The Case of the Reluctant Model

Chapter One

Perry Mason, opening the door of his private office, grinned at Della Street, his confidential secretary, and said, “All right, so I’m late.”

Della Street, glancing at her wrist watch, smiled indulgently. “Okay, so you’re late! And if you want to sleep late I don’t know anyone who’s more entitled to do so — only I’m afraid we’re going to have to buy a new carpet for the reception room.”

Mason’s eyes were puzzled. “A new carpet?”

“This one’s getting worn out.”

“What do you mean, Della?”

“You have a client who has been waiting since one minute before nine o’clock when Gertie opened up the office. The trouble is he won’t sit still. He’s pacing the office at the rate of five miles an hour, looking at his watch every fifteen or twenty seconds and demanding to know where you are.”

“Who is it?” Mason asked.

“Lattimer Rankin.”

Mason frowned. “Rankin,” he said, “Rankin... Isn’t he the one who has something to do with pictures?”

“The big art dealer,” Della Street said.

“Oh, yes, I place him now,” Mason told her. “He’s the one who testified as to the value of the painting in that civil suit — and he gave us a picture. What the devil did we do with that picture, Della?”

“It’s gathering dust in the storeroom off the law library. That is, it was until five minutes past nine this morning.”

“And then what?” Mason asked.

“Then,” Della Street said, “I got it and hung it just to the right of the door where a client will see it when he sits in the client’s chair.”

Della Street indicated the painting.

“Good girl,” Mason said approvingly. “I wonder if you’ve hung it upside down.”

“It’s all upside down if you ask me,” she said, “but at least we’ve got it there, and there’s a label on the back of the picture that has the name of Lattimer Rankin and the address of his place of business. If the label’s right side up, the picture is right side up.

“So if he looks at you disapprovingly and says, ‘Mr. Mason, you’ve got the picture upside down,’ you can look right back at him and say, ‘Mr. Rankin, you’ve got your label upside down.’ ”

“Fair enough,” Mason said. “Let’s get him off the tenterhooks. Bring him in, Della. I knew I didn’t have any early morning appointments so I was cheating a little bit on office hours.”

“I told him you were on your way,” Della Street said, “that you’d been detained in a traffic jam.”

“How did you know?” Mason asked, grinning.

“Telepathy,” she said.

“Do you plan to read my mind all the time?” he asked.

“I’d be afraid to all the time,” she said archly. “I’ll get Mr. Rankin in before the carpet is entirely threadbare.”

A few moments later Della Street opened the door and Lattimer Rankin, a tall, dark, grim-faced individual, with piercing gray eyes, came striding into the room as though he had been walking in a marathon contest and didn’t want to break his stride. He moved across to Mason’s desk, gripped the lawyer’s hand with his own huge, bony hand, swept the office in a brief survey, said, “I see you’ve hung my picture. A lot of people didn’t appreciate that artist’s work but I’m glad to tell you it’s going across very nicely now. I knew it would. He has power, harmony. — Mason, I want to sue a man for libel and slander.”

“No, you don’t,” Mason said.

Mason’s comment caused Rankin to straighten up. “I think you failed to understand me,” he said with cold emphasis. “I have been slandered. I wish to retain you to file suit immediately. I want to sue Collin M. Durant for half a million dollars.”

“Sit down,” Mason said.

Rankin settled himself in the client’s chair with the stiffness of a carpenter’s rule being folded up. The man seemed absolutely rigid except at the joints.

“I want the suit to get all the publicity we can give it,” he said. “I want to drive Collin M. Durant out of town. The man is incompetent, he’s a four-flusher, a publicity-seeker, an unethical competitor, and he has none of the instincts of a gentleman.”

“You want to sue him for half a million dollars,” Mason said.

“Yes, sir.”

“And you want lots of publicity.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You want to claim that he damaged your professional reputation.”

“That’s right.”

“To the tune of half a million dollars.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You will,” Mason pointed out, “have to specify the manner in which he did this.”

“He did it by intimating that I am incompetent, that my judgment is unsound, that I have victimized one of my customers.”

“And to whom did he make these statements? How many people?” Mason asked.

“I have long suspected that he has made them by innuendo to anyone who would listen, but now I have a very definite witness — a young woman named Maxine Lindsay.”

“And what did he say to Maxine Lindsay?”

“He said that a painting I had sold Otto Olney was a rank imitation and that any art dealer worthy of the name would have recognized it as such as soon as he saw it.”

“He made that statement only to Maxine Lindsay?”

“Yes.”

“In the presence of witnesses?”

“There were no other witnesses except Maxine. Under the circumstances you would hardly have expected any.”

“What circumstances?” Mason asked.

“He was engaged in trying to promote his own stock with the young lady — making a pass, I believe is the popular expression.”

“Has she repeated the statement?” Mason asked. “That is, has she spread it around any?”

