The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink

Chapter 13

The morning mail brought the letter from Morris Alburg. A check for $1,000 was enclosed.

The letter, however, as a rather harassed, nervous Mason pointed out to his secretary, was something less than a masterpiece of clarity. It said simply:

Mason angrily tapped the letter with his forefinger. “Represent him in ‘that thing.’... That’s broad enough to include every crime in the Penal Code.”

“And probably does,” Della Street said.

At three-thirty that afternoon, Paul Drake, looking worn and haggard, tapped his code knock on the door of Mason’s private office.

Della Street admitted him. Drake dropped into the big overstuffed chair, stretched, yawned, shook his head, and said, “I can’t take it any more, Perry.”

Mason grinned. “You’re just out of practice, Paul. You haven’t been working for me enough lately. What you need is a few more sleepless nights to keep in training.”

Drake said, “For a fact, Perry, I used to be able to keep going all night and through the next day and keep alert. Now I have spells of being groggy.”

Mason merely grinned.

“How about the Chief?” Della Street asked. “He had a million problems confronting him this morning and...”

“Oh, him,” Drake said. “You never need to worry about him. He’s the old human dynamo. He manufactures energy faster than any human being can use it up. If we only had some way of soldering wires on him we could get rich selling surplus energy to run-down millionaires.”

“What’s on your mind beside all that stuff?” Mason asked.

“That girl,” Drake said. “Minerva Hamlin.”

“What about her?”

“I rang her house fifteen minutes ago and told her mother I wanted to speak with Minerva as soon as she wakened. I wanted her to call me.”

“Well?”

“She wasn’t home.”

“Go ahead.”

“She was down at Police Headquarters. The mother — now get this, Perry — the mother said she had been called down about half an hour ago to make an identification.”

Mason whistled.

“Does that mean they have Dixie Dayton?” Della Street asked.

“It could mean a lot of things,” Mason said, pushing back his desk chair and getting to his feet. “Hang it, I don’t like that, Paul.”

Mason started pacing the office.

“I don’t like it either.”

“Under ordinary circumstances, wouldn’t she have called and reported to you, at least told you what they said they wanted her for?”

“That depends on what you mean by ‘ordinary circumstances,’ Perry. She’s one of these self-sufficient women who wants it definitely understood she isn’t going to stand for any foolishness. She’s been so satisfied with herself that she had me feeling the same way.”

“I doubt if she’s really efficient,” Mason said. “She’s simply cultivated an efficient manner. She’s acting a part, the part of extreme competence, probably aping a secretary she saw in a show some place, and that was merely an actress portraying a part the way she thought it should be portrayed.”

Drake said, “I’ve been checking up on her a little bit, Perry—”

“Go ahead,” Mason said, as Drake hesitated.

“Well, I always felt she was thoroughly competent, but I find that the other help doesn’t think very much of her. She always seems to have the situation well in hand, but, damn it, she does make mistakes. I found that out. The girl who comes on in the morning and takes over the switchboard after she leaves has been covering up a few of her boners.”

“What were they?”

“Minor matters. A couple of the operatives who have been in on night stuff have tried to kid her along a little bit and she’s frozen them in her tracks.”

“Making passes?” Mason asked.

“Hell, no,” Drake said, “just the ordinary stuff that happens around an office — or should happen around an office where people are supposed to be working together with some degree of co-operation.

“You know how it is, Perry, in a business like mine where things are more or less informal, you get a sort of family relationship. Of course, the girl who comes on during the night shift always is a more or less queer fish. She starts in at midnight and quits work at eight in the morning. For the most part the switchboard and office end doesn’t amount to anything, so in order to keep her busy we usually have her do the typing work on most of the cases. She files letters that have been written during the day, and types out the operatives’ reports.

“For instance, a man will come in at five or six o’clock in the evening. He’s been working on a case all day. Most of those fellows can bang out a report with two fingers on a typewriter if they have to, but it’ll be a pretty botchy job of typing and a pretty sketchy job of reporting, so I encourage them to sit down at a dictating machine and tell the story — not in too great detail, but enough of a picture so the client will really know what’s going on, and in that way we keep better records.”

Mason nodded.

“The girl who comes on at four o’clock and works until midnight transcribes part of them, and the girl who comes on at midnight and works until eight transcribes the rest of them, does the filing and does the odd jobs.

“Now, Minerva has been working on. that stuff, and apparently she’s made some bad boners. For instance, there has been trouble with the files, and probably it goes back to mistakes Minerva made. Then, again, some of those reports are pretty juicy, you know, Perry, and sometimes the fellows, when they happen to be working nights and come in to make a report before they go off duty, will kid along about the cases. The girls usually hand it right back — just the usual good-natured stuff that goes on around an office... Well, Minerva doesn’t stand for any of that. She’s Madam Queen as far as the operatives are concerned. She’s all efficiency and ice water.”

Mason said, “I suppose in the long run a girl gets so damn tired of hearing some of those near-smutty stories over and over and over again...”

“Oh, I know,” Drake said, “but a girl who’s really human will always manage to laugh as though it’s a new joke — just so things don’t go too far... What the heck, Perry, you know what I’m trying to tell you. We may have some trouble with this girl. It bothers me that she didn’t call me to tip me off.”

“What did you ring her up for?” Mason asked.

“I made up my mind I was going to fire her,” Drake said.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t do that. Not right now, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“It will look as though we’re taking it out on her because she made that identification of the photograph. That would antagonize a jury.”

“Of course,” Paul Drake pointed out, “the girl could really have been Dixie.”

“Yes,” Mason admitted dubiously. “She could have been.”

The telephone rang sharply.

“See who it is,” Mason said.

Della Street picked up the telephone, answered, said, “Yes, Gertie... Why, what... Just a moment.”

She motioned to Perry Mason with excitement. “Morris Alburg on the line.”

“Well, thank heavens,” Mason said. “It’s about time that boy made a report.”

Mason picked up the telephone, said, “Hello, Morris. What the devil is all this about and where are you?”

“I’m in jail,” Morris Alburg said.

“What?”

“In jail.”

“The devil you are! How long have you been there?”

“Since nine o’clock this morning.”

“Oh-oh,” Mason said, and then added, “Why didn’t you telephone me?”

“They wouldn’t let me.”

“Did you tell them you wanted to talk with your lawyer?”

“I told them everything. I haven’t been in this jail very long. They’ve been shunting me around, keeping me traveling in an automobile, taking me from one precinct to another...”

“You’re down at—?”

“That’s right. I’m at the Central Precinct now.”

“I’ll be there,” Mason said.

Mason hung up the telephone, dashed over to the closet and grabbed his hat.

“What is it?” Drake asked, as Mason made for the door.

“Same old run-around,” Mason said. “They’ve had Morris Alburg since nine o’clock this morning and they’ve been keeping him buried. Just now they’re letting him call his attorney. That means they’ve squeezed everything out of him they can possibly get... Stick around, Paul, so I can get you if I need you. I’ll be wanting you, and don’t fire Minerva — not yet.”