The Case of the Glamorous Ghost

Chapter number 5

The Belinda Apartments had an air of substance and dignity. It made no outward attempt to compete with the more ornate apartments in the neighborhood.

The clerk on duty regarded Mason and Della Street superciliously.

“Suzanne Granger,” Mason said.

“Your name, please.”

“Mason.”

“The initials?”

“The first name is Perry.”

If the name meant anything to him, the clerk gave no sign.

“Miss Granger is not in at present.”

“When will she be in?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t give you that information.”

“Do you know if she’s in the city?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I can’t help you.”

“I suppose,” Mason said, “you would place a message in her mailbox?”

“Of course.”

Mason extended his hand. The clerk, with punctilious formality, took a sheet of paper and an envelope from under the desk and handed them to Mason.

Mason took a fountain pen from his pocket, hesitated a moment, then wrote:

Mason pushed the note over toward Della Street, then suddenly said, “Wait a minute, I think I’ll set forth my business in detail. May I have another sheet of paper, please?”

The clerk silently handed him another sheet of paper.

Mason went over to a writing desk and seated himself. Della Street remained for a moment by the reception counter, then sliding her elbow along the edge of the counter, she moved slowly and apparently aimlessly toward the switchboard.

The clerk retired behind a glassed-in partition to a private office.

Mason waited for some three minutes, moving his pen as though writing on the paper. In the end he wrote simply:

Mason signed his name, folded the note, sealed it in the envelope, and taking it to the desk, wrote on the outside, “Miss Suzanne Granger.”

Della Street said in a low voice, “He stepped into the office and called apartment 360. He’s still talking on that call. You can see the line is still plugged in.”

The clerk looked out through the glass-enclosed office, almost immediately hung up the telephone, came out and extended his hand for the note.

Mason, with his pen poised over the envelope, said, “What’s the apartment number?”

For a moment the clerk hesitated but Mason’s poised pen had about it an air of compelling urgency. The clerk’s cold, slightly protruding eyes looked down at the point of the pen for a moment, then he said, “Apartment 358 — although that’s not at all necessary. Miss Granger will get the message.”

Mason wrote down the apartment under her name, handed the envelope to the clerk. “Will you see that she gets this as soon as she comes in?”

Mason took Della Street’s arm, escorted her across the lobby to the street.

“Now what?” she asked. “Suzanne Granger in 358, and he telephones to 360! What goes on?”

“That,” Mason told her, “is something we’ll have to find out. We don’t know that Suzanne lives in 358.”

“If you could find some way to drop a firecracker down the collar of that stuffed shirt at the desk it would suit me fine.”

Mason nodded. “I have a feeling, Della, that several people are conspiring to give us a run-around. Let’s just walk around the block.”

“Walk?”

“That’s right,” he said, holding her elbow and starting out briskly. “We’ll leave the car parked where it is and see what we can find. After all, there must be some way of getting service to these apartments, taking things in and out and... Here’s an alley. Let’s turn down here.”

They walked down the alley, came to the back of the apartment house and saw a wide door paneled by thick glass backed by steel mesh. Mason and Della Street entered and saw a sign, “Service Elevators.”

Mason pressed the button and a slow, lumbering elevator came up from the basement.

An assistant janitor looked at them inquiringly.

Mason said indignantly to Della Street, “The idea of treating us like garbage and telling us to go back to the service elevator.”

Della Street said angrily, “Well, some day we’ll get even with him.”

They entered the service elevator. Mason snapped, “Third floor... I take it you’ve no objection to garbage.”

“What’s the matter?” the janitor asked.

“Nothing,” Mason said irritably, as though spoiling for a fight. “I’m a vulgar tradesman, that’s all. The front elevators it seems are reserved for guests.”

“Well, don’t take it out on me. I have my troubles too,” the janitor said, pulling the control and sending the elevator slowly upward to the third floor. “Lots of people don’t like the guy you’re thinking about.”

Mason and Della Street got out, oriented themselves by studying the sequence of several apartment numbers and walked down to apartment 360.

Mason pressed the buzzer to the right of the door.

A woman in her early thirties, dressed to go out, opened the door, started to say something, then stepped back in open-mouthed surprise.

