Chapter Eight

Mason and Della Street left the elevator and walked down the long corridor toward Mason’s offices.

“Do we stop in and say hello to Paul Drake?” Della Street asked.

Mason shook his head. “No. Drake will have received a report from his operative, Jessie Alva. He’ll know that the case is terminated as-far as he’s concerned.”

“And as far as we’re concerned?”

Mason grinned. “Well, we had a dramatic conclusion anyway.”

Della Street laughed. “I’ll never forget the expression on that lawyer’s face when he had so patronizingly stated that he had expected more from you in the line of cross-examination and then suddenly realized that you had trapped his witness and his whole case had blown up in his face.”

Mason said thoughtfully, “Of course, Della, the fact that Maxine Edfield made a mistake in the identity of Ellen Calvert actually doesn’t discredit her whole testimony.”

“But the way you trapped her into the admission it does,” Della Street said.

“That,” Mason told her, fitting his key to the lock on the door to his private office, “is only one thing. Her admission of receiving payment for her testimony is going to hurt that side of the case more than anything.”

The lawyer opened the door, held it for Della, then entered behind her, removed his key, and closed the door.

“Of course, Maxine Edfield could have been telling the truth. She was too eager to be of service to Duncan Lovett. And when Lovett assured her that they had run Ellen Calvert to earth and they went to the apartment and the door was opened by a tall woman with a queenly bearing who matched the general description of Ellen Calvert, Maxine naturally jumped to an erroneous conclusion.

“After all, she had the word of Duncan Lovett, of Stephen Garland, and of Jarmen Dayton that this was the person they were looking for.”

Della Street said, “Gertie’s still working. I’d better report to her that we’re here.”

She picked up the telephone to the outer office, said, “We’re back, Gertie. If there’s anyone... what?... WHAT!”

“Good heavens!” Della said. “Hang on!”

She turned to Perry Mason and said, “The real Ellen Calvert is in the office impatiently waiting to see you.”

“Good lord!” Mason said. “Now we will have a field day!”

“Do you suppose Garland and Dayton are still watching the office?” Della Street asked.

“They’d hardly expect me to be so foolish as to send for my client now,” Mason said thoughtfully. “And they’d hardly expect Ellen to be so foolish as to come in, but — well, we’re in for it now, Della. Tell Gertie to have her come in.”

Della Street passed the message over the telephone to the receptionist, and a few seconds later Ellen Adair opened the door to the private office.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Mason,” she said, “but I simply had to see you. I’ve changed my mind.”

“You’ve chosen a mighty poor time to change your mind,” Mason said. “Sit down.”

“Why?” she asked. “What’s so bad about the time?”

Mason said, “As I suppose you are aware, Harmon Haslett has been lost at sea in the wreck of a private yacht. Stephen Garland, the troubleshooter for the company, and Jarmen Dayton, a detective, came out here to try and locate you. They knew that you had been in my office. They assumed you would come again.

“I anticipated their moves and hired a female detective of about your age and build, gave her instructions in the mannerisms she was to assume, and staked her out in an apartment.

“We have just come from that apartment, where we had a dramatic scene. An attorney named Duncan Z. Lovett brought a witness — a Maxine Edfield — who identified the female detective as you and stated that you and she had double-dated and that you had confided in her after your love affair with Harmon Haslett, that you were worried because you thought Harmon was cooling off and you decided, after conferring with Maxine Edfield, to pretend that you were pregnant and see if you couldn’t force Haslett into marriage.

“In place of that scheme’s working, she said, Haslett left abruptly for Europe, acting on the advice of Garland, the troubleshooter. She said that Garland sent you a thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills and you decided to go away and begin life all over again, that you never were pregnant and the whole thing had been a scheme to try and force Harmon Haslett into matrimony.”

“Why, the lying little...”

“Take it easy,” Mason said. “It’s necessary that you have this information quickly. Then we can discuss it after you know the facts.

“Maxine Edfield identified the detective as being you. She was about your height and complexion, and I had given her instructions as to how to walk and how to comport herself.

“The result was rather ludicrous. Maxine Edfield insisted that she was telling the truth. She also insisted that the detective was the woman she had known as Ellen Calvert, the woman who had confided in her.

