Chapter Thirteen

Ellen Adair, who had been giving Mason driving directions, said, “Turn to the right at this next corner, and it’s the house in the middle of the block.”

“You think your son will be home?” the lawyer asked.

“He should be.”

“And he knows you as...”

“He knows the truth now, but for years he thought I was just a friend of the family, related in some way to the Bairds. He never asked too much about details. He took the relationship for granted and called me ‘Aunt Ellen.’ ”

“All right,” Mason said, “let’s hope he’s home.”

“He will be. He’ll be studying. He has an examination coming up and... Here’s the place.”

The lawyer slid the car beside the curb.

“All right, let’s go. Remember — you say absolutely nothing at any time that would indicate you had been to see Agnes Burlington twice today. You are never, under any circumstances, to tell any human being the things you have told us. All right, now; let’s go up and take a look at this boy.”

They left the car, walked up the cement walk and past the well-kept lawn.

“Who does the work here?” Mason asked. “Your son?”

“I think he hires it done. There’s a gardener. There’s a lot of yard work, you know, and, after all, Wight is busy with his studies.”

Ellen Adair pushed her thumb against the bell button, giving a series of short, sharp rings, then a long ring, then two short rings.

She smiled at Mason. “We have a code so he’ll know who’s at the door.”

They waited for some fifteen seconds and then Ellen Adair said, “Why, that’s strange. He must be home. His car is in the driveway.”

“That his car?” Mason asked, indicating a low-slung sports car.

“Yes.”

“That’s an expensive car,” Mason observed.

“He is very modern, Mr. Mason, and — well, the Bairds left him this money. He... I can’t understand what’s delaying him.”

She pressed the button again, a series of short, sharp rings, then a long ring and a couple of short rings.

Della Street exchanged glances with Perry Mason.

Abruptly from the back of the house a man’s voice called, “Whoo-hoo, I’m coming,” and then a few moments later the door was swung open and a well-built, good-looking young man said, “Aunt Ellen — Mom! What brings you here at this time of night?”

Ellen Adair said, “Wight, I want you to meet Perry Mason, the famous attorney; and this is Della Street, his confidential secretary.”

Wight Baird regarded his visitors with open-mouthed amazement. “Gosh,” he said, “the famous lawyer! What’s all this about?”

Ellen said, “We’re coming in, Wight. We have to talk with you about a matter of great importance.”

“Is all this about the will?” Wight asked.

“Yes.”

“Gee, Mom, is Mr. Mason going to be on our side?”

“He’s going to be on our side,” Ellen said, “but there are lots of complications.”

“I’ll bet,” Wight said. “You get to kicking a couple of million bucks around and there’ll be lots of complications. Come on in.”

He led the way into a living room.

“You were quite a while answering the bell,” Ellen said.

Wight said, “I called out just as soon as you rang the bell.”

“Then you didn’t hear it the first time?”

“You mean you rang twice?”

“Yes.”

“Gosh, no. Aunt Ellen — Mom — I didn’t hear it the first time.”

The sound of a motor starting came from the driveway.

Wight said, somewhat hastily, “I’m cramming for an exam. I’ve been holding my nose to the grindstone all afternoon and evening. I’m about all in. Forgive me if I seem a little dopey. What’s new, Aunt — Mom? Why are you coming here at this hour of the night with Mr. Mason and his secretary?”

Ellen said, “There was a witness that we called on — a rather mature woman who had some information that would have been of value. We went to call on her. Mr. Mason wanted to talk with her.”

“Yeah, sure,” Wight said. “That’s a smart move. Let’s get the evidence rounded up.”

“We got there too late,” Ellen said. “She was dead.”

“Dead!”

“That’s right.”

“How come?”

“She had evidently been murdered,” Mason said.

“Murdered!” Wight exclaimed. “Say, what are you doing — trying to put one over on me? You don’t... good lord!”

Ellen said, “Mr. Mason feels that we may be questioned in some detail, and I wanted to come to you and explain the situation, and Mr. Mason wanted to talk with you.”

“Who was this jane?” Wight asked. “Anybody I know?”

