Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Reluctant Model

“I see,” Della Street said. “Under the circumstances, I hang onto the key to Maxine’s apartment.”

“Very definitely,” Mason said. “You take a taxi to work in the morning, and now if you have no objection I’ll move my car into the parking place vacated by Maxine Lindsay and I will escort you to your apartment.”

“That,” Della Street announced, “is service. I welcome the suggestion. I would, however, like to know whether this is business or social.”

“It has been business to this point,” Mason said. “The final act of escorting you to your door is social.”

“And as such?” she asked.

“I believe,” Mason observed, “there is an almost universal custom of collecting a good-night kiss from a date, isn’t there?”

“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Mason,” Della said demurely.

Mason left the elevator the next morning, stopped in at the office of the Drake Detective Agency, said to the switchboard operator, “Paul in?”

She nodded, said, “He’s busy on the phone.”

“I’ll go on down,” Mason said. “Anybody with him?”

She shook her head. “He’s alone. Just getting phone calls right and left.”

Mason smiled. “I guess I’m responsible for that. I’ll go down and listen to him gripe.”

The lawyer walked on down the narrow passageway, past the doors of the cubbyhole offices, to Paul Drake’s office.

Mason opened the door.

Drake was talking on the phone. “Okay, Bill, stay with it. Get all you can. Keep on the job. Now, is there any chance you’ll need a relief up there?... I see... Well, it sounds a little naïve, but— Okay, if she’s preoccupied, that’s it.”

Drake hung up the phone, said, “Hi, Perry,” reached for a cigarette, said, “I’ve been up all night.”

“Glad to hear it,” Mason said. “You wouldn’t want to draw your money without doing something to earn it, would you?”

“Well, I’m going to draw a lot on this one,” Drake said. “I hope your client is well heeled.”

“The client right at the moment,” Mason said, “is Mr. Perry Mason. I’m doing this on my own.”

“ You are!” Paul Drake exclaimed, pausing with a match halfway to the cigarette.

“That’s right,” Mason said. “I’m just taking out a little insurance to see that I’m not being played for a sucker. What do you know about Maxine?”

“Maxine,” Drake said, “is leaving a trail a mile broad. I had four operatives on the job.”

“I saw you had quite a gang,” Mason said.

“Were they obvious?”

“If you were looking for them, they were. But I had the impression Maxine was pretty much disturbed over something and wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings.”

“Well, your impression was right, unless the girl is a consummate actress,” Drake said. “She’s headed for someplace up north and just doesn’t seem to give a hang about anything except getting there. She pulled out last night right after she talked with you, drove to an all-night drug store, parked, purchased some creams, a hairbrush, a toothbrush, comb, and a pair of pajamas. Then she stopped at a filling station, got her car filled to the brim with gasoline and took off. She got as far as Bakersfield, went to a motel, got six hours’ sleep, then was on the road again and is at this moment in Merced.”

“Stopping there?” Mason asked.

“Grabbing a bit of breakfast, getting the car filled up, and ready to be on her way again,” Drake said.

“How many men have you got on the job?” Mason asked.

“Only two at the moment,” Drake said, “because that’s all that’s needed. I told the others to come on back home. I have one man keeping ahead of her, one man staying behind. They swap positions once in a while so that she doesn’t feel she’s wearing a tail, but frankly I don’t think she’s thinking about it at all.”

“What have you found out about her background?” Mason asked.

“She worked as a model in New York, she came on to Hollywood thinking she might crash the portals here, did some modeling work, started getting a little heavy, turned to a technique of photo portrait painting, and that seems to be about it.”

“Boy friends?” Mason asked.

“Haven’t found any yet that she’s taken any particular interest in. She seems to be pretty much in love with her work. That is, she’s ambitious and keeps on plugging away at her work.

“An art dealer named Lattimer Rankin has been throwing some work her way and may have a little personal interest there. She knows a few of the models, a few of the artists, is well liked, and that’s about it so far. I’m working on it. She’s probably had a few affairs.”

“What about Durant?”

“Durant,” Drake said, “is a phoney. He has some kind of a medical discharge out of the army. He dabbled around in an art appreciation course, became a self-styled art dealer, started putting on a series of lectures; talks learnedly, knows very little, is rather resourceful, likes to ride around in fancy cars which he gets second or third hand and has had a couple of them repossessed when he couldn’t meet the payments. He’s two months behind in the rent on his apartment and I don’t think he stayed in his apartment last night. If he did, he’s sleeping late this morning.

“I have a man on the job who can get in after the maids get on duty but couldn’t get in last night. However, his best guess is Durant is out somewhere. His car isn’t in the apartment garage. He—”

The phone rang. Drake took the cigarette out of his mouth, picked up the phone, said, “Drake talking.”

The detective listened for a moment, said, “Okay. That’s the way I had it figured. Stay on the job until I give you instructions to the contrary.”

Drake hung up and said, “That’s the operative out at the apartment house. Durant wasn’t in last night. The bed hasn’t been slept in.”

“A man like that would have been married at least once,” Mason said.

“Twice we know of,” Drake said. “Once, a young girl before he went in the army. She had a child four months after the marriage. She’s working to support the child.

“After he got out of the army he married into rather a wealthy family, but he reckoned without the old man. The old man had detectives on his trail, got all the dope he needed, waited until the daughter became disillusioned and then they threw Mr. Collin Durant out on his ear without a dime by way of settlement.”

“How long ago?” Mason asked.

“Four years.”

“What’s he been doing since — I mean for his love life?”

“Playing the field,” Drake said. “He has a good line of patter and he’s deadly on models who pose in the nude, young female artists who want a chance to get ahead — all the general rackets.

“I haven’t had a chance to check on him too much, because of the outlandish hour I started working... My God, Perry, I’ve run up a bill for you. If you’re footing this, it’s going to give you a jolt when you get the statement, but I thought you wanted results and... well, I sort of thought Otto Olney was the one who was back of all this and I just haven’t spared expenses in order to get results.”

“Don’t spare them,” Mason said. “I want results. In fact I have to have them.

“You have a description of Durant’s car?”

“Sure,” Drake said. He picked up a card, tossed it over to Mason. “There’s the make, model, license number, color — everything about it.”

Mason regarded the card thoughtfully.

“What about Maxine’s background? Any particular reason why she should be headed where she is headed?”

“We don’t know where she’s headed yet,” Drake said. “It could be Sacramento, it could be Eugene, it could be Portland, it could be Seattle, it could be Canada. Give her time. One thing’s certain. She’s headed on a long trip, she’s short of cash, and she’s trying to get where she’s going in a hurry.”