Erle Gardner: Case of the Silent Partner

Mildreth Faulkner — A dynamic young lady executive, whose independent spirit started the fire-works

Harry Peavis — Her steam-roller competitor, who believed in getting what he wanted, no holds barred

Lois Carling — Mildreth’s clerk, beautiful and bitterly jealous

Della Street — Perry Mason’s secretary, co-conspirator, and generally a good gal in a pinch

Robert Lauley — Carlotta’s gambling husband, who didn’t know the stakes meant murder

Carlotta Lauley — Mildreth’s sister, a heart case with death staring at her from more than one direction

Esther Dilmeyer — A glamorous gambling lure. Dis satisfied, she accepted orchids and a box of poison

Perry Mason — An easy-mannered but granite-eyed, rapier-minded lawyer who said, “Legality be damned,” and turned up a murderer

Lieutenant Tragg — A keen-witted, rough-and-ready cop who almost outguessed Perry Mason

Sindler Coll — A handsome and very frightened young man, of shady and nebulous profession

Harvey Lynk — A night-club owner and gambler. The ante was too rich for his blood

Dr. Willmont — Who kept two witnesses alive for Perry Mason

Clint Magard — Lynk’s partner, a fat and slippery character who had an alibi

Mildreth Faulkner, seated at her desk in the glass-enclosed office of the Faulkner Flower Shops, selected a blue crayon of exactly the light shade. Clever at sketching, she use d crayons to help her visualize just how flower groupings would appear. Now, with a rough sketch of the Ellsworth dining room at her left, she was trying to get something that would go nicely with the dull green candles Mrs. Ellsworth intended to use for illumination.

Someone tapped on the glass, and she looked up to see Harry Peavis.

She pushed her sketches to one side and nodded for him to come in.

Peavis accepted the invitation as he did everything else, without any outward indication of what his thoughts might be, without any change in pace. A big-boned man of hard muscle, his shoulders and hands showed the effects of hard toil on a farm in his early youth. Now that he had achieved wealth and a virtual monopoly on the city’s retail flower business, he went to great pains to fit into the rôle of successful businessman. His suits were well tailored, and his nails carefully manicured and polished, striking a note of incongruity with the labor-twisted fingers.

“Workin’ kinda late?” he asked Mildreth.

She smiled. “I nearly always work late. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Reports on the payroll, income tax, estimates, and a hundred things. Anyhow, it’s only seven o’clock.”

“You’ve been having it pretty hard since your sister’s heart went bad, haven’t you?”

“Oh, I’m getting along all right.”

“How is she?”

“Carlotta?”

“Yes.”

“She’s a lot better.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“She’s still in bed most of the time, but she’s improving every day.”

“You have three stores, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, knowing that he was thoroughly familiar, not only with the stores and their locations but generally with the amount of business they did.

“Uh huh,” Peavis said. “Well, I sort of thought it might be a good plan to invest a little money with you girls.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some stock in your corporation.”

Mildreth Faulkner smiled and shook her head. “Thanks, Mr. Peavis, but we’re getting along all right. This is a very small, very close corporation.”

“Perhaps it ain’t as close as you think it is.”

“Close enough,” she smiled. “Carlotta and I have all of the stock between us.”

His grayish-green eyes twinkled out at her from under shaggy brows. “You’ll have to think again.”

She frowned for a moment, then laughed. “Oh, that’s right. There’s a certificate of five shares which was given Corinne Dell when we incorporated — we needed three on the board of directors. That stock was just to qualify her as a director.”

“Uh huh,” Peavis said, pulling a folded stock certificate from his pocket. “Well, Corinne Dell married one of my men, you know, and — well, I took over the stock. You can transfer this certificate on the books, and issue me a new one.”

Mildreth Faulkner frowned as she turned the certificate over in her hands.

“Reckon you’ll find it all in order,” Peavis said, “endorsement all okay an’ everything.”

She put the stock certificate down on the desk, looked up at him frankly. “Look here, Mr. Peavis, I don’t like this. It isn’t fair. I don’t know just what you have in mind. You’re a competitor. We don’t want you snooping in our business. Corinne shouldn’t have sold that stock. I suppose she couldn’t very well have helped herself under the circumstances, but I just want you to know where we stand.”

Peavis said, “I know — business is business. You overlooked a bet on that stock, and I didn’t. I like you. I want you to like me. But any time you make a business mistake an’ I can cash in on it, I aim to do it. That’s business. You know we could work out a deal on the rest of that stock. You could stay on here and manage the business. I’d take fifty-one per cent and...”

She shook her head.

“You could make just as much money as you’re doing now,” he said, “and have unlimited capital back of you for expansion. I’d make a good partner.”

“No, thank you. We’re doing fine as it is.”

“Well, just enter the stock transfer of those five shares.”

“Just what are you trying to do?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said, with a guilelessness which was patently assumed. “I won’t interfere with your work. I’ll be sort of a silent partner. Go ahead and make a lot of money. Now that I have an interest, I like to see the executives workin’ late.”

He chuckled and raised his gaunt frame from the chair. Mildreth, watching him lumber down the aisle of the flower shop, knew that his keen eyes, under those shaggy brows, missed no detail.

For some minutes she sat in deep thought, then, putting away her sketches, said to Lois Carling, who was on duty at the front of the shop, “Close up at nine-thirty, Lois. I won’t be back.”

She paused for a moment to survey herself in the full-length mirror near the front of the store. At thirty-two, she had the figure of twenty-two, and the experience acquired through seven years of building up a remunerative business had made her alert mentally and physically, given her a certain aura of dynamic efficiency which kept her muscles hard, firm, and free of excess flesh. Only a worker could have had her alert efficiency and trim lines.

Lois Carling watched her out of the door, her eyes somewhat bitter and slightly wistful. Lois Carling represented dynamic youth, the explosive forces of new wine. Mildreth Faulkner had the mature individuality of a vintage wine. It was, perhaps, only natural that Lois Carling, possessed only of beauty, impatient of the “slow-but-sure” recipe for success, should ask herself the question, “What’s she got that I haven’t?” — only Lois asked it not as a query which carried its own answer, but as a groping attempt to define personality. But because matters philosophical were far removed from Lois Carling’s mental environment, she opened a drawer in the counter, took out a box of candy which had been slipped her by Harry Peavis as he came in, and bit into a chocolate.

There was a telephone booth in the front of the garage where Mildreth Faulkner kept her car. While she was waiting for an attendant to bring it down, she acted on an impulse, and looked up the number of Perry Mason the lawyer.