Erle Gardner - The Case of the Lame Canary

Her face flushed, her eyes starry, she looked up at him, the fresh wind from the harbor blowing her hair about her flushed cheeks.

“Swell,” she admitted.

“Now,” he said, “we are confronted with the problem that all your baggage is initialed ‘D.M’ What are we going to do about that?”

“Can’t we have the initials erased?” she asked.

“Not very well,” Mason said, his eyes twinkling. “They’re stamped into the leather. I’ll tell you what you could do, though.”

“What?” she asked.

“If,” he said, “you became Mrs. Mason, the initials would be perfectly all right. They would then stand for ‘Della Mason’ instead of ‘Diana Morgan.’ ”

“Are you,” she asked, “proposing to me?”

He nodded.

She looked thoughtfully down into the water, then raised her eyes to face him frankly.

“As your wife,” she asked, “would I continue to be your secretary?”

“Hardly. I couldn’t give you orders. It wouldn’t set well with the clients. But you wouldn’t need to work. You could have a car of your own and—”

“That’s what I thought,” she interrupted. “We’re getting along swell the way it is. You’d establish me in a home somewhere as your wife. Then you’d get a secretary to help you with your work. The first thing you knew, you’d be sharing excitement and experiences with the secretary and I’d be entirely out of your life. No, Mr. Perry Mason, you aren’t the marrying kind. You live at too high speed. You’re too wrapped up in mysteries. I’d rather share in your life than in your bank roll.”

“But think of all that baggage,” he told her, sliding his arms around her waist. “It has those perfectly good initials, ‘D.M.,’ which we can’t let go to waste.”

She snuggled close to him. “No,” she said, “I think my hunch is right, Chief. I think it would be better for me to remain Della Street and have the baggage wrong than to become Della Mason and have everything else wrong. But — well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do — ask me again in Singapore.”

“It’s a long ways between here and Singapore,” he told her. “How about Waikiki?”

She laughed, flung back her head to catch the wind on her cheeks and forehead. “Always impatient,” she said. “Come on. Let’s walk the deck. I don’t think you need a wife. But I know damn well you need a secretary who’s willing to go to jail occasionally to back your play.”

Arm in arm they started walking the deck. “Have any trouble with that habeas corpus?” he asked.

“Nuh uh,” she said.

Another half turn in silence. “Happy?” Mason asked.

“Uh huh,” squeezing his arm.

Like two happy children, they walked the deck. “Dammit,” Mason said, frowning, “I wonder what it was that Paul Drake had. It’s the first time I’ve ever known him to get excited over a case. It must be a humdinger—”

She placed her fingers across his lips. “Stop it,” she ordered. “Quit talking about it, and quit thinking about it. If you so much as mention business on this trip, I’ll take a separate ship and leave you to your own devices.” Mason held up his hands in grinning surrender and said, “Kamerad! You win!”

Thereafter, passengers getting their last taste of the cold wind which came tanging in from the sea, hurrying toward their staterooms to lay out light weight tropical garments in anticipation of the warm cruise ahead, smiled tolerantly as they saw the tall, distinguished man, accompanied by the capable, good-looking young woman, parading around the deck, as though it was a ceremonial march, and, as they walked, whistling Hawaiian Paradise.