The Case of the Stepdaughter’s Secret

Chapter Six

Shortly before noon, Della Street entered Mason’s private office and said, “You are confronted with a problem.”

“What?” he asked.

“A very irate Rosena Andrews is in the outer office, with fire in her eye.”

“Any idea how she got a lead to me?” Mason asked.

“She isn’t talking,” Della Street said. “She says she has to see you immediately upon a strictly personal matter of the greatest importance.”

Mason grinned and said, “Well, we may as well face it, Della. Let her come in... Is she the type who would pull a gun out of her purse and start shooting, or would she climb across the desk and start clawing?”

“She’s the type that might do both,” Della Street said. “She’s very much a law unto herself, if I’m any judge of character.”

“Well, you certainly should be,” Mason said, “after having been on the firing line in a law office. Bring her in.”

A few moments later, Della Street held the door open and an irate, twenty-three-old woman came marching into the office, her blue eyes snapping with anger.

“You’re Perry Mason,” she said.

“That’s right,” Mason told her.

“Well, I’ll thank you to keep your hands out of my business! I don’t know just what recourse I have, but I certainly intend to take it up with the Bar Association, or anyone else in authority.”

Mason raised inquiring eyebrows. “I’ve been interfering with your business?”

“You know you have.”

“Perhaps,” Mason said, “you might care to sit down and give me the details.”

“I don’t have to sit down,” she said. “That blasted publicity in the paper this morning is enough. I know my stepfather called you yesterday upon an emergency matter and I’m giving you credit for having engineered the whole scheme.”

“The whole scheme?” Mason asked.

“You know what I mean. The grabbing of the coffee can and changing the note and putting in fifteen hundred dollars more, and... Will you kindly tell me what you’re trying to do, Mr Mason?”

Mason smiled tolerantly and said, “Not while you’re in this mood, Miss Andrews. If I’m going to talk to you at all, I should like to do so when we could look at the matter with calm appraisal.”

“I’m willing to listen,” she said.

“With one ear,” Mason told her. “You’re too indignant to give undivided attention at the present time.”

“Well, I have a right to be indignant.”

“You still haven’t told me why.”

“You know perfectly well why. That blackmail note was sent to me. I was the one who was instructed to get the fifteen hundred dollars in ten and twenty-dollar bills, put them in a coffee can with ten silver dollars to balance the coffee can just enough so it would keep floating right side up, put the lid on tight and toss it overboard from my boat at a time when there were no boats in the vicinity.

“No sooner had I done it than this boat with a lot of scantily clad bathing beauties came swooping up out of nowhere — I thought at first they were the people who were going to collect the money, but then I decided they wouldn’t be quite that brazen about it. However, there seemed to be no one else in the vicinity, so I let it go.”

“Now, let’s get this straight,” Mason said. “You say the blackmail note was addressed to you?”

“You know it was.”

“How would I know?”

“Probably through my stepfather, who has been snooping around and who took that note from my desk and then replaced it under the blotter.”

“How do you know that?”

“I took the precaution of marking the exact place I had put the note under the blotter. I just wanted to know if someone might be snooping around.”

“Do I gather there is no great amount of affection lost between you and your stepfather?” Mason asked.

“You don’t gather anything of the sort. I love him. He’s wonderful, considerate, overly protective, overly solicitous, a worrywart, and he’s always worrying about me.”

“So what do we do now?” Mason asked.

“Now,” she said, “I don’t know. You’ve put me on a spot. I had fifteen hundred dollars to turn over to some people who were going to suppress certain information. Somebody has changed the note to three thousand dollars, somebody has put in another fifteen hundred dollars in addition to mine, and now we’ve got a starlet in a bikini bathing suit having her photograph all over the front pages of the papers, the police have got hold of the money, and... Well, frankly, there’s hell to pay.”

“Has anybody asked you to pay hell yet?” Mason asked.

“Not yet,” she said, “but I dread what’s going to happen.”

“Perhaps,” Mason said, “you’d care to tell me how it happens you’re so vulnerable.”

“What do you mean, vulnerable?”

“So that a blackmailer could put a bite on you.”

“I think we’re all vulnerable,” she said. “Virtually everybody has some skeleton in his closet.”

“What’s your skeleton?”

“That’s none of your business. I realize you’re trying to protect me in some way, but I’m here to advise you, Mr Perry Mason, that I don’t want protection. I want to deal with this thing in my own way.”

Mason said, “I hope you realize that once you start playing ball with a blackmailer, you’re licked. You pay once and then you pay again and then you pay again and again and again, and then you keep on paying until you’re bled white.”

“No one is going to bleed me white,” she said. “I’m gaining time, that’s all.”

“Time for what?”

“Time to play things my own way. I’ll take care of my own business in my own way, and I don’t need your help.”

“Were you,” Mason asked, solicitously, “trying to protect someone else in this thing?”

“That,” she said, “is none of your business. All I want to tell you, face to face, is that I want you to keep out of this and let me handle it my own way.”

“But don’t you understand, you’re walking into quicksand,” Mason said. “You keep getting deeper and deeper and—”

“I know what I’m doing, Mr Mason. I’m gaining time. I was willing to pay fifteen hundred dollars to gain time.”

“And then they’ll put another bite on you.”

“By that time,” she said viciously, “they’ll break their teeth.”

“You seem to be a very determined young woman.”

