The Case of the Shapely Shadow

Chapter Six

In an hour and a half Della Street was back in the office.

“Well?” Mason asked.

She said, “There’s a difference in viewpoint.”

“What do you mean?”

“You said Mrs. Theilman was hard to describe. She might be hard for a man to describe but she’s easy for a woman.”

“How do you describe her?” Mason asked.

“You wouldn’t like it,” she said.

“No?”

“No.”

“What did you find out?”

“The woman who is now Mrs. Morley Theilman,” Della Street said, “was in Las Vegas wearing the highly impossible name of Day Dawns. She was a hostess, an entertainer, a show girl, and she had her eye out for the main chance.”

“You mean she was for sale?” Mason asked.

Della Street said, “Let’s put it this way. She was for rent. Now she’s on a long-term lease.”

“You mean she was a cheap little—?”

“Don’t be silly,” Della Street interrupted. “There was nothing cheap about her. She’s class to her finger tips and, believe it or not, there’s nothing common about her. But she knew which side of the bread had the butter. In fact, she studied all there was to know about butter.

“Of course, we must remember that some of the things I got were contained in the complaint of Carlotta Theilman versus Morley Theilman, in which Day Dawns was named as a corespondent.”

“Pictures?” Mason asked.

“Scads of pictures.”

“I mean of Carlotta.”

“Carlotta wasn’t photogenic,” Della Street said. “And Carlotta let her figure get out of hand — the exact opposite of her successor, whose figure was always very much in hand.

“Carlotta, of course, was no match for Day Dawns. It was perhaps this feeling of futility that caused her to exhibit so much bitterness.”

“What happened with the divorce suit?” Mason asked.

“Settled. Carlotta Theilman apparently got something like half a million dollars in cash. Morley bought his way out.”

“He seems to have had plenty left,” Mason said.

“Have you ever seen his picture?” Della Street asked.

Mason shook his head.

“He looks like a go-getter,” she said, “even in the newspaper pictures. He has an aggressive, dynamic, masculine personality — somehow you get the impression he isn’t a one-woman man.”

“Isn’t or wasn’t?” Mason asked.

Della Street frowned. “I hadn’t thought of it in exactly that light,” she said.“Well, think of it now.”

After a moment Della Street shook her head. “I can’t tell just from pictures,” she said. “I could tell if I saw him. You know, Chief, this Janice Wainwright may not be so dumb. There’s just a chance she might be playing things on a long-time basis.”

“She isn’t fooling Mrs. Theilman any,” Mason said.

“What makes you think she isn’t?”

“Mrs. Theilman has noticed that Janice has done everything she could to submerge her beauty and appear to be plain and unattractive.”

Della Street said, “And you say she isn’t fooling Mrs. Theilman?”

“No.”

“That may be the greatest fooling of all,” Della Street said. “The second Mrs. Theilman is a plaything, a highly polished, perfectly poised, expensive plaything. She’s on her way up. As long as she’s on her way up, she’s going to keep planning. She doesn’t intend to remain static. When she quits moving up, she’ll move out.

“After she’s been with Morley Theilman long enough to get a good property settlement, she isn’t going to remain with a man fifteen years her senior and settle down.

“She’s going to keep a tight hold on Morley Theilman until she’s entirely finished with him. When she is entirely finished with him, Morley Theilman is going to have had all that he wants of sleek sex. He’s going to look around for the plain, sincere, sweet, simple and honest in life. Janice Wainwright just may be grooming herself for the part of the third Mrs. Theilman.

“The second Mrs. Theilman is working for a goal — an objective. She’s swapping physical charm for future security. Janice Wainwright is in love.”

“With a man fifteen years her senior?” Mason asked.

“Make it ten,” Della Street said.

She opened her purse, took out her notebook, thumbed through the pages and said, “At the time of the divorce Morley Theilman was thirty-four. That was four years ago. It makes him thirty-eight now. Janice is probably about twenty-eight.”

“Well,” Mason said, “I guess we’d better talk with our client, Della, and find out just what the situation is. Give her a ring.”

Della Street put through the call and shook her head. “No answer at Theilman’s office.”

“What was the number Janice gave you this morning?”

“I have it here,” Della Street said. “She said it was the number of her apartment.”

“Let’s try her there,” Mason said.

Della Street dialed the number, then said, “No answer there either.”

Mason frowned. “She should be calling in.”

“She should be, for a fact,” Della Street said dryly. “Something seems to tell me that the dollar she paid by way of retainer has probably been expended in detective fees by this time.”

“I wouldn’t doubt,” Mason agreed, grinning. “That’s a case that sneaked up on me from behind, Della. I didn’t want to take her money. I was curious. I wanted to find out what the case was all about, and the dollar retainer that I took was simply for the purpose of protecting me so there could be no question of my professional privilege.”