“No one you know,” Ellen said. “She had been a nurse in San Francisco at the time you were born, and—”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Wight interrupted. “You don’t, by any chance, mean Agnes Burlington, do you?”

“Agnes Burlington!” his mother exclaimed. “Do you know her?”

“Why, sure.”

“How did you meet her?” Mason asked.

“She hunted me up,” Wight said.

“How long ago?”

“The first time was just after the Bairds died. She told me that I wasn’t the real son of August Baird, that Mrs. Baird had put up a job on him and palmed me off as his son.

“She said that if the facts were known I’d be penniless. She said that would be a great shame because it wasn’t my fault. She told me then that you were my real mother and a lot of stuff...”

“How much did you agree to pay her?” Mason asked.

“Ten per cent of whatever I inherited from the Bairds.”

“Why, Wight! You never told me about this!” Ellen exclaimed.

“She said not to. She told me not to tell anyone. She warned me against telling you in particular. She said I’d lose everything.”

“You paid her the ten per cent?” Mason asked.

“Yes.”

“When did you next see her after that?” Mason asked.

“Just a couple of days ago.”

“What did she want?”

“She told me that it might be possible I could inherit a very substantial sum of money and asked me what it would be worth to me percentage-wise if...”

“Why, Wight, you should have told me,” Ellen Adair said.

“Well, to tell you the truth. Mom, I never had much of a chance. I only see you briefly once in a while, and I thought this Burlington dame was talking through her hat, but I told her to go get me some money and she could have her percentage of it.”

“Did she say how much money?” Mason asked.

“She said quite a large sum of money.”

“You knew she had been a nurse in San Francisco?”

“That’s right. That first time she told me that she had been a nurse in San Francisco and she told me that she attended my mother when I was born — and that my parents weren’t the Bairds at all. I let her do the talking. I didn’t say very much.”

“You’re living here in this house alone?” Mason asked.

“That’s right. A woman comes in and keeps things clean; she does the dishes and makes the bed.”

“She comes in every day?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been in all day?” Mason asked.

“That’s right — had my nose buried in books.”

“Ellen Adair here has a key to the place?” Mason asked.

“Why, yes, sure, she has a key. She always rings the code signal when she comes, but she has a key and could get in if she wanted to.”

“If she had something she wanted to hide, is there any place here where she could leave it?”

“Dozens of places,” Wight said.

“Would you,” Mason asked, “mind if I looked around?”

Ellen Adair said, “Why, Mr. Mason, I wouldn’t think of leaving it here.”

“I was just asking questions,” Mason said.

The lawyer got-up, opened a door into a hallway, which disclosed a bathroom and two bedrooms.

“Which one of these is yours?” he asked the young man.

“That one right in front of you there.”

Mason went in, sniffed the air a couple of times, walked to the closet and opened the door.

A partially emptied quart bottle of whiskey was on the floor with an ice container and two glasses which still contained ice cubes.

There was lipstick on one of the glasses.

Mason said, “You weren’t studying, Wight; you were having a little social gathering. When your mother rang the bell the first time, you had your girlfriend get sufficiently presentable so she could leave via the back door. After you let us in the front door, she took your car and drove off.”

Wight Baird said, “Suppose you try minding your own business for a change, Mr. Lawyer.”

“This is my business,” Mason said. “I’m trying to get a line on a rather complicated situation.”

“All right,” Wight said, “so I’ve been a normal human being. Any law against that?”

“No law against that,” Mason said, “but I don’t like people who lie to me, and when you, with liquor on your breath, told me this story about having your nose buried in books all day and then I heard someone drive off in your car, I thought perhaps I’d like to check into your story a little bit.”

“All right, you’ve checked it. Now what are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing,” Mason said. “I was just testing your truthfulness.”

“Wight is a good boy,” Ellen Adair said, “but the way boys are tempted these days you just can’t blame them for anything. I swear I don’t know what girls are thinking of.”

Mason turned to Wight. “Do you,” he asked, “have the address of Agnes Burlington?”