“She has not. Maxine Lindsay is an art student. I was able to help her two or three times. I have given her some bargains on painting materials and she is grateful. She came to me at once and told me she thought I should know what Durant was doing. I knew, all right, but this was the first time I had had an opportunity to prove it.”

“All right,” Mason said, “I will now repeat my statement. You don’t want to sue.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you,” Rankin said with formality. “My credit certainly is good. My checkbook is here. I am prepared to give you a retainer. I want suit filed at once. I want to file suit for half a million dollars. Surely the courts are open to me, and if you don’t wish to take my case—”

“Come on down to earth,” Mason said. “Let’s talk facts.”

“Very well, go ahead and talk facts.”

Mason said, “So far, Maxine Lindsay knows that Collin Durant said you sold Otto Olney a picture which wasn’t genuine... By the way, how much did you get for the picture?”

“Thirty-five hundred dollars.”

“All right,” Mason said, “Maxine Lindsay knows what Durant said. You file suit for half a million dollars. The newspapers publish the story of the suit. Tomorrow morning a million readers will know that an art dealer named Lattimer Rankin has been accused of peddling a phony picture. That’s all they’ll remember.”

“Nonsense!” Rankin stormed. “They will know that I am suing Collin Durant, that at last someone has had the courage to bring that bounder to account.”

“No, they won’t,” Mason said. “They will read about the suit but they won’t remember very much about it except that an art expert said you had been peddling worthless art for thirty-five hundred dollars to a valued customer.”

Rankin frowned, blinked his eyes rapidly several times, then brought them to hard focus on Mason’s face.

“You mean to say I must sit here and let that unspeakable cad go around making statements that no reputable dealer would make? Hang it, Mason! The man isn’t an expert, he’s a dealer, and if you ask me, he’s a damned poor dealer at that!”

“I’m not asking you,” Mason said, “and you’re not making that statement, because the first thing you know Durant might turn around and sue you for defamation of character. Now, you came up here for advice. I’m going to give you that advice. It probably isn’t the advice you want, but it’s the advice you need.

“When you sue a man for defamation of character, in a business way you put your own reputation right out on the line. You have to submit to a deposition and the lawyer on the other side starts asking you questions. Suppose I start asking you those questions first: Did you sell Otto Olney a phoney painting?”

“Absolutely not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know the painting. I know the artist. I know his work. I know his style. I know art, Mason. Hang it, I couldn’t stay in business ten minutes if I didn’t. That picture is absolutely genuine.”

“All right,” Mason said. “So, instead of having you sue Durant for half a million dollars’ damages, claiming that he has damaged your reputation, and putting you in the position of going on the witness stand and trying to prove that Durant’s statement was made with malice and that it undermined the confidence of your customers, actual and potential, we go to see Otto Olney.”

“What good does that do?” Rankin asked.

“We get Otto Olney, as the owner of the painting, to sue Durant claiming that Durant has disparaged the value of his picture by making a statement that it was spurious. Olney alleges that he paid thirty-five hundred dollars for the picture, that it was well worth twice that amount or seven thousand dollars, and that the aspersions cast upon the painting by Collin Durant have damaged him in the amount of seven thousand dollars.

“Then,” Mason went on, “people reading the newspapers know that a man with the standing of Otto Olney has accused Durant of being a malicious spite-peddler, that he is incompetent as an art appraiser or he is a liar.

“We get the newspapermen interested, we get a photograph of the picture in question, and we have Olney call in some expert art appraiser who pronounces the picture genuine. Then we have a picture taken of you, the art appraiser and Otto Olney, all standing beside the picture shaking hands, beaming at each other. The general public reading the article will come to the conclusion that Collin M. Durant is a very shady character indeed; that you are a reputable art dealer, that the experts back up your judgment and that your customers are completely satisfied.

“The only thing that is in issue is the authenticity of the painting, not your reputation, not the amount of your damages, not anything that can be dredged up from your background that you might not want to have publicized.”

Rankin blinked his eyes rapidly, thrust his hand into his breast pocket, pulled out a checkbook, said, “It’s a pleasure to work with a real expert, Mr. Mason. Will a thousand dollars be an adequate retainer?”

“A thousand dollars will be about five hundred dollars too much,” Mason said, “depending, of course, on what you want to have done and how serious this matter is.”

“The matter is very serious indeed,” Rankin said. “Collin M. Durant is a wise guy, one of these smart alecks, a know-it-all, a talker. He isn’t content to make acquaintances in the art world and build up his reputation slowly and by merit. He is, instead, bent upon trying to build his own reputation by tearing down the reputations of others. I am not the only one who has been the target of his innuendos and sneering comments, but I am perhaps the only one who has a very definite case in that a certain specific object of art which I sold has been definitely and positively branded as spurious by Durant to a witness who will testify.”

“How do you get along with Olney?” Mason asked. “You sold him this one painting. Have you sold him any more?”

“Only the one. But I have every reason to believe he is very friendly.”

“Why only the one?” Mason asked. “After you make a sale, don’t you try to keep a man as a customer?”

