Chapter Six

It was shortly before closing time in the afternoon when the phone from the outer office rang and Della Street, answering it, raised her eyebrows in surprise, glanced at Perry Mason, said into the phone, “Just a minute, Gertie; I’ll let you know.”

She turned to the lawyer. “Stephen L. Garland is in the outer office, says he has no appointment, that he wants to see you upon a matter of business in which he has reason to believe you’re already interested.”

“Good old Slick Garland,” Mason said. “The troubleshooter, the smart one! Now, what do you suppose he wants?”

“Information,” Della Street said.

“But this is such a peculiar way to get it,” Mason said. “Garland should be the sort who taps telephone lines, who bribes witnesses, who— Anyway, Della, go get him. Let’s see what he has to say for himself.”

A few moments later Della ushered the tall, cadaverous, unsmiling Garland into the office.

“Mr. Mason,” Garland said in a deep, bass voice.

“Sit down,” the lawyer invited.

“You know who I am and all about me,” Garland said.

Mason raised his eyebrows.

“Let’s not play innocent with each other, Mason. Time is very definitely not on our side. I think the time has come to be absolutely frank with each other.”

“Go ahead; it’s your move,” Mason said.

Garland said, “For many, many years I’ve been a troubleshooter for the Cloverville Spring and Suspension Company.

“Originally I was a claims adjuster; then I graduated into assisting attorneys in damage suits; then I became a troubleshooter, more or less in charge of public relations.”

Mason nodded.

“Now, then,” Garland went on, “you have a woman, in whom I am vitally interested, as a client. You have her salted away. You think I don’t know where she is. I do.”

“Indeed,” Mason said.

“She’s in the Rosa Lee Apartments, apartment three-ten. She’s going under the name of Ellen Smith. Actually her name is Ellen Calvert. I did her a bad turn some twenty years ago. I’m sorry about it. I’ve lived to regret it, but a man can’t bat a hundred per cent when he gets into a big-league hall game.”

“Your are playing big-league ball?” Mason asked.

“The biggest.”

“Such as what?”

“I had a job,” Garland said. “I tried my best to do that job and do it well. The head of the company was Ezekiel Haslett. He was a tough, square-jawed, thin-mouthed product of the old school.

“Heaven knows what the kids in his generation really were like. I guess they were repressed, disciplined, and worked so hard that they didn’t have time for any animal spirits.

“Ezekiel wanted the public image of the Cloverville Spring and Suspension Company to be the highest. It was up to me to keep it that way.

“One of the employees would be in trouble over drunk driving. I had to square it so there was no publicity. One time one of the guys got drunk and raped one of the employees. I had to square that — and, believe me, it was a job. She was all set to prosecute. But I pointed out to her that under the peculiar provisions of the law the minute she claimed that she had been forcibly attacked the defense had a right to show her previous sexual experience, if any — all of it.

“She tried to bluff it out. She said that it didn’t make a bit of difference to her. But that was where old Garland had been on the job earning his salary. I’d done a lot of gumshoe work. I was able to point out names, dates and telephone numbers. Then I gave her a thousand dollars in cash to satisfy her injured feelings, arranged to get her a job with one of the companies that we dealt with in a distant city, and shipped her off with a prepaid ticket and my blessing.

“In the end I think she felt good about it.”

“And this other young woman that you’re talking about?” Mason asked.

“There I botched things,” Garland said, “although I followed the same procedure that was standard in cases of that sort. She had been in love with young Haslett. Things had gone pretty far, and she found herself pregnant.

“Mind you, that was a while ago. She talked about ‘shame’ and she absolutely refused to do the things that are more or less taken for granted these days.”

“What did she want?” Mason asked.

“I’ve no idea what she wanted. At the time, I assumed that she wanted Haslett to marry her and to have the child. But now I think she was just so completely panic-stricken that she didn’t know what she did want. Anyway, I did the usual. I sent young Haslett off to Europe on a prolonged tour where no one knew where he was and it would take a person with money to find him. Then I sent her a thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills in a plain, unmarked envelope.

“Of course, if she had wanted to make a squawk, I’d have denied all knowledge of sending her the money and she couldn’t have proven a thing.

“That’s almost always a winning combination. They may start out being indignant, but before they are through they get practical. They sit down and count those ten hundred-dollar bills. They can get fixed up for a couple of hundred if they know where to go. They seldom have to pay more than four hundred. That leaves them with at least six hundred dollars. It gives them carfare to any place within reason they want to go. It gives them money while they’re getting a new job, and they stay for a few months, then come back home with a story about a loss of memory or an irresistible desire to see the world, a set of fictitious adventures, and they pick up the threads of life where they left off.

“Sometimes they meet a new man and return to introduce their friends and parents to a stalwart, beaming husband who probably knows absolutely nothing about the past.”