“Everything blew sky high after Lovett’s witness got herself in that trap.

“Now, then, you’ve walked into my office. If Garland and Dayton are still shadowing the office in the forlorn hope that you’ll show up, they’ll know from the description that they’ve hit pay dirt.”

“Let them hit pay dirt,” she said. “I’m going to come out in the open and fight.”

“Fight for what?” Mason asked.

“Two million dollars for my son.”

“Whoa, back up,” Mason said. “That’s an entirely different attitude from the one you had when you were here before.”

“A woman has a right to change her mind.”

“What brought about this change of heart on your part?” Mason asked.

She opened her purse, took from it another newspaper clipping.

“This article from The Cloverville Gazette, for one thing,” she said.

Mason glanced at the headline: MANUFACTURER’S ESTATE VALUED AT TWO MILLION DOLLARS.

Mason raised his eyes from the headline. “You hadn’t known this before?”

“No. I knew that Harmon Haslett was head of the business and virtually the sole stockholder, but I had no idea the business had grown so much in twenty years. It’s evidently a real big company now.”

“You understand what all this means?” Mason said. “If you try to claim that estate, you’re going to be accused of fraud, you’re going to be accused of perjury, your son is going to have his name dragged through the courts, and... He has no idea that you’re his real mother?”

“He does now,” she said. “I talked with him. I explained everything to him, and it was a lot easier than I had anticipated, because the woman he thought was his mother had made a couple of statements that had aroused his suspicions.”

Mason regarded her thoughtfully. “You know,” he said, “you could be a very, very, very clever woman working in conspiracy with a young man of the proper age and making a very dramatic, carefully staged flimflam for the purpose of collecting a couple of million dollars.”

“And you think I am an impostor?”

Mason said thoughtfully, “The way this thing has been engineered, the dramatic way the facts have been brought to light, I just don’t know what to think. I’m only letting you know that I’m skeptical at the moment.

“Remember this: I’m not representing you any longer. Our relationship as attorney and client was terminated by you. Now you come to me with an entirely different plan of operation. I’m just telling you that I’m skeptical.”

“I can’t blame you, Mr. Mason,” she said. “And I know now that I have acted like a fool. I should have taken everything into consideration.”

“All right,” Mason said, “let’s have the real story; and, mind you, I am not asking you as a client. I am only asking you to tell me what you want me to do for the purpose of seeing whether I want to represent you.

“Now how much of what you told me was the truth?”

“Everything I told you was the truth,” she said. “The only thing is I kept part of the truth from you.”

“You did have a son?”

She said, “I came here just a little over twenty years ago. I was pregnant and desperate, but I had some money. I had what was left of the thousand dollars I had received — and since I had traveled in the cheapest way possible, I had a large part of that money.

“I couldn’t take advantage of the office training I had had in the Haslett Company without giving it as a reference. Therefore, the only thing I had left was general housework and baby-sitting.

“I put an ad in the paper, and a Mrs. Baird answered the ad and asked me to call. I went out and had an interview. They were not very well fixed, but they had good credit and Mr. Baird had a steady job. The wife, Melinda Baird, was not at all well. They had no children. They looked like just an ordinary married couple.

“I went to work for them. Within a short time Mrs. Baird noticed my condition. I told her all about my trouble and told her that I would keep on working as long as I was able. Then I would go to a home for unwed mothers and have my child.

“She was very frank with me and very friendly. She asked me if I had considered the possibilities of an abortion, and I told her I had and that I wouldn’t go for it.

“She didn’t say anything more that day, but a couple of days later she talked with me and told me that she had had a long discussion with her husband — that they would like very much to adopt my baby but there were legal obstacles which made it impossible.

“So then Mrs. Baird came out with the proposition. She would tell her friends that she was pregnant. Mr. Baird would stay in Los Angeles and keep his job. But Mrs. Baird and I would go to San Francisco. When it came time for me to be confined, I would go to a San Francisco hospital under the name of Melinda Baird and have my child. The child would be registered as having been born to Melinda Baird and August Leroy Baird.

