The Case of the Troubled Trustee (2 page)

Dutton grinned. "I am one of those who didn't get killed on a weekend."

Mason looked at Dutton and said, "You're a young man."

"It depends on what you consider young. I consider myself quite mature. I'm thirty-two."

"And Desere?"

"She'll be twenty-seven in a few months."

"When you started handling this trust you were still in your late twenties?"

Dutton flushed and said, "That's right."

"Do you," Mason asked suddenly, "love her that much?"

"What!" Dutton exclaimed, snapping back in the chair and sitting very straight.

Mason said, "You have your career ahead of you. Apparently, you have a remarkable aptitude in your chosen profession. In order to protect Desere Ellis and keep her from being the victim of fortune hunters, you have jeopardized your entire professional career and apparently haven't gained a thing by it.

"Now you are talking to a lawyer. Lawyers are not noted for being particularly naпve, so perhaps you had better tell me the real story."

Dutton sighed, looked for an embarrassed moment at Della Street, then blurted out, "All right, I love her. I have always loved her, and I don't want her to know it the way things are now."

"Why?"

"Because she would never think of me in that way. Her attitude toward me is one she would show to a much older man… Well, I'm sort of a big brother; a species of uncle. I don't talk her language. I don't mingle with the set that appeals to her. At the present time, she regards me only as the custodian of her money. Her set regards me as 'square.'"

"Were you so successful four years ago," Mason asked, "that Desere's father thought his daughter's financial affairs would be better in your hands than in those of some more experienced and older banker?"

Dutton hesitated.

"Go on," Mason said.

"All right," Dutton told him, "her father wanted to- Well, he liked me. He thought I might have a steadying influence on Desere- She was running with that crazy crowd. She went overboard for a lot of fads and fancies."

"And her father hoped that if she had to see a lot of you in connection with money matters she'd fall in love with you?"

"I guess that was partly his idea. He wanted to protect her from herself, and he may have had some idea of having her fall in love with me. He knew how I felt toward her.

"Actually, like so many schemes which fail to take human nature into consideration, the thing worked out just the opposite. She thinks of me as a moneygrubber. Our difference in ages has been accentuated."

"And you've been in love with her for four years?"

"Five."

"And never told her how you felt?"

"Of course I did. That was more than four years ago."

"What did she say?"

"She felt sorry for me. She said it was simply that I'd built up a synthetic feeling for her. She said she'd be a younger sister to me if I'd take her on that basis; that if I was going to persist in this crazy idea of being in love with her it would mean she couldn't see me any more. It would spoil the friendship."

"So you took it on that basis?" Mason asked.

"I've been waiting," Dutton said.

"Did her father have any idea he was dying?"

"Yes. He knew. The doctors gave him eight months. They were too optimistic. He lasted six."

"And now you feel that the will and the spendthrift trust didn't work out the way he had anticipated?"

Dutton said, "It had exactly the opposite effect. For a few months, Desere was so terribly hurt and angry that she would hardly speak to me.

"She felt that her father had repudiated her; that he had insulted her intelligence; that he was trying to dominate her life even after he had passed away and- Well, she's like a wild colt. She doesn't want any restrictions. Show her a fence and she tries to jump it. Come toward her with a halter and she wants to run; and if she gets cornered, she wants to bite and kick.

"After the will was read, she felt her father had crowded her into a corner, so she started biting and kicking."

"And, I take it," Mason said, "you were the target?"

"That's right."

"And you felt that embezzling the trust assets would make everything all right?"

"I wasn't trying to make things all right. I was trying to keep them from going all wrong."

"How?"

"She'd be a target for dead-beat fortune hunters if they knew the truth. Even as it is, she has a beatnik nogood moving in on her. He wants to marry her and 'manage' the few thousand she's going to get on the termination of the trust."

Mason smiled. "You don't approve of him as a husband for Desere?"

Dutton said grimly, "If he marries her, I'll-I don't know what I would do, but someone should shoot the guy."

Mason regarded Dutton thoughtfully. "Perhaps," he suggested, "you should be a little more aggressive in your romantic affairs."

"I have to play the waiting game a little longer," Dutton said.

"You've been playing it without any results for four years now," Mason said.

"Five," Dutton corrected. "I felt that as Desere grew more mature the difference in our ages would become insignificant. I want her to stop thinking of me as an older brother-a much older brother."

Mason said, "All right, I'm glad you've come clean. Now, I want you to do three things. First, make me a check for a thousand dollars as a retainer. Second, sign an undated declaration of trust, listing all the securities that are in your name but which you are holding as trustee for Desere Ellis. You don't necessarily need to tell her about it, but get a record that these properties are being held only as a trustee under the will, then if you die she is protected."

"Third?" Dutton asked.

"Try to get Miss Ellis to come in to see me," Mason said. "I want to talk with her."

"Why?"