“It didn’t work in this case?” Mason asked.

“It didn’t work. I don’t know just what happened, but I Know where the girl is and I want to talk with her. You’ve got her stashed away. It’s only a question of time until I get her and get to talk to her.”

“You’re certain of that?” Mason asked.

“I’ll tell you how certain I am,” Garland said. “Haslett has been lost at sea. If there’s an heir, the heir inherits. If there isn’t an heir, the half brothers inherit. The half brothers are out on the trail, trying to find out what happened. I’m an employee of the company. I’m going to be working for the half brothers or I’m going to be working for an heir. It doesn’t make too much difference which: I’ll try to do my job.

“However, I do want to know where I stand, and I want to bring this case to a satisfactory conclusion by being the one that cracks it and not having some private detective employed by the half brothers beat my time.”

“What,” Mason asked, “specifically, do they want me to do?”

Garland said, “There are lots of people involved, and they have different wants. The half brothers, represented by Duncan Lovett, want to prove there never was any illegitimate child. Then the half brothers inherit the plant and I find myself with three years to go, working for the half brothers, before I can retire on a pension.

“Put yourself in my position, Mason. I’m not going to do anything which will antagonize the half brothers.

“On the other hand, let us suppose that there was an illegitimate child and that rumor is correct and Harmon Haslett has made a will leaving everything to that illegitimate child if the parentage can be established.

“That child would be about nineteen years old now. That child would inherit the company. I’d find myself in an entirely different position.”

“And so you come to me?” Mason asked.

“So I come to you,” Garland said.

“You know that I’m bound by professional ethics, that I can’t give you any information?”

“I know you’re bound by professional ethics. I know you can’t give me any information. But I also know that you weren’t born yesterday. You’re probably the only one who knows the facts and...”

There was a sharp, insistent ringing on Mason’s unlisted telephone, the phone to which only Della Street and Paul Drake possessed the number.

Della Street raised her eyebrows at Mason.

The lawyer nodded, said, “I’ll take it myself, Della,” picked up the telephone and said, “What is it, Paul?”

“This decoy of yours is in trouble,” Drake said.

“How come?”

“A lawyer by the name of Lovett and some woman who is with him have got into the apartment.”

“Dammit,” Mason said. “I left instructions that she wasn’t to let anyone in.”

“They engineered this too cleverly,” Drake said. “The woman knocked at the door. My operative opened it just to the limit of the safety chain. The woman was standing outside; a man was in the background carrying a big box which appeared to be filled with tools. The woman said, ‘My apartment is right below yours, and there’s a bad leak which we think is coming from a faulty connection in your bathtub. In any event, my ceiling is soaked with water. We’ve got to shut off your water for a few minutes.’

“My operative should have had her head examined, but she fell for it, took the chain off the door, and said, ‘Come in.’ The man brought the box in and put it down. It was filled with old newspapers and a briefcase. He took out the briefcase and said, ‘Now, my dear, I want to ask you a few questions. If you answer them truthfully, everything will be all right. If you lie, you are going to be in serious trouble.’ ”

“So what happened?”

“My operative refused to talk, ordered the people out of the apartment. They are still sitting there. She wants to know whether to call the police or what to do.”

“Call her back,” Mason said. “Tell her to wait right there until I get there. We’ll be there within twenty minutes. She can tell these people that Perry Mason is coming to represent her. That probably will frighten them out. In case it doesn’t, we’ll see what they have to say when we get there.”

Mason slammed down the receiver, said to Della Street, “Grab a notebook, Della; let’s go.”

The lawyer paused, looking at Garland.

“All right, Garland,” he said; “you’ve been casing an apartment in the Rosa Lee Apartments. A woman known to you as Ellen Smith is in there, and some people have forced their way into the apartment.”

“That probably will be Duncan Z. Lovett,” Garland said. “He’s clever and he’s fast. He has a private detective on the job who knows as much as I do. We were casing the apartment together. You’re bucking money in this thing, Mason, and you’re bucking brains.”

“All right,” Mason said; “if you want a free ride, come along. I may want a witness to what’s going to happen.”

“Remember I’m biased,” Garland said.

“You’re biased,” Mason told him, “but you’re not going to commit perjury and you’re not going to testify to something that didn’t happen. I have an idea you’re a square shooter.”

Garland said, “All right, since we’re putting cards on the table, Mason, I’ll tell you this. I try to shoot square, but I have loyalty to the people I represent and I’m tricky.”

Mason grinned, said, “Come on, let’s go. I’m tricky myself.”

“Jarmen Dayton is already out there casing the apartment,” Garland said.

“Fine; we’ll pick him up and let him come in. We need an audience. The more the merrier. You can go with us in my car. I’m going to push pretty hard on the throttle.”

Garland got to his feet. “Let’s go.”