“You!” she exclaimed.

“Exactly,” Mason said and volunteered no other information, but simply stood there.

“Why, I... I... what are you doing here?”

“Maybe the clerk at the desk got his signals mixed.”

She had a look of such apparent consternation on her face that after a moment Mason said, “Or perhaps you did.”

“What do you want?”

Mason did not reply to her question. “You seem to know who I am,” he observed.

“I recognized you from your pictures. You’re Perry Mason, the lawyer, and this is your secretary, Miss Street.”

Mason remained perfectly silent.

“Well, you are, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yes. I want to talk to you.”

She looked at him frowningly. Then Mason and Della Street entered the apartment.

Mason noticed that there were morning newspapers on the floor, that someone had neatly snipped the account of the park ghost from the paper. There was no sign of what had been done with the clipping, but the newspaper lying on the floor bore mute testimony to someone’s interest in the case.

“Are you sure you are not the one who is confused, Mr. Mason, that you haven’t got me mixed up with someone else? I’m certain you have never even heard of me. My name is Ethel Belan.”

Mason caught Della Street’s eye and gave her a warning glance. “Sit down, Della,” he said, and settled himself comfortably in one of the overstuffed chairs.

“No, I’m not confused, Miss Belan. It is you I want to talk to. I’m representing the young woman you’ve been reading about,” Mason said, indicating the mutilated newspaper on the floor.

Ethel Belan started to say something, then apparently changed her mind and was silent.

“Nice apartment you have here,” Mason said.

“Thank you.”

“You get a view out over Sierra Vista Park from those front windows?”

“Yes, it’s nice having a park right across the street.”

“Double apartment?” Mason asked, looking around.

“Yes.”

“Someone share it with you?”

Ethel Belan looked around the apartment as though looking for something that would give her an inspiration as to how to handle the situation. Her eyes rested momentarily on the telephone, then moved toward the window. “I took a lease on it some time ago. I had a very congenial young woman living with me but she was transferred to a position back East and I... well, I haven’t as yet found anyone to share the apartment. I think it pays to go easy in matters of that sort.”

Mason nodded. “Do you smoke?” he asked Ethel Belan, taking his cigarette case from his pocket.

“No, thank you. I don’t smoke.”

“May I?”

“Of course.”

Mason lit a cigarette, settled back in the chair.

Ethel Belan said pointedly, “I was just going out.”

Again Mason nodded, smoking in silence.

“Mr. Mason, may I ask just what it is you want?”

Mason seemed somewhat surprised. “Don’t you know?”

“I... I’d prefer to have you tell me. I...”

Mason studied the smoke eddying upward from his cigarette. “In representing a client one has to exercise a certain amount of caution. It is very easy to make a statement which can perhaps be misconstrued and then the situation becomes complicated. It’s much better to let the other party make the statements and then either agree or disagree.”

“Well, Mr. Mason, I’ve got nothing in the world to talk to you about. I realize, of course, that you’re a highly successful and reputable lawyer, but...”

Mason’s eyes bored steadily into hers. “Was that your raincoat Eleanor was wearing?”

The question took her completely by surprise.

“Why,” she said, “I... oh, so that’s what brought you here! You traced the raincoat!”

Mason gave himself over to contemplation of the smoke spiraling upward from his cigarette.

“Mr. Mason, did Eleanor send you here or did you come here because of the raincoat?”

Mason abruptly turned to Ethel Belan. “We want to get her things,” he said.

“Why... I...”

“I brought my secretary along,” Mason said, “in case there should be any packing to be done.”

“Well, I... what gave you the idea that I had any of Eleanor’s things here, Mr. Mason?”

Mason shook his head.

“I understand her mind was a complete blank as to where she had been and what had happened for the last two weeks,” Ethel Belan said.

Mason’s smile was as enigmatic as that of the sphinx.

“Very well,” Ethel Belan said abruptly, “I guess it’s all right. You’re a reputable attorney and you wouldn’t be here asking for her things unless she’d sent you for them. This way, please.”

She led the way into one of the two bedrooms, opened a closet door and said, “All of those things on the hangers are hers. That’s her suitcase in the closet, that’s her two-suiter there, and...”

