The Case of the Fan-Dancer's Horse

Chapter number 9

Mason left the rooming house, walked down the street rapidly for some twenty yards, then stopped suddenly as though he had forgotten something. Looking back over his shoulder, he sized up the neighborhood.

It was a typically cheap, low-rental district, with dilapidated stores on the street level; above them rooming houses, the cheaper type of offices, flats and apartments. Half of the buildings in the block were one-story and there was only one three-story building in sight.

The man lounging in front of the delicatessen store might or might not have been Drake’s detective. He seemed to pay no attention whatever to Mason, but stood there looking through the help-wanted ads in the paper. He was neither too well dressed nor too seedy; a man who had a gift for blending himself into his surroundings. The car, which was parked at the curb near him, was dingy in appearance, yet had no distinguishing marks which could readily be identified. There were no bent fenders, no cracked glass in the windows or windshield. The car was not dirty, nor yet was it clean.

Mason waited for five minutes, then Sheldon came out of the rooming house, carrying a suitcase, an overcoat thrown over his arm.

Mason kept his place until after Sheldon had turned the corner and the man who had been reading want ads had suddenly folded his paper, got in the nondescript car and driven away.

Then Mason went back to the rooming house, climbed the stairs, leaned over the counter, extended his flattened palm and smacked it down sharply on the button of the dome-shaped, nickel-plated bell on the counter.

The bell sounded its strident, unmusical summons.

After a couple of minutes, the door behind the counter opened. A woman thrust out an inquisitive, uncordial head, saw Mason, appraised him, smiled, raised her hands to her hair, came out and said, “What can I do for you?”

She was in the middle forties, heavily fleshed, and the body underneath the somewhat faded house dress quite evidently enjoyed the freedom of uninhibited motions which came with the absence of a girdle.

She was, however, not unattractive. Her face was full, but the skin was smooth, the complexion clear. Her face was well made up, and there was a friendly twinkle in her eyes as she placed thick forearms on the counter, leaned forward and smiled up at Perry Mason.

“Around three-thirty this morning,” Mason said, “you rented a room. I want to find out if you rented another one at about the same time.”

The smile left her face. “Three-thirty this morning?”

“That’s right.”

She shook her head. Her dead-pan face gave no clue to her thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t like to contradict you, but I happen to know almost the exact time when this room was rented.”

“Which room?”

Mason placed his finger on the register. “Arthur Sheldon. Room number five.”

“That was rented about three o’clock yesterday afternoon.”

“You rented it yourself?”

“Yes.”

“The man have any baggage with him?”

“A suitcase and an overcoat. Look, what’s it to you? Are you the law?”

“I’m not the law,” Mason said. “I’m a lawyer. I’m trying to find out something for a client.”

“Well, don’t drag us into it,” the woman said shortly, the face still wooden.

“I don’t want to drag anyone into anything. I’m trying to get someone out of something.”

“Well, of course, that’s different,” the woman said, her eyes searching Mason’s face. “Say, I’ve seen you before somewhere.”

“Possibly.”

“What’s your name?”

“Shall we say Smith?”

“I’ve seen your... I’ve seen your picture. You’re Perry Mason, the lawyer.”

Mason nodded.

“You do get people out of trouble, don’t you?”

“Sometimes.”

“When they’ve committed murders?”

Mason shook his head. “Not when they’ve committed murders. Sometimes when they’ve been accused of committing murders I’ve been able to prove they didn’t.”

“Well, that gets them out of it, doesn’t it?”

“Very effectively,” Mason admitted, smiling. “The man who registered wrote that name in your presence?”

“Yes.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Well, let’s see. He was young, that is, I call him young. Somewhere around twenty-seven or twenty-eight, I’d guess, and he had light hair and brown eyes. He’s of medium height and weighs oh, somewhere around a hundred and forty-five, I’d say, on a guess. He was wearing a gray double-breasted suit and I remember his overcoat was a very dark brown. He put it across the counter here while he signed the register.”

“And the girl with him?” Mason asked.

“Say, what are you trying to do?”

Mason kept his eyes completely innocent. “Trying to find out about the girl who was with him.”

“This isn’t that kind of a place.”

“I’m not suggesting she shared his room. I thought she was with him when he registered or that she may have had another room.”

The woman shook her head.

“Perhaps she came in later,” Mason said. “Rather a good-looking girl, quite short skirt, good figure, auburn haired, wearing a suit that had a pattern somewhat similar to a plaid.”

“How old?”

“Twenty-two or twenty-three.”

She shook her head slowly. “We don’t cater to that class.”

“She may have been all right.”

“No. If she looked like that and got a room here, she wouldn’t be all right. She’d either go to a boardinghouse or a hotel. This is a rooming house. I try to keep it clean. I can’t be responsible for everything that goes on but I know better than to rent rooms to dolls. No matter what they tell you, they’ll make trouble for you sooner or later. I keep the place pretty well filled up the way it is and if anyone like that came in I’d tell her the place was full.”

“You can’t say a woman like that wasn’t in here at any time during the evening.”

“Certainly not. I don’t stand at the head of the stairs keeping an eye on the corridors. I size people up when they come in. I do the best I can to run a respectable place but I’m not going to sit on the doorstep and watch everybody that comes upstairs. I’m not a chaperon. If there’s any noise, I stop it. If there’s anything offensive to the other guests, I get the thing cleaned up, but I don’t snoop.”

“Then this man Sheldon may have had a woman visit him?”