“I think she left it somewhere. I never paid any attention to it,” Wight said.

Mason suddenly whirled and grabbed Wight by the shoulders. “All right,” he said, “what did she want? Cut out this lying.”

Wight broke loose, said, “Keep your hands off me. I’m not lying.”

Mason said, “You’re lying and you can get yourself, as well as others, in a lot of trouble. Now what did she want?”

“All right,” Wight said in a surly manner; “she wanted money.”

“How much money?”

“She wanted ten per cent of whatever I acquired from that Cloverville estate.”

“Did you make a deal with her?”

“Well, I...”

“Did you make a deal with her?” Mason asked.

“All right,” Wight said; “I made a deal with her.”

“Was there anything in writing?”

“No; she said it would be better not to put it in writing but that if I tried to double-cross her I’d really be sorry.”

Mason said, “It would be a big relief if someone somewhere would tell me the truth.”

“Well, you move in pretty fast,” Wight said.

“I have to move in pretty fast with this family,” Mason told him. “Now, have you ever been to Agnes Burlington’s place?”

“No.”

“You don’t know where she lives?”

“Just the address she left — that’s all.”

“Have you ever had any social dealing with her?”

“What do you mean, social... My God, man, the dame was old enough to be my mother. I like them young and snappy and... Shucks, no; it was just a business proposition.”

“How many times did you see her?”

“Only once in the last month. She came here and...”

“And why didn’t you tell your mother?”

“She told me not to. She said that Mom was something of a square and old-fashioned and that if she and Mom made any business arrangement the lawyers might find out about it and it would be bad — that, after all. Mom wasn’t going to inherit any money. I was the one who was going to get it and...”

“Did she tell you how much?”

“A couple of million bucks.”

“And you agreed to give her ten per cent?”

“That’s right, provided...”

“Provided what?”

“Provided she came through with the testimony that would enable me to get it.”

Mason said, “In trying to work a deal of that sort, you probably did more to kick your case out of the window than anything that could have happened. Now, then, what about the paper?”

“What paper?”

“She had some kind of a paper, some kind of an agreement,” Mason said.

“No, she didn’t. I told you that she said it would be better if we didn’t have any agreement and...”

Mason said, “She had to have something signed by you. She had to have it for her own protection. Now quit lying.”

“Well,” Wight said, looking at his feet, “she did have me give her a memo. She said no agreement or anything — just a memo that would bind the deal.”

“And you signed this memo?”

“Yes.”

“Was there any copy?”

“No, she said a copy would be dangerous, that there’d be just the one original so that I couldn’t go back on the deal, and she’d keep it in a place where it could never be found.”

Mason said wearily, “You’ve done a lot of talking tonight, Wight, and in a short time you’ve told me more lies than...”

“Well, what do you expect — that I’m going to come blurting out with the truth about an arrangement that I’d sworn to keep confidential?”

Mason turned to Della Street. “I guess we can go home now.”

“What about me?” Ellen asked.

“You,” Mason said, “are to take a taxi back home. You are not to do anything in any way which would result in trying to destroy or tamper with evidence. And, above all, you are not to try and change the tires on your car, try to buy new tires, try to swap the tires around from wheel to wheel, or do anything else. Now do you understand that?”

“But if I sit tight that way, then I’d have to admit that—”

“You admit nothing,” Mason said. “From the time you are picked up by the police, you state that you have nothing to say, that you will make no statement unless I am present. And, when I am present, I will tell you to say nothing. Now is that understood?”

“I think that puts me in a bad light with the public.”

“Sure it does,” Mason said, “but it’s better to be in a bad light with the public than to—”

“What is this, Mom?” Wight interrupted. “Don’t let that man bully you. If you want to tell your story, go ahead and tell it.”

“No, no, Wight; you don’t understand,” Ellen said.

“Was your girlfriend going to come back later with your car?” Mason asked Wight.

“Yes,” he said, “if you want to be so damn nosy, she was coming back.”

“All right,” Mason said, “if you want to do something constructive for a change, you can call your mother a taxicab.”

Mason nodded to Della and they walked out of the front door of the house.