Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Long-Legged Models

“I see,” she said, her face suddenly wooden, and she added, “I wish I’d known that a little earlier this evening.”

“All right,” Garvin said, “let’s put it on a business basis. I picked up stock in that motel corporation to help you when I thought you were going to be one of the family.

“It isn’t efficient for that little motel to continue to operate as it’s now operating. The property has become too valuable. Taxes are too high. Yet you can’t do anything with that property as it is. There’s no chance of getting the property on the north, and the property on the south is controlled by this syndicate that wants to get the motel property in order to put up a reasonably big building which can pay off. It’s time for you to sell out.”

“Yes,” she said, “I think it’s time for me to sell out and pull up my roots here.”

Garvin said, “I think Casselman is a chiseler. I doubt if he actually represents the syndicate. I think he’s an independent operator, but of course the syndicate would be glad to do business with him if he had the property.

“It’s my plan to go direct to the syndicate and find out what their best offer is. In order to do that I want to be in a position to close out the deal. Now then tell me, what do you actually want for your stock?”

“I was offered thirty thousand dollars by Casselman,” she said. “I’ll take it if I can’t do better, but I don’t think that’s enough.”

“What would you take and be satisfied?”

“Anything over thirty thousand.”

“All right,” Garvin said, “give me a ten-day option to sell your stock at eighty thousand dollars, and if I can get anything above that, we’ll split the profits. You take half and I take half. I’ll put my stock in at the same time, at the same price ratio, and we’ll make a deal with the syndicate. We’ll split anything above that figure fifty-fifty.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “Only you can’t get eighty thousand for my stock.”

“You have a typewriter here, Stephanie?”

She nodded.

“Then, let’s draw up a document. Mason, you can dictate it and we’ll sign it right now.”

“I can do it at my office in the morning,” Mason said.

“I’d like to get the thing cleaned up tonight.”

“All right,” Mason told him and motioned to Della Street.

Stephanie Falkner found stationery and carbon paper. Della Street sat at the typewriter and typed as Mason dictated a short form of agreement.

When he had finished, she ratcheted the paper out of the typewriter, handed one copy to Mason, one to Stephanie Falkner, one to Garvin.

“Okay?” Garvin asked Stephanie after he had read it.

“Okay,” she said.

“Let’s sign.”

They signed the agreement.

“Well,” Mason said, “I guess that covers everything we can do tonight. You’ll be in touch with me in the morning, Homer?”

“Probably,” Garvin said.

“And how about you, Miss Falkner? I can reach you here?”

“If anything turns up, yes.”

Garvin hesitated.

Della Street flashed Mason a glance, said, “Well, I’m a working girl. I should be getting home.”

“I’ll drive you home,” Mason said.

Garvin hesitated a moment, then said to Stephanie Falkner, “Now I’ll take that drink, Stephanie.”

Stephanie Falkner saw them to the door, stood watching them down the corridor, then, as they entered the elevator, closed the door gently.

“Now,” Mason said, “why should she keep insisting Casselman only offered her thirty thousand dollars for forty per cent of the stock when he offered me that same amount for fifteen per cent of the stock, and offered to buy it all at the same rate?”

“Any ideas?” Della Street asked.

“No,” Mason said, “but I’m certain that if it hadn’t been for that phone call he was going to make me a firm offer of eighty thousand for her stock and thirty thousand for Garvin’s stock.”

“Then the phone call caused him to change his mind?”

“Something did,” Mason said.

“Someone who saw him?”

“No one entered the apartment house except... Oh well, let’s let things wait until tomorrow. We may know a lot more when we see Garvin again.”

Mason swung his car into the parking lot the next morning, nodded to the attendant, pulled into his regular parking stall, walked over to the sidewalk, and was just turning in to the foyer of the building where he had his office when he became conscious of Della Street at his side.

“Hi, Chief,” she said in a low voice. “Thought I’d catch you before you’d get to the office. Want to keep walking?”

Mason glanced at her in surprise. “What’s wrong, Della?”

“Perhaps a lot.”

“Shall we go back to the car?”

“No, let’s just walk.”

They fell into step, moving along in a stream of early morning pedestrian traffic which was pounding its way along the sidewalk.

“What gives?” Mason asked.

Della Street said, “Lt. Tragg was in the office looking for you. I wouldn’t doubt but what he’s waiting in the foyer of the building to collar you as soon as you show up. I tried to ring you at your apartment, but you’d left.”

“What does Tragg want?” Mason asked.

She said, “George Casselman has become a corpse. A maid opened the door of his apartment and found him dead on the floor, a big bullet hole in the front of his chest.”

“When?” Mason asked.

“Apparently about eight o’clock this morning. The news just came over the radio as I was...”

“No, no,” Mason said, “when was the time of death?”

“No information on that as yet.”

“Why does Tragg want to see me?”

“I’m just putting two and two together and making eight.”

“Good girl!” Mason said. “I have one very important thing to do. Let’s catch a cab and see if we can find out something important before we have to answer a lot of questions.”

Mason swung over to the curb, waited impatiently as the long line of morning traffic went streaming past. Finally he caught a vacant cab and said, “Lodestar Apartments.”

Della Street glanced at him. “We don’t telephone first?”

Mason shook his head.

“Surely, Chief, you don’t think...?”

“Exactly,” Mason said. “I’m not doing any thinking yet. I want information, then I’ll start thinking.

“For your confidential, private, and exclusive information, Homer Garvin called on George Casselman around eight-fifteen yesterday evening. He didn’t see fit to tell me about that visit, so I said nothing to anyone.

“Also, for your confidential information and as food for thought, if when Stephanie Falkner called on Casselman at eight-thirty last night she found she was interviewing a corpse, and had subsequently been asked what she had been offered for her stock, she’d have had to make up a fictitious figure.

“That might account for the discrepancy between what Casselman offered me for Garvin’s stock and what she said she had been offered for hers.”

“Oh-oh!” Della Street exclaimed. “I never thought of it in that light, Chief. I guess I’m a little dumb this morning.”

“Nothing dumb about the way you stood down there on the sidewalk waiting to catch me as I left the parking lot. You did a smooth job. I didn’t pick you out. That’s an art, blending with a crowd.”

She laughed. “Actually I was in the shoeshine stand. I had the shine boy shine my shoes, and then had him give me another shine. I was on my third shine when you showed up. I felt that I’d be conspicuous if I stood around on the sidewalk, and I didn’t know whether Tragg had any men on the job or not.”