Erle Gardner - The Case of the Baited Hook

“Looks like it,” Mason said. “Sergeant Holcomb didn’t mention any names, so I didn’t… Ring Paul Drake. Tell him to find Robert Peltham, and ring up the Contractor’s Journal and put in a classified ad. Simply say, ‘P: Must talk with you, personally if possible. Otherwise over the telephone. Will mention no names over the telephone but must have additional accurate information at once. M.’ ”

Della Street’s pencil flew over the lines of her shorthand notebook. “Okay, Chief,” she said. “Anything else?”

“No,” Mason said, “but get busy on that stock deal, and tell Drake to keep his ear to the ground on that murder case.”

Della Street said, “If your clients are in the clear, Chief, why worry about the murder?”

Mason said, “Because, Della, I’m caught in a trap. I’m afraid some woman is going to come into this office at such time as suits her convenience, and hand me the other part of that ten-thousand-dollar bill, and say, ‘Go ahead and represent me, Mr. Mason.’ And it’s an even money bet that the hand holding that part of the ten-thousand-dollar bill will be the one that held the gun when Tidings was killed.”

“Within fifteen minutes after he left his office Tuesday morning?” Della Street asked skeptically.

“Somebody killed him,” Mason said.

“Then you don’t believe that it was Tidings who called the secretary at noon Tuesday to find out whether the deal had been completed?”

“The autopsy surgeon doesn’t,” Mason said significantly.

Mason entered his office on Thursday morning TO find Paul Drake waiting for him. He nodded to Gertie, took Drake’s arm, and escorted him into the private office where Della Street was busy sorting the morning mail.

“ ’Lo, Della. Anything new?” Mason asked.

“Nothing particularly important,” she said. “Hello, Paul.”

“Hello, Della. How’s tricks?”

“Swell.”

Drake jackknifed himself into his favorite pose across the arms of the big, black, leather chair.

“Got something?” Mason asked.

“Odds and ends,” Drake said. “Peltham’s skipped out. The officers want him damn badly. They can’t find him, and I can’t find him.”

“Any charge against him?” Mason asked.

“They figure he’s the one who signed the checks with Tidings… The checks that left the hospital holding the sack.”

“You can’t find out anything about a girl friend?”

“Not a thing. He lived in an apartment, and as far as is known, no woman ever visited him in that apartment. He’s a cold-blooded, mathematical individual with no more emotions than a banker turning down a loan application. Anything that he did would have been done skillfully, thoroughly, and with ample attention to details. If he had a love affair with a married woman, for instance, the thing would be all blueprinted, nothing would be left to chance.”

Mason said, “Okay. Here’s an important job for you, Paul. I put an ad in the Contractor’s Journal. That’s confidential. I don’t want even your operatives to know about it. The point is, sometime during the day a person will send in an ad in answer to mine. Plant a man there at the office, Paul, and when an answer to my ad shows up, arrange for a tip-off from behind the counter, and tail that person.”

“Okay,” Drake said. “Anything else?”

“Yes. Mrs. Tump had a run-in with an orphan asylum, The Hidden Home Welfare Society. It made quite a stink… She’s in touch with a former bookkeeper of that society. I have a hunch this bookkeeper is here in the city. I’m going to make her want to get in touch with him sometime after… Oh, say ten-thirty this morning. You watch her hotel, check on the people who inquire for her at the desk, and watch her outgoing telephone calls… Do you think you can fix that up?”

“The telephone calls aren’t easy,” Drake said, “but it can be managed.”

“All right,” Mason said, and then to Della Street, “Promptly at ten-thirty, Della, ring up Mrs. Tump and tell her that Mr. Mason says there’s some question as to the endorsements on the back of the cancelled checks from The Hidden Home Welfare Society. Tell her the claim has been made that they’re forgeries, that The Hidden Home Welfare Society never received any of that money in the first place, and that the person endorsing the checks was never connected with the society. Ask her if she knows anything about it… Get her worried, but be a little vague. You know. You’re only my secretary calling during my absence from the office and repeating my instructions… You can act just a little dumb if you want to. It won’t hurt anything.”

“Be your own sweet self,” Drake supplemented.

Della ran out her tongue at him and made a note. “Ten-thirty,” she said.

“That’s right.”

“You have a man planted on the job by that time, Paul,” Mason said to Drake.

“Okay.”

Mason said, “I want to find out something about Byrl Gailord, Paul. The story Mrs. Tump tells doesn’t hold water.”

Della Street looked up in surprise. “How so, Chief?” she asked. “I thought it was very dramatic.”

“You bet it was dramatic,” Mason said. “Too dramatic. The hands clutching at the steel sides of the vessel, people being swept away on waves and all that… But what she overlooked was certain routine matters of procedure. In the first place, the Russian nobleman and his wife wouldn’t have gone over in the first lifeboat — not with Mrs. Tump standing on the rail looking down into the dark waters. It’s a rule of the sea that women and children go first.

“Mrs. Tump gives a swell picture, but it’s only the way she’s imagined it. She pictures herself standing on the rail, looking down with a detached, impersonal interest. If she’d actually been on that ship, she’d have spoken about how hard it was for her to stand up on the slanting deck, how she struggled to get on her life preserver, and how officers kept blowing whistles and herding passengers around from one boat to another… That shipwreck sounds phony to me. Notice she didn’t give any data about the name of the ship. Whenever she’d come to statistics, she’d wave her hand and say, ‘All this is preliminary, Mr. Mason.’ ”

Della Street said, “When you come to think of it, it does sound fishy… But why?”

Mason said, “On a guess, she’s lying about some things, telling the truth about others. If it weren’t for that correspondence she has, I’d have figured that she was just trying to tell Byrl a fairy story and horn in on the trust fund.”

Drake said, “Well, I’ll get busy,” and started to straighten up from the chair.

Mason said, “Wait a minute, Paul. I’ve got one more thing for you. Carl Mattern, the secretary to Albert Tidings. Get all the dope you can on him. Find out who his sweetheart is, whether he intends to get married, whether he plays the horses, hits the hooch, or what he does for relaxation.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“That’s all, right now.”

As Drake moved out through the exit door, the telephone rang, and Della Street said, “Here’s your broker on the line with that information about Western Prospecting.”

Mason picked up the telephone, said, “Okay. This is Mason talking. Let me have it.”

His broker gave him the information in concise, dry-as-dust statistics. “Western Prospecting,” he said, “capital stock, three million dollars. Two million five hundred thousand shares issued. Each share has a par value of one dollar. Much of it given in exchange for mining properties. Some sold to the public at a dollar a share, then it went up, and there were several sales at a dollar and a quarter, a dollar and a half, and at two dollars. Then the pressure was removed, and the stock drifted back. Right now, there’s no open market for it at any price. The corporation isn’t making any sales at less than a dollar, but reports are that private stockholders will sell out for anything they can get from two cents up. No one wants it.