Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Lonely Heiress

Mason nodded.

“Then she must have had friends whom she knew before... How long has she lived here, Mason?”

“Apparently about five years.”

“I don’t understand it,” Caddo said.

“Do you have to?”

“What do you mean?”

“As I understand your position, you are being accused of endeavoring to build the circulation of your magazine by a false advertisement."

“That’s right.”

“What’s false about the advertisement?”

Caddo rubbed his chin. “Nothing, I guess.”

“Exactly,” Mason said.

A slow grin suffused Caddo’s features. “I guess, Mr. Mason, thanks to you, I’m sitting pretty.”

Mason nodded.

“And the replies,” Caddo went on, “keep rolling in. Good heavens! The mail that girl is getting! I had enough of the magazines printed to last me two months, and stocks are getting low already.”

“Then you’ll have to put out a new issue of the magazine?” Mason asked.

“Don’t be silly,” Caddo said. “I’ll simply reprint. With that ad pulling the way it is, I’ll keep on selling those magazines until the cows come home. Boy-oh-boy, what a sweet spot to be in! She’s getting a hundred replies a day right now.”

Caddo got up out of his chair, then paused. “Are we all square, Mr. Mason?”

“All square,” Mason said. “I’ve had some expenses, but I’ll pay them out of the five hundred dollars and still have enough left to cover my fee.”

“That’s splendid! Would you mind telling me how you pulled this particular rabbit out of the hat, Mr. Mason?”

“It took a little head work and a little leg work, that’s all.”

“I presume, of course, you hired someone to do the leg work.”

Mason said, “I try to get results, Caddo. I believe I got them.”

“That’s right,” Caddo said, “you certainly did.”

He shook hands with Mason, beamed at Della Street, and then, halfway to the door, said, “By the way, I’d better get all the dope on this Marilyn Marlow. What’s her address?”

Mason consulted a card and said, “The address is 798 Nestler Avenue, at the Rapahoe Apartments. Any details you need about the rest of the layout, in case you do need them, you can secure from the office of the Probate Clerk, Matter of the Estate of George P. Endicott, deceased.”

Caddo pulled a fountain pen from his pocket, scribbled a note on the back of an envelope, smiled beamingly once more, and went out.

Mason said to Della Street, “Well, let’s forget the heiresses, Della, and get to work on this brief. It seems terribly prosaic now. Hang it, why did Marilyn Marlow put that ad in? Oh, well, we have work to do.”

Mason went to lunch, returned at two o’clock, worked until three, and then Paul Drake telephoned.

“Perry,” the detective said, “do you want to talk with Kenneth Barstow?”

“Who’s Barstow, Paul?”

“The operative who was on that Marilyn Marlow case.”

“Shucks, no, that case is closed.”

“I had an idea you might like to get the low-down from Barstow. Something’s a little strange there. He thought she might be looking for something.”

“So what?” Mason asked.

“I mean she may be wanting him to do something specific, something that was a little bit shady.”

“Where is he?”

“In the office here. He’s been talking to me and I thought you might like to ask him a question or two, just to complete your files in case anything else turns up.”

Mason glanced at his watch and said, “Oh, bring him in, Paul. Let’s hear the story.”

Drake said, “We’ll be in right away.”

Mason nodded to Della Street. “Open the door for Paul, Della. He’s bringing in the operative who made the pickup with Marilyn Marlow.”

“Some sheik,” Della observed. “And you were going to put him out of my life, just like that?”

Mason laughed. “I don’t know why I should waste any more time on it. The client has been satisfied; we’ve got a fee. But let’s hear his story. I’m curious.”

Della Street opened the door and a moment later Drake and his operative entered the office. “This is Kenneth Barstow,” Drake said by way of introduction. “Sit down, Kenneth. You’ve seen Perry Mason, I guess, and this is Miss Street, his secretary. Tell them your story.”

Barstow was no longer the awkward-appearing young man from the country. He wore a double-breasted suit which fitted his slim-waisted figure to advantage. His thick, wavy black hair was combed back from his forehead, and his blue eyes dwelt appreciatively for a moment on Della Street, then shifted back to Perry Mason.

“I made contact with the subject at seven minutes past six,” he said. “We went in a taxicab to a restaurant. She bought the dinner and did most of the talking. I put on an act of being bashful and tongue-tied. She cross examined me some about the country and life on the farm. She didn’t know too much about life in the country and I did, so it was duck soup. We walked from the restaurant over to a parking station. She had her car there. I got the license number and knew then that I was getting to first base. She drove around the city, got up in the park and stopped to show me the lights, and we did a little necking.”

“How much?” Drake asked.

Barstow glanced apologetically at Della Street and said, “All of the preliminaries.”

“Then what?”

“Then Hi drove home with her and saw her to her apartment. She bought me a drink, and that was the end of the evening.”

“No more necking?” Drake asked.

“Not after we got to her apartment. She was businesslike then. She said she might have a job for me. She wanted to see me again right after lunch this afternoon. I told her I wasn’t working at present, because I thought it would be a lot easier to stand by that than to tell her I had a job and have her check on it and find I was wrong. You see,” Barstow went on, “I didn’t know whether this was going to be just a one-time contact job or whether it was going to run along for several days.”

Mason nodded.

“I went back about one-thirty, as she had suggested. We were going to play some tennis. I told her I wasn’t too good at it, but she wanted to play a couple of sets. She said she had to watch her figure.”

“Did you play?”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“I got in bad.”

“How?”

“That’s the thing I don’t understand. I went up to her apartment and she bought me a drink and chatted along awhile, then she went in the bedroom to change her clothes. The phone rang a couple of times and she talked on the calls.”

“Any necking?” Drake asked.

“Yes, there was a little necking,” Barstow said, “and to tell you the truth I wondered just what she had in mind. And then after the second call I made a halfway pass at her and got my face slapped so hard my ears are ringing. The first thing I knew, I found myself out on the street, and boy, did I get a bawling out! She said I was just like everyone else, all I thought of was making passes; that she thought I’d been a sweet, unspoiled country boy, and I turned out to be an amateur wolf, and she wanted me to understand that the wolf act was strictly amateurish.”

“Perhaps you went too fast too soon,” Mason said.

“Or too slow too late,” Della Street supplemented.

Barstow smiled at Della, then frowned. “After the way the thing started out last night I know I wasn’t exceeding the speed limits. I was getting along swell. Then something happened. I’d swear she egged me on to the face-slapping point just so she could throw me out. It’s some place where I didn’t put my act across the way I should. I think she found out I was phony, and it worries me. My technique shouldn’t be that bad.”