The Case of the Fabulous Fake

2

At ten minutes after nine Mason entered his private office through the hall door, smiled a greeting at Della Street, said, “Anybody in the outer office, Della?”

She shook her head and then said, “Gertie.”

“Well, Gertie is supposed to be there.”

“Gertie’s there, hitting on all six,” Della said. “Gertie is so excited she is running around in circles.”

“What’s excited Gertie?”

“Your mysterious client of yesterday.”

Mason’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “We’ve heard from her again?”

“Gertie has.”

“What do you mean?”

Della motioned to Mason’s desk. On top of the mail was a folded newspaper, opened at the section of CLASSIFIED ADS and folded so that the so-called “Personals” were on top.

Mason walked over to the desk, seated himself in the cushioned swivel chair, picked up the paper, let his eyes glance down the section of personal columns, and noticed the ad which had been marked in the margin:

“Well, I’ll be darned,” Mason said. “Do you suppose that’s our gal?”

“Sounds like it,” Della said.

“Hang it,” Mason said, “that’s what comes of taking a case sight-unseen. Now, that gal is mixed up in some adventure which is going to get her into trouble just as sure as shooting. And when she gets into trouble she’s going to look to us to get her out.”

Mason hesitated a moment, then jerked his thumb toward the telephone. “Paul Drake, Della.”

Della dialed Paul Drake’s unlisted number and, in a moment, said, “Just a minute, Paul, Perry wants to talk with you.”

She handed the phone over to Mason.

“Hi, Paul,” Mason said, “are you too busy to come down to the office for a minute?”

“Never too busy but what the scent of new business causes me to come running!”

“Come running, then,” Mason said, and hung up.

Della Street said, “Is it ethical for you to tell Paul...?”

“It isn’t ethical for me to tell him anything,” Mason said, “not at this stage of the game — at least the way I interpret ethics. But I’m going to find out something about who this gal is seeing and what it’s all about.”

“Any idea?” Della asked.

Mason said, “I think she came down from San Francisco.”

“Why?”

“The way she’s dressed for one thing,” Mason said, “plus the time of day she came in. She took a plane down, checked her baggage somewhere, probably at the Willatson Hotel, took a cab, came up here... And she had probably arranged to put that ad in the paper before she ever came down here. As I remember it, it takes a day or two to get an ad of that sort published... If that’s correct, she telephoned the Willatson Hotel for a reservation.”

“And so?” Della asked.

“And so,” Mason said, “we’re going to find out a little bit about our mysterious client, a little bit more than the three measurements.”

Paul Drake’s code knock sounded on the corridor door of the private office. Della opened the door. “Hi, Paul,” she said. “How’s the digestive system?”

“Better, thanks, Beautiful. You folks haven’t had me sitting up all night on cases where I’ve had to eat soggy hamburgers at an office desk. I’ve dined out on good freshly cooked meat now for six days in succession.”

“Business that bad?” Mason asked.

“Lousy,” Drake said.

“Maybe we can help,” Mason told him. “But this isn’t a big case, it’s just a routine job.”

“Who’s the client?” Drake asked.

“I am,” Mason said.

“Oh, oh.”

“He wants to find out about a client,” Della said.

Drake settled himself in the overstuffed leather chair, threw his legs over the rounded arm, took out a notebook and a fountain pen, and said, “Shoot.”

Mason said, “I think I let a client down, Paul.”

“How come?”

Mason hesitated, spoke cautiously. “I can’t tell you the details without violating the code of ethics, Paul. An attorney is supposed to protect the confidences of his client. Any statements that are made are completely confidential.

“Now then, with that in mind I want you to know that I am afraid I gave a client advice which fell short of the advice I should have given.”

“Male or female?” Drake asked.

“That also is confidential,” Mason said.

“Well, how did you fail this client?”

“I didn’t tell the client the things the client should have known for the client’s own good,” Mason said. “I let the client diagnose the case and accepted that diagnosis.”

“How come?”

Mason said, “Every once in a while a client wants to diagnose the case, just as a patient will come to a doctor and say, ‘Doctor, I have indigestion. I want you to give me something for indigestion.’

“If the doctor simply gives the patient something for indigestion he is untrue to his profession.

“What the doctor should do is ask about symptoms connected with the indigestion. He finds out that the patient has been having pains in the chest and occasionally down the left arm, so he suspects something entirely different from indigestion. He has a cardiograph made and finds out that the patient is suffering from a high cholesterol count. He doesn’t give the patient medicine for indigestion, but puts the patient on a diet consisting of no fats, no dairy foods, but high in proteins.