“That was all there need be to it. After a period of recuperation, we would return to Los Angeles. I could have a permanent job with them and they would bring up the child as their own. The only thing they asked was that I never let anyone — particularly the child — know the true state of affairs.”

Mason studied the woman thoughtfully. “Why did you change your mind, and why do you come to me now?” he asked.

“Because of articles in the paper,” she said, “showing that Harmon Haslett left an estate of over two million dollars. There are no heirs other than my son.”

“You’re not trying to get any for yourself?” Mason asked.

“I have no legal claim.”

“Before, when I talked with you, you were very positive that you wanted your son to make his own way in the world, that you didn’t want him to know that he had — as you expressed it, I believe — a heel for a father. Now there has been an abrupt change.”

“I’ve been giving the matter a lot of thought. A few days ago I was thing in terms of a live father and two or three hundred dollars a month as support money for my son. Now I am thinking in terms of a dead father and an estate of two million dollars for the boy.”

“All of that,” Mason said, “helps to make me skeptical.”

She said, “It just happens that I can prove my story.”

Mason sat forward in his chair. “Now that,” he said, “would be interesting. How are you going to prove it? By the people who have been posing as the parents of...?”

“No, they are both dead. They were killed in an automobile accident.”

“How, then?”

“By a nurse at the hospital in San Francisco.”

Mason said, “You mean you have a nurse who remembers what happened twenty years ago and who can testify to the circumstances surrounding one single birth out of all of the thousands which took place?”

“You’re making it sound like something utterly incredible.”

“Frankly, I think it is.”

“Well, when you understand the circumstances, you’ll realize that it’s the most logical thing on earth.”

“What are the circumstances?”

“This nurse had just started work in this hospital on the day that I was confined. Remember that I went into the hospital and took the name of Melinda Baird — and at that time, of course, I had to take the age of Melinda Baird, which I gave as twenty-nine. At the time I was only nineteen.

“Nobody noticed the discrepancy in ages except this one nurse, who happened to be checking the records and saw that my age was given as twenty-nine. Actually, Melinda Baird was thirty-one at the time, but we thought we could get by with a few years off on the official documents on the grounds that a woman always likes to make herself younger than she is.

“Anyway, this nurse thought there had been a mistake, and she came in to talk with me about it.”

“What’s her name?” Mason asked.

“Agnes Burlington.”

“All right, she came in to see you before the child was born?”

“That’s right.”

“And asked you if you hadn’t made a mistake in giving your age?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“I told her no — that I’d actually been born on the date I’d put in the records, that I was really older than I looked.”

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Bosh and nonsense,’ and she asked me who I thought I was fooling, and finally I told her to give me a break and to just quit worrying about it.

“She was on her first assignment there at the hospital and so she remembered the thing rather distinctly.”

“That’s no sign she could remember you personally,” Mason said.

“Oh, but she does. I have talked with her.”

“You’ve talked with her?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she?”

“Here in Los Angeles. She has a nursing job here now.”

“When did you talk with her?”

“Just a short time ago. That Agnes Burlington is diabolically clever. She had an idea of what was happening there in the hospital, so she just made a note of all of the records. Remember that I went there under the name of Melinda Baird and, of course, I gave the correct address at which Melinda Baird was living at the time. We had to do that in order to have the birth certificate and everything regular on its face.

“Well, Agnes Burlington bided her time, and then a couple of years ago she came to me and told me who she was, that she remembered me, and that she knew I had been posing as Melinda Baird and that the baby who was born and who was baptized Wight Baird was not the son of Melinda Baird and August Leroy Baird but was my illegitimate son.”

“What did she want?” Mason asked.

“What do you think she wanted? Money. She was a shrewd, professional blackmailer. A nurse has lots and lots of opportunities for blackmail if she wants to use them, and this girl certainly wanted to use them.”

“She’s living here in Los Angeles now?”

“Yes.”

“What’s she doing?”

“She lives in a nice duplex house. She works when she feels like it. She drives a good car. She knows several places where she can go to get money when she needs it and...”

“How much has she hooked you for?” Mason asked.

