The Case of the Stepdaughter’s Secret

Chapter Seven

At three o’clock in the afternoon Della said, “This seems to be your day for troubled women.”

“Who is it now?” Mason asked.

“The starlet, Eve Amory, and she’s certainly upset. I wouldn’t be too surprised if she hadn’t been doing a little crying.”

“The devil!” Mason said. “Let’s see her.”

“You have an appointment in a few minutes and—”

“The appointment can wait,” Mason said. “This girl may be in serious trouble. Incidentally, find out from Paul if he has a shadow on her and if he hasn’t, be sure that someone tails her when she leaves the office — a good, husky, two-fisted individual who can keep an eye on her and act as bodyguard. And tell me a little more about Eve before you bring her in, Della.”

“She’s very, very beautiful,” Della Street said. “She’d make anyone stop and do a double-take.”

“What else?” Mason asked.

“Well,” Della Street said critically, “I don’t want to be catty, but after the double-take you feel that you’ve seen it all, that you’ve looked at the entire inventory.”

“What do you mean?”

“She doesn’t have the individuality, the spontaneity. She does everything in too rehearsed a manner. She smiles and holds the smile just a second too long, as though she had been practicing it in front of a mirror. When she stands, when she walks, when she moves, you get that feeling of synthetic charm. You don’t feel that you’re getting through to the girl herself.”

“Well, I’ll take a look and check your observations,” Mason said.

“You’ll take a look and fall overboard,” Della said. “It’ll be a while before you are able to make a calm appraisal. She’s very beautiful.”

“Bring her in,” Mason said. “Let’s see what’s on her mind. And be sure to call Paul Drake and tell him that I want her shadowed, not so much to see where she goes, but for her own protection. I want somebody keeping an eye on her who can get tough if he has to. Now go bring her in, Della, and let me be properly dazzled.”

Della Street left the office to return in a few moments with Eve Amory.

“Well,” Mason said, smiling, “I’ve seen your picture in the papers.”

She smiled, and held the smile for a full second too long. Then she gave Mason her hand and said, “That’s what I wanted to see you about.”

“Why me?” Mason asked.

“The man with whom I was working,” she said, “was Paul Drake. He’s a private detective. I learned that he handles your business and I know that he reported to you after we had picked up the can with the money in it.”

“How do you know that?” Mason asked curiously.

“I’m not blind, and after all, Mr Mason, you are not entirely unknown. Your picture has been in the papers...” She smiled and added, “Even more than mine.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

She said, “I have been contacted by a very suave, ruthless individual who has put me in very much of a spot.”

“What kind of a spot?” Mason asked.

“This individual,” she said, “knows something about me.”

“You have a past?” Mason asked.

She met his eyes and said, “Every aspiring Hollywood actress who is beautiful enough to want a future could very well have a past. And a present.”

“And what about this individual?” Mason asked.

“He was a man about fifty — perhaps forty-five to fifty-two. He has penetrating grey eyes, and he has a single-track mind.”

“What do you mean by that?” Mason asked. “You mean that he wants to—”

“No, no,” she interrupted hastily, “I mean just the opposite, Mr Mason. He is not influenced in the least by feminine wiles, charm, tears, smiles or nylon.”

“Go on,” Mason said. “What does he want?”

“Money.”

“How much money?”

“The three thousand dollars I found.”

“You turned the three thousand dollars over to the police,” Mason said. “Doesn’t this man read the papers?”

“This man reads the papers,” she said. “This man does more than that. He gets around.”

“And what did he want?” Mason asked.

“He wants the three thousand.”

“How does he expect to get it?”

“The only way he could get it. I am to make a statement to the police that this whole thing was a setup for publicity, that a friend staked me to the three thousand dollars and the blackmail note and the idea was that I would go water-skiing in a very scanty bathing suit and claim that I’d found the money and the note in a coffee can and the inference would be that one of the wealthy families living along the shores of the lake was being blackmailed and the newspapers would give me a lot of personal publicity.

