Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Velvet Claws

Locke whirled, his chocolate brown eyes suddenly wide with alarm, and stared at Mason.

“Got to thinking,” explained Mason, “that I’d better telephone and see if I could get in touch with my client. So that I could give you an immediate answer. But I can’t get a call through. Nobody answers. I’m waiting to get a nickel back.”

Locke nodded. His eyes were still suspicious.

“Let the nickel go,” he said. “Our time’s worth more than that.”

Mason said: “Maybe yours is,” and stepped back to the telephone. He jiggled the receiver two or three times, then shrugged his shoulders with an exclamation of disgust, and left the telephone booth. The two men rode together in the elevator to the mezzanine floor, and returned to the chairs they had occupied.

“Well?” said Mason.

“I’ve been thinking the thing over,” said Frank Locke, and hesitated.

Mason commented, dryly: “Well, I presumed that you had.”

“You know,” said Locke, “the situation that you’ve brought up, without mentioning any names, might have a very important political angle.”

“Again,” said Mason, “still without mentioning any names, it might not. But there’s no use you and me sitting here trying to kid each other like a couple of horse traders. What’s your price?”

“The advertising contract,” said Locke, “would have to have a proviso that in the event it was breached, a payment of twenty thousand dollars would be made as liquidated damages.”

“You’re crazy!” exclaimed Mason.

Frank Locke shrugged his shoulders. “You’re the one that wanted to buy the advertising,” he said. “I don’t know as I’m anxious to sell it to you.”

Mason got to his feet. “You don’t act as though you wanted to sell anything,” he remarked. He walked to the elevator and Locke followed him.

“Maybe you’ll want to buy some advertising again sometime,” Locke said. “Our rates are somewhat elastic, you know.”

“Meaning that they’re going down?” queried Mason.

“Meaning that they may go up, in this case.”

“Oh,” said Mason, shortly.

He paused abruptly, and whirled, staring at Locke with cold, hostile eyes.

“Listen,” he said. “I know what I’m up against. And I’m telling you right now that you can’t get away with it.”

“Can’t get away with what?” said Locke.

“You know damned well what you can’t get away with,” said Mason. “By God! You fellows have run a blackmailing sheet here and made people eat out of your hands long enough. I’m telling you right now where you head in!”

Locke regained something of his composure, and shrugged his shoulders.

“I’ve had fellows try to tell me that before,” he said.

“I didn’t say I was trying to tell you,” said Mason. “I said I was telling you.”

“And I heard you,” said Locke. “There’s no need of raising your voice.”

“Okay,” said Mason. “Just so you know what I mean. By God! I’m starting after you fellows right now.”

Locke smiled. “Very well. In the meantime, would you mind pressing the elevator button, or else get out of the way, so that I can press it.”

Mason turned and pressed the button. They rode down in silence, walked across the lobby.

When they reached the street, Locke smiled.

“Well,” he said, his brown eyes staring at Perry Mason, “there’s no hard feelings.”

Perry Mason turned his back.

“The hell there ain’t,” he said.

Perry Mason sat in his automobile, and lit a cigarette from the butt of the one he had just smoked. His face was set in lines of patient concentration, his eyes glittered. He seemed like some pugilist seated in his corner, waiting for the gong to ring. Yet there was no expression of nervousness upon his face. The only thing which indicated strain was the fact that he had been lighting cigarettes, one after the other, for more than an hour.

Directly across the street was the building in which Spicy Bits had its editorial offices.

Mason was half way through the last cigarette in the package, when Frank Locke came out of the building.

Locke walked with a furtive manner, glancing about him mechanically, with eyes that didn’t seem to be looking for anything in particular, but were peering, purely as a matter of habit. His appearance was that of a fox who has been prowling until after daylight and is caught slinking back to his lair by the rays of the early sun.

Perry Mason flipped away the cigarette and pressed his foot on the starter. The light coupe slid away from the curb and into the stream of traffic.

Locke turned to the right at the corner and hailed a taxicab. Mason trailed the cab closely until traffic thinned slightly, when he dropped farther behind.

Frank Locke got out in the middle of the block, paid off the cab, and went down an areaway where he knocked on the door. A panel slid back; then the door opened. Mason could see a man bow and smile. Locke walked in and the man slammed the door shut.

Perry Mason parked his car half a block away, took out a fresh package of cigarettes, broke the cellophane, and started smoking again.

Frank Locke was in the speakeasy for three quarters of an hour. Then he came out, looked quickly about him, and walked to the corner. The alcohol had given him a certain air of assurance, and caused him to throw his shoulders back slightly.

Perry Mason watched while Locke found a cruising cab, and climbed in. Mason trailed along behind the cab until Locke discharged it in front of a hotel. Then he parked his car, went into the hotel lobby, and looked cautiously around him. There was no sign of Locke.

Mason looked the lobby over. The place was a commercial type of hotel, catering to salesmen and conventions. There was a line of telephone booths, with an operator stationed at a desk. Quite a few people were in the lobby.

Perry Mason moved slowly and cautiously about, looking the people over. Then he walked over to the desk.

“Can you tell me,” he asked the clerk, “whether or not Frank Locke has a room here?”

The clerk ran his finger down the card index system, and said, “We have a John Lock.”

“No,” said Mason, “this is Frank Locke.”

“He’s not with us. Sorry,” said the clerk.

“That’s all right,” said Mason, turning away.

He crossed the lobby to the dining room and looked in there. There were a few people eating at the tables but Locke was not among them. There was a barber shop in the basement, and Mason went down the stairs and peered in through the glass partition.

Locke was in the third chair from the end, his face covered with hot towels. Mason recognized him by the tweed suit, and tan shoes.

Mason nodded and went back up the stairs to the lobby. He crossed to the girl at the telephone desk.

“All the booth calls are handled through you?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Okay. I can show you how to pick up twenty dollars pretty easy.”

She stared at him, and asked, “Are you kidding me?”

Mason shook his head. “Listen,” he said, “I want to get a number, and that’s all.”

“How do you mean?”

“Just this,” he said, “I’m going to put through a call for a man. He probably won’t take the call right away, but will come up here to get it later on. He’s in the barber shop now. After he talks with me, he’s going to call a number. I want to know what that number is.”

“But,” said the girl, “suppose he doesn’t put the call through here?”

“In that case,” Mason told her, “you’ve done the best you can, and you get the twenty bucks anyway.”

“I’m not supposed to give out information about those things,” the girl protested.