“Not too much so far. She’s reasonably modest in her demands and she’s very, very plausible. She tells about how she needs a loan and things of that sort just to tide her over, a couple of hundred dollars now, and then a year later she’ll be back for three hundred dollars, and always so nice about it.”

“She said she remembered you?” Mason asked.

“Oh, yes — and actually I think she does — but she had one of those thirty-five-Millimeter cameras and she got several pictures of me in the hospital — pictures I knew nothing about until she casually mentioned that she had them.”

“Did she show them to you?”

“No.”

“You don’t think she’s bluffing?”

“No, I think she has them.”

Mason said thoughtfully. “So you’ve been paying blackmail to keep from having your past exposed and now, suddenly, you want to reverse the whole procedure?”

“Why not?” she asked. “The Bairds were killed in an automobile accident. Harmon Haslett is now dead. Wight is sole heir to a two-million-dollar estate and a big business.

“I have been wondering what I was going to do about Wight. Frankly, Mr. Mason, he’s been just a little bit wild since the Bairds were killed in that automobile accident. They left a will giving him some money, and he’s showing signs of — well, of being just a little bit wild.

“If he suddenly found himself the head of a great big business, if he found himself with plenty of money, he would steady down and assume the responsibility.”

“You hope he would steady down and assume responsibility,” Mason said. “He might go just the other way.”

“No, not Wight,” she said. “He’s restless now because he doesn’t have an assured position in life. Believe me, things were different when the Bairds were alive; but they died and he inherited just enough money — no, Mr. Mason, I’ve thought it all over. I’ve come to the conclusion that I reached a wrong decision when I first came to you and I want to change my entire position now.”

“I see,” Mason said; “and what do you want me to do now?”

“I want you to have Agnes sign an affidavit and — isn’t there some proceeding by which you can get an affidavit or some sort of a legal document from a person who knows very important facts but who might die or turn up missing or something?”

“Where there is reason to believe a person is the only one who knows certain facts and the facts are vital to property interests, there is a procedure by which the testimony can be perpetuated.”

“That’s what I want done in this case.”

“Your son is going under the name of Baird?”

“Yes. Wight Baird. One day when Melinda and August were both away and Wight was there in the house alone this woman came to call on him. She was very nice. She told him that she was one of the nurses in the hospital in San Francisco when he was born and that she attended his mother and that she wanted to see his mother. Evidently she was planning to blackmail the Bairds.”

“This was the same nurse?”

“Oh, yes; she gave her name — Agnes Burlington.”

“And then what happened?”

“She asked Wight about his mother — if his mother was a tall woman with what she called a commanding presence. And Wight laughed and said, ‘No, she’s medium height and inclined to be a little plump.’ And one thing led to another and then this nurse went away.”

Mason said, “You’re not telling me the whole story. Let’s have it all.”

“All right,” she said; “the nurse started blackmailing the Bairds. She hunted up Mr. Baird and told him who she was and told him that she had been one of the nurses when his son was born, and she made such thinly veiled statements about the mother’s being a tall woman and how she’d talked with the mother and would remember her anywhere that when she wanted to borrow two hundred and fifty dollars Baird loaned it to her.”

“Then what?”

“Then after a while she came back and borrowed two hundred and fifty more.”

“How much altogether?”

“She put the bite on the Bairds for twelve hundred and fifty dollars in all.”

“And where did that money come from? Did they pass it out willingly?”

“They paid it,” Ellen said. “They were reluctant to pay it, but they had no choice.”

“And during all of that time you were paying this nurse?”

“Yes, I was loaning her money.”

“So now you want her to talk,” Mason said musingly.

“Yes, I paid money to keep her from talking. Now it’s just the other way. I want her to talk now. I’m going to want her to testify.”

Mason said, “This could be one most ingenious and gigantic fraud.”

“What do you mean?”

“You could have hatched this whole thing up after finding out there was a potential two-million-dollar estate to be had if a claimant... Look, Ellen, I’ll talk with this nurse, but I’m going to be very, very skeptical — and I’ll want to see proof — lots of proof.”

“She can give you proof,” Ellen Adair said.

Mason said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. We’ll go call on this Agnes Burlington. If I think she’s telling the truth, I’ll get an affidavit from her.”