“He said I was to break down and confess to the police that that’s all it was, a campaign for personal publicity, a press-agent stunt that the newspapers fell for. Then he said in the course of time the police would have to give me back the three thousand dollars and I could turn it over to him.”

“Or else?” Mason asked.

“Oh, of course,” she said, “there was an ‘or else.’ And it’s something that bothers me very much because it would look rather bad in print.”

Mason studied her thoughtfully. “You feel that your career requires you have nothing in your past?” he asked.

She said, “I don’t care a fig for myself, but this involves someone else. A man who is the father of two children.”

“Did this man who called on you give you his name?”

She shook her head. “He said that I could refer to him as ‘Mr X.’”

“And how were you to get in touch with him?”

“I wasn’t. He was going to get in touch with me.”

Mason said, “This evidently bothers you.”

“It bothers me a lot.”

Mason said, “If you should come out now and make a statement of that sort and claim that this was all a publicity gag, and that the newspapers had fallen for it, you’d incur the undying enmity of a lot of reporters.”

“I know it.”

“It would quite probably kill any career you might have in store for you.”

“You don’t need to spell these things out for me, Mr Mason.”

“Yet you still feel that you might be forced to make such a statement?”

“I can’t help thinking of the man and the children.”

“The man, I take it, is rather powerful in certain circles?”

“Very.”

“What does he have to say about it?”

“I haven’t told him.”

“Why not?”

“It would throw him into a tailspin — and of course I don’t know how much Mr X knows and how much of what he claimed he knew was based on bluff. I’ve been seen with this man in public a couple of times and... Well, it could be all a legitimate business relationship or it could be something else.”

Mason thought for a moment, then said, “When is this man going to get in touch with you again?”

“Sometime this evening.”

Mason said, “All right, tell him that he has a nice scheme but it won’t do a damned bit of good, that an attorney is willing to swear that it was a genuine deal involving blackmail.”

She thought that over for a moment. “Could I tell him the name of the attorney?”

“You’re damned right you can tell him the name of the attorney,” Mason said. “Tell him it’s Perry Mason and tell him to come and see me.”

She was silent for several seconds, thinking the thing over. Then she abruptly gave Perry Mason her hand.

“That,” she said, “ought to do it.”

Mason said, “I don’t like blackmailers. They’re human vultures who prey on other people’s weaknesses and their desire to avoid publicity. You tell your Mr X if he wants to discuss it further to come and see me personally.”

“No,” she said thoughtfully, “I think the minute I mention your name and tell him that you are willing to swear the money in the coffee can was really blackmail money he’ll start running for cover.”

Mason said, “I just want you to know that we appreciate your co-operation in this.”

She smiled and again her smile was held just a fraction of a second too long.

“It has turned out to be a very good thing for me, Mr Mason, and I thank you. Do I go out the same way I came in or...?”

“No, out this door,” Mason said.

When she had left the office Mason nodded to Della Street who promptly got Paul Drake on the line.

“You’ve got someone tagging Eve Amory?” Mason asked.

“That’s right. I’ve had somebody on her for half an hour. He tailed her up to the building here. I thought she was coming to see me. Instead of that she detoured in to see you folks.”

“She was approached by a rather suave individual somewhere in his fifties,” Mason said.

“That was before my man got on the job,” Drake said. “We don’t have anything like that in the report.”

“Keep an eye out for him,” Mason said, “and if you can find him, tail him. I think he’s going to come back sometime later on in the afternoon or in the early part of the evening.”

“Who is he?” Drake asked.

“He gives the name of Mr X,” Mason said, “and unless I’m greatly mistaken, he’s the blackmailer. He’s around forty-five to fifty-two with penetrating grey eyes and—”

“That’ll be the man who was doing pole fishing in the boat,” Drake said. “We’ve got a pretty good description of him.”

“Okay,” Mason said. “Now we’re getting in touch with the blackmailers and once we find out who they are we’ll take the initiative and give them something to think of.

“Stay on the job, Paul.”