Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Velvet Claws

She stared at him for a moment, and then asked, “How are you going to do that?”

He smiled at her. “In this game,” he said, “I’m the one that has to know everything. The less you know, the less you stand a chance of telling.”

“You can trust me. I can keep a secret,” she told him.

“You’re a good liar,” he said judiciously, “if that’s what you mean. But this is once where you won’t have to lie, because you won’t know what’s going on.”

“But Burke didn’t do it,” she insisted.

He frowned at her.

“Now listen,” he said, “that’s the reason I wanted to get in touch with you. If Burke didn’t do it, who did?”

She shifted her eyes. “I told you some man had a conference with my husband. I don’t know who he was. I thought it was you. It sounded like your voice.”

He got to his feet, and his face darkened.

“Listen,” he said, “if you go trying that kind of a game on me, I’ll throw you to the wolves. You’ve tried that game once. That’s enough.”

She started to cry and sobbed. “I cccan’t help it. You asked me. There’s nobody listening. I ttttold you who it wwwas. I heard your vvvoice. I won’t tttell the pppolice, not even if they tttorture me!”

He took her by the shoulders and slammed her down on the bed. He pulled her hands from her face and stared at her eyes. There was no trace of tears in them.

“Now listen,” he said, “you didn’t hear my voice, because I wasn’t there at all. And cut out that sobbing act—unless you’ve got an onion in your handkerchief!”

“Then it was somebody whose voice sounded like yours,” she insisted.

He scowled at her.

“Are you in love with Burke?” he asked. “And trying to put me in a position where you can throw me over in case I can’t square the thing for Burke?”

“No. You wanted me to tell the truth, and I’m telling it.”

“I’m tempted to get up and walk out on you, and leave you with the whole mess on your hands,” he threatened.

She said, demurely, “Then, of course, I’d have to tell the police whose voice it was I heard in that room.”

“So that’s your little game, eh?”

“I haven’t any game. I’m telling the truth.” Her voice was sweet, but she didn’t meet his eyes.

Mason sighed. “I never went back on a client yet, guilty or innocent,” he said. “I’m trying to remember that. But, by God! It’s a temptation to walk out on you!”

She sat on the bed and twisted her handkerchief about her fingers.

In a moment he began to talk, “On my way back down the hill, after I’d left your house, I stopped to talk with the clerk in the drug store where you telephoned to me. He was watching you when you went in the telephone booth, which was only natural. A woman in evening clothes, with a man’s coat on, who is sopping wet, and goes into a telephone booth, in an all night drug store, after midnight, is naturally going to attract some attention. Now this clerk told me that you called two telephone numbers.”

Wideeyed she looked at him, but she said nothing.

“Who did you call besides me?” he asked.

“Nobody,” she said, “the clerk’s mistaken.”

Perry Mason put on his hat and pulled it low down over his forehead. He turned to Eva Belter and said savagely, “I’m going to get you out of this somehow. I don’t know just how. But I’m going to get you out of it. And, by God, it’s going to cost you money!”

He jerked open the door, went out into the hall, and slammed the door behind him. The first light of dawn was coloring the eastern sky.

The first rays of the early morning sun were gilding the tops of the buildings, when Perry Mason got hold of Harrison Burke’s housekeeper.

She was fiftyseven or eight years old, heavily fleshed, filled with animosity. Her eyes were sparkling with hostility.

“I don’t care who you are,” she said, truculently. “I tell you that he isn’t here. I don’t know where he is. He was out until aroundmidnight, then he got a telephone call, and went out again. After that, the telephone kept ringing all night. I didn’t answer it, because I knew he wasn’t here, and my feet get cold when I get up in the middle of the night. And I don’t appreciate being called out of bed at this hour, either!”

“How long after he came in before there was a telephone call?” asked Mason.

“It wasn’t very long, if it’s really any of your business.”

“Do you think he was expecting the telephone call?”

“How do I know? He woke me up when he came in. I heard him open the door and close it. I was trying to go to sleep again when I heard the telephone ring, and heard him talk. Then I heard him run up to his bedroom. I thought he was going to bed, but I guess he was putting some things in a suitcase, because this morning the suitcase is gone. I heard him run down the stairs and slam the front door.”

Perry Mason said, “Well, I guess that’s all, then.”

She said, “You bet it’s all!” and slammed the door.

Mason got in his car, and stopped at a hotel to call his office.

When he heardDella Street’s voice on the line, he said, “Is Mr. Mason there?”

“No, he isn’t,” she said. “Who’s calling?”

“This is a friend of his,” he told her, “Mr. Fred B. Johnson. I wanted to get in touch with Mr. Mason very badly.”

“I can’t tell you where he is,” she said rapidly, “but I expect he’ll be in soon. There are several people looking for him, and one of them, a Mr. Paul Drake, I think has an appointment. So I think he’ll be in soon.”

“Well, that’s all right,” Mason remarked, casually. “I’ll call again.”

“You haven’t any message to leave with me?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he told her, “except that I’ll call again,” and he hung up.

He called back the number of Drake’s Detective Bureau and got Paul Drake on the telephone.

“Don’t make any cracks where anybody can hear you, Paul,” said Mason, “because I have an idea a lot of people would like to ask me some questions that I’d rather not answer right now. You know who this is.”

“Yeah,” replied Drake, “I got some funny dope for you.”

“Shoot,” said Mason.

“I went out to this chap’s house. The one on West Sixtyninth Street, and I found something funny.”

“Go on,” Mason told him.

“This bird got a telephone call from somebody a little after midnight, and told his wife that he was called out of town on important business. He seemed pretty much frightened. He put some things in a suitcase, and, about quarter to one, an automobile drove by for him, and he got in and left. He told his wife that he’d get in touch with her and let her know where he was. This morning she received a telegram saying: ‘All right. Don’t worry. Love.’, and that’s all she knows. Naturally she was a bit worried.”

“That’s fine,” Mason said.

“Does it mean anything to you?” asked Drake.

“I think it does,” said Mason. “I’ve got to think it over a bit. I think it means a whole lot. Have you got anything new on Locke?”

Drake’s voice showed animation. “I haven’t found out what you want to know yet, Perry. But I think I’m on the tracks of it all right. You remember this jane at the Wheelright Hotel? This Esther Linten?”

“Yeah,” said Mason. “What about her?”

“Well,” said Drake, “it’s a funny thing, but she came from Georgia.”

Mason whistled.

“That’s not all,” went on Drake. “She’s getting some regular sugar from Locke. There’s a check that goes through every two weeks, and it’s a check that doesn’t come from Locke himself. It comes from a special account that Spicy Bits keeps in a downtown bank. We managed to get the cashier at the hotel to talk. The kid has been cashing the checks through the hotel regularly.”