Эрл Гарднер - Case of the Cautious Coquette

“Shucks,” Mason said, grinning, “I never know just what I’m going to do.”

The address on South Gondola Avenue was a relatively small apartment house. The list of names on the left of the door indicated there were some thirty-five tenants.

Mason found without difficulty the name which had been clipped from the center of a visiting card, “Lucille Storla Barton.” The figure opposite was “208” and there was a worn push button to the right and a speaking tube.

Mason deliberated for a few seconds over the push button, but curiosity about the key got the better of him. He fitted the key to the lock in the outer door and twisted it. The lock immediately clicked back and the door opened.

Mason found himself in a narrow lobby where a few uncomfortable chairs had been placed uninvitingly in a cold, symmetrical design. There was a public pay-station telephone in one corner and a cubbyhole office, separated by a low counter from the rest of the lobby. Back of this was a door marked “Manager” and on the counter was a placard reading, PRESS THIS BUTTON FOR THE MANAGER. Mason walked through the narrow lobby, into a corridor flanked with the doors of apartments. The elevator was lighted and back some thirty feet down the corridor. The building had three floors and Lucille Barton evidently lived on the second.

Mason pushed the button on the automatic elevator and when the lighted cage slid to a stop, opened the door, got in and pushed the button for the second floor.

Rattling upward, the lawyer realized it well might have been quicker had he climbed the stairs.

Apartment 208 was toward the rear of the building. Mason followed the doors back until he came to the one he wanted. He pressed a bell button and waited. There was no sound from within the apartment. Mason tried his knuckles on the door and again had no luck.

Surreptitiously, the lawyer inserted the key and twisted with thumb and forefinger.

The latch came smoothly back. The door opened.

Through the open crack in the door, Mason could look through a dark living room into a bedroom lighted by an overhead electric light. The bed had not been made and a feminine nightgown lay across it where it had been thrown. The lawyer could hear the sound of water running in a bathroom.

Mason gently closed the door, removed the key, waited in the corridor for some two minutes, then pressed the button again.

This time he heard sounds of motion and a feminine voice on the other side of the door asked, “What is it, please?”

“Is this Miss Barton?”

“Yes.”

“I want to talk with you. My name is Mason. I’m a lawyer.”

The door opened a cautious crack. He saw laughing, saucy blue eyes, molasses-taffy hair, and a hand holding a robe tightly at the neck. Even, white teeth flashed in a smile. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mason,” she said, “but I’m not presentable. I’m just getting up. You’ll have to... to wait or come back.”

“I’ll wait,” Mason said.

“I’m afraid I don’t know you, Mr. Mason. I...” She looked him over from head to foot, then her eyes widened. “You’re not the Perry Mason?”

“Perhaps you’d better say that I’m a Perry Mason.”

She said, “ Honestly, Mr. Mason!”

There was a moment of silence. Then she said, “Look, Mr. Mason, it will only take me a second or two to get into some clothes. Things are in sort of a mess, but if you’ll just step into the living room, please, and — you can raise the shades and make yourself comfortable — I’ll be with you in just a few seconds.”

“Or,” Mason said, “I can come back, and...”

“No, no, come on in and sit down. It’ll only take me a minute to make myself presentable.”

She held the door open.

Mason entered the dark living room.

“If you don’t mind raising the curtains, Mr. Mason, and — well, just sit down and make yourself at home.”

“Thanks,” Mason told her.

She moved swiftly across the sitting room to the bedroom and closed the door.

Mason walked over to the windows, raised the shades, and let in the morning sunlight.

Mason saw to his surprise that the apartment represented an incongruous clash of the cheap and the costly. A small but exquisite Oriental rug made the larger drab rug beside it seem hopelessly shoddy. The furniture was for the most part expensive, comfortable and had been selected with taste. Against this note of quiet luxury a few pieces of cheap furniture, their mediocrity emphasized by the aristocratic articles surrounding them, gave a jarring note.

On the table an ash tray was still well filled with cigarette stubs. Some of them had lipstick, some did not. A small kitchenette disclosed an empty bottle of Scotch on the sink, a couple of glasses, and two empty soda bottles. A magnificent, antique walnut writing desk was over in the corner. Mason hesitated for a moment, then swiftly walked over toward it, inserted his fingers in the ornamental metal handle on the top of the door and pulled. The desk was firmly locked.

Mason returned to a chair by the table in the center of the room, picked up an old magazine, settled himself, crossed his legs and waited.

He had to wait about five minutes. Then the young woman came out of the bedroom wearing a chambray housedress which looked simple and domestic, but which had been carefully cut for the purpose of showing various curves and contours. She was wearing well-shaped shoes with medium high heels. Her legs were smoothly stockinged and very visible.

She said, “I’m not human in the morning until I’ve had my coffee, Mr. Mason. If you’ll pardon me, I’ll put a percolator on the stove. I suppose you’ve had breakfast.”

“Oh, yes.”

“You make me sound hopelessly lazy,” she laughed, “but... how about a cup of coffee with me?”

“Thanks. Put my name in the pot and I’ll join you.”

She went into the kitchen, busied herself with the coffeepot.

“Nice apartment you have here,” Mason said, getting up and strolling around the room.

“It’s large,” she said, “and I get the morning sun. The building is old-fashioned, but the way things are now that’s very convenient. I have lots of elbow room and there’s a private garage which goes with the apartment — and that’s more than I’d have in a more modern apartment.”

“I see you have a portable typewriter. Do you write?”

She laughed. “I pound out a letter once in a while. There was a time when I thought I was going to write the great American novel. I’m not only too dumb, I’m also too lazy.”

Mason lifted the cover from the portable typewriter, said, “I want to make a memo. A matter has been bothering me. Would you mind if I used this typewriter for a minute? It’s something that had escaped my mind until just now and...”

“Not at all,” she said. “Go right ahead. There’s some stationery in the drawer there in the table. I’ll be with you in a minute. I’m going to put on some toast and a soft-boiled egg. How about you?”

“No thanks. I’ve had breakfast. Just a cup of coffee for me, please.”

Mason opened the drawer in the table. There were two piles of stationery, one the conventional full letter-size sheets such as are used in preparing manuscripts, the other a pink tinted stationery, apparently matching the stationery on which the letter that had been received by the Drake Detective Agency had been typed.

Mason fed a sheet of this paper into the machine and hurriedly wrote out a memo dealing with an imaginary witness in a fictitious case, involving the validity of a will, a witness who must be questioned along certain lines. When he had completed the memo, he put the cover back on the machine.