“And there’s some way you can start proceedings so that you can perpetuate her testimony in case something should happen to her?” Ellen Adair asked.

“She’s been around for twenty years,” Mason said. “She’ll probably be here a few years longer. But there is a procedure by which the testimony of a witness can be perpetuated.”

“And we’ll do that?”

Mason said, “The last time I talked with you, you dismissed me; you didn’t want me as an attorney.”

“The situation has changed since then. I have changed my mind about a lot of things.”

“I’ll say you have,” Mason said. Then he asked abruptly. “What about Maxine Edfield?”

“What do you mean what about her?”

“How well did you know her?”

“Very well indeed.”

“You asked her advice about things?”

“Yes; she was a few years older and I looked up to her.”

“You double-dated with her?”

“Yes.”

“You talked over your affair with Harmon Haslett?”

“Yes.”

“You told her you were pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“She knew about your getting the thousand dollars?”

“She was the only one who did know.”

“Did you tell her that actually you weren’t pregnant?”

“Of course not. I was pregnant; I was having morning sickness. That’s how Maxine happened to find out about it in the first place. She became terribly suspicious and started cross-examining me, and finally I had to tell her.”

Mason said, “Now she swears that you told her you weren’t pregnant, that it was all a racket to try and get Harmon Haslett to marry you.”

“I know. Life hasn’t been very kind to Maxine and someone has come along and dangled a lot of money in front of her. When there is two two million dollars involved, Mr. Mason, you can expect almost anything to happen.”

“You can say that again!” Mason said.

“Maxine is going to swear that it was all a part of a scheme for a shakedown?” Ellen asked.

“Not a shakedown; just that it was a part of a scheme to force Harmon Haslett into matrimony. She’s already given her testimony. The only thing is that she identified the wrong person as being you. Now that put her in an embarrassing position when she made the statement. But, actually, it only means she made a wrong identification, which, after twenty years, is something anyone could do.”

“You got her to identify the wrong person?”

“Well, I laid a trap for her and she walked into it,” Mason said.

“And you’ll go see Agnes Burlington with me?”

Mason sighed wearily. “All right,” he said, “I’ll go see her and listen to what she has to say. But I’ll warn you of one thing. I’m not going to represent you until after I’ve satisfied myself about a lot of things.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Mason said, “a person accused of crime is entitled to a defense whether he’s guilty or innocent. But a reputable lawyer doesn’t want to get involved in a case of this kind where a client may be trying to put across a fraudulent claim.”

“I can readily understand that, Mr. Mason. And if there were anything fraudulent about my claim, I wouldn’t want you to represent me. I wouldn’t even be coming forward.

“Even as it is, there was a while when I didn’t want to set forth the claim. That is, not my claim but my son’s claim. You can testify to that.”

“I can remember what you said,” Mason told her, “but it now seems your actions point in one direction, your words in another.

“As far as I’m concerned, you could be a very, very clever woman who pretended she was pregnant some twenty years ago, who tried to force Harmon Haslett into marriage, who failed in that attempt, who settled for a thousand dollars hush money, who came out here and got a job and worked her way up — but always with the idea that at the proper time she’d try and make a claim to the Haslett estate or make some kind of settlement.

“You looked around and found the Bairds, who were having a child at just about the date your child would have been due if your story had been correct.

“From that time on, you simply waited your time to cash in.”

“But I couldn’t do anything like that, Mr. Mason!”

“Why not?”

“It’s completely, utterly foreign to my character! Can’t you understand I’ve made good in the business world? I’ve worked up until I’m chief buyer for French, Coleman and Swazey in the big department store. And then there’s the testimony of this nurse.”

“That testimony,” Mason said, “will probably be the determining factor if it’s genuine.”

“But the minute you talk with her you’ll find out that she’s telling the truth. Of course, she won’t like to admit the blackmail. But Wight can testify that she called at the house when the Bairds were out and asked for the Bairds and asked him to describe his mother. He was about twelve or thirteen at the time, and he’ll remember it.”

“You’ve talked it over-with him?”

“No, but I’m quite sure he’ll remember, because he told me all about it, and he told the Bairds.”

