The Case of the Golddigger’s Purse

5

The night was cold and clear. Mason drove rapidly through the late after-theater traffic.

Sally Madison ventured a suggestion. “Wouldn’t it perhaps be better to just start some detectives watching Staunton’s house so as to make sure he didn’t move the fish? And then wait until tomorrow?”

Mason shook his head. “Let’s find out where we stand. The thing really has me interested now.”

Thereafter they drove in silence until Mason slowed down as he came in sight of a rather pretentious stucco house with a red tile roof and wide windows. “This should be the number,” he said.

“This is the place,” Sally Madison declared. “They’re still up. You can see there’s a light in that side window.”

Mason slid the car in to the curb, switched off the ignition, and walked up the cement walk to the three stairs which led to a tiled porch.

“What are you going to say?” Sally Madison asked, excitement raising her voice to a higher pitch than usual.

“I don’t know,” Mason told her. “It’ll depend on what happens. I always like to plan my campaign after I’ve sized up my man.” He pressed a bell button at the side of the door, and a moment later the door was opened by a tall, rather distinguished looking gentleman in the middle fifties.

“Mr. James L. Staunton?” Mason asked.

“That’s right.”

Mason said, “This is Sally Madison from the Rawlins Pet Store, and I am Perry Mason, a lawyer.”

“Yes. Oh yes. I was sorry I wasn’t in tonight when you called, Miss Madison. I wanted to tell you that the treatment you had given the fish proved to be a great success and I suppose you want the rest of your money. I have it here all ready for you.”

Staunton gravely counted out fifty dollars and, trying to make his voice sound very casual, added, “If you’ll just give me a receipt, Miss Madison.”

Mason said, “I think the matter has gone a little bit past that point, Mr. Staunton.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s some question about the ownership of the fish which you have. Would you mind telling us where you got them?”

Staunton drew himself up with a dignity so rigid that it might have been a mask to hide fright. “I certainly would. I don’t consider it any of your business.”

“Suppose I should tell you those fish had been stolen?”

“Were they stolen?”

“I don’t know,” Mason admitted frankly. “But there are some rather suspicious circumstances.”

“Are you making an accusation?”

“Not at all.”

“Well, it sounded to me as though you were. I’ve heard of you and I know you’re a very able lawyer, Mr. Mason, but it occurs to me you had better watch what you say. If you’ll pardon the suggestion, I’m quite capable of running my own business and it might be well if you’d devote your attention to your business.”

Mason grinned, took his cigarette case from his pocket. “Have one?” he asked.

“No,” Staunton said curtly, and stepped back as though to slam the door shut.

Mason extended the cigarette case to Sally Madison, said casually to Staunton, “Miss Madison asked my advice. I was about to tell her that unless you had some satisfactory explanation, I considered it was her duty to report the matter to the police. That, of course, might prove embarrassing. But if you want it that way, it’s all right with me.”

Mason snapped a match into flame, held it to the tip of Sally Madison’s cigarette, then to his own.

“That sounds very much like a threat,” Staunton charged, apparently falling back on a repetition of his previous charge.

By this time Mason was sure of his man. He blew smoke into Staunton’s face and said, “It does, doesn’t it?”

Staunton drew back in startled surprise at the lawyer’s insolent assurance. “I don’t like your manner, Mr. Mason, and I don’t care to stand here and be insulted.”

“That’s right,” Mason agreed. “But you’ve already missed your chance to do anything about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that if you hadn’t anything to conceal about those fish, you’d have told me to go to the devil five minutes ago and slammed the door. You didn’t have nerve enough to do it. You’re curious as to what I know, and afraid of what I’m going to do next. You’re standing there in a lather of indecision, wondering whether you dare take the chance of slamming the door, rushing inside, and telephoning the man who told you to take care of the fish for him.”

Staunton said, “Mr. Mason, as a lawyer, you’re doubtless aware that you’re defaming my character.”

“That’s right. And as a lawyer, I know that the truth is a defense to slander. So make up your mind, Staunton, and make it up fast. Are you going to talk with me, or are you going to talk to the police?”

Staunton clung to the doorknob for some two or three seconds, then suddenly lost the dignified shell which had been interposed as an ineffectual armor against the lawyer’s attack.

