Chapter Two

It was two o’clock the next afternoon when Della Street, answering a call from the receptionist, said into the telephone, “Just a moment; I’ll call you back, Gertie.”

Della dropped the telephone into its cradle, said to Perry Mason, “We have a man in the outer office who says his business is urgent. His name is Jarmen Dayton. He says that he has to see you right away upon a matter of the greatest importance — to you.

“Gertie told him he would have to have more specific information than that and he said he was representing The Cloverville Gazette.”

“An attorney?” Mason asked.

“Apparently not,” she said. “He gave Gertie only the name of Jarmen Dayton.”

The lawyer’s eyes narrowed. “I had a hunch about that case yesterday,” he said. “Bring Dayton in, Della, and we’ll find out exactly what he wants.”

Della nodded, left the office, and returned with a man in his late forties. He was partially bald and of stout build, and he affected a brusque manner.

“Mr. Mason!” he exclaimed, pushing his way across the office, holding out a rather pudgy, short-fingered hand. “This is indeed a pleasure! A very great pleasure!”

The lawyer shook hands.

“I’ve come quite a distance to see you, sir. I thought perhaps I’d have some trouble since I had no appointment, but...”

“You could have telephoned,” Mason said.

“Believe it or not, Mr. Mason, I’ve been going too fast to pause for telephones, had to catch a jet plane by the skin of my eyeteeth — just barely did make it.

“Don’t like to run; doctor told me not to. But in an emergency you forget about everything except catching that plane. Mind if I sit down?”

“Please do,” Mason said. “Now you’re representing The Cloverville Gazette?”

“That’s right. Thought I’d better come out here and have a talk with you.”

“You’re an attorney?”

The man ran a hand over his high forehead, brought his palm down along the back of his neck, then rubbed the side of his jaw. “Not exactly,” he said.

“Well, let’s be exact,” Mason said; “either you are or you aren’t.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re an employee of the paper?”

“Well, there again I have to say not exactly. Now, don’t start cross-examining me. Mason. I know the managing editor quite well, and he thought I’d better talk with you man to man — no telephone stuff, you understand, just right across the desk, eyeball to eyeball, face to face, man to man, put our cards right on the table.”

Mason tapped the blotter on his desk with his forefinger. “There’s the table.”

“This Calvert case,” Dayton said. “Something of a mystery there — and a story, a whale of a story. Now, of course, the paper doesn’t want any lawsuits, but the paper does want the story. The darn thing is twenty years old, but people still talk about it — that is, the old-timers — garbled versions, all that sort of thing — not fair to the community, not fair to Ellen Calvert.”

“Let’s get this straight,” Mason said. “The newspaper sent you all the way out here to talk with me and try to get that Calvert story — and all the newspaper wants it for is to put an item in its column of what happened twenty years ago. Is that right?”

Again Dayton rubbed his hand over his head. “Well, now, Mr. Mason,” he said, “you keep putting me in a spot — you really do. The truth of the matter is that after the newspaper published this little lead that was sent in by one of its readers asking what had happened to Ellen Calvert, the phone started ringing. Readers in droves rang up and said that they had always wondered about Ellen Calvert, that it was a story the paper should publish.

“Now the paper may have been just a little conservative when you talked with the editor yesterday. Of course, you understand time is a couple of hours later back there. Anyway, when they got to checking things — well, it was thought I’d better come out here and put the cards on the table.”

“Keep putting them on the table,” Mason said, “and turn them face up.”

“Well, we want to find her. We want to find out what’s happened to her. We’re even in a position to make a payment — a very substantial payment.”

“For a country newspaper?” Mason asked.

“We aren’t country any more,” Dayton said; “we’re city.”

“How much?” Mason asked.

Dayton’s eyes studied Mason’s face. “A payment to you, Counselor, for your cooperation and a payment for Ellen Calvert.”

“How much?”

