The Case of the Baited Hook (14 page)

Mason said, "No need to be so upset, Miss Hastings. Just tell me what he said."

She clutched his arm then, and he could feel the tips of her fingers digging into his flesh. "No, no," she cried. "No, no! You mustn't ever, ever let anyone know about that… Oh, I should have known you'd trap me!"

Mason patted her shoulder. Noticing the curious glances of several pedestrians, he piloted her toward a doorway. "Take it easy," he said. "Perhaps there's some place we can talk… Here's a cocktail lounge. Let's go in."

She permitted him to pilot her into the cocktail lounge, and seated herself as though glad to relieve the strain of her weight on wobbling knees.

"How did you know that?" she asked, as Mason seated himself on the other side of the little table.

A white – coated waiter appeared, and Mason raised his eyebrows at Adelle Hastings.

"A double brandy," she said.

"Make it two," Mason ordered, and, when the waiter had withdrawn. Mason said in a kindly voice, "You should have known you couldn't get away with it."

"But I could have," she said, "if I'd if I'd only used ordinary prudence. I can see it all now. I can see the trap you set for me."

Mason brushed her remark aside. "Let's quit this business of beating around the bush," he said. "Haven't you something to say to me?"

"About what?"

"About your first visit to my office."

Her eyes narrowed. "What about it?" she asked.

Mason said, "If you need me, you know, arrangements have already been made."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Mason said, "That isn't going to get you anywhere."

"But I don't. I really don't."

"All right," Mason said. "You've had your chance. Remember that I protect my clients to the best of my ability. People who are not my clients have to be on their guard."

She laughed nervously. "If you think I'm not going to be on my guard with you from now on, Mr. Mason, you have another think coming."

"All right. We'll handle it that way then," Mason said with calm, patient persistence. "Now let's get back to Robert Peltham. First, what did he say in answer to my ad?"

As she hesitated. Mason added, "I can find out by the simple expedient of ringing up the Contractor's Journal. After all, they're going to publish it, you know."

She bit her lip. For a moment her dark eyes were veiled from his by lowered lashes, then she suddenly looked up at him, and he had a glimpse of flashing teeth as she smiled. "Mr. Peltham," she said, "says he can't meet you-for you to carry on."

"But," Mason observed, "I'm groping in the dark."

"You seem to be doing very well at it, Mr. Mason," she said, and Mason realized that something had given her a sudden return of self – confidence. Her manner was archly gay, a jaunty assumption of carefree banter.

Mason studied her, trying to find some reason for the transformation, to learn whether it was due to something he had said, or simply because she had suddenly conceived some new plan which offered such possibilities of ultimate success as to restore her confidence.

Mason said, "I'm in too deep to back out right now. I'm going ahead."

"Do," she said. "Mr. Peltham seems to think you're doing splendidly."

"Have you talked with him?"

"Well, let's put it this way: I've been in communication with him."

"Over the telephone?"

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to start avoiding questions again, Mr. Mason."

Mason scowled. "All right," he said, lashing out at her with sudden belligerency. "Let's quite playing ring – around – the – rosy. What's your alibi for Monday night?"

She smiled at him sweetly. "Tuesday from noon on, Mr. Mason," she said.

"You heard my question. Monday night."

"You heard my answer," she replied smilingly. "From noon Tuesday, Mr. Mason."

"I hope it's a good one."

"It is."

"Just by way of satisfying my curiosity," he asked her, "what were you doing Monday night?"

"What I was doing Monday night doesn't have anything to do with the case. You know it doesn't. The newspaper says you, yourself, talked with Tidings Tuesday morning around eleven o'clock… And I see you're representing that Gailord girl… I wish you luck with her."

"Are you," Mason asked, "trying to change the subject?"

"No, of course not."

"What do you know about Miss Gailord?"

"Nothing."

"You know her?"

"I've met her, yes."

"Where?"

"Oh, several times-at social functions."

"She moves in your circle?"

"Not exactly. She tries to… wait a minute, I don't mean it that way."

"Yes, you do," Mason said. "That's exactly what you meant. The remark may have slipped out, but you meant it."

"All right, then, I did. It's just what she's doing."

"She's a social climber?"

