Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom

Livesey looked glum.

“And in the meantime,” Mason went on, “you’d better investigate your own organization and see if you can’t find who filed those new proxies.”

“I’d give a lot to know that one,” Livesey said. “It looks to me as though someone was double-crossing us.”

Mason said, “I wish you’d check your entire organization and find out if anyone was working last night about eleven o’clock. See if anyone was in the office.”

“I’ll do that.”

“And then let me know,” Mason said, standing up to indicate that the interview was over.

“Okay, thanks,” Livesey said.

He heaved himself up out of the big chair, and seemed reluctant to leave. Twice as he walked toward the door, he hesitated as though about to turn back and attempt to renew the conversation, but he reached the door, turned, smiled, bowed, caught Della Street’s eyes, gave her a special smile and then backed out into the corridor.

Della Street waited until the door had closed, then made a little grimace. “God’s gift to women,” she said, and then added bitterly, “put that in quotes and sign it Frank C. Livesey.”

Mason laughed. “He’s probably Santa Claus to a certain type of party girl.”

“A certain type,” Della said, “but he’s forgotten that Santa Claus only picks the chimneys where stockings are hung.”

Mason smiled, picked up his phone, dialed Paul Drake’s number, and then, when he had the detective on the line, said, “Here’s another job for you, Paul. That fool client of ours seems to have decided this is a good time to take himself out of circulation.

“He can’t be very far because he must be planning on attending that stockholders’ meeting day after tomorrow. But he’s out with his new wife on the second installment of a honeymoon.

“I want him. Find out what car he’s driving, get the lowdown on the places he likes to go, see how much baggage he took and — hell, find him, that’s all.”

“Okay,” Drake said in a bored voice, “if a client wants to pay me money to find him, it seems a cockeyed way to spend his money, but I should worry about that.”

“And let me know at once, no matter what hour of the day or night it is,” Mason went on.

“Okay, you’ll hear from me,” Drake said and hung up.

Mason parked his car in front of the Monolith Apartments, a brick-faced corner building with severely plain lines. Paul Drake’s man, on duty in a car parked across the street, was apparently a rather harassed individual looking through the classified section of the newspaper in search of apartments available to renters of average income. He didn’t even look up as Perry Mason swung open the car door, crossed the curb and entered the apartment house.

The man at the desk regarded Perry Mason with polite curiosity, but a complete lack of cordiality.

“Mrs. Ethel Garvin,” Mason said.

“Does she expect you?”

“Tell her it’s about a proxy.”

“Your name?”

“Mason.”

The man turned to a switchboard, and, with the obvious condescension of one who is engaging in a menial work which he is quite certain is beneath his dignity, plugged in a line, waited a moment, then said, “There’s a Mr. Mason to see you about a proxy, Mrs. Garvin... No, he didn’t say... Shall I ask him?... Very well.”

“You may go up,” the clerk said, pulling out the telephone connection. “Room 624.”

“Thank you,” Mason said.

Mason entered the elevator, saw that it was designed so that it could be manipulated by an operator during the daytime and turned on to automatic by night, said, “Six, please,” and waited.

The woman who was running the elevator, a big woman with sagging muscles and a general air of weariness, put down the magazine she was reading, glanced expectantly down the corridor, hopeful of more customers before she closed the door. She was seated on a folding chair and her hips seemed to spread out over each side. A look of extreme weariness was stamped upon her countenance.

“Sixth floor,” Mason repeated.

She made no response, but leaned forward to peer once more down the corridor. Then, after an interval, she reluctantly closed the door, and the cage rattled upward to the sixth floor.

The operator opened the door, promptly picked up the magazine she was reading, resumed her place in the story and waited for a call to some other floor.

As Mason stepped out of the elevator and turned to the left, the buzzer on the elevator was calling for the ground floor.

The operator glanced up at the signal, then resumed reading for a few lines before closing the door and taking the cage back down.

Mason followed the corridor, checking the numbers, until he came to 624.

He knocked, and the door was promptly opened by a woman somewhere in the thirties who wore a clinging black gown and who smiled graciously.

“Mr. Mason?” she asked, her voice melodiously cordial.

“Yes.”

“I’m Mrs. Garvin. You wanted to see me about a proxy, Mr. Mason?” She smiled and the smile was one of warm friendliness.

“Yes,” Mason said, “a proxy covering voting privileges in the Garvin Mining, Exploration and Development Company.”

“Won’t you come in, please?”

“Thank you.”

Mason entered the apartment. She gently closed the door behind him and said, “Do sit down, Mr. Mason.”

While her figure did not have the lines of early youth, it had, nevertheless, maintained the slim-waisted symmetry which comes with a disciplined diet. There was about her face and about her eyes the calm, self-contained look of a woman who has coordinated her life with the greatest care and makes every move as the result of some carefully preconceived plan.

“Do sit down, Mr. Mason.”

Mason seated himself by the window.

Mrs. Garvin sized him up, then seated herself across from him, crossed her knees, settled back on the davenport, and said, “What about the proxy, Mr. Mason, was there something you didn’t understand about it?”

Mason said, “The designation of the person named in the proxy was a little different from the wording in previous proxies, wasn’t it?”

She threw back her head and laughed.

Mason waited for an answer.

The laugh became a smile, a roguish, tantalizing smile. “My, Mr. Mason,” she said, “did you take all the trouble to come up here in order to talk with me about that unfortunate matter of the wording?”

“Yes,” Mason said.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said in a tone of voice that indicated she might well have added, “silly boy!”

She shifted her position, sliding her right arm along the back of the davenport. “Really, Mr. Mason,” she said, and laughed again.

Mason sat quietly waiting.

She said, “And it must have been difficult for you to have found me. Tell me, Mr. Mason, how did you go about doing it?”

“I hired a detective,” Mason said casually.

Her entire body stiffened into wary attention. “You did what?”

“Hired a detective to find you,” Mason said,

“For heaven’s sake, why?”

“Because I considered it important.”

“And why?”

Mason said, “Just what did you intend to do with your proxies, Mrs. Garvin? Did you intend to take control of the corporation away from your ex-husband?”

“My husband!” she flared.

“Oh, pardon me. I thought you had been divorced.”

“Just who are you?” she asked.

Mason said, “I’m an attorney. I have offices in the same building as your husband.”

“Are you — did he hire you to come here?”

“Retain is the word one uses in connection with an attorney,” Mason said.