“How much would be required?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think,” Dayton said, “we could put up the required amount, whatever it might be — that is, of course, within reason, you understand, Mr. Mason, within reason.”

“I’ll have to give that matter some consideration,” Mason said.

“Of course you will, Mr. Mason, of course, of course. You’ll have to take it up with your client. I understand perfectly.”

Dayton abruptly got to his feet. “Do you want to call me or shall I call you?”

“You had better give me a number where I can reach you,” the lawyer said.

“I’ll have to call you a little later and give you the number, Mr. Mason. I have been traveling all night, you understand. I came to your office right away. I haven’t had a chance to get a hotel room or get freshened up. I wanted to see you at once — I anticipated I might have some delays — I know you’re a busy man — very prominent lawyer — more than that, a famous lawyer. I’ll be in touch with you. Thank you for seeing me. Good day, Mr. Mason.”

Dayton didn’t even turn toward the room from which he had entered but marched directly to the door leading to the outer corridor and went out.

“A private detective,” Mason said to Della Street; “one of the tough boys who carries a gun. He gets results by stopping at nothing. You have our client’s telephone number?”

She nodded.

“All right,” Mason said, “we’ll call her shortly; but first get the Drake Detective Agency on the line. Get Paul Drake in person if you can, Della.”

Della put through the call to the Drake Detective Agency, whose offices were next to the elevator at the end of the corridor, on the same floor as the lawyer’s office.

When Mason had Paul Drake on the line, he said, “Paul, I have just been interviewed by a man who is undoubtedly a private detective. He is too portly to conceal the bulge under his left armpit. He’s a tough customer. He was sent here from the Midwest to locate a client of mine. He thinks I am going to get in touch with that client either by telephone or personally, and since it is a matter I would hardly take up over the telephone, I think I may be wearing a tail.

“Now, here’s what I’m going to do. In precisely ten minutes from the time I hang up the telephone I am going to go to the elevator. I want you to get aboard the same elevator and ride down with me. Just speak to me casually.

“We’ll ride down together, then separate, and I’ll walk to the taxi stand on the corner, pick up a cab, and go to the railroad depot. Once there, I’ll go into a telephone booth, put through a call, walk out, get another cab, and come back to the office. I want you to have an operative waiting in a cab so I can be tailed to see if I am being shadowed by anyone else.

“Can you do that?”

“Can do,” Drake said. “I’ve got a couple of operatives in the office right now, making out some reports. I can send one of them down and have him engage a cab and be waiting.”

“Do that,” Mason said; “if he should lose me at a traffic signal, you can tell him to drive right to the depot and pick up my trail there. I’ll wait around the telephone booths for a minute or two before putting in the call. Look at your watch now; we’re going out in exactly ten minutes.”

Mason hung up the phone, said to Della, “Give me Ellen Adair’s telephone number, Della.”

Della Street, watching him curiously, said, “Aren’t you going to a lot of trouble and a lot of expense just on mere suspicion?”

“It’s not mere suspicion,” Mason said. “If that man wasn’t a private detective, I’ll go see my oculist. And when a small city newspaper sends a private detective instead of a reporter to get a story, it means something big is in the wind. Furthermore, I have a hunch there are two men on the job. One of them may be local, but this one came from Cloverville.”

Promptly at the end of nine minutes and forty-five seconds. Mason left his office, walked to the elevator, and pressed the down button.

Just before the cage came to a stop, Paul Drake emerged from his office.

“Hi, Perry,” Drake said; “what’s new?”

“Nothing much,” Mason said.

“You aren’t quitting for the day?”

“Heavens, no! Just have to consult with a client on a matter of business.”

They entered the cage together.

“Going to see a client, eh?” Drake asked.

“Uh-huh,” Mason said, without making any effort to carry on further conversation.

In the foyer of the building, Drake paused to buy a package of cigarettes. Mason strolled across to the sidewalk hailed a taxicab.

“Take me to the Union Depot,” he instructed, and settled back against the cushions.

