Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Shapely Shadow

“Of course, we must remember that some of the things I got were contained in the complaint of Carlotta Theilman versus Morley Theilman, in which Day Dawns was named as a corespondent.”

“Pictures?” Mason asked.

“Scads of pictures.”

“I mean of Carlotta.”

“Carlotta wasn’t photogenic,” Della Street said. “And Carlotta let her figure get out of hand — the exact opposite of her successor, whose figure was always very much in hand.

“Carlotta, of course, was no match for Day Dawns. It was perhaps this feeling of futility that caused her to exhibit so much bitterness.”

“What happened with the divorce suit?” Mason asked.

“Settled. Carlotta Theilman apparently got something like half a million dollars in cash. Morley bought his way out.”

“He seems to have had plenty left,” Mason said.

“Have you ever seen his picture?” Della Street asked.

Mason shook his head.

“He looks like a go-getter,” she said, “even in the newspaper pictures. He has an aggressive, dynamic, masculine personality — somehow you get the impression he isn’t a one-woman man.”

“Isn’t or wasn’t?” Mason asked.

Della Street frowned. “I hadn’t thought of it in exactly that light,” she said.“Well, think of it now.”

After a moment Della Street shook her head. “I can’t tell just from pictures,” she said. “I could tell if I saw him. You know, Chief, this Janice Wainwright may not be so dumb. There’s just a chance she might be playing things on a long-time basis.”

“She isn’t fooling Mrs. Theilman any,” Mason said.

“What makes you think she isn’t?”

“Mrs. Theilman has noticed that Janice has done everything she could to submerge her beauty and appear to be plain and unattractive.”

Della Street said, “And you say she isn’t fooling Mrs. Theilman?”

“No.”

“That may be the greatest fooling of all,” Della Street said. “The second Mrs. Theilman is a plaything, a highly polished, perfectly poised, expensive plaything. She’s on her way up. As long as she’s on her way up, she’s going to keep planning. She doesn’t intend to remain static. When she quits moving up, she’ll move out.

“After she’s been with Morley Theilman long enough to get a good property settlement, she isn’t going to remain with a man fifteen years her senior and settle down.

“She’s going to keep a tight hold on Morley Theilman until she’s entirely finished with him. When she is entirely finished with him, Morley Theilman is going to have had all that he wants of sleek sex. He’s going to look around for the plain, sincere, sweet, simple and honest in life. Janice Wainwright just may be grooming herself for the part of the third Mrs. Theilman.

“The second Mrs. Theilman is working for a goal — an objective. She’s swapping physical charm for future security. Janice Wainwright is in love.”

“With a man fifteen years her senior?” Mason asked.

“Make it ten,” Della Street said.

She opened her purse, took out her notebook, thumbed through the pages and said, “At the time of the divorce Morley Theilman was thirty-four. That was four years ago. It makes him thirty-eight now. Janice is probably about twenty-eight.”

“Well,” Mason said, “I guess we’d better talk with our client, Della, and find out just what the situation is. Give her a ring.”

Della Street put through the call and shook her head. “No answer at Theilman’s office.”

“What was the number Janice gave you this morning?”

“I have it here,” Della Street said. “She said it was the number of her apartment.”

“Let’s try her there,” Mason said.

Della Street dialed the number, then said, “No answer there either.”

Mason frowned. “She should be calling in.”

“She should be, for a fact,” Della Street said dryly. “Something seems to tell me that the dollar she paid by way of retainer has probably been expended in detective fees by this time.”

“I wouldn’t doubt,” Mason agreed, grinning. “That’s a case that sneaked up on me from behind, Della. I didn’t want to take her money. I was curious. I wanted to find out what the case was all about, and the dollar retainer that I took was simply for the purpose of protecting me so there could be no question of my professional privilege.”

“I know,” she said sympathetically. “I was just kidding, Chief. I felt exactly the same way. I’d have cried if you’d turned her down. There’s something about her — a pathetic something — yet I can’t help but think that she’s playing it awfully smart.”

“Could be,” Mason agreed. “She—”

He broke off as Paul Drake’s code knock sounded on the door.

“Let Paul in,” Mason said. “Let’s see if we can get some more facts to work on.”

Della Street opened the door, and Paul Drake, with his customary, “Hi, Beautiful,” moved over to the client’s big leather chair, deposited a brief case, pulled out a notebook, elevated one knee over the arm of the chair and said to Mason, “Well, I have a collection of statistics but I can’t put them together.”

“Tell me what you know,” Mason said.

“Cole B. Troy at Bakersfield,” Drake said. “A business associate of Morley Theilman. Not a full partner but associated in some of the real estate deals Theilman has up around Bakersfield.

“Theilman was with Troy yesterday afternoon. He arrived about four-thirty. They were in conference until six. Then they went out to dinner and after dinner they went briefly to Troy’s office.

“Theilman put through a call to his wife to tell her that he would be home at eleven or a little after, that his wife wasn’t to wait up for him.

“After that call the two men talked for about an hour in the office at Bakersfield, but by nine o’clock they had covered all the matters Theilman wanted to discuss, so the conference broke up.”

“Then what?” Mason asked.

“Now we come to the thing that may be important,” Drake said. “After Theilman left the office, Troy said he walked over to the window and looked down at the street, that he didn’t have any particular reason for going to the window. He certainly didn’t want to watch Theilman. But Theilman had left him with some business problems to think over and he just automatically walked over to the window and stood there looking down on the street. He saw Theilman leave the office and cross over to the corner, then go to the parking lot where he had his car.

“Now then, Troy says that some woman was shadowing Theilman. He says that he couldn’t get a look at her face and couldn’t recognize her, but she was a shapely woman. He saw only her back. He says she walked with what he describes as hippy grace.”

“She wasn’t just walking along the street?” Mason asked.

“That’s what he thought at the time. He didn’t pay too much attention to it. But since Theilman seems to have disappeared and Troy is giving the matter a lot more thought, now he believes the woman was shadowing Theilman. She kept just about the same distance behind him and walked along in exactly the same path Theilman had taken.”

“Theilman didn’t look back?”

“He didn’t look back.”

Mason frowned. “Then this woman wasn’t trying particularly to be inconspicuous,” he said. “At that hour of the night you know and I know a shadow couldn’t just dog along behind a person, keeping a uniform distance.”

“Not a professional shadow,” Drake said. “This, of course, was an amateur.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, for one thing, the way she acted.”

“And what happened?”

“Troy doesn’t know. He saw Theilman reach the corner, go around the corner and start for the parking lot. He saw the woman keeping just about the same distance, following along behind, reach the corner and turn toward the parking lot. After they passed the corner, the building on the corner shut them from his view.”