Erle Gardner - The Case of the Borrowed Brunette

“That’s Paul,” Mason said. “Let him in, will you, Della.”

As Drake entered the office he said, “Hi, Della!” and, with a grimace at Mason, blew out his breath in a weary whistle. “Gosh, Perry, I’ve been busy!”

“Found out anything?”

“I think we’ve struck pay dirt.”

“Shoot.”

Drake dropped sidewise into the big overstuffed leather chair. “Your two women did a lot of shopping. Then they had dinner and went back to the apartment. My boys had spotted the chaps who were shadowing them and had no difficulty in trailing along behind.”

“The men who were shadowing the women followed them in their shopping and to the apartment?”

“That’s right.”

“And your men shadowed the shadows?”

“Right.”

“Then what?”

“Then all hell broke loose. Sirens, police cars, and excitement. Thanks to your tip, I got some reinforcements there in time and we were able to cover everything.”

“Just what happened?”

“Well, one of the chaps rushed out to a public telephone. My operative had a small, very powerful pair of binoculars and he was able to look through the glass door of the booth and get the number the man dialed. He looked it up, and it’s the number of the Interstate Investigators. My man telephoned me what he’d found out, and I immediately rushed men to the Interstate office, just as you’d instructed.

“Out at the scene of the crime, the Interstate men were busy trying to find someone they could pump, someone who knew the low-down. Finally, from a friendly police officer they got as much as anyone could get — the same as the newspaper men are getting. It may not be all the story, but it’s most of it.”

“Which was what?” Mason asked.

“Well, you know the identity of the corpse. What do you know about the murder itself?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, Hines had been shot in the middle of the forehead with a small-caliber gun, probably a .32.”

“Any wound of exit?”

“No.”

“Then the bullet’s still in the skull?”

“That’s right.”

“When the police” get that, they can check the gun from which it was fired.”

“Right.”

“That’ll simplify matters somewhat.”

“Or complicate them,” Drake said dryly, “depending on whether the gun was owned by your client or somebody else’s client!... Well, the Interstate boys kept going down to the phone and feeding details into the office just as fast as they could get them. Then Interstate sent a relief man out and called in one of the men who was on the job. I figured that meant the client was coming to the office and wanted a personal report. So we had everything in readiness. Sure enough, a rather prosperous-looking chap of forty-two or forty-three, around five feet ten, weight about a hundred and ninety pounds, wavy red hair, pearl-gray hat, and double-breasted gray suit with a small check-plaid pattern came bustling into the office. He was in there half an hour. When he left, our men picked him up and followed him down to his car — a big, high-powered outfit. We looked up the license number later. Our men tagged him out to one of the swank apartment houses and got his name from the janitor, and by that time we’d checked up on the car license and had the same name for that.”

“What’s the name, Paid?”

“Orville L. Reedley,” Drake said.

Mason whistled. “Any relation to Helen Reedley?”

“As soon as we got the name,” Drake went on, “I had a man look up a contact in the library of one of the newspapers. After pawing through the records he found that Orville L. Reedley married Helen Honcutt in March 1942. She gave her age as twenty-one, he gave his as thirty-eight. As nearly as we can tell from the information in these statistics, it’s the same Helen Reedley who has the apartment up there.”

“This chap, Reedley,” Mason asked, “what does he do?”

“He seems to be a broker.”

Mason drummed on the edge of his desk with his finger tips. “Where is he now?”

“Still holed up in his apartment with two of my men watching the place.”

Mason pushed back his chair. “Let’s go, Paul,” he said.

“Your car or mine?” Drake asked.

“Where’s yours?”

“Right outside.”

“We’ll take it.”

“Where do you want me?” Della Street asked.

“Right here in the office, I guess, Della. We’ll get in touch with you. It may be we’ll want you to take down a statement after a while. You don’t mind sticking around?”

“Not a bit.”

“Let’s go, Paul,” and the two men left.

Mason lit a cigarette as Drake started the car. “Now we’re beginning to see a pattern,” he said, as Drake pulled up at the first traffic signal that was against them.

“You mean the husband angle?”

“Uh-huh, and the private-detective angle.”

“It has possibilities,” Drake admitted.

“Of course, we’re in the position of taking two and two and making four out of it, and then trying to find something to add that will give us the total of ten. But we can make a reasonable guess at the figure we want.”

“How reasonable is the guess, and what’s the figure?” Drake asked, grinning.

“A wife comes to a city and starts living by herself. A husband wants to get a divorce. She’d like to have a property settlement, but her husband doesn’t want to be that generous. She says, ‘Okay, then we’ll get along without a divorce.’ He waits a while, finds that the shoe is pinching, and decides to employ some detectives to get something on her. She’s running around with a boy friend, but she’s smart enough to know when the dicks are going to be put on the job. No — wait a minute, Paul! There has to be a leak somewhere. She has to know that her husband is going to employ detectives before he actually employs them.”

“How do you figure that out?”

“Because as soon as he employed them, he’d give them her address and they’d pick her up and start following her. But, knowing that he’s going to employ detectives, she makes arrangements to give them all a run-around. She turns the apartment over to a brunette who looks like her, and she’s just as anxious as the substitute is to make sure there’ll be a chaperone on hand at all times. Then everything is done with the utmost propriety. The husband’s detectives are probably shown a photograph that’s a fuzzy snapshot, given a description, and told to go to that address, pick up Helen Reedley, and shadow her day and night. They get on the job, the address is right, the apartment is in the name of Helen Reedley. A brunette who answers the description of the woman they want is living there. They start shadowing her. There’s a chaperone living there with her, and the two are inseparable. The husband gets a steady string of reports showing the greatest decorum all around. He gets discouraged and tells his lawyers to make the best settlement possible in the circumstances.”

“And in the meantime the real Helen Reedley is out playing around?” Drake asked.

“Well,” Mason said, “she’s probably being a little discreet about things, but my guess is that she isn’t spending the long evenings by the fireside with her crocheting and knitting.”

“Then this man Hines must be the boy friend.”

“Somehow I don’t think so,” Mason said. “I think she’d be too smart to let the boy friend be around the apartment, because the husband’s detectives might start tailing him. No, I have an idea this fellow Hines is a stooge of some sort.”

“Was,” suggested Drake.

“Was is right,” Mason amended.

“Well, what do you propose to do with this husband when we get there?”