“And her overnight bag, I take it,” Mason said, indicating the red and white overnight bag.

“Exactly.”

Mason said quite casually to Della Street, “You’ll try packing them as well as you can, Della?”

Della Street nodded.

“We may as well go out and sit down,” Mason said. “Della Street will pack the things.”

“I... I have an appointment, Mr. Mason. I... I’ll wait here and close up as soon as Miss Street has them packed. Perhaps I can help.”

Mason nodded.

The two women took clothes from the hangers, put them in the suitcases. Ethel Belan opened a drawer and took out handkerchiefs, lingerie and nylon stockings which she handed to Della. Della Street packed them silently.

“Well, I guess that’s all,” Ethel Belan said.

“We will, of course, trust your discretion in the matter,” Mason said significantly.

Ethel Belan hesitated a moment, then said, “Actually, Mr. Mason, there was another week’s rent due.”

“Oh yes,” Mason said, taking his wallet from his pocket. “How much was it?”

“Eighty-five dollars.”

Mason hesitated perceptibly.

“Of course,” Ethel Belan said rapidly, “that’s not exactly half of what I’m paying for the apartment but that was the price that was agreed upon.”

“I understand,” Mason said, counting out a fifty, three tens and a five.

He handed the currency to Ethel Belan.

“I’m wondering,” he said, “since I’m acting in a representative capacity and will necessarily have to submit an expense account, if you’d mind...?”

“Not at all,” she said.

She took a piece of paper and wrote:

She signed it, and Mason gravely pocketed the receipt, said, “If you can carry the overnight bag, Della. I’ll carry the other two.”

Ethel Belan’s curiosity suddenly got the better of her. “I don’t understand how you... how you got up here,” she said.

“After the clerk phoned you,” Mason said, “we felt that we could hardly count on his co-operation.”

“But didn’t... you didn’t ask for me!”

Mason smiled. “An attorney has to be discreet. He has to be very discreet, Miss Belan.”

“I see,” she said gravely. “I hope you can be as discreet about my connection with this as you are about other things, Mr. Mason. I have a rather responsible position in a downtown department store. This happens to be my afternoon off. I... you just happened to catch me at home.”

“Exactly,” Mason said, “and I think it might be well if you didn’t mention our visit to anyone.”

“How are you going to get the baggage out?”

“We’ll arrange for that,” Mason said. “Come on, Della. Can you wait about five minutes before you go out, Miss Belan?”

She glanced at her watch. “I’m sorry, I can’t. I’ve got to leave. I’ll ride down in the... oh, I understand, you must have come up the freight elevator.”

Mason nodded.

“Well then,” she said, “I... oh, I see, and you’ll be taking the baggage out the same way... well, thanks a lot, Mr. Mason.”

She gave him her hand and a cordial smile, shook hands more perfunctorily with Della Street and ushered them out of the apartment.

She went at once toward the passenger elevator. Mason and Della Street walked around the corridor to the freight elevator.

“Think she’ll tell the clerk?” Della Street asked.

“Darned if I know,” Mason said, “but we have the baggage now. It’s evidently Eleanor’s baggage and we’ll keep it.”

Della let out a long sigh. “Lord! My head is still whirling. I was never so surprised in my life to discover that Ethel wasn’t Suzanne Granger, or rather — well, you know what I mean. And as for the bluff you pulled! I almost gasped out loud when I heard you ask her so casually if that was her raincoat.”

“Evidently it was,” Mason said. “You see it’s the dry season here and when Eleanor packed she certainly didn’t put in a raincoat, that is, not a heavy, opaque raincoat like the one she was wearing when the police picked her up. If she’d had a raincoat in her suitcase it would have been one of those transparent plastic types that can be folded into a small, compact bundle.”

“But why in the world would Eleanor have wanted to take off her clothes there in the apartment, put on a raincoat, go over to the park and start dancing around in the moonlight, and why would Ethel Belan have given her the raincoat and...”

“Let’s not overlook one point,” Mason said. “She may not have given Eleanor the raincoat. Eleanor may simply have appropriated that. It was evidently Ethel Belan’s raincoat, that’s all. She didn’t tell us anything else.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Della Street said.

