Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Lonely Heiress

Caddo stroked his chin. “That’s putting it rather crudely.”

“I tried to put it that way.”

“Please believe me, Mr. Mason! I’m in good faith... Why did you want the magazines?”

“I just want to look them over,” Mason said.

Caddo smiled. “You have one magazine,” he said, “and, in case your idea was to bait this heiress by writing letters, I have here a large number of back pages, torn from the magazine, which you can use at your convenience.”

And Caddo opened his brief case and took out some two dozen back covers which had been cut from the magazines.

“Give Miss Street your check for five hundred dollars,” Mason said, “and I’ll see what can be done.”

Caddo sighed and took out his checkbook. “You’re right,” he said, “it’s going to prove expensive.”

When he had gone, Mason picked up the magazine, thumbed through it. “Listen to this,” he said to Della Street, and read aloud from the story by Arthur Ansell Ashland:

“Once more Dorothy stood before the mirror where she had so frequently surveyed herself. Now there had been a magic transformation. The face that looked back at her was no longer wan, drab, lined with care. Love had waved its wand and the reflected features were those of a transformed woman, mature, to be sure, but radiant, feminine, in every way desirable.

"Another reflection formed behind the face in the mirror, the face of George Crisholm who had quietly entered the room and was now standing behind her.

" ‘My darling,’ he exclaimed. ‘Don’t waste your sweet beauty on that cold glass. Turn and look at me.’

"She turned, and strong arms crushed her in an embrace. Hot, eager lips were searching the pent-up recesses of her soul, releasing floods of desire that were all the more potent for having been so long denied.”

Della Street whistled.

Mason said, “In a way, the thing is a crime. In another way, it probably brings solace to lonely hearts. If our friend Mr. Caddo is on the square we’ll play ball. If he isn’t — God help him.”

Perry Mason continued to thumb through the magazine, pausing occasionally to read other bits aloud to Della Street. Abruptly he closed the magazine and dropped it on his desk. “Della,” he said, “we are now about to compose a love letter.”

Della Street, nodding, held her pencil poised over a shorthand book.

“We’ll block it out in rough form on the typewriter,” Mason said. “Then I’ll copy it in pen and ink on the back page of the magazine and send it to the magazine office to be put in the box.”

Della smiled. “One would say that the surroundings were hardly conducive to a letter of passion.”

Mason said thoughtfully, “I’m not at all satisfied that she wants a letter of passion.”

“What does she want?”

“Let’s consider that question, Della. It’s highly pertinent. She has advertised in a lonely-hearts magazine. She announces that she is an heiress. She says she is fed up with the class of people she has been meeting. Observe, Della, that quite obviously the woman is not lonely. She only wants a change.”

“Don’t you suppose she has it by this time?”

“That’s a chance we have to take,” Mason said. “But after all, she’s only human and she’s going to read the letters that come in. If we can work out something that catches her fancy, we’ll get a reply.”

“Robert Caddo’s letters didn’t rate a reply.”

Mason said, “We’re going to profit by his mistakes. Caddo must have gone about it in the wrong way.”

“His reply sounded all right to me.”

Mason shook his head. “Observe that in every one of his replies he stressed the fact that he wasn’t after her for her money.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Della asked. “Surely a girl would hardly be flattered by a man who wrote and said, ‘Dear Miss Box 96: I am interested in you because you are an heiress.’ ”

“I’m not so certain,” Mason said musingly.

“Why, Chief, what do you mean? Certainly she...”

“She took particular pains to mention that she was an heiress,” Mason interrupted. “If she didn’t want people to take that into consideration, why did she set it forth?”

Della Street frowned and said thoughtfully, “Yes, of course, she did mention that she was an heiress, but that was just to arouse interest.”

“Then a man who wrote her that he was not interested in her because she was an heiress branded himself at once as being a damn hypocrite.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

Mason said, “Let’s try her with two letters. We’ll start with this one:

“ ‘Dear Miss Box 96:

“ ‘I am a poor young man, and since you are an heiress I don’t suppose there is any possibility that you would be interested in me. But, nevertheless, I am writing to tell you that I would like to meet you and would do anything to get your friendship. I think we have some things in common.’ ”

“That’s all of it?” Della Street asked.

“That’s all of it.”

“Why, what a vague letter!”

“Exactly,” Mason said. “I want it vague. I think perhaps Caddo’s letters didn’t get to first base because he was too specific.

“Let’s suppose, Della, that this heiress is playing a pretty shrewd game. Perhaps she isn’t lonely at all. Perhaps she just wants to contact someone whom she can use for some particular purpose.”

“What purpose?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to find that out.”

“Then why not use more regular channels, if that were the case?”

“Because she’s not interested in the sort of person she’d get through regular channels. Remember, Caddo said some of his readers were young men, chaps who came mostly from the country.”

“Young men from the country know plenty these days,” Della Street said.

“Most of them do,” Mason admitted, “but there are some who are young and impressionable and haven’t been around too much. Suppose, for instance, our heiress is really trying to get hold of someone who is green as grass?”

“I would say there wasn’t much chance,” Della Street said. “I’m not so certain. Let’s try her with this sort of a letter:

“ ‘Dear Miss Box 96:

“An heiress, Gee! I’ve always wanted to meet an heiress. I haven’t been in the city very long and I guess I’ve got no business writing you, but, golly, I certainly would like to meet up with a real, honest-to-goodness heiress, just to see what she looks like. I’m good and strong and husky and can handle just about any kind of farm work there is. I know a little some thing about cattle and am not afraid to pitch right in. Maybe if you’d like to meet a man like me, you could give me a break.’ ”

Della Street said, “You don’t tell her what you look like, how old you are, or anything about yourself.”

“That’s right,” Mason said.

“A woman who is looking for a boy friend would want to know those things first off,” Della suggested.

Mason nodded. “I’m acting on the assumption she isn’t looking for a boy friend, but is looking for something else.”

“What else?”

“I’m darned if I know.”

“What names do you want to use on the letters?”

Mason said, “The second one is easy. I’ll sign it ‘Irvin B. Green.’ The initials, you’ll notice, make it read I B Green.”

“And the first one?”

Mason grinned. “The first one will have been written by a man named Black. We’ll see what color she wants, black or green. Tell you what you do, Della. We’ll need two different types of handwriting. Go down the hall to Paul Drake’s office and get Paul to write out the one to be signed by Mr. Black and I’ll write the one by Mr. Green. Paul Drake keeps a couple of post-office boxes that he can use for mail when he doesn’t want to give a business address. Assign one of those box numbers to Black and the other one to Green. Then see that the letters go to Caddo’s office.”