Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Velvet Claws

On the piece of paper had been scribbled a telephone number: Freyburg 629803 .

Perry Mason nodded to her and slipped the piece of paper in his pocket.

“Was that the conversation—that line about paying for information?” he asked.

“I can’t divulge what went over the line.”

“I know,” said Mason, “but you’d tell me if that wasn’t the conversation, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe,” she said.

“All right, then, are you telling me anything?”

“No!”

“That’s all I wanted to know,” he told her, and grinned.

Perry Mason walked into the Detective Bureau at Police Headquarters.

“Drumm in here?” he asked.

One of the men nodded, and jerked a thumb toward an inner door.

Perry Mason walked in.

“Sidney Drumm,” he said to one of the men who was sitting on the corner of a desk, smoking. Some one raised his voice, and yelled: “Oh, Drumm, come on out.”

A door opened, and Sidney Drumm looked around until he saw Perry Mason, then grinned.

“Hello, Perry,” he said.

He was a tall, thin man, with high cheek bones, and washedout eyes. He would have looked more natural with a green eyeshade on his forehead, a pen behind his ear, keeping a set of books on a high stool, than in the Detective Bureau at Police Headquarters, which was, perhaps, why he made such a good detective.

Mason jerked his head and said, “I think I’ve got something,Sidney.”

“Okay,” said Drumm, “be right with you.”

Mason nodded and walked out into the corridor. Sidney Drumm joined him in about five minutes.

“Shoot,” he said.

“I’m chasing down a witness in something that may be of value to you,” Mason said to the detective. “I don’t know yet just where it’s going to lead. Right now, I’m working for a client, and I want to get the low down on a telephone number.”

“What telephone number?”

“Freyburg 629803,” said Mason. “If it’s the party I think it is, he’ll be as wise as a treeful of owls, and we can’t pull any of this wrong number business on him. I think it’s probably an unlisted number. You’ve got to get it right from the records of the telephone company, and I have an idea you’d better do it personally.”

Drumm said: “Gee, guy, you’ve got a crust!”

Perry Mason looked hurt.

“I told you I was working for a client,” he said, “there’s twentyfive bucks in it for you. I thought you’d be willing to take a run down to the telephone company for twentyfive bucks.”

Drumm grinned.

“Why the hell didn’t you say so in the first place?” he said. “Wait till I get my hat. We go down in your car or in mine?”

“Better take both,” Mason said. “You go in yours, and I’ll go in mine. I may not be coming back this way.”

“Okay,” the detective said. “I’ll meet you down there.”

Mason went out, got in his machine, and drove to the main office of the telephone company. Drumm, in a police car, was there ahead of him.

“I got to figuring,” said Drumm, “that it might be better if you didn’t go up there with me when I got the dope. So I’ve been up and got it for you.”

“What is it?”

“George C. Belter,” Drumm told him. “And the address is 556 Elmwood. You were right about its being an unlisted number. It’s supposed to be airtight. Information can’t even give out the number, let alone any information about it. So forget where you got it.”

“Sure,” agreed Mason, pulling two tens and a five from his pocket.

Drumm’s fingers closed over the money.

“Baby,” he said, “these look good after that poker game I was in last night. Come around again some time when you’ve got another client like this one.”

“I may have this client for some time,” Mason observed.

“That’ll be fine,” Drumm said.

Mason got in his car. His face was grim as he stepped on the starter and sent the machine speeding out towardElmwood Drive.

Elmwood Drive was in the more exclusive residential district of the city. Houses, set well back from the street, were fronted with bits of lawn, and the grounds were ornamented with wellkept hedges and trees. Mason slid his car to a stop before five hundred and fiftysix. It was a pretentious house, occupying the top of a small knoll. There were no other houses within some two hundred feet on either side, and the knoll had been landscaped to set off the magnificence of the house.

Mason didn’t drive his car into the driveway, but parked it in the street, and went on foot to the front door. A light was burning on the porch. The evening was hot, and myriad insects clustered about the light, beating their wings against the big globe of frosted glass which surrounded the incandescent.

When he had rung the second time, the door was opened by a butler in livery. Perry Mason took one of his cards from his pocket, and handed it to the butler.

“Mr. Belter,” he said, “wasn’t expecting me, but he’ll see me.”

The butler glanced at the card, and stood to one side.

“Very good, sir. Will you come in, sir?”

Perry Mason walked into a reception room, and the butler indicated a chair. Mason could hear him climbing stairs. Then he heard voices from an upper floor, and the sound of the butler’s feet coming down the stairs again.

The butler stepped into the room, and said: “I beg your pardon, but Mr. Belter doesn’t seem to know you. Could you tell me what it was you wanted to see him about?”

Mason looked at the man’s eyes, and said, shortly, “No.”

The butler waited a moment, thinking that Mason might add to the comment, then, as nothing was said, turned and went back up the stairs. This time he was gone three or four minutes. When he returned, his face was wooden.

“Please step this way,” he said. “Mr. Belter will see you.”

Mason followed the man up the stairs and into a sitting room which was evidently one of a suite which opened from the hallway, taking up an entire wing of the house. The room was furnished with an eye to comfort and none for style. The chairs were massive and comfortable. No attempt had been made to follow any particular scheme of decoration, and the room radiated a masculinity which was untempered by feminine taste.

A door to an inner room swung open, and a big man stood on the threshold.

Perry Mason had a chance to look past this man, into the room from which he had emerged. It was a room fitted up as a study with book cases lining the walls, a massive desk and swivel chair in one corner, and, beyond that, a glimpse of a tiled bathroom.

The man stepped into the room and pulled the door closed behind him.

He was a huge bulk of a man with a face that was fat and pasty. There were puffs under his eyes. His chest was deep and his shoulders very broad. His hips were narrow, and Mason had the impression that the legs were probably thin. It was the eyes that commanded attention. They were hard as diamonds and utterly cold.

For a second or two the man stood near the door, staring at Mason. Then he walked forward, and his gait strengthened the impression that his legs were taxed to capacity to carry about the great weight of his torso.

Mason surmised that the man was somewhere in the late forties, and there was that in his manner which indicated he was completely cruel and ruthless in his dealings.

Standing, Mason was a good four inches shorter than this man, although his shoulders were as broad.

“Mr. Belter?” he asked.

The man nodded, planted his feet wide apart, and stared at Mason.

“What do you want?” he snapped.

Mason said, “I’m sorry to come to your house, but I wanted to talk over a matter of business.”