“Of course,” Mason pointed out, “she acted on the assumption that we knew. Now notice that this receipt covers rent from the sixteenth to the twenty-third. It’s the seventeenth now. You can see that Ethel Belan has an eye on the financial end of things, and since the rental was by the week we can assume that the rental started either on the second or the ninth of this month.”

“But Eleanor left home on the evening of the second.”

“That’s right,” Mason said, “so probably rental started on the ninth, which leaves her whereabouts from the second to the ninth as a problem.”

“And did you notice that Ethel Belan referred to her as Eleanor Corbin, not as Eleanor Hepner?”

“Very definitely,” Mason said.

“And what in the world was she doing in that apartment from the ninth to the sixteenth...?”

The freight elevator lumbered to a stop. The door rumbled open.

Mason stood aside for Della to enter, then, carrying the two suitcases, carefully holding them so it could not be told whether they were empty or packed, said to the elevator man, “A job of baggage repair and he sends us to the tradesmen’s entrance! The elevators are reserved for guests!”

“I know, I know,” the janitor sympathized. “They do funny things here. If you’d given the bellboy a dollar to take them down you could have gone down the front way, but...”

“We should give a bellboy a dollar!” Mason exclaimed. “A dollar for what? A dollar to carry suitcases across the lobby to an automobile...?”

The elevator rattled and swayed on downward, and came to a stop at the ground floor. Mason and Della Street emerged into the corridor, then through the heavy doors into the alley.

Mason said to Della Street, “You walk around and get the car, Della. Drive around here to the alley and pick me up. I’ll wait with the baggage.”

“Why not you get the car and I’ll...”

“Someone,” Mason said with a grin, “might try to take the baggage away from you.”

Mason stood by the three pieces of baggage, all decorated in red and white checkerboards, watching Della Street’s trim figure as she hurried down the alley, then turned into the street. Some three minutes later she was back with the car. Mason loaded the baggage into the trunk. Della Street slid over from the driver’s seat and Mason got in behind the wheel.

“Where to?” she asked.

“How about your apartment?” Mason asked. “This luggage is rather conspicuous and the office may have some people who would notice. It will probably be described in the press later on.”

Della Street nodded.

Mason drove the car through the afternoon traffic, stopped at an intersection and motioned to a boy who was selling newspapers.

Della Street skimmed through the early evening edition while Mason continued to drive the car.

“Well!” she exclaimed.

“Good coverage?” Mason asked.

“I’ll say. The newspapermen seem to have taken particular delight in letting you realize that you’re persona non grata.”

“How come?”

“Evidently they felt that you wanted to avoid publicity so they gave you plenty. Of course it’s a nice story. Heiress identified by wealthy family. High-priced attorney retained to control publicity and represent the young woman in any action that may be filed. Chief, when you come right down to it, the family certainly did a strange thing, didn’t they?”

Mason nodded.

“Coming in with a retainer of that sort — good Lord, that’s the type of retainer you’d expect in a murder case.”

Again Mason nodded.

“And this talk about protecting the family from publicity — when you stop to think of it, it was inevitable that the things they did would make publicity, ten times as much publicity as they’d have otherwise received.”

Again Mason nodded.

“Well, you’re a big help I must say,” Della Street said.

“I was simply agreeing with you.”

“Well, it just hit me all of a sudden how peculiar it was for people to come to you and ask you to handle the publicity and... well, they said they wanted things minimized, but what has happened has just transformed a small story into a big story.

“Perry Mason, the famous criminal attorney, retained by the family, fires the doctor, spirits the patient to a private sanitarium in an ambulance that uses its siren to go through signals at sixty miles an hour so it can’t be followed. Nobody knows where the patient is. The wealthy family, the background, the trips to Europe, picture of the father. Story about an elopement with Douglas Hepner. Good Lord, Chief, it’s completely incongruous. The very things that they told you they were doing to control publicity have resulted in smearing the thing all over the front page.”

Again Mason nodded.

“I take it,” she said, “your thinking is in advance of mine and may I ask when this idea which has now hit me with such terrific impact first occurred to you?”

“When they handed me the twenty-five-hundred-dollar check,” Mason said.