“Come in,” he said.

Mason stood to one side for Sally Madison to precede him into the house.

From a living room on the right, a woman’s voice called, “What is it, dear?”

“A business matter,” Staunton called, and then added, “some insurance. I’ll take them into the study.”

Staunton opened a door and ushered his visitors into a room which had been fitted up as an office, with an old-fashioned roll-top desk, a safe, a table, a half dozen steel filing cabinets, and a secretarial desk. On top of the filing cabinets was an oblong glass container filled with water. Two fish swam lazily about in this container.

Mason moved across to look at the fish, almost as soon as Staunton had switched on the light.

“So these,” Mason said, “are the Veiltail Moor Telescopes, sometimes referred to as ‘The Fish of Death’.”

Staunton said nothing.

Mason curiously regarded the dark fish, their long fins sweeping down in black veils, regarded the protruding eyes which were as black as the bodies of the fish. “Well,” he announced, “as far as I’m concerned, anyone who wants my interest in them can have them. There certainly is something sinister about them.”

“Won’t you sit down?” Staunton ventured, somewhat dubiously.

Mason waited for Sally Madison to seat herself, then stretched himself comfortably in a chair. He grinned over at Staunton and said, “You can spare yourself a lot of trouble and nerve strain if you’ll begin at the beginning and tell your story.”

“Suppose you ask me what you want to know.”

Mason jerked his thumb toward the telephone. “I’ve asked my question. If there’s any more questioning to be done, it’ll be done by the police.”

“I don’t fear the police. Suppose I should just call your bluff, Mr. Mason?”

“Go ahead.”

“I have nothing to conceal, and I have committed no crime. I’ve received you at this unusually late hour because I know who you are and have a certain respect for your professional standing, but I’m not going to be insulted, and I warn you, Mr. Mason, I’m not going to be browbeaten.”

“Who gave you the fish?” Mason asked.

“That’s a question I don’t care to answer.”

Mason took the cigarette from his mouth, casually moved his long legs, and walked over to the telephone, picked up the receiver, dialed Operator, and said, “Give me police headquarters, please.”

Staunton said rapidly, “Wait a minute, Mr. Mason! You’re going altogether too fast! If you make any accusation against me to the police you’ll regret it.”

Without looking around, still holding the receiver to his ear, Mason said over his shoulder, “Who gave you the fish, Staunton?”

“If you want to know,” Staunton almost shouted in exasperation, “it was Harrington Faulkner!”

“I thought it might have been,” Mason said, and dropped the receiver back into its cradle.

“So,” Staunton went on defiantly, “the fish belong to Harrington Faulkner. He gave them to me to keep for him. I write a lot of insurance for the Faulkner-Carson Realty Company. I was glad to do Mr. Faulkner a favor. There’s certainly no law against that, and I think you’ll now appreciate the danger of your position in insinuating the fish were stolen and that I am acting in collusion with the thief.”

Mason returned to his chair, crossed his long legs at the knees, grinned at the now indignant Staunton and said, “How were the fish brought to you — in the tank which is on the filing cases at the present time?”

“No. If Miss Madison is from the pet store, she’ll know that’s a treatment tank they furnished. It’s an oblong tank made to accommodate the medicated panels which are slid down into the water.”

“What sort of a tank were they in when you got them?” Mason asked.

Staunton hesitated, then said, “After all, Mr. Mason, I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

“It might be considered significant.”

“I don’t think so.”

Mason said, “I’ll tell you this much. If Harrington Faulkner delivered those fish to you, he did so as part of a fraudulent scheme he was perpetrating, and as a part of that scheme he reported the theft of these fish to the police. Now the police aren’t going to like that. So, if you have any connection with what happened, you had better get in the clear right now.”

“I didn’t have any connection with any fraudulent scheme. All I know is that Mr. Faulkner asked me to take charge of these fish.”

“And brought them to you himself?”

“That’s right.”

“When?”

“Early Wednesday evening.”

“About what time Wednesday?”

“I don’t know exactly what time it was. It was rather early.”

“Before dinner?”

“I think it was.”

