Erle Gardner - The Case of the Half-Wakened Wife

Lawton said angrily, “Those lawyers will get their grub hooks into the deal and mess it all up. You’ll wind up paying out all your dough. I can read and I know that lease like a book. No lawyer can...”

“I know, dear, but Martha felt we should see Mr. Mason, and it means so much to her — on account of Margie, you know.”

“Margie!” Lawton exclaimed bitterly. “Sure, it means a lot to Martha. All those buzzard relations of yours, standing in line every time you put across a business deal... I can’t keep enough operating capital to make investments if you’re going to keep dissipating it with loans to your relatives.”

“I know, Lawton dear, but please read me the provision in the lease over the telephone... There’s a girl coming to the phone to take it down.”

Della Street’s voice came over the wire, “I’m on an extension line, Mrs. Keller. If this gentleman will go ahead and read, I’ll take it down in shorthand.”

Lawton Keller, realizing there was another listener on the line, promptly modified his tone, said efficiently, “Just a moment,” and then started reading the provision in the lease.

A few minutes later Della Street handed a neatly typed copy of the six months clause to Jackson.

Jackson became utterly oblivious of his clients as he perused the provision in question.

At length he looked up. “It looks like a joker,” he said. “Now I am wondering about what’s in the other part of the lease. I’m afraid I’m going to need the whole document... Look here, why don’t you get the lease and put it through the mail slot in the door of the office here. In that way I’ll get it first thing in the morning and will be able to reach a decision more promptly.”

“You can let us know right away, as soon as you see it?”

“It may take a little time,” Jackson said. “I wouldn’t want to limit myself on that.”

Martha nodded to Jane Keller. “All right, Jane, we’ll go out and get the lease.”

Perry Mason, hat pushed jauntily back on his head, came swinging down the corridor just as Della Street was leaving by the exit door of the private office.

“Well, for heaven’s sakes, what brings you back?” she asked.

Mason grinned, “Been having a session with the district attorney.”

“That’s something.”

“Uh huh, thought I’d drop in at the office to see if there was anything new. Everyone gone?”

“Jackson’s in the law library.”

Mason grinned, “Looking for a case that’s on all fours?”

“Absolutely.”

Mason said, “Jackson is never satisfied. If he has a replevin case involving a brown horse with a white right hind leg, he doesn’t want a precedent that establishes a rule of law about just any old horse. He wants to keep looking until he finds one with a white right hind leg.”

Della Street smiled, “ One white right hind leg,” she amended. “That’s Jackson.”

“What is it this time?” Mason asked.

“An oil lease... A couple of sisters, a vague dreamy little woman whom you’d like and a grim faced chiseler whom you wouldn’t... Looks to me as though the chiseler might wind up with the money in the long run.”

“They always do,” Mason said. “What about the oil lease?”

“Some joker that provided any default could be straightened up within six months.”

Mason said, “I suppose there’s some new activity and the sharper wants to chisel in on it.”

“No, something different. It’s an island in the middle of the river about thirty miles up from the bay. Apparently just a beautiful place for a millionaire to have an island empire of his own. It isn’t much good for ranching but it would be swell for a millionaire’s estate.”

Mason grinned, “The problem these days is to first find your millionaire.”

“They’ve found one, Parker Benton.”

Mason whistled.

“The deal’s already in escrow,” Della said. “This oil thing will kill it.”

“How long’s Jackson been working on it?”

“Only about an hour. I think he’s waiting for the women to return and bring him the oil lease. He doesn’t want them to know he’s going to be in the office. He told them to drop it through the mail chute in the door, but I know he rang up his wife and told her he wouldn’t be home for dinner.”

“Again?”

“Again and again and again. If I were his wife I’d want to have him wear an identification tag with his photograph on it so I’d know who he was when he did come back to the house. Honestly, it seems to me she doesn’t get to look at him often enough to remember what he looks like. He’s always up here in the office with his nose stuck in some law book.”

Mason said, “Let’s take a look, Della,” and opened the door of the law library.

Jackson was seated at the table. Already an imposing array of open books had been erected in a semi-circular barricade around him, and he was so deeply engrossed in the volume he was reading, that he didn’t hear them enter.

For a moment Mason stood watching.

The expression on Jackson’s face was similar to that of a fisherman who has just received a strike in a deep pool and then, after a couple of fruitless casts, is looking through his fly book, trying to find something else the trout will take.

“Hello, Jackson,” Mason said, “you’re working late.”

Jackson looked up and blinked his eyes into focus. “A most interesting problem, Mr. Mason. It involves a potential conflict between provisions in a lease, one of them providing specifically that in the event a certain sum of money is not paid by a certain time, the lessee shall lose all rights and the other one, a blanket provision, to the effect that any breach can be cured within six months, unless the lessor has given a specific notice of termination.”

Mason sat down on the corner of the law library table, tapped a cigarette, snapped a match into flame and asked, “Getting anywhere?”

“Well, yes and no.”

“What’s your theory?” Mason asked.

Jackson placed the open law book on the table, shoved it slightly to one side, then, swinging around in the chair, pressed the tips of his fingers together.

“The first big hurdle to get over is the question of a forfeiture. The law doesn’t like forfeiture provisions in a document, and anything providing for a forfeiture is to be strictly construed. That would seem to subordinate the clause about payment of rental to the general clause providing that there can be performance at any time within six months unless a forfeiture has been sooner declared.”

Mason said, “Remember that this is an oil and gas lease, Jackson.”

“Well, what about it? It’s still a lease, isn’t it?”

Mason slid down from the corner of the library table, walked over to the shelf, ran his hand along the row of books, pulled down a red backed book, riffled through the pages, said, “Here’s a line of decisions for you to look up, Jackson, taking a view that forfeiture clauses are a necessary part of an oil lease and that the statutory provisions requiring a forfeiture to be strictly interpreted against the party for whose benefit it is created, doesn’t apply to oil leases.”

Jackson jerked upright in the chair. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Uh huh,” Mason said lazily. “See the case of John versus Elberta Oil Company, 124 Cal. App. 744; Slater versus Boyd, 12 °Cal. App. 457; Hall versus Augur, 82 Cal. App. 594.”

Jackson said, somewhat querulously, “That phase of it hadn’t occurred to me. I don’t know how it is you can walk into a law library and pick what you want out of thin air. I have to do a lot of plodding to even get the proper legal theory on which to work.”