“Well,” she told him, “I certainly swung late on that one! Why in the world do you suppose they did anything like that?”

“Because, as Olga Jordan so aptly expressed it, judging from the scrapes Eleanor has been in before, this one is a lulu.”

“Well,” she said, “it’ll be interesting to interview Suzanne Granger and see what her connection is. I take it she’s a third point in a triangle.”

“Could be,” Mason said.

Della Street, piqued at the lawyer’s reticence, settled back against the cushions and remained silent until they reached her apartment house.

“Want me to call a bellboy?” she asked.

“No,” Mason said, “I’ll go up with you. In that way people will think you’ve been out on a case and you’re just coming back with your suitcases. Hang it, I wish these things weren’t so conspicuous.”

“We’re pretty likely to find the lobby completely deserted,” Della Street said, “and, after all, we dash around on cases so much that people take us more or less for granted.”

They parked the car. Mason opened the trunk and said, “You take the overnight bag, I’ll take the other two, Della.”

They entered the apartment house, found the lobby deserted, and went to Della Street’s apartment.

“What should I do with these things?” she asked. “Unpack them and put the clothes on hangers, or just leave them...?”

“Leave them packed,” Mason said. “I take it you checked through the articles as you were packing them, Della?”

“Just the clothes you’d expect,” Della said. “Some of them hadn’t even been unpacked. She has an assortment of dresses, underwear, lots of stockings. I presume her more personal things are in the overnight bag.”

“Let’s just take a look in there,” Mason said. “We’d better see what we have.”

“Suppose it’s locked?” Della Street asked, regarding the formidable catches.

“If it is,” Mason said, “we’ll get a locksmith and unlock it. I want to see what’s in there.”

Della Street tried the catches. They snapped up and she pulled back the lid.

“Oh-oh!” she exclaimed. “What a beautiful bag!”

The interior had been carefully designed to hold an array of creams and lotions around the edges in special containers. The inside of the lid held a beautiful beveled mirror, and a small margin between the mirror and the edge of the lid was fitted with loops containing a complete manicure outfit. The space in the center of the bag held some folded stockings, some lingerie and a nightgown.

Della Street held the nightgown up against her shoulders. “Well, well, well,” she said.

It was one of the new short nightgowns, not much longer than a pajama top.

“Brevity,” Mason said, “is supposed to be the soul of wit.”

“You couldn’t ask for anything wittier than this then,” Della Street said.

“Well, we live and learn,” Mason told her, grinning. “Personally I guess I’m getting a bit out of date.”

“You are!” she exclaimed. “How do you suppose this makes me feel?”

Abruptly she laughed to hide her confusion, folded the garments, put them back in the overnight bag. She casually unscrewed the lid from one of the jars and said, “Eleanor evidently gives a great deal of thought to her skin.”

“Some skin,” Mason said. “You should have seen her in the hospital when she threw back the covers and started to get up.”

“Good-looking?”

Mason smiled reminiscently.

“I suppose,” Della Street said somewhat bitterly, “she was all unconscious of your presence and just threw back the covers. A girl who is accustomed to wearing nightgowns that short should be a little discreet about tossing covers back.”

“While brevity,” Mason said, “may be the soul of wit, it isn’t supposed to have anything to do with discretion.”

Della Street placed an exploring middle finger into the jar of cream, said, “Well, I’ll see how this expensive cream works on the skin of a working girl and...”

Abruptly she stopped.

“What is it?” Mason asked.

“Something in here,” she said, “something hard.”

Her middle finger brought out a blob of cream.

“It has a hard interior, Chief. It feels like glass or...”

Della Street reached for a package of cleansing tissue, rubbed the object in the tissue and then opened the paper.

“Good Lord!” Mason exclaimed.

The facets of a beautifully cut diamond coruscated in glittering brilliance.

“Anything else?” Mason asked after a moment.

Again Della Street dipped her finger into the cream jar. Again she came up with a hard object. This time the cleansing tissue removed the cream and disclosed the beautiful deep green of an emerald.

“I don’t know much about gems,” Della Street said, “but those certainly look to me like the cream of the crop.”

“No pun intended, I take it,” Mason said.