“And how were the fish brought to you? In what sort of a container?”

“That’s the thing which I told you before was none of your business.”

Mason once more got up, walked across to the telephone, picked up the receiver and started to dial Operator. There was a grim finality about his manner.

“In a bucket,” Staunton said hastily.

Mason slowly, almost reluctantly, put the receiver back into its cradle. “What sort of a bucket?”

“An ordinary galvanized iron pail.”

“And what did he tell you?”

“Told me to call the David Rawlins Pet Shop, tell them I had a couple of very valuable fish that were suffering from gill disease, for which I understood there was a new treatment furnished by the pet shop. I was to offer to pay them one hundred dollars for treatment of these fish. I did just that. That’s all I know about it, Mr. Mason. My skirts are entirely clean.”

“They aren’t as clean as you claim,” Mason said, still standing by the telephone, “and they don’t cover you as much as you’d like. You forget about what you told the man from the pet shop?”

“What do you mean?”

“About your wife being sick and that she wasn’t to be disturbed.”

“I didn’t want my wife to know anything about it.”

“Why?”

“Because it was a matter of business, and I don’t discuss business with her.”

“But you lied to the man from the pet shop?”

“I don’t like that word.”

“Describe it by any word you like,” Mason said, “but let’s remember that you made a false statement to the man from the pet shop. You did that to keep him from coming in so that he wouldn’t see the fish.”

“I don’t think that’s a fair statement, Mr. Mason.”

Mason grinned and said, “Think it over for awhile, Staunton. Think over how you’re going to feel on the witness stand in front of a jury when I start giving you a cross-examination. You and your clean skirts!”

Mason stepped over to the window, jerked back the heavy drapes which covered the glass and stood with his back turned to the people in the room, his hands pushed down into his trouser pockets.

Staunton cleared his throat as though about to say something, then shifted his position uneasily in the swivel chair. The chair creaked slightly.

Mason didn’t so much as turn around, but stood for some thirty seconds in utter silence, looking out at the section of sidewalk which was visible through the window, waiting while his very silence exerted a pressure.

Abruptly the lawyer turned. “I guess that’s all,” he said to the surprised Sally Madison. “I think we can go now.”

A slightly bewildered Staunton followed them to the outer door. Twice he started to say something but each time the thoughts crystallized themselves into words preparatory to speech, they apparently seemed inadequate, and he choked off the sentence almost at the beginning.

Mason didn’t look around or make any comment.

At the front door, Staunton stood for a few moments watching his departing visitors. “Good night,” he ventured somewhat quaveringly.

“We may see you again,” Mason said ominously, and kept right on walking toward the parked car.

Staunton abruptly slammed the door shut.

Mason clasped his hand on Sally Madison’s arm, pushed her over to the right across a strip of lawn and toward the stretch of sidewalk which had been visible from the window of Staunton’s study.

“Let’s watch him carefully,” Mason said. “I purposely pulled the drapes to one side and left the telephone turned toward the window. We may be able to get some idea of the number that he dials by watching the motion of his hand. At least we can tell if it’s a number similar to that of Harrington Faulkner.”

They stood just outside of the oblong of light cast from the open window. From where they stood, they could clearly see the telephone and the fish in the tank on the top of the filing cases.

A shadow crossed the lighted oblong on the lawn, moved over toward the telephone, then stopped. The watchers saw James Staunton’s profile as he held his face close to the fish tank, watching the peculiar undulating motion of the black veils which hung down from the “Fish of Death.”

For what might have been a matter of five minutes, Staunton regarded the fish as though held with a fascination that was almost hypnotic — then he slowly turned away, his shadow moved back across the oblong, and a moment later the lights were switched off and the room left in darkness.

“Do you suppose he knew we were watching?” Sally Madison asked.

Mason remained there watching and waiting for nearly five minutes, then he circled her with his arm, guided her toward the parked automobile.

“Did he?” she asked.

“What?” the lawyer asked, his voice showing his preoccupation.

“Know that we were watching?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But you thought he was going to telephone?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t he?”

Mason said, “I’ll be damned if I know.”

“So what do we do now?” she asked.

“Now,” Mason said, “we go to see Mr. Harrington Faulkner.”