The driver skillfully threaded his way through traffic and duly deposited Mason at the station.

Mason paid the fare, gave the cabby a tip, and walked toward the line of telephone booths near the station entrance. He entered one and stood so that his shoulders concealed the dial of the telephone from anyone who might have been watching to see what number he dialed; then he dialed the number of Paul Drake’s office.

Drake’s switchboard operator came on the line and Mason said, “Perry Mason, Ruth. Is Paul where you can put him on?”

“He’s just receiving a telephone report from one of his operatives,” she said. “I think it’s on the case that you’re interested in.”

“I’ll hang on,” Mason said, and waited some two minutes at the telephone. Then he heard Paul Drake’s voice.

“Hi, Perry; you’re down at the telephone booths at the depot?”

“Right.”

“Well, you’re wearing a tail all right.”

“A heavyset individual in the late forties with...”

“No, this is a thin older man about sixty with high cheekbones. He’s wearing a dark-brown suit, black shoes, white shirt and brown tie. He seems to know his way around.”

“I think probably he is local,” Mason said. “What’s a job like that worth, Paul?”

“If he’s local, he’s probably getting forty to fifty dollars a day and expenses,” Drake said. “He was planted in a taxicab outside the building.”

“Well,” Mason said, “I’ve got a problem on my hands, Paul. I’m going to have to employ a decoy.”

“What kind of a decoy?”

“A woman, about thirty-eight years old, quite tall — a little taller than the average — about five feet eight and a half. Light-chestnut hair, if possible. I want her to weigh a hundred and thirty to a hundred and thirty-two pounds. I want her to be quick on the uptake, and she’ll need an apartment. She’ll go under the name of Ellen Smith. She’ll surround herself with an air of mystery, avoid contacts with anyone, and be in a position to follow instructions.

“I’d like to have her in an apartment if possible, but I don’t want her to get an apartment which was leased just a few hours earlier if I can avoid it. I...”

“That end of it is all right,” Drake said. “As part of the operation we keep a dummy, decoy apartment in the name of the switchboard operator, but the rent is handled in such a way that no one could ever trace the apartment to this office.

“It’s going to take me a little while to make all the arrangements you want, but I have a list of female operators and one of them fits your description to a T. I don’t think she’s working now, and I’ll try and get her.

“Now, Perry, there’s one thing you’ve got to watch out for. If anybody has gone to all this trouble to sew you up, you had better be careful with your telephone conversations. With electronic eavesdropping devices it’s not too difficult to bug an office or tap a telephone line.”

Mason said, “That’s why I’m telephoning you from the depot, Paul. I’ll telephone you again shortly. See if your operative is available, and if she is I want her to come to my office in about half an hour. Can do?”

“If she’s available, can do,” Drake said. “You call me back in ten minutes.”

“Right,” Mason said.

The lawyer hung up, left the telephone booth, walked halfway to the entrance of the depot, then suddenly snapped his fingers as though he had forgotten something, whirled on his heel, and started back toward the telephone booths.

He almost collided with a rather thin individual with high cheekbones, a lantern jaw, a brown suit and tie, black shoes, and white shirt. The man was about sixty years of age.

Mason hurried back to the telephone booth, again held his body in such a position that his shoulders shielded the dial of the telephone, and dialed the number Ellen Adair had given Della Street.

A voice at the other end of the line repeated the number Mason had dialed.

“Miss Adair, please,” Mason said.

“Just a moment, please,” the voice said.

A few moments later another voice said, “Miss Adair’s office.”

“Miss Adair, please,” Mason said.

“Who’s calling?”

“Mr. Mason.”

“Just a moment, please.”

A moment later Mason heard Ellen Adair’s voice.

“Listen carefully,” Mason said. “I want to know where I stand. What kind of a game are you playing? Are you mixed up in a criminal case — and, if so, what are the facts?”

“What are you talking about?” Ellen Adair demanded.