"If you want to put it that way. Good Lord, what if her father was a grand duke? Who cares?"

Mason, watching her narrowly, said, "At a guess, she has specific ambitions toward marriage?"

"I guess all women do, don't they?"

"I wouldn't know. What's the catch she's after?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Mason. I don't care to discuss it."

"Simply because she's a rival?"

"What do you mean? What are you insinuating?"

Mason said, "I may know more than you give me credit for."

She said hotly, "You look here, Mr. Mason. Coleman Reeger and I are good friends, and that's all. I don't care whom he marries-only I'd hate to see him walk into a trap."

"You think that's what he's doing?"

Shd said firmly, "That's enough, Mr. Mason. We aren't going to discuss that matter, and we'll leave Coleman Reeger out of it."

"All right, we will if you'll tell me where you were Monday night."

She laughed and said, "You're laying another trap for me, aren't you, Mr. Mason?"

The waiter brought their drinks.

Mason said, "Look here. You weren't just playing a hunch on that trust fund business. You've been sticking up for Peltham. You're in communication with him. You have the most implicit faith in him. That means that -well, you know what it means."

"What does it mean?" she asked.

Mason said, "You may mask your face, but you can't mask your feelings."

She twisted the stem of her glass, rotating it by a slow motion of the thumb and forefinger while she kept her eyes from his. "I don't think I'm going to make any answer to that," she said.

"You mean you don't understand me?"

"N – n – no. Not exactly that, but I'd want you to be very definite before I-before I said anything at all."

Mason tossed off his drink, pulled a bill from his pocket, and dropped it on the table. "Now listen," he said, "we've played ring – around – the – rosy and button – button – who's – got – the – button until I'm sick of it. You can either talk to me now and talk to me frankly and fairly, or I'll walk out, and you can chase me around."

"But why should I want to chase you around, Mr. Mason? It's the other way around. You were following me."

"Forget it," Mason said. "I'm tired of playing horse. Do you want me to walk out, or don't you?"

Her eyes showed a quick flash of some baffling expression. "Mr. Mason," she said, with feeling, "if you'd get up from this table, walk out of that door, and not ask me any more questions, I'd think-I'd think it was one of the biggest breaks I'd ever had in my whole life."

Without a word, Mason pushed back his chair, picked up his hat, and started for the door. He turned midway to glance back at her surprised features and said, "You know where my office is,"-then walked out and left her.

7

DELLA STREET LOOKED UP AS MASON UNLOCKED THE door of his private office and came striding into the room.

"Oh-oh," she said. "Was it as bad as all that?"

"Worse," Mason told her, taking off his hat and throwing it on a chair. "I'm getting fed up with things. I've bought a pig in a poke, and it's the last time."

"But Paul Drake telephoned that you'd picked her up, and that everything seemed all right."

"Drake," Mason said, "is a damn poor judge of feminine character. I don't know but what I'm not as bad… When did Drake telephone?"

"A few minutes ago. He said he guessed there was no need for him to keep a shadow on the woman, but he'd done it just on general principles, that she was Adelle Hastings, that you'd left her in a cocktail lounge, that she'd gone out right after you had left-within a matter of minutes-and had gone straight to her apartment. If you'll give me the other half of that ten thousand dollars, Chief, I'll take it down to the bank and make a deposit."

Mason laughed mirthlessly.

"What's the matter? Haven't you got it?"

"No."

"Didn't she have it?"

"She must have it," Mason said, "and she's taking me for a ride to the tune of ten grand."

"How do you figure?"

Mason spread out his hands in a gesture of resignation. "A sucker," he said. "Just a plain pushover. I was so damn conscientious that I stuck my finger in the porridge and started stirring. Now I've stirred out all the lumps, and haven't anything to show for it except a burned finger."

"You mean she isn't going to give you the other half of that bill?"

"Why should she? Peltham is satisfied, and she's satisfied. Things are moving fine. She has an iron – clad alibi for Tuesday morning. At least, she says she has, and I give her credit for being smart enough to be telling the truth. If she fixed up an alibi, she fixed up a good one.