“The point is that Olney is a rather peculiar individual with very definite tastes. At that particular time he wanted one painting and only one painting. Actually he commissioned me to buy that painting if I could find it, and I think he may have commissioned others as well.”

“What’s the painting?” Mason asked.

“It’s a Phellipe Feteet.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to enlighten me more than that,” Mason said.

“Phellipe Feteet is, or rather was, a Frenchman who went to the Philippines and started painting. His early work was rather mediocre. Then he developed what was to be his forte — pictures of natives in the shade with sunlit backgrounds.

“You may not have noticed it, Mr. Mason, but there are very, very few painters who can get the true effect of sunlight. There are many reasons for this, one of which is that the canvas cannot transmit light; it only uses colors to suggest light. The contrast therefore, between sunlight and shadow is seldom really emphasized in a painting. But in the work of Phellipe Feteet — that is, in his later years — he turned out pictures that were so vivid they have a terrific impact. The illusion of sunlight is so bright it is dazzling. You want to reach for a pair of dark glasses.

“Even studying his pictures, no one knows exactly how he did it. The man had a gift for this type of work. I don’t think there are more than two dozen of his later pictures in existence, and so far only a few people really appreciate the man’s work. But there is a growing sense of appreciation.

“You mention that Olney’s picture was sold for thirty-five hundred dollars and is worth seven thousand. You had better up that latter figure materially. I sold him the picture for thirty-five hundred dollars. I would like to buy it back for ten thousand. I think I could sell it for fifteen. Five years from now it will be worth fifty.”

Mason grinned. “All right,” he said, “there’s your answer. You go and see Otto Olney. You fix things up with him. You get a disinterested art expert to go out there and appraise the painting. You get Olney to sue Durant for disparaging his picture. You have the art expert offer Olney ten thousand dollars for the picture. That makes a story the newspapers can eat up. Olney files the suit. The suit is against Durant. You only come into it as the dealer who sold the picture and whose judgment is vindicated by an independent art expert. The fact that you sold a picture for thirty-five hundred dollars and the trade is now willing to pay ten thousand for it, the fact that the art expert appraises it as being worth three times what you charged for it a few years ago, makes everybody happy.

“The newspapers will want to know who Phellipe Feteet was and you can tell them the story of his pictures and the fact that they are going up in value every day. This will enhance the value of Olney’s painting, will have a tendency to start a new vogue for the Feteet paintings, and Durant will be the one who is behind the eight ball.

“If the newspapers want to interview Durant, all he can do is reiterate his statement that the painting is spurious. At that time his story will give Olney more grounds for a lawsuit, Durant’s opinion will be at variance with the established art appraisers in the country, Olney will have a good cause of action, your damaged reputation won’t enter into the litigation. In fact your reputation will actually be enhanced by all the newspaper publicity.

“How long before you can fix things up with Olney?”

“I shall call on Olney right away,” Rankin said, “and I’ll get George Lathan Howell, the noted art expert, to appraise the painting and—”

“Whoa, back up,” Mason interrupted. “You don’t get anybody to appraise anything until we are ready to release the newspaper publicity. That is why I asked you if you were sure the painting was genuine. If there is any room for doubt, we’re going to have to handle things in another way. In a deal of this sort we have to fit our strategy to the facts.”

“You may rest assured the painting is a genuine Feteet,” Rankin said.

“Now there’s one other point,” Mason said. “We have to prove Durant said the painting was spurious.”

“But I told you about that. Maxine came to me. I have it direct from her own lips.”

“Send her to me,” Mason said. “I want to tie her up with an affidavit. You can imagine what a fix we’d be in if we started all this newspaper publicity and then fell down on our proof. Durant would then have you in a trap.

“To date, our only witness is Maxine Lindsay. We have to be certain we can depend on her.”

“We can depend on her with our lives,” Rankin said.

“You can get her to come in to the office here and give us aa affidavit?” Mason asked.

“I’m certain of it.”

“How soon?”

“Any time you say.”

“Within an hour?”

“Well... right after lunch. How will that do?”

“That’s okay,” Mason told him. “You get in touch with Otto Olney. See how he feels about the situation, suggest that he file suit, and—”

“And retain you?” Rankin asked.

“Heavens, no,” Mason said. “He’s got his own lawyers. Let him instruct them to file the suit. I’ll arrange the behind-the-scenes strategy, and that’s all. You pay me for my advice, Olney pays his lawyers for filing the suit, and Durant pays in damages for trying to undermine the value of a painting — and the resultant publicity will build up your reputation all the more.”

Rankin said, “Mr. Mason, I am going to insist on making that check in an amount of a thousand dollars, and thank heaven I had the good sense to come to you rather than some attorney who would have let me tell him what I wanted him to do.”

Rankin filled out the check, handed it to Della Street, shook hands with Mason and strode from the office.

Mason grinned at Della Street. “Now then, take that damned picture down and put it back in the storeroom,” he said.