“I’m talking about the fact that somebody from Cloverville showed up in my office and said that he was representing The Cloverville Gazette, that the story of what had happened to you was arousing a tremendous amount of local interest, that the paper would be willing to pay a reasonable sum for your story.”

“Oh my God!” Ellen Adair exclaimed.

“Wait a minute: you haven’t heard it all yet,” Mason said. “I pegged this man as a private detective. I surmised that he would feel I might be getting in touch with you, that my phone might be tapped or my office bugged, so I took a cab to the depot. I’m calling you from the phone booth there. I was followed to the depot by another man, who may be a local private detective.

“Now all of this is costing somebody a lot of money. I think the one private detective really did come in from Cloverville. The other man who is on my tail seems to know the city pretty well and may well be a local man. Even so, someone has put a few hundred dollars on the line right up to date.

“Now then, if you’re that important and you’ve mixed me into the case, I want to know why you’re that important.”

“I can’t tell you,” she said; “not now.”

“I didn’t think you could,” Mason said, “but I want to know where I can meet you at seven-thirty tonight. I’ll be accompanied by Della Street, and we’ll have dinner and be where we can talk. We can get reasonable privacy at The Blue Ox. Do you ever eat there?”

“I’m familiar with it,” she said. “Can I meet you there at seven-thirty and be sure that the people who are following you wouldn’t — wouldn’t pick me up?”

Mason said, “I think so. I think I can arrange it.

“Now look — all this cloak-and-dagger stuff makes me very, very suspicious. I am afraid that I am being dragged into something that...”

“No, no, no, Mr. Mason,” she interrupted, “it’s nothing that will affect you. It’s only something that affects me, but I need you now more than ever. I know now who’s back of all this and I simply must have your help. I’m prepared to pay whatever it’s worth.”

“All right,” Mason said; “I’m going to play ball with you because I had an idea yesterday there was a lot more to the case than you were telling me. Also, I don’t like to have some private detective try to make a monkey out of me.

“Now, correct me if I am wrong. These people — whoever they are — who are on your trail haven’t seen you for some twenty years. They knew you as a good-looking girl — in fact, a beautiful girl — who was a little above the average height. Any rather tall woman who is good-looking and about the right age might be used as a decoy — is that right?”

“Yes.”

“It’s difficult for you to talk where you are now?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask where that is?”

Ellen Adair said, “You are talking with the head buyer of French, Coleman and Swazey, and any understanding you have with me will be honored.”

“Thank you,” Mason said. “I’ll see you at The Blue Ox at seven-thirty. Tell the headwaiter that you are Mr. Mason’s guest and he’ll show you to a booth.”

The lawyer waited for several minutes, then again called Drake’s office.

Paul Drake himself answered the phone.

“Perry?”

“Right.”

“Everything’s O.K. I’ve got the operative, and she’ll move into the apartment with at least enough stuff to enable her to act as if she’s living there. She’ll probably have to eat out.”

“When can she be at my office?”

“Any time you say within the next thirty to forty minutes.”

Mason said, “Have her at my office in exactly forty minutes. Then I want her to leave a broad trail from the office right to the apartment. In other words, Paul, we’re going to be naive. We’re going to play everything wide open. It will be so easy to follow her that it will be like rolling off a log. Only don’t make it too simple. I don’t want these people to suspect a frame-up, but I do want them to believe that they’re dealing with an unsuspecting attorney who won’t prove to be too formidable an adversary.

“Now, here’s something else. Della Street and I are going to be at The Blue Ox Café tonight. I’ll have a table reserved. I want to be absolutely certain that I am not followed, and if I should be followed I want to be tipped off so that I can take my shadow on a detour Della and I will come in a taxicab. We’ll be there on the dot at seven-thirty. I want you to have an operative on the job to make sure I’m not being followed. I don’t think I will be, but I have to be absolutely certain.

“Got everything straight?”

