Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Lonely Heiress

“So what?”

“So she plunked herself down in a chair, clamped her lips together and said, ‘I’ll see him if it takes all week.’ ”

“How long’s she been there?”

“Over an hour. She was waiting in the corridor when Gertie opened the office and as soon as I came in, I went out and talked with her.”

Mason laughed good-naturedly. “What sort of a woman is she, Della?”

“She’s younger than he is, not bad looking. But right now she’s not exuding any charm and she isn’t bothering with sex appeal. All she needs is a rolling pin to be perfectly typical.”

Mason elevated one hip on the corner of his big desk, lit a cigarette and regarded Della Street with amused eyes. “What the devil do you suppose she wants here?”

“I suppose Caddo is trying to use you as an alibi.”

“Exactly,” Mason said, “and the alibi will be for his association with Marilyn Marlow. Hang it, Della, I’m going to talk with her!”

“I warn you. She’s on the warpath.”

“Irate women are all part of the day’s work in a law office. Let’s have a look at her, Della.”

“Well, get over in your chair,” Della said. “Rumple up your hair, pull some law books around. Look busy and dignified. You try to meet this woman informally and you’ll have me calling a doctor to pull pieces of rolling pin out of your head.”

Mason laughed, seated himself at the desk, opened some law books and held a fountain pen poised in his hand over a pad of paper. “How does this look, Della?”

She surveyed him with critical eyes and said, “It looks staged. There’s no writing on the paper.”

“Right you are,” Mason said, and immediately scrawled on the pad of yellow foolscap: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party."

Della Street walked around to place a hand on his shoulder and peer over at what he had written.

“How’s that?” he asked.

“That is perfectly swell. I’ll tell Mrs. Caddo that you’re very busy working on an important matter, but that you’ll give her five or ten minutes.”

“Shoot the works,” Mason told Della Street.

Della left Mason’s private office, returned after a few seconds with Mrs. Caddo in tow.

Mason heard Della Street say, “He’s absorbed in looking up a law point. Don’t interrupt him.”

Following that cue, Mason started to scribble meaningless words on the sheet of foolscap.

Mrs. Caddo pushed Della Street to one side and said in a high, shrill voice, “Well, I’ve got a problem for him to concentrate on. What does he mean by sending my husband out, chasing after some little hussy! If I had my way, a lawyer who does that would be made to pay damages. The idea of breaking up a home!”

Mason glanced up, said somewhat absent-mindedly, “Caddo... Caddo? You’re Mrs. Caddo? Where have I heard that name before, Della?”

“You know where you’ve heard it!” Mrs. Caddo screamed at him. “You advised my husband. You told him to go out and cultivate this hussy, and then he tells me, ‘My lawyer will know all about it! A business matter,’ he says. He didn’t think I’d ever find out who his lawyer was but I fooled him. I looked in his checkbook and there it was, big as day, a check stub showing Perry Mason had nicked the family bank roll for five hundred bucks. For what? For sending my husband out fawning around on a snaky-hipped brunette, that’s what for!”

Mason said, “Oh, yes, Robert Caddo, the publisher of the magazine. Sit down, Mrs. Caddo, and tell me what’s bothering you.”

“You know perfectly well what’s bothering me. A publisher! Robert Caddo is running a racket.”

“Indeed,” Mason said, raising his eyebrows.

“And I’ll tell you something else,” she went on, moving toward Mason belligerently. “Such as he is, he’s mine! I’ve got my brand on him and I don’t intend to let him get away. I’ve put up with enough to turn my hair white. I’ve got too much of an investment in him to let him go. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly,” Mason said.

“If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t marry him for a million dollars, but he had a good line and after he’d talked me into it, I kept tagging along, thinking we’d work it out all right some way.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Seven years. And it doesn’t seem long at all when you look back on it — not over a hundred and fifty or two hundred.”

Mason threw back his head and laughed.

“Go ahead and laugh,” she said savagely. “I suppose it strikes you as funny. I wasn’t bad looking in those days and Robert had a little money. I wasn’t in love with him but I didn’t think he was going to turn out to be a complete heel. So we tied up for better or worse, and I really and truly tried to make a go of it.

“I’ve put up with a lot since then. A couple of times I thought I’d pull out. But I stuck, and gradually, bit by bit, Bob has been getting a little property together. Now he’s getting to the age when he strays off the reservation now and then, and I don’t like it.”

Mason said, “You’re young yet, Mrs. Caddo. You certainly are far from being unattractive. If you think your life has been ruined...”

“I didn’t say my life had been ruined. I’m not one of these women to come wailing around that they’ve given a man the best years of their lives. Bob Caddo never had the best years of my life, although he may think he had. But what gets my nanny goat is to have him go traipsing around after this brunette and pulling the line that he’s merely following his lawyer’s advice.”

“That would bother me too,” Mason said. “Suppose you sit down and tell me about it.”

“I’m too mad to sit down.”

Mason said, “Stand up and tell me about it, then.”

She said, “Who’s Marilyn Marlow?”

“What about her?” Mason asked.

“Bob has gone for her, head over heels. She’s got some property. Bob thinks he can sink his grub hooks in that property and throw me overboard.”

“You’re certain?”

“Just as certain as I need to be. He’s been gallivanting around lately and I wasn’t born yesterday. I’m not so dumb, even if I am a big blonde. I tailed along and found out where he was going. Then I gave him a piece of my mind when he finally got back home with the old story about being out on business. He tried to back it up and told me that it was business, that this Marlow girl had been using his magazine and that there were some legal difficulties and he had retained ‘a prominent lawyer’ to advise him and that the lawyer told him he’d better stick close to her and work out some sort of a settlement.”

“Your husband told you that?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re certain there’s no opportunity for a misunderstanding?”

“None whatever.”

Mason sighed, and said, “Mrs. Caddo, none of us is perfect. We all of us have our little faults. These are imperfections in character which range from the trivial to the serious, and none of us is free from them, but in addition to what other minor imperfections he may have, your husband is a liar and I would appreciate it if you’d tell him I said so.”

“Humph!” she said, quite evidently surprised at Mason’s frankness.

“And you are free to quote me on that,” Mason went on. “Tell your husband to come in and see me in case he feels aggrieved.”

She regarded Mason quizzically. “Say, I believe you’re regular. I came in here to throw inkwells, but you seem to be on the up-and-up. Who’s Rose Keeling?”

“Are there two women?”

“I don’t get the sketch,” she admitted. “I caught Bob off first base. I snitched a little red notebook he carries in his inside pocket. When he finds that’s gone, he’ll have a fit. He had two names in there, this Marilyn Marlow and Rose Keeling. This isn’t the first time and it isn’t going to be the last time. I know that I have to put up with a certain amount of that stuff, but believe you me, Mr. Mason, once I catch up with him I see that there isn’t any great amount of pleasure left in it for him. I’m a wildcat when I get started.”