Erle Gardner: The Case of the Borrowed Brunette

Della rushed out of the door.

Mason jiggled the receiver hook with his finger and, when his operator came in on the line, said, “Gertie, get me that apartment. You have the number out there.”

“Okay.”

“If they don’t answer, try the Hines number, Drexberry 5236.”

“Yes, Mr. Mason.”

“Rush it.”

“Yes, sir. You want me to call you when I—”

“No, I’ll wait on the line, Gertie. Rush it as fast as you can. Get me Mr. Hines on the line.”

Mason heard the whir of the telephone mechanism as her fingers dialed the number. Then he sat listening to the sound of the ringing telephone.

“There seems to be no answer, Mr. Mason, at the Reedley apartment. I’ll try the Drexberry number.”

Once more she dialed, and once more Mason heard the sound of the ringing telephone. Then, once again, there was a pause.

“They’re just not answering,” Gertie said.

Mason said, “Try them again in five minutes. And, Gertie, if Hines should ring in, I’m very anxious to talk with him. No matter what’s going on be sure to put the call directly through to my office.”

“Mr. Hines?”

“That’s right — Robert Dover Hines.”

“Okay. I’ll put the calls right through.”

As Mason dropped the receiver back into place he heard Della Street’s quick steps in the corridor, and a moment later she was fitting her key into the exit door of his private office.

“That’s fast work,” Mason said.

“I was lucky enough to catch Paul Drake in the corridor just as lie was leaving for the elevator. I outlined the situation to him and he’s getting busy on it right away.”

“I tried to get Hines, but couldn’t get him,” Mason said. “No one answered at the apartment. I told Gertie if he called in to rush the call right through.”

“You think he’ll call?”

“I don’t know. I’m hoping he will. I’ve got my clients out of that apartment and I’m in a bargaining position now. This is going to give him a jolt.”

“Why are you better off now that they are out, Chief?”

“Because we don’t know a darn thing about him,” replied Mason. “He could have stepped out of the picture and left the women holding the sack when the police arrived and found Eva Martell going under the name of Helen Reedley, living in Helen Reedley’s apartment, wearing Helen Reedley’s clothes, and... well, you know the answer. We’d have had a lot of explaining to do.”

“Do you suppose it’s Hines who is having those girls shadowed?”

“It could be. Hines was very anxious that they should merely go to some public place and wait. He emphasized particularly that if they went to their own apartment, everything would be off — and may be having them shadowed now to see that they don’t go there.”

“But why?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“Do you think the real Helen Reedley is dead?”

“I don’t know. She could be. As yet we haven’t enough information even to speculate. But there’s one fact that is very significant.”

“What?”

“The instructions given to Adelle Winters. Whenever any friend of Helen Reedley called the apartment, Mrs. Winters was to stall the party, promise that Helen Reedley would call back in fifteen or twenty minutes, report to Hines — and then forget it.”

“Well, wouldn’t that indicate that the Reedley woman might be— Oh, I see! If she didn’t call back, the friend would get suspicious.”

“Exactly, Della. If Hines merely wanted to stall Helen’s friends along, he would have had a better one than that — such as that Miss Reedley was out shopping, or visiting in the country, or something like that. But to say that she’d call back in fifteen or twenty minutes meant that he’d have to make good.”

“How do you suppose he did that?”

“By having Helen Reedley call back, just as he’d had Adelle Winters say she would.”

“But how?”

“Simple enough. Helen Reedley is afraid of something. She ducks out and stays in hiding. She can’t be dead, because evidently she’s able to call her friends back. They, of course, have no way of knowing she isn’t calling from her own apartment, and—” He was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone.

“This is probably Hines now,” he said, as he picked up the telephone.

But it was Gertie’s voice that came over the wire. “A Helen Reedley is out here. Says she had an appointment with you for earlier in the afternoon. She was unable to keep it and—”

“Send her in,” Mason said. “Get her in here right away.”

He hung up and, nodding to Della Street, said, “Helen Reedley. This is going to be good.”

The door from the outer office opened and Gertie ushered in a trim young brunette. The newcomer looked at Della Street first, appraising her coolly from head to feet. Then she turned to Perry Mason. “How do you do, Mr. Mason? I’m Helen Reedley. Good of you to see me so promptly. I’m sorry I was late.”

“Won’t you sit down?” Mason said. “There are some questions I wanted to ask you.”

“So I was given to understand.”

She crossed the office with a smooth sweep of slim-waisted grace, a young woman who was quite aware that her figure would not go unnoticed. In externals she seemed an exact duplicate of Eva Martell, even to a noticeable resemblance in feature. What differentiated her from Eva was the supercharged effect that she radiated. Not only were her motions smooth, with the grace that comes from perfect health, but their timing was slow, calculated, tantalizing. Her large dark eyes, with their long, sweeping lashes, moved provocatively under delicately arched brows as she glanced up at Mason, completely ignoring Della.

“What was it that you wanted to know, Mr. Mason?” she asked.

“What,” Mason countered as he sized her up, “do you want to tell me?”

For a moment a shade of annoyance flashed across her features. “Mr. Hines told me you had some questions,” she returned. Her voice, like her motions, had just that trick of timing which made a definite impression on the listener. And Mason noticed that at the end of every speech she raised her eyebrows slightly and at the same time tilted her face upward and to one side.

“I have only one question,” he said, “and I have already asked it: What do you want to tell me?”

She frowned. “About what?”

“About anything.”

“I understand you are interested in my apartment.”

“It is your apartment?”

“Naturally.”

“You have proof of that?”

“Mr. Hines told me you might be difficult... Now — may I draw my chair up a little closer? And if you’ll pull out that leaf in your desk... Here are the documents that prove my identity.”

Opening her purse she took out a folding leather wallet and from it produced a driving license. “Made out to Helen Reedley,” she said. “You’ll notice that the address is the same as that of the apartment in question. There’s a thumbprint on the license. Now, if you’ll notice my thumb, Mr. Mason... Perhaps you have an inked pad there for rubber stamps? — Thank you. Observe, I press my thumb on the pad — and if you have a piece of paper? There you are: my thumbprint. Please notice that it corresponds exactly with the thumbprint on the license.”

Helen Reedley took some cleansing tissue from her purse, wiped her thumb free of ink, dropped the tissue in Mason’s wastebasket, settled back in the chair, and waited for him to compare the thumbprint with the print on the driving license.

“It’s all right to smoke?” she asked.

“Quite,” Mason said without looking up from the thumbprint. Once more she showed a faint flicker of annoyance. But she took a cigarette case from her purse, extracted a cigarette from it and a lighter, lit the cigarette, and studied Mason with a sidelong glance.