“I have it all straight,” Drake said. “Ellen Smith will be at your office in exactly forty minutes. She’ll give the name ‘Ellen Smith’ to the receptionist and say she has an appointment. She’ll talk with you, then leave and go directly to the decoy apartment and stay there until she receives further orders.”

“That’s right,” Mason said. “Now, you’ve got some kind of a bug detector which can tell if an office is bugged?”

“That’s right.”

“Go in my office,” Mason said, “and make sure that there are no bugs.”

“I can’t check your phone in that time,” Drake said. “They’ve got so many methods of...”

“Forget the phone,” Mason told him, “and I don’t think you’ll find any bugs in the office. They think I’m a pushover.

“I’ll be in touch with you from time to time, giving you instructions. I can trust this Ellen Smith?”

“With your life,” Drake said.

“O.K.,” Mason told him, and hung up.

The lawyer left the station, took a cab directly back to his office, entered through the corridor door to his private office, turned to Della Street, and said, “What’s new, Della?”

“Paul has been here with a bug detector and has given the office a clean bill of health,” she said. “No bugs.”

“That’s fine,” Mason told her. “I didn’t think there’d be any.”

“Can you tell me what this is all about?” Della asked.

“Not yet,” Mason said, “but you have a dinner date with the boss and a client tonight, so prepare to wrap yourself around a nice, juicy steak with all trimmings. Unless I’m greatly mistaken, we’re going to be mixed up to our eyebrows in intrigue. A rather tall woman, thirty-eight years old, is going to be in the office within about ten minutes. I want to see her. She’ll give the name of Ellen Smith. Tell Gertie she has an appointment and she’s to come right in.”

“And who, may I ask, is Ellen Smith?”

“Ellen Smith,” Mason said, grinning, “is a ringer.”

“A ringer?”

“That’s right. A double for our client, Ellen Adair. When she leaves the office she’s going to be followed to her apartment.”

“And then?” Della Street asked.

Mason said, “Our friend Jarmen Dayton will, from that moment, be very difficult to deal with. We’ll find that The Cloverville Gazette is very, very penny-pinching. The talk of generous compensation which we heard earlier today will fade away into the background. Our friend Mr. Dayton will wish us a very good day and leave us badly mystified.”

“And what will you do?”

“Oh, I’ll be badly mystified,” Mason said, grinning. “You never want to disappoint a private detective who has spent the night on a jet plane and who hasn’t had time even to go to a hotel and freshen up but who did have time to go to a local private detective agency and engage an operative to back up his play.”

Della sighed. “If you didn’t get such a kick out of cases of this sort, you’d get bored with it all. I suppose you’re running up a big bill with Paul Drake’s office, and so far we have no client to charge it to.”

“I’m the client in this particular transaction,” Mason said. “I’m trying to find out why a young woman who had won a beauty contest and thought she had the world at her feet would become pregnant and disappear, remain unmarried for twenty years, then hire an attorney to keep a local newspaper from publishing an item in the column entitled ‘Cloverville’s Yesterdays’.”

“And what,” Della Street asked, “became of the baby?”

“I think,” Mason told her, “that when we start asking questions about that, we’ll find our client will tell us to go fly a kite.”

“Why?” Della Street asked.

“If we knew the answer to that,” Mason said, “we’d probably know why The Cloverville Gazette sent a private detective out here and why someone is paying to have me shadowed.”

Mason, feeling in a particularly happy mood, brought out the coffee percolator and said, “I think that entitles us to a coffee break, Della.”

They had only started drinking their coffee when the telephone rang and Gertie said, “Ellen Smith is here.”

“Tell her to come in,” Mason said. “Wait a minute. Della will come out and get her.”

Della Street went to the outer office and, a few moments later, came back with a woman who was almost exactly the same height and build as Ellen Adair.

Mason looked her over approvingly.

“Credentials?” he asked.

She opened her purse and showed him her credentials as one of Drake’s operatives.

