Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Spurious Spinster

“Thanks. I just wanted to be sure we had it straight,” Abert said.

“We’ve got it straight,” Mason told him.

Abert looked at his watch and yawned. “Just about two hours’ shut-eye before I have to go to work,” he said.

“You’re fortunate,” Drake told him.

“In what?”

“In getting two hours’ shut-eye,” Drake said.

Mason grinned, opened the door of the car, slid in behind the steering wheel. “Come on, Paul,” he said, “we’re going places.”

“Where?” Drake asked, as they backed out of the garage.

“Bed,” Mason told him.

“Those,” Drake said, “are welcome words.”

“We stop by your office,” Mason told him, “and see if they have anything more on any of the characters involved.”

“Why not phone?”

“All right,” Mason told him, “we’ll phone.”

They stopped at a telephone booth, Drake put through a call, came back and shook his head. “Nothing doing,” he said, “they haven’t found Endicott Campbell yet, there’s no trace of the seven-year-old son or the governess, the police are turning Mojave upside down trying to get some dope on Ken Lowry, and, so far, the police haven’t taken any interest in Amelia Corning. We’re ahead of them on that information.”

“Okay,” Mason said. “It gives us about two hours and a half. We don’t have to get up quite as early as your expert.”

Perry Mason was up at seven forty-five. He shaved, showered, dressed and, without breakfast, stopped at a supermarket, bought two dozen large, luscious eating apples, drove the rented car down to the front of a junior high school, parked it near the curb, let the air out of the left front tire until the tire was flat, and stood helplessly by the car until a group of students came along chatting and laughing, completely immersed in their own world and their own problems.

“Hey,” Mason asked, “you boys want to make twenty bucks?”

The group paused and looked at him suspiciously.

“Here are the car keys,” Mason said. “I’ve got an appointment and I don’t want to get all mussed up changing a tire. Fact of the matter is, I don’t even know how to go about it. I don’t know where the tools are. Here are the car keys and here’s twenty bucks.”

“What do you know?” one of the boys said.

“Manna from heaven,” another remarked.

“I’m going to go over here to the snack bar and get a cup of coffee,” Mason said. “I’d like to have you do the best you can with it.”

Mason dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the seat of the automobile and walked across the street to the snack bar. “You boys help yourselves to some of those eating apples, if you want.”

Looking back, he saw boys literally swarming all over the car.

By the time the lawyer had finished his coffee and walked back across the street, the tire was changed and one of the boys standing by the car said, “Gee, thanks a lot, Mister. We felt we shouldn’t charge you that much. The boys felt they were sort of taking advantage of you.”

“Not at all,” Mason said. “I’m going to come out all right on this deal myself.”

By that time, a crowd of some fifteen or twenty boys had gathered around the car, those who had not been in on the tire-changing deal looked enviously at those who had.

One of the boys said suddenly, “Say, I’ve seen you before. I’ve seen your picture some place. Aren’t you... my gosh, you’re Perry Mason, the lawyer!”

“That’s right,” Mason grinned, and seating himself behind the steering wheel, left the door on the left-hand side of the car wide open while he visited with the boys for some four or five minutes. Then he closed the door and drove to his office.

He drove the car into the parking lot where he and Della Street kept regular stalls for their cars. Mason jumped out of the car and said to the parking lot attendant, “I’m in the deuce of a hurry. Would you mind parking it in my stall when you get a chance? Thanks a lot.”

Mason smiled his thanks and hurried to the elevators.

He stopped in at Paul Drake’s office. “Paul in yet?” he asked the switchboard operator.

“Not yet,” she said. “He left word that he was working until five o’clock in the morning and he was going to get a little shut-eye.”

“Ask him to come in as soon as he shows up, will you?” Mason asked, and went on down to his own office. He went in through the reception room and told the receptionist, “Della Street probably won’t be in today, Gertie. I’m going to be in my office for a while, but I may have to tell you to cancel all appointments.”

Gertie, always the romanticist, said with awe, “Gee, Mr. Mason, it isn’t another murder case, is it?”

“I’m afraid it is,” Mason told her.

“And you’re mixed up in it?”

Mason grinned. “Let’s say we have a client who may become involved.”

Mason walked back to his private office, seated himself and, picking up the phone, said, “Gertie, I want to get the Presidential Suite at the Arthenium Hotel. I’ll talk with anyone who answers the phone. I’m afraid it’s going to be rather a tough day today. We’re going to have to get along without Della and—”

“Oh, no, we aren’t. She’s just corning in,” Gertie said.

“What!” Mason exclaimed, jumping up out of his chair.

“She’s just corning in.”

Mason dropped the phone into its cradle, crossed the office with rapid strides, and jerked open the door to the private office just as Della Street was about to open it from the other side.

For a long moment they stood there all but in each other’s arms, then Mason said, “Good gosh, Della, I’m glad to see you! Although I suppose it’s bad news.”

“It’s bad news,” Della Street said.

“Come on in and tell me about it. Where have you been?”

“I,” Della Street announced, “have been in the district attorney’s office since six o’clock this morning. We were routed out of bed by deputy sheriffs from Kern County at a very early hour. Our friend, Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide, showed up and started questioning me in great detail.”

“What did you tell him?” Mason asked.

“I told him the truth,” Della Street said.

“All of it?”

“Well, there were some phases of the matter on which I didn’t elaborate, but I have never seen Lieutenant Tragg more insistent and there was a deputy district attorney who was positively insulting.”

“They didn’t have any right to hold you,” Mason said.

“That’s what I told them. But they had an answer for all that. They said I might be a material witness, that I might be aiding and abetting a felony, that I might be trying to conceal evidence... oh, they had lots of answers.”

“Did they give you a rough time?”

“They were rather insistent,” Della Street said, putting her hat in the hat closet and dropping wearily into a chair. “I think the deputy district attorney and one of the deputy sheriffs would have been really rough in an insulting sort of way if it hadn’t been for Lieutenant Tragg. He was probing and insistent, but very much a gentleman of the old school.”

“And what did Susan Fisher have to say?” Mason asked.

“As to that I wouldn’t know,” Della Street said. “They had her in a separate room and they never let us have a word together from the time they took us into custody. They brought her in, in one car, brought me in in another, and they interrogated us in separate rooms.”

“Well,” Mason said, “I guess the fat’s in the fire, the wind is about to start blowing.”

Gertie, in the outer office, gave a series of several short, sharp rings on the telephone and simultaneously the door from the outer office opened and Lt. Tragg stood smiling on the threshold.