“Sure and what’s wrong with that? She may have been his sister, or...”

“I’m not trying to find any fault with the place,” Mason interrupted. “I’m merely trying to locate this young woman. It’s very important that I locate her and in case it interests you, I’m trying to help her.”

“I didn’t see her.”

“And you didn’t rent a room to anyone like that?”

“One thing could have happened, since you’re being so nice about it.”

“What?”

“When I go to bed at night I sometimes leave a sign on the counter stating that certain rooms are vacant; that the price of them is three dollars; that a person can register and put the money through this slot in the counter, take the key off the board, go in and go to sleep.”

“Isn’t that taking a chance?” Mason asked.

“It is and it isn’t. Rooms that will make you trouble are rented earlier in the evening — nearly all of them before midnight. After midnight it’s usually someone that can’t get hotel accommodations and is more or less desperate. I only have two or three rooms that I do that with. They’re the least desirable rooms. I add a dollar to the price and I don’t put that sign out until after midnight.”

“And last night one of those was rented?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“I wouldn’t know. I know that there were three one-dollar bills in the cash box under the slot in the counter this morning and that the key was gone.”

“What’s the name on the register?” Mason asked.

“That’s the point, there isn’t any name. That’s why I didn’t think of this room when you were looking at the register. Whoever took that room didn’t sign the register.”

Mason said, “Let’s go take a look at it.”

“You understand,” the landlady warned, “it’s probably a false lead. But if you’re sure this woman spent the night here, that’s where she’d have to be.”

“I’m not sure,” Mason said.

“Well, we’ll take a look.”

“She still in the room?”

“I don’t know. Suppose she is — then what? Are you going to talk with her?”

“Yes.”

“Not going to make any noise?”

“No noise, no commotion and no argument. I just want to see her, that’s all.”

“Will she be glad to see you?”

“She should be.”

“Okay. Come on.”

The landlady led the way down the corridor. Her broad figure undulated beneath the thin house dress. Sunlight coming through a window at the end of the hall silhouetted her big legs against the thin skirt. She stopped in front of the door of one of the inside rooms, glanced at Mason, then knocked on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again, more loudly. When there was still no answer she tried the knob.

The door was unlocked. It swung open. The key was on the inside of the lock and the metal tag which was wired to the key jangled against the door as it swung open.

“Well,” the woman said, “she’s been here and gone. Slept here and evidently got out early this morning, perhaps before I was up. In any event, I didn’t see her go out.”

The room was furnished similarly to the room Arthur Sheldon had occupied but there was only one window in it and that window opened into a narrow air shaft. Mason examined the bed. The person who had slept in it either had slept very soundly, or had occupied it for only a very brief interval. The sheets were hardly disturbed and there was only one indentation on the smooth surface of the pillow, an indentation which indicated a head had lain there in one position, quietly.

“Young,” the landlady said. “When they’re older they sleep all over the bed. Only a young person can crawl into bed and get out again and leave it looking like that.”

“A young person with a clear conscience?” Mason asked.

“I didn’t say that. I said she was young. Damn few young women who stay here bother about a conscience.” She picked a long strand of hair from the pillow, stretched it against the white sheet. “Auburn hair. Maybe it’s natural. It’s fine enough.”

Mason moved over to examine the washstand. The oblong mirror over the bowl gave back a slightly distorted view of his face. The lines of the window on the other side of the room showed in a weirdly warped pattern.

The thin carpet around the washstand was dark where water had been splashed, and the woman, following the direction of Mason’s eyes, said by way of explanation, “She stood in front of the wash basin and took a sponge bath. Women all do that, at least all the particular ones. I’d rather they’d do it than that they didn’t.”

She walked over to the bed, pulled back the covers, stood looking down at the sheets and said, almost musingly, “Make this up nice and smooth and a person wouldn’t ever know the sheets had been slept in. She was a dainty sleeper, all right.”

Mason examined the drops of water which were splashed on the washstand and which had not yet evaporated. There was a pale pink appearance about some of the globules.

“What are you looking for?” the woman asked over her shoulder. She was making up the bed now, carefully smoothing the sheets and pillow cases.

“Just looking around,” Mason said. He moved away from the washstand, walked over to the wastebasket, glanced into it, started to turn away, then stopped.

Something which had stuck to the side of the waste-basket caught a faint breath of air and fluttered so that it caught Mason’s attention.

The lawyer bent over the wastebasket.

A few of the loose white streamers from an ostrich plume had been dropped into the wastebasket apparently while they were still wet, and had stuck to the side of the basket. Now that the ends were dry they were quivering with every little current of air like the leaves of a tree.

The landlady was carefully folding back the top of the upper sheet.

Mason quickly retrieved the few slender feathery tendrils with thumb and forefinger. As he did so, he noticed what had caused them to stick to the side of the wastebasket. There was a faint, but nevertheless unmistakable, clot of red at the base of the feathers. Apparently an attempt had been made to wash it out but as the clot still remained, the white tendrils had been cut loose from the ostrich-plume fan and dropped into the wastebasket.

Mason opened his wallet, slipped the bits of feather into the billfold, and said to the landlady, “Well, I guess there’s no use waiting for her to come back.”

The woman stood back and critically surveyed the bed.

“If she’s young and she needs help, it’s a shame you can’t find her.” She stretched the frayed bedspread taut and tucked it in at the foot of the bed.

“It is indeed,” Mason said, and there was that in his voice which caused the landlady to jerk her head up and look at him sharply.