The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister

by Erle Stanley Gardner

Mason nodded to Della Street. “Ring up the Drake Detective Agency,” he said. “Get Paul on the phone.”

  “No, no, please!” Sylvia Atwood exclaimed. “Not another private detective. I detest them.”

  “Drake is an ethical detective,” Mason said. “I have to contact him because I want to find out about Brogan.”

  Della Street’s swift fingers dialed a number on the private unlisted trunk line which was on her desk and which detoured the switchboard in the outer office.

  A moment later, when she had Paul Drake on the line, she nodded to Mason.

  Mason picked up the extension phone on his desk, said, “Paul, this is Perry. I want to find out something about a George Brogan who seems to be a licensed private investigator. Do you know anything about him.… You do, eh.… All right, let me have it.”

  Mason listened for nearly a minute, then said, “Thanks, Paul. I may be calling you in connection with a case.”

  He hung up the telephone.

  Sylvia Atwood’s green eyes were intent with an unspoken question.

  “Well,” Mason said, “Brogan is quite a character. He drives an expensive automobile, maintains a membership in a country club and a yacht club, has a swank apartment, has been under fire three or four times over a question of losing his license, and no one seems to know just how he makes his money.”

  “Does he make professional contacts at his country club?” she asked.

  Mason said, “According to my sources of information, the people who know him would be the last ones to give him business.”

  “In other words, your detective tells you that he’s a high-class blackmailer.”

  Mason grinned. “If he’d told me that I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Well, I’m telling it to you then.”

  Mason said, “Of course, as between an attorney and client, it’s a privileged, confidential communication, but I still wouldn’t say it.”

  “And wouldn’t admit that that was what your friend, Mr. Drake, had told you.”

  Mason grinned, shook his head.

  “You mentioned a relationship of attorney and client,” she said. “I hope that means that you are going to accept me as a client.”

  “And, to make it official,” Mason said, “you’re going to pay me a retainer of five hundred dollars, because when I take my next step I don’t want to have any misunderstanding about whom I’m representing and what I’m trying to accomplish.”

  “What’s going to be your next step?”

  Mason merely held out his hand.

  “Surely,” she said, “I don’t carry five hundred dollars in cash in my purse.”

  “Your check’s good.”

  She hesitated for a moment. Her green eyes were hard and appraising, then she opened her purse, took out a checkbook, and wrote Mason a check.

  Mason studied the check carefully, then said, “Put on the back of it, ‘As a retainer on account of legal services to be rendered.’”

  She wrote as Mason suggested.

  Mason blotted the check, handed it to Della Street, who placed a rubber stamp endorsement on it.

  Mason pulled the telephone toward him, said, “You want me to handle this my own way?”

  “I want results.”

  Mason said to Della Street, “Look up the number of George Brogan, Della. Get him on the line. We’ll place that call through the switchboard.”

  “Do you think it’s wise for you to talk with Mr. Brogan?” Sylvia Atwood asked.

  “Somebody has to talk with him.”

  “I’ve already talked with him.”

  “I don’t think it’s wise for you to continue to talk with him.”

  “He assures me that he’s just trying to be helpful, that every cent of money he receives will be accounted for, that he’ll have to pay it over to Fritch in order to hold him in line.”

  “And in the meantime,” Mason said sarcastically, “Fritch has given him possession of the spool of tape containing the recording of the conversation supposed to be between your father and Fritch?”

  She nodded.

  “Does that impress you as being a little unusual?”

  “Well, of course, J.J. would have to do something in order to turn his information into money.”

  Della Street nodded to Perry Mason.

  Mason picked up the telephone, said, “Hello. Brogan, this is Perry Mason. I want to see you.… It’s about a matter in which I’ve been retained by Sylvia Bain At-wood.… That’s right.… I want to hear the recording.… No, I want to hear it all, every bit of it.… Why not.… Well, you can’t expect so much as a thin dime.… All right, tell Mr. Fritch that he can’t expect even a thin dime unless I hear all of that recording and unless I’m satisfied it’s an authentic recording.… To hell with that stuff. Tell your friend, Fritch, that he’s dealing with a lawyer now.… All right, if he isn’t your friend, the message is still the same.… That’s right, every bit of recording that’s on that tape.… Every word.… Otherwise Fritch can go roll his hoop.… When I advise a client about buying a horse I want to see the horse, all of it.… That’s right.

  “When.… I can’t. I’m going to be busy in court.… All right, then make it right away. I’ll be over within ten minutes.… Why not.… All right, at your apartment then. I don’t care.… An hour.… All right.”

  Mason hung up the telephone, said to Sylvia, “I’m going over to Brogan’s apartment. I’m going to hear that recording. I’m going to hear all of it. You’ll have to be there with me. I want you to listen carefully and tell me if you feel the voice you hear on the recording is that of your father. Now I’m going to tell you something else. I don’t like blackmail.”

  “You think this is?”

  “It’s first cousin to it,” Mason said. “It smells like blackmail, and it’s an aroma I don’t care for. Now I want you to do one other thing for me.”

  “What?”

