The Case of the Lazy Lover

4

Paul Drake draped his loose-jointed length over the big client’s chair, twisting around until he had a comfortable position. Then after a moment, he squirmed about until his legs were hanging over the overstuffed arm of the chair.

Paul Drake carefully cultivated a nondescript appearance and a lugubrious countenance. There was, to him, no romance in connection with the operation of a detective agency. He looked upon his profession with an air of pessimistic detachment, did his work competently and deprecatingly.

“Know anything about Bertrand C. Allred, Paul?” Mason asked.

“Very little. He’s a big shot in the mining business. Wait a minute, I do know something too. I heard something just the other day. He’s mixed up in a suit for fraud.”

“His wife has skipped out,” Mason said.

“Okay, where do I come in?”

Mason handed Paul Drake the telegram he had received, said, “I want to talk with Mrs. Allred. Here’s a telegram that was sent earlier this morning from Springfield. I want you to find her.”

“Got a description?” Drake asked.

Mason shook his head, said, “That’s up to you, Paul. You’ll have to work fast. She has a daughter, Patricia Faxon, the one mentioned in the wire. Mrs. Allred’s supposed to be running away with a man, Robert Fleetwood. That is highly confidential. The family doesn’t want it to get out.”

“When did she leave?”

“Saturday night on a guess. She sent me a check drawn on a local bank here for twenty-five hundred dollars. At any rate, the check seems to have been signed by her. That check was mailed Saturday night. This morning I received another check, drawn on the First National Bank of Las Olitas, also for twenty-five hundred dollars and also purporting to be signed by her.”

“In the telegram,” Drake pointed out, “she only refers to one check.”

“That’s right. One check for twenty-five hundred. That’s the only one the bank says is good.”

“What about the other one?”

“Handwriting experts say it’s forged. The signature was transferred and re-traced.”

“How about the checks, other than the signature?”

“In typewriting,” Mason said. “Both checks are the same on that score, and the interesting thing is that as nearly as I can tell from an examination of the envelopes, they were both typed on the same typewriter.”

“Okay,” Drake said. “Give.”

Mason gave him the two envelopes in which the checks had been received.

“Where are the checks?”

“One of them has been cleared,” Mason said, grinning, “and the other is in the hands of the bank. The bank may be contemplating turning it over to the police.”

“The bank hasn’t asked for the envelopes in which the checks came?”

“Not yet. It will. Have those envelopes photographed. Then have some enlargements made so we can check that typewriting. Get an expert to tell the make and model of typewriter on which they were written.”

“That all?”

“That’s all I can tell you. You’ll probably think of something else as you go along.”

Drake heaved himself up out of the chair. “How about this daughter, Patricia? Can I tell her about the wire?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Tell her I’m from you?”

Mason thought for a moment, then said, “Tell her you’re a newspaper reporter first. Let’s see what story she has for publication. Then tell her who you are and say you’re working for me. See if it changes her story.”

“Anything else?” Drake asked.

Mason said, “I don’t need to draw you a diagram, Paul. Police records are full of cases of wealthy wives who disappear, husbands who think up one story and then another. It all follows a pattern.”

“You mean the husband bops the wife over the head, puts the body in the cellar, pours on a little cement, and then tells the neighbors his spouse has gone to visit ‘Aunt Mary’?”

“That’s the general idea.”

“In this case there’s a second person, Fleetwood.”

“It may be a big cellar.”

“Not let anyone know what’s cooking, I suppose?”

“That’s right.”

“Shall I let Patricia know why you’re looking for Mom?”

“No. Let her do the talking — and acting.”

“Okay,” Drake said. “How soon do you want this stuff?”

“Soon as I can get it,” Mason said.

“You always do,” Drake told him, and went out.

Mason said to Della Street, “You hold the fort, Della. I’m going to take a run out to Las Olitas. With luck I can see the bank president before he goes to lunch.”