“And she called on them?”

“Just on August Baird.”

“And asked him for money?”

“Asked him for loans.”

“And Baird paid off?”

“Yes, he had to.”

“Did he have the money?”

“Yes.”

“And he made the loans?”

“Yes.”

“By check?”

“No, it was always handled on a cash basis.”

“And August Baird is now dead?”

“Yes.”

“And Melinda Baird is dead?”

“Yes, I told you they were killed in a car crash.”

“Then we have your story,” Mason said, “supported by absolutely nothing in the world except your uncorroborated statement and perhaps the testimony of this nurse. Opposed to that, we have the testimony of Maxine Edfield.”

“Maxine is a liar!” Ellen said with feeling. “She has sold out!”

Mason said, “Well, I’ll go and see this Agnes Burlington with you, but I warn you I’m going to give her a cross-examination.

“If this is all a lie, if you have concocted this story and intend to use Wight Baird as a pawn in the game, I warn you that I’m going to find out about it.”

“And if you come to the conclusion that I’m not on the square?”

“I won’t represent you,” Mason said. “Right now you’re not my client and I’m only considering the case. I’ll go so far as to talk with Agnes Burlington with you and that’s all!”

“When can you go?”

“When is it convenient?” Mason asked.

“Well, I think she’s working days. We’ll have to get her at night.”

“This evening?” Mason asked.

“Why not?”

“You want to call her up and make an appointment?”

“No, that wouldn’t be the smart thing to do. I think we should call on her and you should tell her that you’re my attorney and ask her about the money she borrowed from August Baird and from me.

“Then she’ll probably deny that she ever got any money from August, and I’ll ask her about her conversation with Wight, and finally we’ll get her to tell her story.”

Mason shook his head. “I don’t think I want to go at it that way, but I’ll play it by ear. I’ll meet this woman and talk with her.”

“At eight o’clock tonight?”

“At eight o’clock tonight,” Mason said. “Now you may be followed as soon as you leave this office. You made a mistake coming back here. You may have walked right into a trap. When you leave here... Did you come by car?”

“No, I took a bus.”

“All right,” Mason said. “Take a bus; ride on it until you come to a taxi which is parked at a stand where there is no other taxi. In other words, keep riding for an hour if you have to, until you come to a place where there is just one taxicab at the curb.”

“And then?” she asked.

“Then,” Mason said, “get out and take that taxicab. Make sure that there is no one following you with an automobile. When you feel that no one is following you, go home by a circuitous route.

“Now, then, tonight when I pick you up, Della Street and I will be out in Hollywood, driving along La Brea. We’ll be driving south. At the corner of Beverly we’ll bring the car into the curb at exactly eight o’clock.

“You be standing there at the curb. We’ll open the door and let you in. Then we’ll make sure that you aren’t being followed, and then we’ll go and see this nurse.”

“But suppose somebody follows you?”

“They won’t,” Mason said. “I’ll take precautions.”

Ellen rose with queenly dignity, put her hand in Perry Mason’s, and said, “Thank you very much, Mr. Mason. Thank you for your confidence and all you have done for me.”

She turned and swept out of the office.

Della Street exchanged glances with Perry Mason. “Well?” she asked.

Mason shook his head. “This is one of those things,” he said. “That woman can have engineered this whole thing so it looks like a convincing case. After all, we have her unsupported word, which is completely contradicted by the testimony of Maxine Edfield. And we may have the somewhat nebulous testimony of a nurse who, even according to our client, has been resorting to blackmail. And that’s it!”

“And there’s better than two million dollars involved,” Della Street said.

“There’s better than two million dollars involved. There are some very shrewd attorneys representing claimants on the other side, a couple of claimants who are viciously hostile, a private detective who is nobody’s fool, and a troubleshooter who is just plain smart.

“If I have to go up against a combination of that sort, I want to be a lot more certain of the integrity of my client than I am of this woman with her somewhat condescending dignity and her air of utter assurance.”

“Where do I meet you?” Della Street asked.

“You don’t meet me,” Mason said. “We go out and have dinner, then pick up our queenly client at La Brea and Beverly on the dot of eight o’clock.”