  Mason said, “When I go over there I’m going to wear a hearing aid. I’m going to pretend to be a little deaf. I want you to play up to me on that.”

  “Why the hearing aid?”

  “Perhaps,” Mason said, grinning, “because I want to hear better. Now we’re to meet him at his apartment in an hour. I want you to meet me here in forty-five minutes. It’ll take us about fifteen minutes to get to his apartment from here. In the meantime I don’t want you to say anything to anyone about what we’re doing.”

  She nodded.

  “Now then,” Mason went on, “suppose it turns out this is a genuine recording of a conversation that actually took place between your father and J. J. Fritch, and in that conversation your father admits in effect that he knew the money used by Fritch in the partnership deal was the proceeds of a bank robbery. What are you going to do?”

  “We’re going to pay off unless you can find some better way of handling it.”

  “How much are you going to pay?”

  She hesitated. Her eyes avoided his.

  “How much?” Mason asked.

  “As much as he demands, if we have to.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then I want to be very, very certain that there isn’t any more proof, that all of the proof is in our hands.”

  “How do you propose to do that?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I came to you. I thought I’d leave that up to you.”

  Mason said, “You can take a spool of recorded tape and dub a dozen different duplications if you want to. If they’re well made on good equipment those duplications will be just as faithful as the original.”

  “Mr. Brogan says he’ll guarantee J.J.’s good faith in the matter, that there is only one recording, that no copies have been made.”

  “Just how does he propose to guarantee that?”

  “I don’t know. He said we could depend on his word.”

  “Do you think his word’s any good?”

  She said pointedly, “I gave you five hundred dollars, didn’t I? That’s the best answer I can m
ake.”

  “I thought so,” Mason said. “It’s a mess. We’ll try and handle it the best we can.”

  “And I’m to be back here in forty-five minutes.”

  “Forty minutes now,” Mason told her. “On the dot.”

  “Very well.” She arose and left the office.

  When the door had clicked shut behind her Della Street raised questioning eyes at Mason.

  Mason said, “First, I’m going to find out whether that’s her father’s voice or not. I’m going to prove that much to my own satisfaction.”

  “How?”

  “I’m going to listen to that recording and I’m going to keep on listening to it until I’m fully familiar with the voices, then I’m going to make it a point to see Ned Bain. I’ll talk with him about the weather or anything else. I’ll study his voice and compare it with the voice on the recording, and I’ll have a scientific comparison made. We’ll slow the recording down and we’ll slow down recordings of Bain’s voice. We’ll speed them up. We’ll make every scientific comparison we can.”

  “But I don’t see how you’ll have any opportunity to make all those examinations of the voice on the record. Do you think Brogan will let you take the record to play with, or make a copy of it?”

  Mason grinned. “You haven’t heard about my affliction.”

  “What?”

  “About being deaf.”

  Mason opened the drawer of his desk, took out a small, oblong metal container which he slipped into his side coat pocket, then he clipped a device which held a small microphone up against the bone of his head just over the right ear.

  “All right,” Della Street said, “that may help you to hear more distinctly, but how is it going to help you study what’s on that tape recording?”

  Mason said, “Of course, I’ll conceal the wires, running them in through a hole in my coat pocket and up through the shoulder of the coat.”

  “But I still don’t see,” Della Street protested.

  Mason reached in the drawer of his desk, took out a small compact extension speaker about four inches in diameter. He placed that on his desk, plugged it into the flat device in his pocket and flipped a switch.

  Della Street heard her own voice, startlingly lifelike, say, “All right, that may help you to hear more distinctly, but how is it going to help you study what’s on that tape recording?”

  Mason grinned as he saw the expression of utter consternation on Della Street’s face. He disconnected the loud-speaker and put it back in the drawer of his desk.

  “Good heavens!” Della Street said. “How did you do that?”

  “This little device,” Mason said, “is of German manufacture. It makes a wire recording for two and half hours on wire that is so small it is all but invisible except under a microscope. When there is no interference it gives an astonishing fidelity of tone reception. While I am listening to that recording over in Brogan’s apartment I’ll actually be making a copy of it that we can experiment with.”

  “How do you get the power for that?” Della Street asked.

  “Batteries and tubes,” Mason said. “Just the same as with a pocket radio set or with a hearing aid.”

  “Suppose Brogan finds out what you’re doing?”

  “He won’t.”

  “But suppose he does.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “what can he do?”

  “He could—well, he could become very disagreeable.”

  “So can I,” Mason told her, grinning.

  Chapter 2

  Mason entered the office of the Drake Detective Agency.

  “Paul in?” he asked the receptionist.

  She nodded.

  “Busy?”

  “On the telephone is all. I’ll tell him you’re coming.”

  She plugged in a line, flashed a signal, then nodded to Mason. “Go right on down.”

  Mason opened a latched gate in a waist-high partition, walked down a long corridor which contained a veritable rabbit warren of offices on each side, small cubbyholes for the most part, where operatives could make their reports.

  Paul Drake’s office was at the far end of the corridor. Drake was talking on the phone as Mason entered.

  He motioned Mason to a seat, finished his telephone conversation, hung up and turned to grin at the lawyer.