“I know,” she said sympathetically. “I was just kidding, Chief. I felt exactly the same way. I’d have cried if you’d turned her down. There’s something about her — a pathetic something — yet I can’t help but think that she’s playing it awfully smart.”

“Could be,” Mason agreed. “She—”

He broke off as Paul Drake’s code knock sounded on the door.

“Let Paul in,” Mason said. “Let’s see if we can get some more facts to work on.”

Della Street opened the door, and Paul Drake, with his customary, “Hi, Beautiful,” moved over to the client’s big leather chair, deposited a brief case, pulled out a notebook, elevated one knee over the arm of the chair and said to Mason, “Well, I have a collection of statistics but I can’t put them together.”

“Tell me what you know,” Mason said.

“Cole B. Troy at Bakersfield,” Drake said. “A business associate of Morley Theilman. Not a full partner but associated in some of the real estate deals Theilman has up around Bakersfield.

“Theilman was with Troy yesterday afternoon. He arrived about four-thirty. They were in conference until six. Then they went out to dinner and after dinner they went briefly to Troy’s office.

“Theilman put through a call to his wife to tell her that he would be home at eleven or a little after, that his wife wasn’t to wait up for him.

“After that call the two men talked for about an hour in the office at Bakersfield, but by nine o’clock they had covered all the matters Theilman wanted to discuss, so the conference broke up.”

“Then what?” Mason asked.

“Now we come to the thing that may be important,” Drake said. “After Theilman left the office, Troy said he walked over to the window and looked down at the street, that he didn’t have any particular reason for going to the window. He certainly didn’t want to watch Theilman. But Theilman had left him with some business problems to think over and he just automatically walked over to the window and stood there looking down on the street. He saw Theilman leave the office and cross over to the corner, then go to the parking lot where he had his car.

“Now then, Troy says that some woman was shadowing Theilman. He says that he couldn’t get a look at her face and couldn’t recognize her, but she was a shapely woman. He saw only her back. He says she walked with what he describes as hippy grace.”

“She wasn’t just walking along the street?” Mason asked.

“That’s what he thought at the time. He didn’t pay too much attention to it. But since Theilman seems to have disappeared and Troy is giving the matter a lot more thought, now he believes the woman was shadowing Theilman. She kept just about the same distance behind him and walked along in exactly the same path Theilman had taken.”

“Theilman didn’t look back?”

“He didn’t look back.”

Mason frowned. “Then this woman wasn’t trying particularly to be inconspicuous,” he said. “At that hour of the night you know and I know a shadow couldn’t just dog along behind a person, keeping a uniform distance.”

“Not a professional shadow,” Drake said. “This, of course, was an amateur.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, for one thing, the way she acted.”

“And what happened?”

“Troy doesn’t know. He saw Theilman reach the corner, go around the corner and start for the parking lot. He saw the woman keeping just about the same distance, following along behind, reach the corner and turn toward the parking lot. After they passed the corner, the building on the corner shut them from his view.”

“He didn’t recognize the woman?”

Drake shook his head. “He only saw her back.”

“Evidently he noticed her.”

“He noticed her shape. And about all he can say is that in his opinion she was young and shapely.”

“What does he mean by young?”

“Somewhere in the twenties.”

“It’s hard to tell a woman’s age from her back,” Mason said.

“Are you telling me?” Drake grinned. “Now then, I suppose you want the latest on Theilman.”

“What’s the latest on Theilman?”

“He hasn’t been found.”

“That was the earliest,” Mason said.

“However,” Drake said, “we have another angle on the case — or another curve, if you want to call it that. His secretary has also disappeared.”

“What!” Mason said.

“That’s right — and that, in case you want to know, has lessened the police activity very much.

“This morning, when Mrs. Theilman had reported her husband had disappeared and gave them information leading them to believe that her husband might have been blackmailed, the police took a very keen and instant interest.

“Now then, having found that Theilman’s secretary has also disappeared, the police are still going through the motions but they’re conducting their investigation with a somewhat cynical smile.

“They’ve made inquiries at Theilman’s bank and find that he has been diverting a good many securities into the form of cash during the past three weeks.”

“For three weeks?” Mason asked.

“Three weeks.”

“What happened yesterday morning, anything?”

“Yesterday morning,” Drake said, “Theilman got another five thousand in cash.”

“Only five thousand?” Mason asked.

“Don’t say ‘only’ in that tone of voice when you’re talking about five thousand,” Drake said, “particularly when you carry it in the form of cash in twenty-dollar bills.”

“It was in twenty-dollar bills?”

