Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Lonely Heiress

Drake said, “Well, as soon as you phoned in and gave me the license number and her address we double-checked on her, so we have everything we want. Does she know where she can get in touch with you?”

“Yeah, I gave her a phone number. It’s a friend. She could reach me there.”

“Think she’ll call up?” Drake asked.

“I’d bet a hundred to one she doesn’t. She sure was mad when she put me out.”

Drake said, “Sounds to me as though she gave you a pass to first and you tried to steal second.”

Mason said somewhat impatiently, “Oh, well, it’s all right. It’s all over now. Forget it.”

“I hate to think I’ve muffed a play,” Barstow said.

“We all do once in a while,” Drake reassured him and then said apologetically to Perry Mason, “I thought you’d like to know all the details, Perry.”

Mason said, “Okay, thanks, Paul. That’s fine, Barstow. You did a good job. We got the information we wanted.”

Barstow arose somewhat reluctantly, glanced again at Della Street and said, “I don’t ordinarily fall all over myself that way. I still would like to know what I did wrong.”

They left the office, and Della Street said to Perry Mason, “What do you make of it, Chief?”

Mason glanced up from the brief which had once more claimed his attention. “Make of what?”

“That Barstow incident.”

“I don’t know,” Mason said. “The guy probably misunderstood the signals and made the wrong play.”

“I don’t think so.”

“He must have done something,” Mason said. “She turned against him all at once, and it wasn’t for nothing.”

“I don’t think it was anything he did,” Della Street said. “I’m just checking my impressions on Marilyn Marlow and giving it to you from a woman’s angle. Remember, this Marlow person used an ad in a lonely-hearts magazine. She met this chap and started giving him a rush act. She sized him up at a restaurant and then certainly encouraged him to throw a forward pass.”

Mason pushed the brief to one side. “All right, Della, what are you getting at?”

She said, “I think it was the telephone call.”

Mason frowned, then whistled and said, “Perhaps you’ve got something there.”

“A telephone call,” Della went on positively, “that tipped Marilyn Marlow off to the fact she was playing with dynamite. Now, who could have placed that call?”

Mason let his eyes narrow in thoughtful speculation. “Wait a minute,” he said, “let’s get the time element on this thing.” He motioned to the telephone and said, “Get Drake’s office. See if Barstow has left. Ask him what time he got the gate.”

Della Street put through the call, turned to Mason and said, “About one-fifty.”

The lawyer started drumming with his fingers on the edge of the desk. He was frowning and thoughtful.

“Do you,” Della Street asked, “know more than I do?”

“I’m simply putting two and two together,” Mason said.

“The answer?” Della Street asked.

Mason said, “I guess I’ve been a little too easy-going, Della.”

“How come?”

Mason said, “If I’d thought it was that sort of a play I’d have charged him another thousand.”

“You mean Robert Caddo?”

“Robert Caddo,” Mason said.

“Good grief! Do you think it was Caddo? What would have been the idea?”

“I think it was Caddo,” Mason said. “And the idea is that our friend, Robert Caddo, intends to cut himself a piece of cake, and he evidently wants to be certain he gets the right piece — the one with all the frosting.”

At five o’clock, Gertie the receptionist and the two typists went home. At five-ten, Jackson, the law clerk, thrust an apologetic head into Mason’s private office. “If there’s nothing else, Mr. Mason, I think I’ll leave early tonight.”

Mason smiled, glanced at his watch and said, “It’s ten minutes late now.”

“Early for me,” Jackson said. “I just can’t seem to get caught up with things.”

He was so deadly serious that Mason merely smiled and nodded.

At five-twenty, Mason pushed the law books and the brief back on his desk, said to Della Street, “Let’s call it a day, Della, and get a cocktail. I’ll drive you to your apartment, or, if you haven’t a date, I’ll buy you a cocktail and also a dinner.”

“You’ve sold a dinner,” Della Street told him. “Let’s have a cocktail down at that little place in the Spanish Quarter and then go over to the restaurant that’s run by your Chinese friend for dinner. I feel like spareribs sweet and sour, fried prawns and some pork noodles.”

“Simply ravenous, in other words,” Mason said, smiling.

“I have to keep my strength up to hold my nose on the grindstone — particularly with all these heiresses bobbing in and out of our lives.”

“Out is right,” Mason said.

They closed up the office, drove in Mason’s car down to the Spanish Quarter and sipped a Bacardi while they toyed with thin sheets of fried corn-flavored delicacies.

Della Street said, “You have your car here, and the depot’s only a couple of blocks away. Let’s drive around and pick up that bag you left in the parcel-checking locker last night. We were so worked up over the heiress, we drove away and left it.”

“Good idea,” Mason said. “I guess we’re all finished with those stage props. Hang it, I hate to be double-crossed by a client.”

“Of course you aren’t certain it was Caddo.”

“There was only one person,” Mason said, “who knew that Barstow was a detective and who also knew Marilyn Marlow’s address. That person was our esteemed contemporary, Robert Caddo. You can see what he did. He got Marilyn Marlow’s name and address. He left my office, took an hour or two to get details, then hatched a plan, called her up and told her that a detective was on her trail.”

“But the detective had indirectly been employed by him!"

“Naturally,” Mason said, “he didn’t tell her that. He posed as an unselfish friend who had taken a fatherly interest in her because the ad had appeared in his magazine.”

“I suppose it must have been Caddo,” Della said.

“Caddo,” Mason went on, “is just one of those things. His whole magazine business is a racket. I’m kicking myself I didn’t realize that right at the start. However, he enlisted my sympathy with his hard-luck story. I’m always a pushover for a client’s tale of woe... What time is it, Della?”

“Six o’clock.”

“Well, it’s a little early to eat, but — let’s go over and pick up the bag. Then we’ll have a Chinese dinner and by that time we can probably find a show we haven’t seen.”

Mason left two silver dollars on the table, escorted Della Street out of the restaurant and into his car. They drove to the terminal, and Mason parked the car.

“I like to watch people around a depot,” he said. “It’s fascinating. You can see so much of human nature that way. People aren’t on their guard when they’re dead-weary or when they’re completely removed from their usual environment. A person who lives here in the city feels he’s on his own home ground, no matter what part of the city he’s in, unless it’s the depot. But the minute he walks into the depot he’s started, so to speak, on a complete change of environment and he lets his guard down. He... Della, do you see what I see?"

“What?”

“Over there at the information desk,” Mason said.

“I don’t see anything. I... Oh!.. He has a white carnation.”

“In his right lapel,” Mason pointed out.

“Do you suppose he’s another candidate?”