  Mason seated himself in an uncushioned wooden chair, regarded the detective across a desk which was decorated with half a dozen separate telephones.

  “It’s a wonder you wouldn’t get a decently comfortable chair for clients,” Mason said.

  “Then they’d stay too long,” Drake told him. “I can’t charge whopping big fees the way a lawyer can. I have to carry on a volume of business. Right now I have a dozen cases going, with men out working on those cases, phoning in reports, asking for instructions. Why were you inquiring about Brogan? You aren’t getting mixed up with him, are you?”

  Mason took a cigarette case from his pocket, snapped it open, offered Drake a cigarette.

  The detective, tall, languorous, his face carefully schooled to an expression of disinterest, stretched forth a lazy hand, extracted a cigarette, snapped a match into flame.

  “You tangle up with Brogan,” he went on, “and you’ll learn something about the noble art of shakedown.”

  “I’m tangled with him,” Mason said.

  “In that case you’d better let Della keep all of your money for you until you get untangled.”

  “What’s wrong with him, Paul?”

  “Everything.”

  “You weren’t too emphatic over the telephone.”

  “I try to be a little cautious over the telephone. I gave you the sketch, however.”

  “What about him?”

  “Well,” Drake said, “for one thing he’s a blackmailer. They can’t catch him at it, but he’s a blackmailer.”

  “Why can’t they catch him at it?”

  “Because he’s too damn clever. He never appears as a blackmailer. Apparently he never gets any part of the money that’s paid over as blackmail, but you let Brogan get hold of a piece of confidential information and sometime within the next year or eighteen months, after no one would think of connecting it up with George Brogan, some blackmailer will approach Brogan and demand that Brogan’s client pay a shakedown.

  “Brogan, of course, will immediately get in touch with his client. Brogan will be completely dismayed. He’ll accuse the client of having let the cat out of the bag. The client will assure him that the information Brogan had was completely confidential. Brogan will start cross-examining the client, asking him if he didn’t tell someone, if he didn’t tell his wife, if he didn’t tell his sweetheart, if his secretary didn’t know about it, if he didn’t confide in his income-tax accountant or if he hadn’t told someone at the club.

  “Of course, the answer is always the same. During an eighteen-month period a man will have told someone. If he hasn’t, Brogan will make him think he has. Then Brogan will be employed to settle the deal with the blackmailer.

  “Brogan will look into the thing and advise the client that about the only thing he can do is to make a payoff; that Brogan, by reason of his reputation and his underworld connections, can manipulate things so that the payoff will only be about half what it would otherwise be, and he promises that he can fix things so there will only be one payoff; that he’ll not only get the evidence but he’ll put fear into the heart of the blackmailer so that there won’t be any recurrence, any comeback, there won’t be any question of a sucker being bled until he’s white.”

  “And then what?” Mason asked.

  “Then the sucker pays Brogan about half the amount of money that the blackmailer has first demanded, according to Brogan. That money disappears. Brogan turns the evidence back to the sucker and charges the sucker a fee, which is usually very nominal under the circumstances.”

  “And what becomes of the blackmail money?”

  “Brogan gets the bulk of it,” Drake said, “but you can’t pr
ove it. They’ve tried to prove it half a dozen different times, but they’ve never been able to tag Brogan with anything. He’s smart.”

  “How smart?”

  “Plenty smart, in a slimy sort of way.”

  “And what happens when there’s a comeback, when they start bleeding the sucker white?”

  “That’s the point,” Drake said. “That’s where Brogan gets by. They don’t do it. When you’re dealing with Brogan it’s once on the line and that’s all. He makes good on that. He claims that he puts fear into the heart of the blackmailer so that nothing happens. Actually, of course, he’s in on the racket all the way through, but I couldn’t tell you that over the telephone where you might repeat it to a client. I wouldn’t dare to say it to anyone else.”

  Mason said, “It looks as though I’ll have an interesting session with him.”

  “When?”

  “In about twenty minutes. I’m to meet him at his apartment.”

  “Watch your step, Perry.”

  “I’m watching it,” Mason said. “Now here’s what I want you to do, Paul. You know Brogan.”

  “You mean personally?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure.”

  “You can describe him?”

  Drake nodded.

  “Do you have some operatives who know him personally?”

  “I can probably get some. How much time do I have?”

  “Not very much. Fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  Drake said, “You always want something in a rush.”

  Mason grinned. “You get paid for it, don’t you?”

  Drake nodded.

  Mason said, “I have an appointment with Brogan at his apartment. Now I want a couple of operatives stationed at the door of that apartment house. I want men who know Brogan if possible. Otherwise I want you to give them a detailed description of Brogan. After I leave, Brogan is going to go some place, probably in a hurry. I want him shadowed. I want to know where he goes. I want to know with whom he talks. And if he talks with a man by the name of Fritch I want an operative to take over and shadow Fritch.”

  “Okay,” Drake said, reaching for the telephone. “Can do.”

  Drake picked up the telephone, gave instructions to his secretary to have two operatives whom he named get in touch with him immediately. He dropped the telephone back into place, said to Mason, “What kind of a deal is it?”