Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Careless Kitten

“Coast all clear?” Mason asked.

“I think so, yes.”

“You haven’t been followed?”

“Not as far as we can tell.”

Helen Kendal said, “I’m quite certain no one has followed us.”

Mason nodded toward the building in the middle of the next block where a section of blank wall rising above the top of the nearest house had been lettered “CASTLE GATE Hotel. Rooms One Dollar and Up. MONTHLY RATEs, TRANSIENTs. Restaurant. ” The sign had been faded and sooted by the grime of a big city.

Mason took Helen Kendal’s arm. “You and I will go first,” he said. “Shore, you and Miss Street can follow, after an interval of twenty or thirty seconds. Don’t appear to be with us until we start up in the elevator.”

Gerald Shore hesitated. “After all,” he said, “the person I want to see is my brother Franklin. I don’t care about seeing this man Leech. If my presence may frighten him, I’d prefer to sit and wait in the automobile.”

Mason said, “Miss Street is going with me. That’ll make three of us. You may as well make four.”

Shore reached a sudden decision. “No, I’ll wait here in the automobile, but the minute you meet my brother, I want you to tell him I’m here and that I simply must see him before he talks with anyone. Do you understand? Before he talks with anyone .”

Mason regarded the man quizzically. “Before he talks with me?”

“With anyone.”

Mason shook his head. “If you want any such message delivered, deliver it yourself. The man has sent for me. He probably wants to consult me professionally.”

Shore’s bow was courtly. “My mistake, counselor. I’m sorry. But I’ll wait here just the same. I doubt that my brother is in that hotel. When you come out with Leech, I’ll join you.”

He walked back to a place near the corner where he had parked his automobile, unlocked the door, got in, and sat down.

Mason smiled reassuringly at Helen Kendal. “We may as well go.”

They walked along the echoing, all but deserted sidewalk to the drab entrance of the out-dated hotel. Mason held the door open for the two young women, followed them in.

The lobby was some twenty feet wide, running back to terminate in a U-shaped desk and counter behind which was a switchboard. A somewhat bored clerk sat, reading one of the more lurid “true” detective magazines. Across from the clerk were two automatic elevators. There were some fifteen or twenty chairs in the lobby, for the most part arranged in a row along one wall. Half a dozen individuals sprawling dispiritedly in these chairs raised their eyes to look, at first casually, then with sharpened interest at the two trim, slim-waisted young women followed by the tall figure of the lawyer.

The clerk at the desk glanced up from his magazine, and did them the honor of letting his attention remain on them.

“You have a Henry Leech registered here?” Mason asked, as he reached the desk.

“Yes.”

“Been here long?” Mason asked.

“About a year.”

“Indeed! What’s his room?”

“Three-eighteen.”

“Will you ring him please?”

The clerk, who apparently was also the telephone operator, moved over to the switchboard and plugged in a line. He pressed a button several times while holding an earpiece against his left ear. His eyes studied Della Street and Helen Kendal with an interest which he made no effort to conceal.

“I’m sorry. He isn’t in.”

Mason looked at his watch. “He was to meet me here at this time.”

The clerk said, “I didn’t think he was in. A man came to see him two or three hours ago. He was out. I haven’t seen him come back. I...” He broke off as a special delivery messenger came up to the desk.

“Got a special delivery for the clerk at the Castle Gate,” the boy said.

The clerk signed for the special delivery, opened the letter, read it, then looked up at Mason. “Are you Mr. Perry Mason?” he asked.

“That’s right.”

“Well, I guess Leech was to meet you all right. It’s really for you — but he addressed it to me.”

The clerk handed Mason a sheet of paper on which a message had been neatly typewritten:

To clerk at Castle Gate Hotel

A gentleman will call for me tonight. He is Perry Mason, lawyer. Please tell him I cannot keep appointment, but he is to come at once to place indicated. Circumstances have necessitated a change in plans. This is unfortunate. Tell him to drive, please, to reservoir near top of road back of Hollywood according to course traced on map enclosed here with. Once more excuse, please, change in plans. It is unavoidable.

The signature as well as the message was typewritten. The map which was enclosed with the letter was an Auto Club map of Hollywood and vicinity. An ink line had been traced along Hollywood Boulevard, turning to the right on Ivar Street, then following a winding course to a spot on the map marked STORAGE RESERVOIR.

The clerk said, “I thought he went out — a couple of hours ago. I haven’t seen him return.”

Mason studied the special delivery letter, abruptly folded both letter and map, and shoved them down into the side pocket of his coat.

“Let’s go,” he said.

The headlights of the two automobiles twisted and turned, alternately showing dazzling circles against a cut bank, then swinging out to send parallel cones of light across dark canyons. The road snaked its way up the mountains, climbing steadily. Mason, with Della Street, drove the car in the lead, Gerald Shore and his niece following in their car.

“Did it strike you there was anything strange about that letter of instructions?” Mason asked Della, deftly spinning the wheel to follow the curves in the road.

Della Street, her eyes shifting alternately from the map to the road ahead, said, “It has a vaguely familiar sound as though I knew the person who had written it — sort of a style of expression, I guess you might call it.”

Mason laughed. “If you heard it read aloud in the proper tone of voice, you’d recognize at once what it was.”

“I don’t get you.”

Mason said, “Try bowing and smiling as you read the lines out loud. Read them without expression, in a monotone, and see what you get.”

Della Street unfolded the letter from the envelope, started reading. At the end of the fourth line, she said, “Good heavens, it’s the way a Japanese would write.”

Mason said, “You couldn’t have made a letter sound more Japanese if you’d deliberately set out to do it. And notice that the signature is typewritten — also that the letter is addressed simply to the clerk at the Castle Gate Hotel. Leech has been staying there for a year. He’d almost certainly have known the clerk by name, and would have addressed the letter accordingly.”

“Then you don’t think we’ll find Leech up here? You think this is a wild-goose chase?”

“I don’t know. I noticed that peculiar style of expression and wondered if you’d noticed it, too.”

“I hadn’t at the time. I suppose I would have if I’d heard it read aloud. Now that you’ve pointed it out, it’s perfectly plain.”

Mason shifted the car into second, pushed the throttle well down, sent the big machine screaming around the curves. For the space of several minutes his hands and arms were busy with the steering wheel then the road straightened somewhat and leveled off.

All around them was a black rim of quiet mountains. Above this rim were the steady stars. Below and behind, a carpet of twinkling lights extended in a huge crescent for mile upon mile, marking the location of Los Angeles, Hollywood, and the suburban towns, an apparently unbroken cluster of myriad pinpointed lights interspersed here and there with blobs of color from neon signs. Against this vast sea of illumination, the outlines of the mountains up which they had climbed were dark, patient silhouettes.