name?” he asked.

Again she looked at Mason.

Mason nodded.

“He said his name was Cassel.”

“I’ll be damned,” the officer muttered.

There was silence for several seconds. Then the officer said, “So, you left the room and left Mason and this man alone here?”

“That’s right.”

“Where did you go?”

“Tell him,” Mason said.

She said, “Mr. Mason gave me a coded signal to follow the man who left here. I found it was absurdly easy. He had parked his Cadillac automobile right in front of the entrance and had tipped the doorman to take care of it for him. I got the license number of the automobile. It was WVM five-seven-four. I hopped in a taxicab, and when this man came out and got in his Cadillac automobile I told the cab driver to follow.”

“And you followed him?”

“Yes.”

“To where?”

“To the Tallmeyer Apartments.”

“Then what?”

“Then I used a few evasive tactics so I didn’t lay myself wide open to the taxi driver so he could pick up a good fee by tipping off the driver of the Cadillac that he had been followed.”

“Then what?”

“Then I came back and reported.”

The officer looked at Mason. “Take it from there, Mason,” he said.

Mason said, “I’m an attorney, acting in a professssional capacity, representing a client. I have no information in which you would be interested except that I have no comment on what this young woman has said.”

“But,” the officer said, “you immediately traced the license number of that automobile, did you not?”

“No comment.”

“And found out it was registered to Moray Cassel in Apartment Nine-o-six at the Tallmeyer Apartments?”

“No comment.”

“And,” the officer went on, “if it appears that you passed that information on to Diana Douglas we’ve got just about the most perfect, airtight murder case you ever encountered. Even the great Mason isn’t going to beat this one.”

“Still no comment,” Mason said.

The officer took out a pack of cigarettes, selected one, offered a smoke to Stella Grimes, then to Mason, and last to his brother officer.

“Well,” he said, “we seem to have uncovered a live lead.”

They smoked in silence, the officer quite evidently thinking over the information Stella Grimes had given him.

There was more desultory conversation for some twenty minutes. Then the phone rang. The officer answered the phone. A slow smile spread over his face.

“Okay,” he said.

He turned to Mason and waved toward the door. “You and this young woman are as free as the air,” he said. “Go any place you want.”

Mason held the door open for Stella Grimes. “Bring your things,” he said. “We’ve finished. That means they’ve picked her up in San Francisco.”