“We have to be cautious in a deal of this sort,” Mason said. “Sit down. We’ve got about ten or fifteen minutes to kill, and I take it you could perhaps use a cup of coffee.”

“I’d love it.”

“Do you mind telling me your exact age?” Mason asked.

“Thirty-two to prospective employers, thirty to prospective swains, and thirty-eight when accuracy is essential.”

Mason grinned. “I think you have what it takes.”

Della handed the woman a cup of coffee.

Then the woman said, “Would you mind telling me what this is all about?”

“Frankly,” Mason said, “we don’t know. I am going to tell you this much about which I am certain.

“Since you will take the name of Ellen Smith for the purpose of this job, we are going to call you Ellen Smith and not your true name.

“You are taking the name of Ellen Smith because people are going to mistake you for an Ellen Calvert who at one time lived in the Midwest in a rural city which has since grown considerably.

“You — as Ellen Calvert — left that city twenty years ago under mysterious circumstances, and certain people are trying to find out what those circumstances were, where you have been, and what happened to you.

“I think that there are a lot of other things which these people are trying to find out, but I’m not prepared to say what they are.

“The reason you are here is that I was approached a short time ago by a man who put me in such a position that he felt certain I would telephone my client — who, incidentally, is the real Ellen Calvert — and ask her to come in to discuss a proposition which he had made.

“I know that I have been shadowed and I have every reason to believe the office is being kept under surveillance. Because you are about the same build and age as the real Ellen Calvert, when you leave this office you will be shadowed.

“Now, as I understand it, the Drake Detective Agency has an apartment which they use from time to time.”

“That’s right. Mr. Drake keeps people there when he has some witness whom he doesn’t dare to register in a local hotel. It’s also a place where operatives can take a potential witness when they want to get a statement. The place is bugged and a tape recorder takes down things that are said.

“It’s not a particularly large or expensive apartment. It’s just a utility place.”

“I think it will do,” Mason said. “When you leave here you’re to take a taxi and go to that apartment. It has a back door?”

“Front and back, yes. There’s a service entrance in the back.”

Mason said, “Once you have been shadowed to that apartment, once you produce a key and go inside as though you owned the place, there will be a period of an hour or so when you will be free.

“I feel that you will be shadowed as far as the apartment, then the detective who shadows you will leave to make a report to his agency. Having run you to earth, so to speak, they will do nothing more for an hour or two, or perhaps a day or two, while they await instructions.

“Now then, as soon as you have entered the apartment with a latchkey, go right through the apartment. Slip out the back door. That opens on an alley?”

“Yes.”

“Drake will have an operative waiting with a car to pick you up. You can go to your own apartment, pack up suitcases with whatever you will need for a stay of several days.

“Since I can’t get you bona fide employment which would stand up under scrutiny, you are going to have to take the part of a young woman who is temporarily out of a job. You will live economically. You will go to the cheaper family restaurants and you will buy provisions at the supermarket.”

“There’s one within a block and a half of the place,” she said.

Mason nodded. “You will use taxicabs when you have to, but as sparingly as possible. I don’t dare have you use one of Drake’s automobiles because they could and would trace the license number.

“I think that sooner or later someone will come to the door and start talking with you. No matter what the approach is, no matter how plausible it may seem, you are to slam the door in his face.

“He may be offering you an opportunity to enroll in a contest where there will be prizes. He may be selling lottery tickets. He may come right out and accuse you of being Ellen Calvert and tell you that there’s no use trying to keep up the pretense, that your story is known to him. He may simply offer you money for your story. He may come right out and tell you he is a private detective, that he wants certain facts and that it will be easier for you to give him those facts for him to have to get them the hard way.”

“No matter what the approach is, I’m to slam the door in his face?”

“Yes.”

“Do I deny that I am Ellen Calvert?”

“You are tight-lipped,” Mason said. “You simply slam the door. The apartment has a telephone?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know the number?”

“Paul Drake has it.”

