Erle Gardner - The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

Mason nodded.

“My wife’s death, the life I’d been leading, the worries, and then that litigation coming on top of everything else was too much for me. I broke all at once. My heart went bad. My nerves went to pieces. Salty heard I was sick, and showed up. Then a peculiar thing developed. It turned out that the stock I’d set aside for Salty, holding it in trust for him, represented the controlling interest in the company.

“Salty was shocked to find how ill I was. He started to bring me back out of it. I think he’s going to do it. I turned the stock over to him so he could vote it. Between us, we keep Jim Bradisson from going absolutely hog-wild. And then Salty had to go and fall in love. I think Mrs. Bradisson engineered it. He’s going to marry. His wife will get that stock just as sure as I’m standing here. I want you to draw up a pooling agreement and—”

He broke off just as the sound made by beating on the bottom of the frying pan with a big spoon announced that Salty had lunch ready.

“I’m going to have Salty sign a pooling agreement by which he votes his stock with mine,” Clarke went on quickly, as the lunch call subsided. “I wanted you to know why I was doing it so you wouldn’t ask too many embarrassing questions. If Salty thought I doubted the woman he’s going to marry, it would hurt him.”

“I see,” Mason said. “That’s all you wanted?”

“No. There’s one other thing, but I can talk that over with you in front of Salty.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a fraud case. I want to hire you to represent the defendant. You’re going to lose the lawsuit. You haven’t a leg to stand on.”

“Who’s the plaintiff?”

“The corporation.”

Mason said, “Just a minute. Are you trying to retain me so you can control both sides of the litigation and—”

“No, no. Don’t misunderstand,” Clarke said. “Win it if you can, but you can’t. You’re licked before you start.”

“Then why go to court?”

For a moment Clarke seemed on the point of giving Mason his full confidence. Then the beating on the frying pan was resumed and Salty’s voice called out, “Come and get it or I’ll throw it out.”

Clarke said abruptly, “I can’t tell you all of the ramifications.”

“And I don’t think I’ll handle the case,” Mason said.

Clarke grinned. “Well, anyway we can eat some lunch and talk it over. I think you’ll handle it when you know more about it. And after a while there’ll be another matter — a mystery you’ll have to solve. And in the meantime Jim Bradisson is buying mines by the dozen from Hayward Small, and I think it’s a situation that stinks. But by all means let’s eat.”

They sat around the little cooking fire over which a kettle of dishwater was now steaming. Salty, moving with a certain awkward efficiency, seemed to do everything without appreciable effort. There were well-cooked frijoles, a dish made of jerked venison chopped up and cooked with tomatoes, onions and peppers, cold bannock, thick syrup, and big agateware cups of hot tea.

Banning Clarke attacked the meal with relish, cleaning out his plate and passing it over for a second helping.

Salty’s eyes twinkled. “Couple o’ months ago,” he said, “he was toying with his grub — couldn’t eat.”

“That’s right,” Clarke agreed. “My heart started going bad and kept getting worse. The doctors had me taking medicine, then keeping perfectly still. Finally, they had me in bed. Salty showed up and made his own diagnosis. He said I had to get back out in the open. The doctor said it would kill me. So Salty fixed up this little camp out here in the cactus garden and moved me out here. I’ve been eating and sleeping out in the open, living on the sort of grub I’m accustomed to, and I can feel myself getting better every day now.”

“Your heart’s a muscle just like any other kind of a muscle,” Salty said positively. “You get to living soft, and your muscles all get soft. The main thing is fresh air and sunshine. I don’t mind telling you, though, this air sorta gets me down. It ain’t like the desert. It’s nice all right, but when fog comes in from the ocean — b-r-r-r!” Salty shivered at the very thought.

“Won’t be long until we’ll be getting out of here,” Clarke promised. “Miss Street has brought a portable typewriter, Salty. Mason can dictate an agreement pooling our stock. We can sign it and get it over with so Mr. Mason won’t have to make another trip.”

“Suits me.”

“What about this fraud suit?” Mason asked.

Clarke said, “I’ll have to tell you a little something about how I’m situated here so you’ll get the picture. I have a nurse who lives in the house and keeps an eye on me, Velma Starler. I have an eccentric housekeeper, Nell Sims. She kept a restaurant out in Mojave. Salty and I used to eat there whenever we were in that section of the country. After my wife died she sort of moved in.”

“There is perhaps some bond of affection?” Mason asked.

Clarke laughed. “Not in that way. She’s married and has a daughter by a former marriage around twenty years old. She’s really a character. Her husband, Pete Sims, is just as much of a character in his way as she is in hers. Pete’s a claim-salter, a bunco artist, and a periodic drunkard with an aversion for work. Hayward Small, a mining broker and promoter who has been dabbling around in psychology and the power of mental suggestion, told Pete, a year or so ago, about split personalities — and ever since then Pete has had a secondary personality for a scapegoat. It’s absolutely ludicrous, but he seems naively sincere about it. He claims Small asked permission to use him as a subject in conducting some hypnotic experiments, and that almost as soon as he became hypnotized this secondary personality began to make its appearance. What makes it so utterly ridiculous is that Pete hasn’t a sufficient idea of split personalities to make his stories even slightly plausible. He just goes ahead with his drinking and swindling and then blames all of his lapses on this secondary personality, a mysterious entity whom he calls ‘Bob.’ ”

“Makes it handy,” Mason said, and then added, “for Pete.”

“Very.”

“Does anybody believe him?”

“Sometimes I think his wife does. You never know just what Nell believes and what she doesn’t believe. She has a peculiar philosophy of her own and is given to garbling proverbs. People used to flock to her restaurant just to hear her garbled proverbs. She’s great for interpolating short comments. However, you’ll meet her.”

“They’re all living at the house?”

“Yes.”

“Also Mrs. Bradisson and James Bradisson?”

“That’s right.”

“Anyone else?”

“This Hay ward Small I was telling you about. He’s a mining broker. I think if we could uncover the actual relationship between Small and Bradisson we’d have something.”

“In what way?”

“Since I became ill, Bradisson has become president of the company. The company is spending money right and left buying new mining claims. Nearly all of them are handled through Hayward Small. Of course, on the face of it it’s all right, but I think Bradisson is getting some sort of kickback from Small. I haven’t been able to prove anything.”

“And this fraud action?”

Clarke chuckled. “Nell Sims had a string of mining claims that she’d taken in on a board bill. Everybody considered they were pretty worthless. They are. Pete Sims sold the claims to the corporation. They’re the Shooting Star group. He swindled Jim Bradisson into buying them. The corporation claims Pete salted the mines and juggled samples so that he gave the properties an entirely fictitious value.”