“That’s the way he wanted it, yes.”

“Let’s see,” Mason said. “Five thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills would be...”

“Two hundred and fifty twenty-dollar bills,” Drake said.

Mason opened his billfold, took out some bills of various denominations, placed them in a pile on the desk.

“How much paper money do you have with you, Paul?”

“Don’t be silly,” Drake said, “you’re talking to a detective.”

Della Street opened her purse. “I’ve got some fives and ones. Will that help?”

“They all weigh about the same,” Mason said. “Here, Della. Go out and weigh these bills on the postal scales and see approximately how much they run.”

Della Street took the bills Mason had handed her, went to the outer office and returned to hand the bills back to Perry Mason. “They run about twenty to the ounce,” she said.

“All right,” Mason said, pulling forth a scratch pad, “let’s say twenty bills to the ounce. That would be three hundred and twenty bills to the pound. That would be six thousand, four hundred dollars if they were all twenty-dollar bills. Ten pounds would be sixty-four thousand dollars. Twenty pounds would be a hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars. Twenty-five pounds, a hundred and sixty thousand dollars.”

“Hey, wait a minute, you two!” Paul Drake said. “What the heck. You’re getting into high finance. What are you trying to do, figure how much a million dollars in twenty-dollar bills would weigh?”

“Something like that,” Mason said, frowning thoughtfully across the desk at Della Street.

“Well,” Drake said, “your man Theilman drew out five thousand dollars yesterday morning. As I said, he’d been drawing out money from time to time.”

“All in twenty-dollar bills?” Mason asked.

“I believe so. The banker wasn’t communicative on a general basis. He answered police questions when they were put to him specifically, but he protected himself and his depositor wherever he could.

“Now then,” Drake went on, “we come to the juicy chapter in Theilman’s life.”

“You mean his divorce?”

“His divorce and remarriage,” Drake said. “Theilman is a guy who sees green pastures on the other side of the fence.”

“An optical illusion?” Mason asked.

“Not in this case,” Drake said. “You should have seen the pasture.”

“I saw it,” Mason said.

“The heck you did!”

Mason nodded.

“Ever see it in a bathing suit?”

Mason shook his head.

“Take a look,” Drake invited, taking a photograph from his brief case. He passed the picture across to Mason.

Della Street moved over to look over the lawyer’s shoulder.

“Is that a bathing suit?” Della Street asked.

“That’s what it’s supposed to be — at least, according to the caption on the photograph. That was a publicity photograph released when the corespondent in the case was appearing in Las Vegas.”

“That,” Della Street announced, “is a green pasture. There’s no optical illusion about that.”

“There isn’t, for a fact,” Drake said. “However, the thing that I thought you’d be interested in was the fact that Day Dawns took a flying trip to the Orient and, strangely enough, that trip coincided with a business trip which Morley Theilman took to Hong Kong; a fact which was duly noted by Carlotta Theilman’s investigators and which you will find incorporated in the complaint for divorce filed by Carlotta Theilman.”

“I trust it was an enjoyable trip,” Mason said.

“It must have been,” Drake said, “but the thing that should interest you particularly, and which will probably interest the police when they find it out, is that when Day Dawns secured her passport she naturally secured it under her own name rather than her stage name.”

“And the correct name?” Mason asked.

“The correct name,” Drake said dryly, “was Agnes Bernice Vidal.”

“What!” Mason exclaimed.

Drake grinned. “It’s always a pleasure to uncover information that gives you a jolt, Perry.”

Mason glanced at Della Street and then back to Paul Drake. “I’ll be damned!” he said.

“Thought you’d like to know,” Drake said. “So far the police, apparently, haven’t stumbled onto that choice bit of information. When they do get it, it’s possible they may take a little more interest in the case.”

Mason was thoughtful. “I can’t help remembering,” he said, “that the second Mrs. Theilman observed that if anyone tried to tamper with her security she’d jerk the rug out from under them so fast they wouldn’t know what had happened until they hit the floor.”

“Well,” Drake said, “what I’m reporting may or may not be rug-jerking. I’m simply giving you the facts. It’s up to you to put them together. But in view of your comments about five thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills weighing somewhat less than a pound, I am beginning to think that you know facts that I don’t want to know.”

“You may have something there,” Mason admitted.

“In that case,” Drake said, “having dropped my bombshell, I’ll retire to my dugout and let you mop up the pieces.”

Mason stopped him at the door. “You have another job, Paul, and I want some fast action — find that secretary.”

Della Street moved over to her typewriter.

“You got a description?” Drake asked.

Mason nodded toward Della Street. “Della’s typing it out for you now, Paul — name, age, clothes, all the things one woman notices about another woman.”