Erle Gardner - The Case of the Phantom Fortune

"That one was enough,"Mason said. "She'd follow me around with a cocktail glass in her lefthand, her right forefinger hooking at the lapel of my coat as though she wasafraid I was going to get away… Who is the bottled blonde who regarded you asan insect of some sort?"

"That," Della Street said, "was Adelle Chester. GeorgeBarrington brought her up and introduced us. She managed to take an instantdislike to me. She wasn't the only one. There was one other woman there,Rosalie Harvey I don't know whether you noticed her. She was dark-haired withgreen eyes. She was wearing a -"

"I noticed her," Masoninterrupted. "Isn't she connected with the business in some way?"

"Judson Olney's secretary,"Della said. "She's been with him for five years. I think she smelled a ratand I also think she was bursting with curiosity, but she didn't quite dare askdirect questions."

"Well," Mason said,"it's easy to account for the enmity of these two girls. Barrington was making a great play for you andneglected the girl he was with, so that explains Adelle Chester's attitude.Then after the buildup Olney gave you and told how he had lost his heart to youin the moonlight, it's not difficult to understand the attitude of his devotedsecretary who has secretly been idolizing him for years but who never gets atumble.

"There wasn't any evidence ofhostility on the part of anyone else -Just how does Judson Olney fit into thepicture?"

"As manager of most of theenterprises, he's Horace Warren's right hand."

"Rather young for such aresponsible position, isn't he?"

"It depends on how you look atit. He's smart believe me, he's smart, and he was doing a lot ofthinking."

"About what?"

"About you being there."

"Yes," Mason said, "Isuppose it would take a lot of doing to palm that off as simply being anaccidental circumstance, particularly in view of the fact that I keep my sociallife sharply limited. What was supposed to be the occasion for the gathering,Della?"

"That," Della said,"I don't know. I assume they do a lot of entertaining, with that house andthe set-up they have. But this was a conglomerate party Barrington was invited because of business reasons.Some of the people were from the organization. A couple of them wereneighbours. Others, it seems, were members of a bridge club Mrs Warren belongsto, and that was about it… I gather you didn't have a good time?"

"I earned my five hundreddollars," Mason said. "Don't think I'm an old grouch, Della, but aprofessional man can seldom enjoy himself at a gathering of that kind. I musthave had five different people come to me and start talking in general termsabout the law and about my career and then finally get around to bringing upsome little legal problem of their own on which they wanted my advice.

"A doctor can seldom attend asocial gathering without having people start reciting symptoms and asking himfor his opinion."

"Where did you and HoraceWarren go after you went out to the swimming pool?" Della asked. "Itried to keep my eye on you but you disappeared somewhere out by theshower."

"We went through a door into abathroom," Mason said. "Then through the bathroom into Lorna Warren'sbedroom."

Della raised her eyebrows.

"Warren wanted to show me a suitcase which he saidhad forty-seven thousand dollars in it, which his wife was keeping in hercloset."

"You saw that suitcase?"she asked.

"I saw the suitcase,"Mason said, "but all that was in it at the time we looked were somenewspapers."

"Then she'd already paid theblackmail?"

"That's what Warren thinks."

"You don't?"

Mason said, "When a person paysblackmail he turns over the money. If Mrs Warren had been blackmailed she'dhave put the suitcase on the bed, opened the suitcase, taken out theforty-seven thousand dollars, given it to the blackmailer and put the empty suitcaseback in the closet.

"When a person takes money outof a suitcase and then stuffs old newspapers into the suitcase to give itapproximately the same weight, that looks more like the work of aburglar."

"Good heavens, if someone hadstolen forty-seven thousand dollars …!" Della Street said, and then let her voice trail off,into silence.

"Exactly," Mason said,"but it goes deeper than that. If someone is putting a bite on Mrs Warrenfor that amount of money, it's something rather important, and when Mrs Warrengoes to pay him off and opens the suitcase and finds that in place of the moneyshe had left in there, there's nothing but a stack of old newspapers, the fatis apt to be in the fire. You can't pay a blackmailer with a stack of oldnewspapers."

"I should say not," Dellasaid, and then became silent as she contemplated the picture of what mighthappen if Mrs Warren, not knowing the money had disappeared, should open thesuitcase. After a moment she asked, "But who could have taken the money?"

Mason said, "The blackmailer,knowing she had the money in cash waiting to pay him, could have sneaked in,stolen the money, and then, denying he knew anything of the theft, demandedpayment."

"That's a thought!" sheexclaimed.

"Or," Mason went on,"someone who didn't want her to pay the blackmail could have taken themoney out of the suitcase and substituted old newspapers."

"Someone who didn't want her topay blackmail?" she echoed.

"Exactly," Mason said.

"But that could have been thehusband!" she exclaimed.

Mason's silence was eloquent.

Della Street, thinking over thevarious possibilities brought up by this idea, said, "And then, when shewent to pay the blackmailer and told him she'd had the money there but had beenrobbed, he'd call her a liar and … and then there would be complications …and you'd have been retained to protect her, and – Chief, that's what didhappen! Warren must have removed the money himself."

"We can't prove it," Masonsaid.

After that they were silent untilthey reached Mason's office.

"I take it that you had a goodtime," Mason said, as he switched on the office lights.

"I had a wonderful time,"she told him.

Mason said, "Probably we shouldhave a more active social life. We keep running from one murder case to anotherlike a hummingbird flitting from one -"

"Now, don't compare murderswith honeysuckle," she interrupted, "and don't be so grim. This caseis just an ordinary blackmail case."

Mason shook his head. "It isn'tordinary, Della, and I'm not even certain it's blackmail."

"Why?"

Mason said, "I have never had acase where the client was at such pains to avoid me."

"What do you mean? Mr Warrentook you around the house, he was talking with you a dozen times during theevening, and – "

"Oh, that," Masoninterposed. "That's the preliminary buildup. That's all right, but younotice that Warren has been at great pains to impress upon methat he isn't going to be available, that there's no way I can reach him when Iwant to without jeopardizing the things he wants to accomplish."

Della Street brought out the coffee percolator, filledit, connected it to the electric socket.

"The Drake Catering Service didquite a job," she said.

"A fine job. That was goodchampagne, too."

"Do you suppose we'll beinvited again to another one?" Della said.

"I doubt it. Warren wanted to get us familiar with thesituation and then keep us at arm's length."

She smiled. "You forget I havemy old cruising crush, Judson Olney."

"Yes," Mason said,"you have him. He started out acting under orders from Warren, but I had the feeling that he was puttinga lot of enthusiasm into his acting along toward the last."

"A lot of enthusiasm isright," she said. "He wants to find out what it's all about. Andspeaking of acting, did you know that Horace Warren had always wanted to be anactor, that he still practices in front of a mirror, using a tape recorder?"