"I've prodded Holcomb into the position of bringing pressure to bear all along the line, to fix the time of that murder as immediately after noon on Tuesday. I have the smaller piece of that ten – thousand – dollar bill. I can't do anything with it until I get the other half… If I'm a big enough sap to work for nothing, why should anyone pay me for it?"

She said thoughtfully, "It does look that way, doesn't it?"

He nodded moodily. "Anything else?" he asked.

"Drake says his men shadowed Abigail Tump, that she led them to the man he thinks is the secretary for the orphan asylum you want. He also picked up a copy of the ad which was left in the Contractor's Journal by Miss Hastings."

"What does the ad say?" Mason asked, dropping into his big swivel chair, elevating his feet to the desk, and taking a cigarette from the office humidor.

Della Street consulted her shorthand notebook and read, " 'Have nothing to add to situation. Granting interview this time would be unwise. You're doing fine. P.'"

Mason said, "That's rubbing it in… I'm doing fine, am I? Yes, Della. Take this down. Type it out and rush it over to the Contractor's Journal. Have them carry it in their earliest possible issue: 'P. I don't like to contract for work without blueprints. Arrange to deliver detailed plans and specifications or anticipate serious defects in finished structure.' Now read that back to me, Della." She read it back to him. Mason nodded grimly. "Okay," he said.

She looked at him with eyes that showed a trace of concern. "Wouldn't it be better, Chief, to sit tight now and let things develop?"

"I'm not built that way," he said. "It would probably be the prudent thing to do. In any event, it would be the conventional thing to do, but you never get far being prudent and conventional. Right now, this case is wide open. If I sit back and wait, it'll crystallize against the client I'll eventually have to represent."

"But if you keep doing things which are advantageous to that client, you'll never be paid," she pointed out.

Mason said, "From now on the things I'm going to do will make their hair stand up… Take that ad down to the Contractor's Journal and leave word in Drake's office that he's to come in here as soon as he gets back to the office… That little devil, Adelle Hastings, figures she can trump my aces and make me like it."

"How can you stop her playing it that way, Chief, as long as you keep working on the case?"

Mason grinned, but without humor. "I'm going to make it no – trumps," he said.

Della Street adjusted her hat in front of the office mirror. "Well," she observed, "there's no use telling you to be careful."

"Whoever got anything in life by being careful?" Mason retorted. "Every time you stop to figure what the other fellow's going to do, you unconsciously figure what you'd do in his place. The result is that you're not fighting him, but yourself. You always come to a stalemate. Every time you think of a move, you think of a perfect defense.

"The best fighters don't worry about what the other man may do. And if they keep things moving fast enough, the other man is too busy to do much thinking."

"Something tells me," Della Street grinned, as she made for the door, "that things are going to move fast."

Paul Drake's voice from the corridor said, cheerfully, "Against the light, your legs are swell, Della. They'd get by in front of any window."

"Sometime when you're not too busy, tell Perry all about them, will you, Paul?"

Drake, in a rare good humor, circled Della Street and edged in at the open door. "Gosh, Perry," he said, "that was a slick stunt you pulled with that purse. I thought I'd die laughing. When she called the officer and said you were annoying her, I thought I'd have to appear in the police court to give you a good character reference."

"What's all this about?" Della Street asked.

"Your boss," Drake said, "has become a purse – snatcher."

Mason said, "Come in here and close that damn door. I don't want all the tenants in the office listening in on my conferences."

"If Paul's through admiring my figure, I'll be going," Della observed.

Drake clicked the door shut behind him. "What the devil was that last crack about?" Mason asked.

Drake grinned. "Don't you ever notice your secretary's legs?"

Mason said, "For God's sake, snap out of it! There's work to be done."

"What sort of work?"

By way of answer, Mason picked up his desk telephone, plugged it in on the office line, and said, "Gertie, I want you to get Dr. Finley C. Willmont on the line. You'll find him at his office. His nurse will tell you he's seeing patients and can't come to the telephone. Tell her it's Perry Mason calling, and it's important. I want to talk with Dr. Willmont personally."

"Right away," Gertie promised. "Do you want to wait?"

"No, ring me when you have him on the line."

Mason hung up and said to Paul Drake, "That little devil's holding out on me."

"Della?" Drake asked in surprise.

