Erle Gardner - The Case of the Substitute Face

Drake grabbed the telephone, put through a call to his office and said, “Get me half a dozen tough babies who can dish it out and take it. I’d like to have a couple of special deputy sheriffs in the lot, and I want guns, ammunition and tear gas.”

“What is it?” Belle Newberry asked, staring with apprehensive eyes at the grim face of the lawyer.

“Della Street’s missing,” Mason said. “She went out this morning and we haven’t heard from her since. A check-up on the hospitals and automobile accidents shows she hasn’t been injured. When she went out, she was trying to trace down this piece of blue silk.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Belle Newberry asked. Mason said, “Yes, you wait here and play secretary. Take all the messages that come in, and be ready to give me a complete report whenever I call in. You, Paul, tell your office to report to Belle and give her all the dope. Keep men on the job.”

Mason walked to his suitcase, pulled out a bolstered revolver, unbuckled his belt and slipped the strap through the loop in the holster. “Come on, Paul,” he said to the detective, who was telephoning. “We haven’t got all day, you know. Tell ‘em to rash those men down here.”

The two automobiles, filled with grim, silent men, roared up the paved road which wound through redwood-covered mountains. An orange-peel new moon hung suspended against the orange after-glow of sunset. The drivers were men who knew their business, men who kept the cars in second gear, gave plenty of throttle on the turns and used the brakes but sparingly.

Drake said, “Have you any idea how you’re going to play this, Perry? We don’t want any rough stuff if we can avoid it.”

Mason said, “I’m going to find out whether Eves knows anything about Della Street. If he starts anything, I’ll finish it.”

“He’s very apt to start something,” Drake warned.

“And I’m very apt to finish it,” Mason said.

“How do you figure the nurse in it?” Drake asked.

“I don’t know,” Mason admitted. “They’re holding something back. How the devil did her dress get on the cleat?”

“Well,” Drake said, “we can ask her.”

“Later on,” Mason told him, “after Della Street shows up, I’m going to do some thinking. I have an idea there’s a plain, logical solution to this whole business staring us in the face, Paul, but I can’t see it right now because I’m too worried about Della.”

“You’re going to make a mistake if you crowd Eves,” Drake warned. “You could do a lot more by putting cards on the table... Look here, Perry, why don’t you get Van Densie to approach him?”

“Why Van Densie?”

“He’s the lawyer who defended him on that last murder rap. He might be able to square the whole thing up for you.”

“Not that shyster,” Mason said. “Anyway, he’s in bad enough already. He has troubles of his own. He wouldn’t cross the street to do me a good turn.”

“Why not try it?” Drake persisted.

Mason said, “I can’t try anything except direct action, Paul. I can’t explain it. When I talk with a man, I form an impression of whether or not he’s telling the truth. If I can look Eves in the eyes and ask him about Della, I’ll bet money I can tell whether he’s lying.”

“All right, suppose he’s lying. Then what?” Drake asked.

Mason said, “Then I’ll take him into custody.”

“ You'll take him into custody!”

“Yes, I will,” Mason said. “It’s not generally known, but under the law a private citizen can make an arrest when a felony has in fact been committed and he has reasonable grounds to believe the person he’s arrested has committed the felony.”

“Do you have reasonable grounds?” Drake asked.

“I’ll make them reasonable,” Mason said.

They drove in silence for another half hour. Then Mason said to the driver, “All right, it’s this turn. Get up all the speed you can, then cut out the motor and coast. When you come to the turn on the left, you’ll find a hill. Shut off your headlights and stop at the foot of that hill. We go up on foot.”

The cars roared into speed, then, as the drivers shut off the motors, glided over the mountain road. “Okay,” Mason said, “shut off your headlights and stop.”

The cars slid to a silent stop. Mason got out, and the men gathered about him in a compact little knot.

“All right,” Mason told them, “we go up the road, surround the house. Don’t shoot unless you’re shot at. I’m going in. Don’t let anyone out. I have reason to believe a girl has been kidnapped and that the man in the house did the kidnaping. Don’t use guns unless you have to. Use tear gas first, and clubs.”

“On our way, ” one of the men said.

They climbed the hill. Mason and Drake paused to let the men deploy out into the shadows. The cabin was dark and silent.

Mason consulted his wrist watch. When five minutes had passed, he nodded to Drake and said, “Okay, Paul, here we go. You keep back and let me go in front.”

“Nothing doing,” Drake said. “We go in together.”

Their feet crunched up the gravel walk. Mason climbed the stairs to the cabin and pounded on the door. There was no answer. Mason kicked on the door and tried the knob. It was locked.

The lawyer stepped to the window, turned on his flashlight, and directed the beam at the interior.

“I wouldn’t do that, Perry,” Drake warned. “It’s dangerous as hell. He could shoot at that flashlight and—”

Mason said, “Save it, Paul. I want action,” and kicked in the window.

The crash of breaking glass sounded startlingly loud in the silence of the mountain night. Mason reached in through the broken pane, unlocked the window, raised the sash, and crawled through. “Coming, Paul?” he asked.

Drake hesitated for a moment, then slid through the window after Mason.

The lawyer directed the beam of his flashlight around the cabin, found a light switch, and snapped on the lights.

“You know what a spot we’ll be in if we’re caught at this,” Drake said.

“I know,” Mason remarked absently, “and I don’t give a damn. I’m going through the house.”

They searched the cabin thoroughly. At the end of the search, Mason delivered his verdict “Okay,” he said, “they played us for suckers. The business about Evelyn Whiting’s testimony was just a stall to get rid of me and keep me from getting suspicious. They packed up and left as soon as we’d gone.”

“What do we do next?” Drake asked.

“We find Eves.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” Mason admitted, “but I do know we’re going to find him.”

“Where do we go from here?” Drake asked.

“We wake up the man in the store, find out if he saw Eves leave, and put through a telephone call,” Mason said.

They summoned the operatives, returned to the cars, and, after some delay, got the man who operated the general store out of bed. He had seen Eves and the young woman, whom he understood was Mrs. Eves, leave within half an hour after Mason had visited him that afternoon. The car, he said, was pretty well filled with baggage.

Drake put through a long distance call to his San Francisco office, talked for several minutes, then drew Perry Mason aside.

“Perry,” he said, “this doesn’t look so good.”

“Do you have some news of Della?”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead,” Mason told him, “spill it.”

Drake said, “After all, Perry, we don’t know that she was working on this evening gown business. She may have had reasons of her own—”

“Never mind the preliminaries,” Mason said. “What are you getting at?”