Erle Gardner - Case of the Beautiful Beggar

As the waiter brought the telephone, Drake sliced a piece off the steak, started chewing on it then, still chewing, picked up the telephone, said, “Yes, this is Drake.”

The receiver made noises. Drake listened for a while, said, “Just a moment.”

He turned to Mason, said, “The tail is reporting on Daphne Shelby. She went to a Chinese restaurant and ordered food to take out — chow mein, fried rice, barbecued pork and chicken pineapple. I’ll get back to the office and—”

“Stay right here,” Mason interrupted. “You won’t have time to get to the office. What’s she doing now?”

“She’s waiting for the food. My man slipped to a telephone.”

“She doesn’t know she’s being tailed?”

“No, apparently not. She looked around a bit when she started out, but apparently she feels pretty safe.”

“Tell your man to keep on her tail,” Mason said. “Don’t take any chances of losing her, We’ve got to know where she goes. She’s taking food to Horace Shelby right now.”

“You mean I eat?” Drake asked with mock incredulity.

“You eat,” Mason said. “Tell your man not to lose her under any circumstances.”

Drake gave instructions in the telephone, slipped the thick steak out from under the pieces of buttered French bread, noted especially the stained surfaces of the bread where the steak juices had soaked in mingling with the melted butter.

He heaved an ecstatic sigh and said, “Sometimes, Perry, I think you’re a slave driver, but this time I’m for you a million per cent. I thought you’d want to have me get Horace Shelby located, bolt my food and get out there.”

Mason shook his head. “I want to find out what Daphne Shelby is up to first, Paul. There’s something cooking and I don’t know what it is.”

“You don’t think there’s any chance the guy really is off his rocker and Daphne is keeping him stashed away?”

“I doubt it,” Mason said. “If he were confused and disoriented, she wouldn’t want to leave him alone and— After all, Paul, the guy’s only seventy-five and the way we’re living nowadays with vitamins and people being conscious of diet and cholesterol, a guy at seventy-five is just coming into the prime of life.”

“Some of them get a little woozy at that age,” Drake pointed out. “You know you have the testimony of the doctor who said he found him disoriented and confused.”

“And, by the same token,” Mason said, “we don’t know what medication he had had before the doctor saw him.”

The headwaiter took away the telephone. Drake attacked his steak, wolfing it down with swallows of hot coffee between bites.

Mason and Della Street ate more leisurely but without wasting time.

The waitress, sensing the urgency of the situation, hovered over the table.

Paul Drake dug out the last of the baked potato, rich with golden butter and red paprika on the top.

“That’s the first time I’ve really enjoyed an evening meal in a long time. You’d be surprised how exacting this job is, Perry. And when you get a case, everything seems to go bang all at once.”

“I’ll admit I want lots of fast service,” Mason said. “Somehow my cases seem to develop at high speed.”

Drake said, “You’re the high-speed factor. Once you start on something you whip it through to a conclusion. The other attorneys I work for keep office hours, go home at four-thirty or five o’clock, forget about business until eight-thirty or nine-thirty the next morning.”

“They don’t have my type of work,” Mason said.

“No one does,” Drake told him, grinning.

The headwaiter was apologetic as he returned with the phone the second time.

“For you, Mr. Drake,” he said.

Drake grinned affably. “It’s all right — now,” he said, “I’ve had my dinner. No hamburger tonight.”

Drake picked up the telephone, said, “Drake speaking... Go ahead, Jim, what do you know?”

Drake was silent for a moment, then cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and said to Mason, “She took the food to the Northern Lights Motel, parked the car directly in front of Unit 21, gave a perfunctory knock on the door, then opened the door which was unlocked and went in with the food in two big bags.”

“Then what?”

“Closed the door. She’s there now. There’s a phone booth at the corner and my man is in the phone booth.”

“Tell him to keep an eye on the situation,” Mason said, “and particularly notice the time element. I want to know what time she went in I want to know what time she comes out and I want to know where she goes when she leaves there... How about some more coffee, Paul?”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m serious.”

Drake relayed Mason’s instructions into the telephone, settled back in his chair with a grin. “Paul Drake,” he announced to no one in particular, “is dining high on the hog tonight. I think I’ll have a hot fudge sundae as well.”

“May as well have whatever you want,” Mason said. “I have an idea Daphne is going to be in there for some time and we have to wait here.”

They had a leisurely dessert.

“Now what?” Drake asked when they had finished.

“We still wait,” Mason said.

“We can go to my office,” Drake suggested. “My men all call the office, and the office relays the call to wherever I happen to be.”

Mason nodded. “Call your office. Tell them we’re on our way back,” he said.

“I hope you know what this is all about,” Drake said. “It’s all mixed up as far as I’m concerned.”

“It’s mixed up as far as I’m concerned,” Mason admitted. “But I want to get a few high cards in my hand before I start calling for a showdown.”

“You’re calling for a showdown?” Drake asked.

“I’m going to have to,” Mason said, “somewhere along the line.”

“Tonight?”

Mason nodded, summoned the waiter, signed the check, gave the waitress an extra ten-dollar tip and said, “I just want you to know how much we appreciate the friendly service that you gave us.”

Her face lit with pleasure. “Why — thank you so much. You’re so nice!”

Mason detoured past the headwaiter, handed him another bill, said, “Thanks ever so much for keeping an eye on us and, incidentally, the waitress who handled our table did a wonderful job, the sort of job that makes people want to come back.”

The headwaiter bowed. “She’s one of our best. I assigned her to your table, Mr. Mason.”

“Thanks,” Mason said.

Driving back to the office, Drake said, “Why all the flowery talk, Perry? The money would have been enough. That’s what they care about.”

Mason shook his head. “They like appreciation.”

“You show it with money.”

“No you don’t,” Mason said. “It takes both money and words. Money without words is vulgar. Words without money are cheap.”

“I never thought of it exactly that way,” Drake said. “But perhaps that’s why you always get such good service in restaurants.”

“Don’t you?” Mason asked.

Drake grinned. “Sure, I send my secretary down to the restaurant for a couple of hamburgers with mustard and onion, and a pint of coffee. She always smiles when she brings it in. That’s what you call service with a smile.”

“We’re going to have to do something about your eating,” Mason said.

“You can say that again,” Drake told him. “Now that I’ve found out how the other half lives, I’m ruined.”

They dropped Paul Drake at his office. Mason and Della Street went on down to the lawyer’s office.

“She’s having dinner with Horace Shelby?” Della asked.

Mason nodded.

“And you’re worried about the case, aren’t you?”