“The patient gets better.

“If, on the other hand, the doctor had accepted the patient’s self-diagnosis, the patient would probably have been dead inside of twelve months.”

“That,” Drake said, “is rather elementary, isn’t it, Perry?”

“I’m making it elementary,” Mason explained, “because I want to show you the situation.

“This client came here and diagnosed the case and prescribed the remedy. Unfortunately, I accepted the statements at face value. I shouldn’t have done that. Now then, in order to appease my own conscience, I want information.”

“About the client?” Drake asked.

“About various and sundry things,” Mason said. “They do not necessarily have any direct bearing on the situation. They may not even directly concern the client. But they are sufficiently significant so they concern me.”

“All right,” Drake said, “you’ve now reached your thumb by going all the way around your elbow. You want me to do a job. It’s a job in which you are the client. You’ll get the best service I can give and you’ll get a discount on the bill. What do I do?”

Mason took the folded newspaper and handed it to Drake.

“That ad,” he said.

Drake read the ad aloud:

Drake looked up from the newspaper. “That’s the ad that interests you?”

Mason nodded.

“Your party evidently has three rooms,” Drake said... “No, wait a minute, thirty-six is mentioned twice. It may be two rooms, thirty-six and twenty-four, and then the person putting in the ad signs it thirty-six to show that that’s the room where contact is to be made.”

“Could be,” Mason said.

Drake regarded him shrewdly. “And it could be some sort of a code,” he said.

Mason was silent.

“Exactly what is it you want me to do?” the detective inquired.

“Find out everything you can about who put that ad in the paper and the person for whom the message was intended.”

Drake said, “That may be a big job, or it may be rather simple. The Willatson Hotel is a commerical-type hotel. When there are conventions in town it’s probably about ninety-five percent occupied. At other times the percentage of occupancy may be sixty to seventy percent. In any event there will be too many people just to go at it blind. I can find out who’s in room thirty-six and who’s in room twenty-four. That may not mean anything.

“The best bet is to try to get a line on whoever put the ad in the paper by making a dummy reply in the press, saying something like:

Drake made a little gesture and said, “Of course, that’s just off the top of my head, Perry. I’d have to word it a little more carefully than that. I’d have to be subtle, but even so the chances are that there’d be some false note in the reply which would alarm the quarry and let your client know that some outsider was checking.”

“Well,” Mason said thoughtfully, “I don’t know as there’s any reason why a situation of that sort should be fatal... It might send the client back to me and then I could...” His voice trailed away into silence.

“What’s the matter?” Drake asked. “Can’t you phone your client at the Willatson Hotel and—”

“I didn’t say I thought the person who put this ad in was my client,” Mason said. “The client may well be the one to whom the ad is addressed.”

“In other words, you don’t know where to reach your client?”

“Come, come,” Mason said, “you haven’t been reading your decisions of the Supreme Court lately. Before I can be questioned I have to be advised of my constitutional rights and given an opportunity to consult a lawyer... I’ve given you a job to do. Get busy and do it.”

Drake thought for a moment and said, “This situation has overtones which intrigue the hell out of me, Perry, but, after all, you said it, you’ve given me a job to do. It’s up to me to get busy.”

Drake heaved himself up out of the chair. “When do you want reports?” he asked.

“As soon as you have something definite to report. No matter how trivial it seems to you, give me a line on it.”

“Day and night?” Drake asked.

“It’s not exactly that urgent,” Mason said. “Let’s say day and evening.”

“Okay,” Drake said, “day and evening it is. Any limit as to the number of people I can put on it?”

“Don’t go over five hundred dollars until you have asked me,” Mason said.

“With your discount,” Drake told him, “you can get quite a bit of investigative work done for five hundred bucks... I’ll be in touch, Perry.”

Mason and Della Street watched the detective out the door. Then Mason heaved a sigh, picked up the pile of papers on his desk, and said, “Well, Della, we’ve done all we can do. I guess now we’ll get to work.”

“How are we going to enter this on the books?” Della asked. “You take in three hundred dollars, you pay out five hundred, and we don’t even have a name for the client in the case.”

“Call her Miss Deficit then,” Mason said. “That will serve until we have a better name.”

“Perhaps,” Della mused, “it could be Miss Deceit.”

“She hasn’t deceived us,” Mason said. “At least we don’t know that she has. What we need is information. She has diagnosed her own case, prescribed her own remedy, and she may be wrong on both counts.”

Della Street picked up her shorthand notebook and pencil. “Well,” she observed, “we’re only starting the day two hundred dollars worse off than when you sat down at the desk.”