“And resourceful,” she added. “Don’t forget that.”

Mason sized her up thoughtfully. “Perhaps if you’d tell me just what you have in mind, Miss Andrews, I might be able to give you some advice that would help and we could, so to speak, pool our resources.”

She doggedly shook her head.

“This information that is hinted at in the blackmail letter. You have an idea what that is all about?”

“I know what it is all about,” she snapped.

“Would you care to discuss it?”

“Certainly not. It’s my business and my business alone.”

“Perhaps,” Mason said, “for romantic reasons, or perhaps because of social prestige, you feel that if you could gain a few days or a few weeks or so, you could handle the situation to better advantage.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

“Do you think it would make any real difference?” Mason asked.

“What would?”

“The passage of time.”

“Yes.”

Mason said, “The persons who sent that note have been communicating with you by telephone?”

“That would seem to be a natural inference.”

“Is there any way by which they identify themselves?”

“That,” she said, “is something else that I don’t care to discuss... The purpose of this visit, Mr Mason, is to tell you that I don’t want your services. I have no need for the services of a lawyer. I am doing this on my own, I have my own plans, I am handling things my own way, and I don’t want any interference. I’ll thank you, therefore, to keep out of my affairs entirely and completely. And this is formal notice.”

With that, she turned and marched abruptly out of the office.

Mason nodded to Della Street. “See if you can get Bancroft on the phone for me.”

A few moments later, Della Street nodded to Perry Mason and said, “He’s on the line.”

“Hello, Bancroft,” Mason said. “I’ve just received a visit from your stepdaughter. She’s breathing smoke and fire.”

“How in the world did she find out about you?”

“Apparently she knew you called me yesterday morning and came dashing in for an emergency appointment. She also felt certain that you had read the blackmail note while she was out of her room. You changed the position of the note somewhat.”

“Just what did Rosena want?” Bancroft asked.

“She wanted to serve notice on me personally and professionally that she didn’t need any attorney, that she was fully capable of taking care of herself, that she had her own plans and that she didn’t want any interference from me.”

“I don’t care what she said,” Bancroft said, “you stay on the job! She’s young and impulsive and self-reliant — too self-reliant. She thinks she can cope with professional blackmailers and she can’t do it.”

Mason said, “It might be a good plan if you went to her and had a frank talk, inasmuch as she knows you saw the letter, and inasmuch as she’s trying to protect you as well as herself. You might do well to sit down and discuss it with her.”

“No,” Bancroft said, “she has to come to me. She’s got to break the ice. So far, she hasn’t seen fit to confide in me, but this blackmail letter was intended for her and she’s playing her cards close to her chest. I’m not going to interfere.”

“In view of the fact that she has told me to keep the hell out of her affairs,” Mason said, “my hands are somewhat tied.”

“What do you mean, somewhat?”

“Well, I can’t represent her in any way.”

“You don’t have to,” Bancroft said. “You’re representing me. I’m trying to keep this matter from becoming public. I have to keep it from becoming public. I have every right on earth to retain you as my attorney. You’re doing fine so far. You’ve got the other people on the defensive. Stay with it... Do you want any more money?”

“Not yet.”

“Any time you need any more, just call on me,” Bancroft said. “Frankly, Mason, the more I think of it, I’m tickled to death with developments. I can see the thing from the viewpoint of the enemy camp — but I don’t want Rosena put in any position that will endanger her.”

“Okay,” Mason said, “we’ll carry on the best we can.”

“Suppose the blackmailers think she double-crossed them?”

“They won’t. They’ll feel one of the gang tried to cut himself in for an extra fifteen-hundred-buck slice of cake. That will be their first reaction. Your stepdaughter did everything the note told her to do. They’ll feel they just happened to grab an empty can instead of the right one, and, in the face of all this publicity, they’ll be jittery.”

“Just the same, I’m worrying about Rosena’s safety.”

“Don’t,” Mason said. “She has an armed bodyguard at all times.”

“Does she know it?”

“Not yet.”

“Will she find it out?”

“She may.”

“When she does there’ll be trouble.”

“We’ll face that when we come to it,” Mason told him. “By that time it’s almost certain that there will be other developments that will take precedence.”

“Okay,” Bancroft said. “You’re the doctor. However, there’s one thing you should know. Rosena is a very determined young woman, and she has armed herself.”

“She’s what?” Mason demanded.

“She has armed herself. At least I think she has. Either Rosena or Phyllis, my wife, has taken the .38-caliber revolver I keep in the dresser drawer by the side of my bed.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I went to the dresser a few minutes ago to get the gun. I made up my mind I might as well have it handy — and it was gone. It has to be either Rosena or Phyllis who has it.”

“How long since you’ve seen it?” Mason asked.

“Why, I keep it there all the time.”

“How long since you’ve actually seen it?”

“Well... now, I don’t know, perhaps a week or so.”

“Where’s your wife now?”

“Back in town — at our apartment there. She’s still working on that charity shindig.”

“Perhaps you’d better get in here yourself,” Mason said. “A little family conference might not be amiss at this time.”

“I want them to come to me,” Bancroft said. “It’s a matter where they have to take the initiative.”

“You’d better come in,” Mason told him, “before Rosena takes the initiative with your gun.”

“Heavens, I hadn’t thought of that,” Bancroft said.

“Think of it now, then,” Mason told him, and hung up.