Эрл Гарднер: The Case of the Curious Bride

His face held the expression of a poker player who calls the bluff of an opponent. But that expression underwent a sudden change as Helen Crocker elevated her chin, clamped her lips together, said, "Very well," and swished past him through the open door and into the corridor. Perry Mason stood in the door waiting for her to turn, but she did not once look back. Her heels clicked down the corridor with quick, nervous steps. A descending elevator cage caught her signal almost as soon as she jabbed her thumb against the button. Her back was still to Perry Mason as the cage door slammed shut and the elevator dropped smoothly out of sight.

Della Street, Perry Mason's secretary, looked up inquiringly as he opened the door of his private office. Automatically, she picked up a pencil and reached for a daybook in which was entered the names and addresses of those who called, the amount of time they consumed, and the fees received. Her eyes showed inquiry. Those eyes dominated her face. They were clear, steady and unafraid—the eyes of one who saw far beneath the surface. The lawyer faced the calm scrutiny of those eyes, and explained: "I gave her a chance to come clean and she didn't."

"What was the trouble?"

"She tried to pull the old line on me, the one about a mysterious friend who wanted certain information. She asked me several questions. If I'd given her the answers, she'd have walked out and tried to apply the law I had stated to the situation that terrified her. The results would have been disastrous."

"Was she frightened?"

"Yes." Between Della Street and Perry Mason was that peculiar bond which comes to exist between persons of the opposite sex who have spent years together in an exacting work where success can only be obtained by perfect coordination of effort. All personal relations are subordinated to the task of achievement, which brings about a more perfect companionship than where companionship is consciously sought.

"So what?" asked Della Street, pencil still poised over the book.

"So I quit playing," Mason said, "and told her she'd better tell her friend to make an appointment with me. I figured she'd weaken and tell me the story. They usually do. This one didn't. She sailed out of the office and didn't once look back as she went to the elevator. She fooled me."

Della Street 's pencil made irrelevant designs in the upper corner of the blank page. "Did she tell you she'd been recently married?"

"No. She wouldn't even admit that."

Della Street 's nod of the head was a quietly emphatic assertion. "She's a bride, all right."

Mason slid his right leg over the corner of her desk, pulled a cigarette case from his pocket, took out a cigarette and said, almost as though thinking out loud, "I shouldn't have done it."

"Done what?" she asked.

"Done what I did," he mused. "What right have I got to sit back with that 'holier than thou' attitude and expect them to come clean with a total stranger? They come here when they're in trouble. They're worried and frightened. They come to me for consultations. I'm a total stranger to them. They need help. Poor fools, you can't blame them for resorting to subterfuges. I could have been sympathetic and drawn her out, won her confidence, found out her secret and lightened the load of her troubles. But I got impatient with her. I tried to force the issue, and now she's gone.

"It was her pride that I hurt. She knew that I'd pierced her subterfuge of lies. She knew that inwardly I was mocking her; and she had too much pride, too much character and too much selfrespect to come clean after that. She came to me for help, because she needed help. When I refused her that help, I betrayed my calling. I wasn't playing the game."

Della Street moved her hand toward the cigarette case.

"Gimme," she said.

Absently, the lawyer extended the cigarette case to her. Their companionship was such that no apology from Perry Mason for having helped himself without proffering the cigarette case was expected. On the other hand, there was no necessity for the secretary to ask permission to smoke during office hours. In more formal law offices, where results were subordinated to methods, a secretary would have stood in apparent awe of her employer, an awe that would have been but a thin and spurious veneer covering inner amusement and a complete lack of respect. But Perry Mason specialized in trial law, mostly criminal law. His creed was results. Clients came to him because they had to. There was no repeat business. Ordinarily a man is arrested for murder but once in a lifetime. Mason realized that his business must come from new clients, rather than from those who had previously been acquitted. As a result, he ran his office without regard for appearances or conventions. He did what he pleased when it suited him to do it. He had sufficient ability to scorn the conventions. Lawyer and secretary lit cigarettes from a single match.

"She'll go to some other lawyer, chief," Della Street said reassuringly.

Perry Mason shook his head in slow negation. "No," he said, "she's lost confidence in herself. She'd rehearsed that story about her friend. God knows how many times she'd rehearsed it. Probably she didn't sleep much last night. She went over this interview in her mind a hundred times. She planned a breezy method of approach. She was going to try and be casual about it. She could be hazy about names, dates and places because her 'friend' had been a little hazy with her. Lying awake last night, staring into the darkness, turning the situation over and over in a mind that had become weakened by worry, it seemed a perfect scheme. She thought she could get the legal information she wanted without tipping her hand. Then I ripped off the cloak of her deception so easily and so casually that she lost confidence in herself. Poor kid! She came to me for help and I didn't give it to her."

"I'll make the charge just the amount of the retainer," Della Street said, making notes in the daybook.

"Retainer?" Mason echoed blankly. "There isn't any retainer—there isn't any charge."

Della Street 's eyes were troubled. She shook her head gravely. "I'm sorry, chief, but she left a retainer. I asked her for her name and address and the nature of her business. She said she wanted some advice, and I told her that I presumed she understood there would be a charge. She became irritated, opened her purse, jerked out a fifty dollar bill and told me to use that as a retainer."

Mason's voice held selfreproach. "The poor kid," he said slowly. "And I let her go." Della Street 's sympathetic hand dropped to his. Fingers—fingers that had grown strong from pounding typewriter keys—squeezed a message of silent understanding.

A shadow formed on the frosted glass panel of the outer door. The knob clicked. It might have been a client with an important case, and it spoke volumes for the manner in which Perry Mason conducted his office and lived his life that he made no effort to change his position. Della Street hastily withdrew her hand, but Perry Mason remained with one hip resting on the corner of the desk, smoking his cigarette, staring with steady, uncordial eyes at the door.

The door swung open. Paul Drake, head of the Drake Detective Bureau, regarded them with protruding, glassy eyes which held a perpetual expression of droll humor, an effective mask, covering a keen intelligence which passed upon life in the raw. "Hello, folks," he said, "got any more work for me?"

Perry Mason managed a mirthless grin. "God, but you're greedy! I've been keeping your whole detective agency busy for the last few months, and now you want more!"

The detective moved away from the door, let it click shut behind him. "Did a little jane in brown, with snapping black eyes, leave your office about six or seven minutes ago, Perry?" he asked.