She looked blank for a moment, then smiled and said, “Well, let’s see what else is in the cream — or shall we?”

Mason nodded.

By the time Della Street had thoroughly explored the jar of cream they had a collection of fifteen diamonds, three emeralds and two rubies.

“There are,” she pointed out, “quite a few jars in here in addition to various bottles and...”

“We’ll take a look,” Mason said.

“And what do you suppose Eleanor will say when she finds out that we have taken liberties with her overnight bag?”

“We’ll find out what she says,” Mason told her, “but we’ll look.”

“She may not like it.”

“I’m her attorney.”

“She didn’t say so — only the family said so.”

Mason was thoughtful for a moment. “That’s right,” he agreed.

“But do we go ahead?”

“Quite definitely we go ahead, Della.”

Twenty minutes later Della Street surveyed the glittering assortment of gems.

“Good Lord, Chief, there’s a fortune here. What do we do with them?”

Mason said, “We count them. We make as much of an inventory as we can. We wrap them individually in cleansing tissue so we don’t mar them in any way.”

“And then what?” Della Street said.

“Then,” Mason said, “we put them in a safe place.”

“And what’s your suggestion of a safe place?”

Mason’s eyes narrowed. “Now,” he said, “you have asked a highly pertinent question.”

“The office safe?”

Mason shook his head.

“A safe-deposit box?”

“That’s a little awkward.”

“What do you mean?”

“We don’t know what these gems are. They may be her personal property. They may have been stolen. They may have been smuggled. They may represent very concrete and perhaps very damaging evidence.”

“And under those circumstances, what?”

“Under those circumstances,” Mason said, “I find myself in a peculiar situation. I am, of course, charged with protecting the interests of my client, Eleanor Corbin or Eleanor Hepner, as the case may be.”

“And the good name of the Corbin family,” Della Street pointed out. “That, I believe, was considered of paramount importance when the retainer was given.”

Mason nodded.

“And so?” she asked.

“So,” Mason said, “I’m going to telephone Paul Drake. He’ll send an armed detective down here to act as a bodyguard for you. The detective will escort you to one of the best hotels in the city. Pick the one that you like the best and where you’d like to stay if you had an unlimited expense account.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“You will,” Mason said, “register under your true name so that there will be no question of concealment. You will have your luggage with you, and immediately after you have registered and been shown to a room you will go down to the office and tell the clerk that you have some valuables you want to leave in the hotel safe. In those large hotels they have very fine safes and safe-deposit boxes. They’ll give you a box. You’ll put the package of gems in the box. The clerk will lock up the box and hand you the key.”

“And then what?”

“Then,” Mason said, “you will start leading a double life. You will come to work as usual during the daytime, but during the late afternoons and evenings you will be the glamorous and mysterious Miss Street who flutters around the hotel as a paying guest, putting on that tight elastic bathing suit of yours, dipping into the pool, being sedate and reserved but not at all forbidding. And in case any amiable and attractive young chap starts making wolf calls you will be archly amused. You will let him buy you a drink and a dinner and Paul Drake’s operatives, who will be keeping you under surveillance, will promptly proceed to find out all about the young man’s background and whether he’s merely acting the part of a wolf with thoroughly dishonorable intentions, or whether his interest is aroused by things other than your face, figure and personality.”

“And the key to the hotel lock box?” she asked.

“The key, just as soon as you get it,” Mason said, “will be given to me and I’ll see that it is put in a safe place so that in case any slick pickpocket should go through your purse while you’re dancing or drinking he would find nothing more than the expense money — which is to be furnished by the Corbins.”

“You make it sound very exciting and attractive,” Della Street said.

“In that case,” Mason told her, “we’ll make immediate arrangements for the bodyguard.”

Mason stepped to the phone, called Paul Drake’s number.

“Perry Mason talking. Put Paul on the line, will you? Is he there?... Fine, thanks.”

A moment later, when Paul Drake came on the line, Mason said, “Paul, I want a bodyguard. I want someone who is dependable, tough and wide-awake, someone who knows his way around.”

“Okay.”

“How soon can I have him?”

“Half or three-quarters of an hour if you’re in a hurry.”

