Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Lonely Heiress

“Do you want Caddo to know that these are your letters?”

Mason shook his head. “Let them be handled in the usual routine manner. From now on the less Caddo knows about what I’m doing, the better I’ll like it. We’ll give him a report on results, not on the means we use to get those results.”

Paul Drake tapped on the door of Mason’s private office, a loud knock followed by four quick, gentle knocks, then two more loud knocks.

“That’s Drake’s code knock,” Mason said to Della Street. “Let him in, Della.”

Della Street unlocked the corridor door and the tall detective grinned fraternally at her. “Hi, Della, what’s new?”

“Whatever you have in your hand,” Della Street said, smiling at the letter Drake was holding.

Drake moved on in, nodded to the lawyer. “Well, Perry, we got an answer.”

“An answer to what?” Mason asked, looking up from the brief he was studying.

“Remember the letters you had me mail day before yesterday?”

“Oh, those. Who got the answer?”

“Mr. Green got the answer,” Drake said. “Mr. Black seems to have drawn a blank.”

Mason narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Now, that’s something!” he said. “She’s looking for someone who’s green as grass, an impressionable, gullible young chap. Let’s see what she says.”

Mason took the letter Paul Drake handed him, slit open the envelope, shook out a sheet of paper that had the crested initials MM. He raised the paper to his nostrils, caught the scent of perfume, grinned, and said, “The heiress speaks.”

“What does she say?” Della Street asked. “I’m burning with curiosity.”

Mason read the letter aloud:

“Dear Mr. Green:

"I was so thrilled to receive your letter. I only wish I could tell you how much it has meant to me to hear from a man like you.

“I get so bored with the playboy type with whom I am forced to spend so much of my time that a letter like yours is like a breath of fresh country air in a stuffy room.

“I gather that you are big and strong and young and are from the country, that you haven’t been in the city long, and that you have but few friends. Am I right?

“Perhaps if you would go to the Union Depot and stand at the desk marked ‘Information’ between six o’clock and six-fifteen tonight, I might be able to get away and meet you. Don’t be too disappointed if I can’t make it, because I’m going to have to try to break a date, but I can promise you that I will try to be there.

“You might wear a white carnation in your right lapel so I can recognize you.

“And if I can possibly make it, I’ll come up and speak to you. Don’t be too surprised to see just an ordinary looking girl. After all, heiresses are no different from other people except that they have money.

“Until tonight, then.

“What the heck is this all about?” Paul Drake asked.

Mason grinned. “It’s a job for you, Paul. I want a detective about twenty-four or twenty-five, a great big raw-boned hunk of manhood who can appear awkward and self-conscious and all that goes with it. I want him to dress up in one of his older suits, one that’s perhaps a little tight or a little short in the arms and legs. He won’t have any model to go by because we want him to make up as something that no longer exists, a terribly green country kid.”

“What makes you think they don’t exist any more, Perry?”

“Three things,” Mason said, grinning. “The radio, the automobile and the. movies.”

Drake thought that over and then said, “Yes, I guess so.”

“It always comes as a surprise to the city dweller,” Mason said, “to tell him that people who live in the country may not be quite as blase and cynical as he is, but that they know the answers about as well. I think our mysterious MM is a confirmed city dweller who doesn’t know too much about life in the country.”

“And she wants a hick?” Drake asked.

“Quite definitely she wants a hick. Can you get a man to take the part, Paul?”

Drake made a mental canvass of the operatives who were available for work of that type and finally said, “Yes, I guess I can. I have a chap who answers the description. He came from the country. He’s done quite a bit of farm work.”

“That’s fine,” Mason said. “She may try to trap him by asking questions about the farm, but I don’t think the answers will mean much to her. Now I’ll want three or four more operatives, Paul.”

“What for?”

Mason said, “She may never go near this man at the information desk, but she’ll be sizing him up. She’ll think that he’s too green to know what her game is or to spot her, but I want men sprinkled around who can spot her and who will follow her in case she doesn’t make contact with our plant.”

“Just what do you want?”

Mason said, “For the present, I want to find out who MM is. I want her name, her address, and I want to find out something about her background.”

“Okay,” Drake said, “it should be easy. If she doesn’t go up and speak to my man, it’s a cinch she’ll be wandering around where she can size him up and my boys can pick her up.”

“Okay,” Mason said. He turned to Della Street and said, “Ring up Robert Caddo and tell him I think we’ll have an answer to his question some time tomorrow. Make an appointment with him for tomorrow at ten o’clock, Della.”

She nodded, jotting down the time in her appointment book.

Paul Drake weighed the letter thoughtfully. “Perry, do you suppose there’s any chance this is on the up-and-up?”

“Of course there’s a chance,” Mason said indulgently.

“How much of a chance?”

Mason grinned. “Offhand, I’d say just exactly one in a million, Paul.”

Perry Mason and Della Street entered the big terminal depot, Mason carrying an empty suitcase and a small traveling bag, Della Street equipped with an overnight bag and carrying a coat over her arm. The hour was five minutes to six.

“How are we doing?” Mason asked.

“Fine,” she said. “There are two seats over there to the left.”

Mason followed Della Street over to the two vacant seats, placed his bags in front of his feet and ostentatiously displayed a timetable which he studied with frowning concentration.

Della Street, with an attitude of assumed travel weariness, kept Mason posted on developments.

“If Paul Drake has men scattered around here,” she said, “I’m so dumb I can’t spot them.”

“Of course not,” Mason said over his timetable. “A detective who could be spotted as a detective wouldn’t be worth a hoot to Paul Drake.”

“Aren’t people who are intelligent supposed to be able to pick out a detective?” Della Street asked.

“They’re supposed to,” Mason said, “but they can’t.”

“Well, here comes the bait,” Della said. “Gosh, he’s a good-looking boy.”

Mason glanced up over his timetable.

A tall, awkward lad, about twenty-four or twenty-five, wearing an expression of open-eyed credulity, attired in a suit which somehow seemed just a little too small for him, walked diffidently up to the information desk. There was a white carnation in his right lapel, and his face was darkened with what appeared to be a deep tan.

“Gosh,” Della Street whispered, “he’s perfect.”

“We’ll see if he gets the heiress,” Mason said. “Have you spotted her?”

“Gosh, no, and I’m looking all around, too.”

“Don’t overdo it,” Mason said.

“I’m not, I’m just a weary housewife who has had to go through all of the strain of packing and hurrying to get away to go to San Francisco and visit Aunt Matilda. I’m pretty tired, but I’m still interested in the people around me and keyed up with anticipation for the trip.”