"Come down to earth," Mason said. "Adelle Hastings."

"I thought you had her eating out of your hand."

"No," Mason said. "I bought her a drink. She drank it out of a glass."

"You act as though someone had put a burr under your saddle blanket," Drake said.

"Someone has."

"Who?"

"I don't know."

"Well, can't you take the burr out?"

Mason said, "I don't want to. I prefer to start bucking."

"What do you want me to do?"

"You have the name and address of that bookkeeper for The Hidden Home Society?"

"Yes."

"Who is he, where does he live, and what does he look like?"

"Arthmont A. Freel, Montway Rooms, around sixty, and mousy, a little wisp of a fellow with stooped shoulders, faded eyes, faded hair, faded clothes, and a faded personality, shabby in a genteel sort of way. Put him in a group of three, and you'd lose him in the crowd. He doesn't stand out any more than cigar ashes on a gray rug on a misty morning."

Mason said, "Feeling pretty good, aren't you, Paul?"

"Uh huh."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Just the way I feel. I got an awful bang out of seeing you turn the tables on that girl when she tried to call the cop. You sure put that one over, Perry. The cop was nodding to himself when you walked away, as though he'd discharged his duties to the taxpayers in noble shape and was entitled to a merit badge."

The phone on Mason's desk rang. He picked it up and heard Gertie say, "Dr. Willmont's coming on," and then a moment later. Dr. Willmont's crisply professional voice saying, "Yes, Perry. What is it?"

Mason said, "I want a blood donor. Doctor-about a pint."

"What type?" Dr. Willmont asked.

"The type that will keep its mouth shut," Mason said.

"I know, but what type blood?"

"Human blood," Mason said. "That's all I require."

Dr. Willmont hesitated. "This is rather unusual. You can't have a transfer, Perry, without getting types of both the donor and the patient. You…"

"There isn't any patient," Mason said. "There isn't going to be any transfusion. I simply want a donor."

"But what do you want done with the blood?"

"Put it in a bottle," Mason said, "and forget about it."

"How would you want it handled?"

"That's up to you. I'll pick up the blood while it's still fresh. I'll keep in touch with your office and let them know just when and where I'll want it. You get the donor lined up."

Dr. Willmont hesitated. "I suppose I could explain it was for laboratory purposes," he said. "Could you keep me out of it, Perry?"

"Uh huh."

"What do you want it for?"

"Purposes of a laboratory experiment in criminology," Mason said glibly.

"Okay, that's fine. I'll try and arrange it."

"I'll call you later," Mason said. "You make the arrangements and have the donor on hand."

He hung up, and turned to Paul Drake. "Okay, Paul, let's go."

"Where?" Drake asked.

"The Montway Rooms," Mason said.

"Your car or mine?"

"Yours."

"Now?"

"Right now. Let's get going."

Drake's loquacious good humor evaporated under the influence of the lawyer's savage grimness. He essayed a quip or two, then lapsed into a silence which persisted until he parked the car in front of the rooming house. "This is the joint," he said. "Are you going to get rough with him, Perry?"

"I'm going to get rough with everyone," the lawyer said, "until I smoke someone into the open. Come on, let's go."

In silence they opened the car doors, slammed them shut, and entered the rooming house. There was no one at the desk, and Drake said, "It's on the second floor near the back. I have the number of the room."

They climbed creaking stairs, pounded their way down a thin ribbon of worn, faded carpet which stretched between the rows of doors down the length of the upper corridor. Drake silently motioned to a door. Mason knocked.

A man's reedy voice on the other side of the door said, "Who is it?"

"The name's Mason," the lawyer said.

The voice sounded now closer to the door. "What is it?"

"News."

A key clicked in the lock. The door opened, and a man, whose face hardly came to Mason's shoulders, looked up over the top of steel – rimmed reading spectacles. "What sort of news?" he asked.

"Bad," Mason said, and walked in.

Drake followed the lawyer into the room. Mason flashed him a swift glance of inquiry, and the detective nodded almost imperceptibly. Drake moved over to a chair by the window and sat down. The chair was still warm from human occupancy. Freel, still holding a newspaper he'd been reading between thumb and forefinger, glanced from one to the other. "I don't think I know you," he said.