“I’m in a hurry.”

“Where do you want him?”

“Della Street’s apartment.”

“Okay. Who do you want him to bodyguard?”

“Della.”

“The devil!”

“I want someone who packs a rod and knows how to use it.” Mason said. “Then Della is going to a high-class hotel. I want her kept unostentatiously under surveillance at the hotel.”

“Now wait a minute,” Drake said, “you said a high-class hotel?”

“The best.”

“We can’t do it unless it happens to be a place where I know the house detective, and even then...”

“What do you mean, you can’t do it?” Mason interrupted.

“It isn’t being done, that’s all. You can’t hang around a place like that keeping a woman as good-looking as Della under surveillance without their knowing about it and then they bring you in and...”

“Can’t you have people register as guests and...?”

“Oh sure, if you want to go that strong. That thing runs into money at a good hotel, but if you want to have them register as guests there’s nothing to it.”

“Okay,” Mason said, “have them register as guests. Have one fellow who is young, who can act as an escort in case it becomes advisable, and one fellow who is old and grizzled and tough and is more interested in the financial section than figures in a bathing suit, someone who will not be hypnotized by the smooth sheen of a nylon stocking, but who will keep his eye on surroundings. And get more men if you have to.”

“What’s the idea?” Drake asked.

“I can’t tell you right now. How are you coming with your homework?”

“Look,” Drake said, “things are happening. Did you see the papers?”

“Della told me we’d attracted quite a bit of publicity.”

“That’s only half of it,” Drake said. “Now look, Perry, I’m damned if I can find where Eleanor ever married this Hepner guy. It was supposed to have taken place at Yuma, Arizona. We’ve combed through the records, we’ve even figured they might have married under assumed names, and we’ve checked all of the marriages that were performed on the second and third of August. We’ve managed to account for everyone. Furthermore we’ve gone over details in every automobile accident that took place anywhere along the road to Yuma on the night of the second and we can’t find anything. We can’t get a trace of Douglas Hepner any—”

“What about his mother in Salt Lake?” Mason asked.

“Now there is really something.”

“What?”

“The so-called mother,” Drake said, “turns out to be a beautiful brunette babe about twenty-seven years old with lots of this and that and these and those, who lives in a swank apartment when she’s there but who flits around like a robin in the springtime. She catches planes on short notice. She goes hither and yon, and...”

“And she poses as Douglas Hepner’s mother?” Mason asked.

“Apparently only over the telephone. The registration is Mrs. Sadie Hepner on the apartment.”

“Good Lord,” Mason said, “another wife?”

“We can’t tell.”

“What does she say?”

“She doesn’t say. Apparently she hung up the telephone after talking with you, and got the hell out of there. In fact it’s very possible that she was in the process of packing up when you phoned her. She returned this morning from some mysterious mission, packed up and left the place within about fifteen minutes of the time you called her. She took a flock of suitcases with her, got into her nice, shiny Lincoln automobile, told the garage attendant she was headed for Denver and took off. She had gone by the time my operatives got to her apartment.

“We traced her as far as the garage and ran up against a blank wall. Do you want us to try to pick up her trail along the road?”

“Sure. Try Denver, San Francisco and here.”

“It’s like a needle in a haystack. We may be able to pick up her trail from her license number when she checks in at one of the California checking stations — but suppose she really is headed for Denver?”

“If she said Denver she probably meant California. Give it a try, Paul. What about the wire from Yuma?”

“That wire was phoned in from a pay station. No one knows any more about it than that. Hundreds of wires all reading about the same way flow through the Yuma telegraph office.”

“Keep running down any lead you uncover,” Mason told him.

“Well,” Drake said, “things are being stirred up. I’ve got men in Las Vegas. We’ve managed to get some pretty good pictures from those negatives and I rushed a man over to Las Vegas by plane. He’ll be inquiring around there. We’re also looking for marriage records in Las Vegas. I should have some more stuff for you late tonight.”

“Stay with it,” Mason said. “Put men on the job.”

“Of course,” Drake pointed out, “it would help if you’d give me some kind of an inkling what you’re working on and what you’re looking for.”

“I’m looking for information.”

“So I gathered,” Drake told him dryly.