"Someone has to tell her that there is more money coming to her at the termination of the trust than she had anticipated, and someone has to tell her why. If you try to tell her, you have to sketch yourself its a heel. If I tell her, I may be able to put you in the position of a hero."

"Look here," Dutton said, "you can't tell her how 1 feel toward her. You can't-"

"Don't be foolish," Mason interrupted. "I'm riot running a matrimonial agency; I'm running a law office. You're going to pay me to keep you out of trouble. I want to keep you out of trouble.

"Your love life is none of my business except as it affects the job I have to do."

Dutton took a checkbook from his pocket and started writing a check.

Chapter Two

Mason entered his private office the next morning to find Della Street opening the morning mail. He stood for a few moments watching her with appreciative eyes.

"Thanks," he said abruptly.

She looked up in surprise. "For what?"

"For just being," Mason said. "For being so much a part of things, so completely efficient and… and all the rest of it."

"Thank you," she said, her eyes suddenly soft.

"Any progress?"

"On what?" she asked.

"Come, come," Mason said, smiling. "Don't try to pull the wool over my eyes. On the romance, of course."

"The Dutton case?"

"Exactly."

"Nothing so far," she said. "Give the man a little time."

"He may not have as much time as he thinks," Mason said, seating himself in the client's overstuffed chair and watching Della Street's smoothly graceful figure as she stood at the desk opening letters, putting them in three pilesthe urgent on the left-hand corner of the desk, the personal-answer-required in the middle, and the general run-of-the-mill for secretarial attention on the right.

"Want some advice?" she asked.

Mason grinned. "That's why I brought the subject up."

She said, "You can't play Dan Cupid."

"Why not?"

"You don't have the build. You wear too many clothes, and you lack a bow and arrow."

Mason grinned. "Keep talking."

"Sometimes," Della Street said, choosing her words carefully as though she had rehearsed them, "a woman will be close to a man for a long time, seeing him in the part in which he has cast himself and, unless he makes some direct approach, not regarding him as a romantic possibility."

"And under those circumstances?" Mason asked.

"Under those circumstances," Della Street said, "nature gave the male the prerogative of taking the initiative; and if he isn't man enough to take it, it is quite possible the girl will never see him as a romantic possibility."

"Go on," Mason told her.

"But the one thing that would definitely wreck everything would be for someone else to try and take the intiative on behalf of this individual."

"Longfellow, I believe, commented on that in the poem dealing with John Alden and Priscilla," Mason said.

Della Street nodded.

"All right," Mason told her, "I've been forewarned. You want me to keep my bungling masculine touch under cover, is that it?"

The phone on Della Street's desk rang.

She flashed him a quick smile, picked up the receiver and said, "Yes, Gertie," to the receptionist.

She said, "Wait a moment. Hold on, Gertie, I'll see." Della Street turned to Perry Mason. "Desere Ellis is in the office," she said.

Mason grinned. "Let's take a look, Della."

"Just a moment," Della Street said. "She is accompanied by a Mr. and Mrs. Heclley, apparently a mother and son."

"They are all three of them together?" Mason asked.

Della Street nodded. "As Gertie whispered confidentially, the mother is a determined creature with a rattrap mouth and monkey eyes; and the son is pure beatnik with a beard and a cool-cat manner which makes her flesh crawl. You know how Gertie is and how she loves to make snap appraisals of clients."

"And generally she's right," Mason said. "Have Gertie send the three of them in."

Della Street relayed the message, then went to the door communicating with the outer office and held it open.

Hedley came in first-a broad-shouldered young man with a spade beard, calmly contemptuous eyes, a sport shirt open at the neck disclosing a hairy chest, a pair of rather wrinkled slacks, and sandals over bare feet. He was carrying a coat over his arm.

Behind him was his mother, a woman of around fifty, not as tall as her son. She was rather dumpy and had a sharp pointed nose on each side of which alert brown eyes glittered as she made a quick appraisal of Mason; the eyes darted to Della Street, then around the office.

Behind Mrs. Hedley, Desere Ellis-slightly taller than average, her skin deeply tanned, honey-blonde hair, steady blue eyes and a figure a little on the spare side-seemed paled into insignificance.

"How do you do?" Mason said. "I'm Perry Mason."

The man, stalking forward and pushing out a hand, said, "I'm Fred Hedley. This is my mother, Rosanna, and my fiancйe, Miss Ellis."

Mason nodded. "Won't you be seated?"

They found chairs. Desere looked at Della Street.

"My confidential secretary," Mason explained. "She takes notes on interviews, keeps things straight, and is my right hand."

Fred Hedley cleared his throat, but it was his mother who hurriedly interposed to assume the conversational initiative.

"Desere was told to come and see you," she said. "We gathered it was about her trust."

"I see," Mason said, noncommittally.

"We'd like to know about it," Mrs. Hedley said.

"Just what was it you wanted to know?" Mason asked.

Fred Hedley said, "The reason why Desere should be told to come and see you."