“I’ll get it from Paul,” Mason said.

“Anything else?”

“When you leave here,” Mason said, “you are to be very much disturbed, yet with it all you have a queenly dignity. Keep your head up, but show that you are emotionally upset. You wipe an imaginary tear from your eye. You twist your handkerchief. Halfway to the elevator, you pause as though you had thought of something important. You turn around and take two or three steps back toward the office, then shrug your shoulders, apparently change your mind, go back to the elevator... Now, of course, you’re familiar with this apartment?”

“I’ve used it several times. I had a female witness to keep under cover.”

“It would be better,” Mason said, “if you know the exact route, to go there by bus rather than by taxicab.”

“That’s easy,” she said, smiling. “Not all of our clients are sufficiently affluent to afford cab bills for operatives and I’ve gone there half-a-dozen times by bus.”

“It’s highly-important that you don’t make any mistakes on that,” Mason said. “If you get on the wrong bus, it would be a dead giveaway. You’ll probably be followed from the minute you leave the office, and it will make it much easier if you give your shadow an opportunity to get aboard the same bus with you.”

She nodded. “I think I’ve got the picture.”

“Under no circumstances,” Mason said, “at any time are you to use the name of Ellen Calvert or to admit that you are Ellen Calvert. If anybody presses you for a name, you say that you are Ellen Smith. The main thing is to keep the door closed whenever anyone tries to interrogate you, but you will do it under circumstances which indicate you definitely have something to conceal.”

“Am I supposed to be an embezzler or something?” she asked.

Mason shook his head. “You’re just supposed to be a woman who is trying to avoid her past.”

She smiled. “I must have quite a purple past,” she said, “if I haven’t been guilty of any crime.”

Mason nodded gravely. “That,” he said, “is something that I am also keeping in mind.”

She finished her coffee, handed the cup to Della Street, and said, “Could I have just another half cup, please?”

While Della poured the coffee, the operative sized up Mason. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve ever worked directly on one of your cases. I think I’m going to enjoy it.”

“I certainly hope so,” Mason said. “Unless things come to a head rather promptly, it’s going to be rather tedious for you, sitting there in an apartment and...”

“Oh, there’s a television and a radio,” she said. “I’ll pick up a couple of books that I’ve been trying to read and I’ll get along fine. This is a vacation with pay as far as I’m concerned. You should see some of the jobs I get mixed up with.”

“I guess it’s an adventurous life,” Mason said.

“You can say that again,” she observed.

She placed the cup and saucer on the edge of the filing case. “Ready for me to go?” she asked.

“O.K.,” Mason said. “I’ll get the number of the telephone from Paul Drake. You have my number. You can call me if anything turns up, but remember that both lines may be tapped after you have been there for a day or so. It will take them a day to concentrate on getting some electronic device in operation. Just be careful — and, above all, be just Ellen. Don’t use your last name when you call me. Say, ‘This is Ellen speaking’.”

“I’ve got it,” she said.

Mason moved over to the exit door. “Remember now,” he cautioned, “be naive. Stand tall, be dignified. Act natural, but be entirely unsuspecting.”

“Will do,” she said, flashing him a smile, and moved out of the office, holding her chin high.

Mason returned and held out his coffee cup to Della Street.

“Well?” she asked.

Mason grinned. “To hell with all the routine stuff, Della. This is the sort of thing which makes a lawyer’s life worthwhile.”

“To whom are you going to charge all these expenses?” she asked.

Mason grinned. “So far, to me. This is as good as a vacation.”

“Some holiday!” she said.

Mason put a powdered cream substitute and sugar in his coffee, stirred the liquid thoughtfully. “We will take the utmost precautions to see that we’re not followed tonight, Della,” he announced, “but I think that our decoy will be working. I think we’ll have sent the hounds baying off on a false scent.”

“You,” Della Street charged, “are as happy as a kid with a new toy.”

“I am for a fact,” Mason agreed.