“Does he know where they’re sending him?”
“If he does, he isn’t telling.”
They were at the door of the house. Gerald pushed it open for her, but he didn’t follow her in.
“I’ve got some things to see to uptown. You’ll have to get down to Mason’s office on your own.” He glanced at his watch. “You’ll have to start pretty soon, too, and you won’t be back in time for dinner, so you’d better say you’re having it with me. That’ll satisfy Matilda and let you give Mason all the time he wants. He’ll want plenty, unless I miss my guess. And I’ll be waiting for you outside the Castle Gate at nine.”
He shut the door before Helen could remind him again that Uncle Franklin had very positively told her that nobody except Perry Mason was even to know about that appointment at the Castle Gate.
4
PERRY MASON had that peculiar, confidence-inspiring magnetism which is so frequently found in tall men. In repose, his features and his manner had the weathered patience of hard granite. It was only in times of stress that his irrepressible personality flooded through. Before a jury, for instance, he could summon the skill and grace of a finished actor. His voice was a responsive instrument that accompanied and emphasized his words. His questions held a razor-edged sharpness which cut through the clumsy falsehoods of sullen, stubborn perjurers. In critical courtroom crises he was a fast-moving, quick-thinking force molding men’s minds, playing on their emotions, out-thinking his antagonists; dramatic, persuasive, agile, yet never forsaking the fortress of deadly logic which buttressed every contention.
Della Street, Mason’s secretary, unlocked the door of the lawyer’s private office, and entered to find Mason seated in the swivel chair back of his desk, his long legs elevated, the ankles crossed on a corner of the big desk.
“Well, here I am,” she announced, taking off her gloves and slipping out of her coat.
Mason said nothing until she emerged from the cloak closet having deposited her hat and coat. Then he said, “Della, virtue has been rewarded. I told you this morning that we shouldn’t clutter up our minds with that equity case, even if there was money in it. Eight hours later we get this.”
“There was a ten-thousand-dollar fee in that equity case,” Della said frostily. “What’s in this?”
Mason grinned. “It’s an adventure that will make you feel ten years younger.”
“Most of your cases make me feel ten years older!”
Mason ignored her. “This has none of the dull, routine angles that drive me to drink. It sparkles with bizarre mystery, adventure, romance. To put it another way, it’s cockeyed crazy and doesn’t make any sense at all—one hell of a swell case.”
“So I gathered when you telephoned,” she observed, crossing over to seat herself on the opposite corner of his desk, conscious of that peculiar gleam in his eyes which came only in moments of inner excitement.
Perry Mason had the rare ability so seldom found in professional men to derive enjoyment from his work. After a certain period, the doctor who has run the gamut of experiences with human illnesses acquires a certain impersonal efficiency. He regards the patients not so much as persons as depositories of various symptoms or anatomical structures which are to be coaxed or carved back to health. The lawyer, having acquired a sufficient background of experience, is apt to become imbued with the mechanics of procedure. But Perry Mason had a mind which was only content when it was detouring the technicalities of legal red tape. He not only regarded each case as a venture studded with excitement, but became impatient with the delays of routine procedure. More and more, as his practice developed, he became interested in personalities. More and more, his methods became dazzlingly brilliant, increasingly dangerous, and highly unorthodox. And Della Street knew that this peculiar light in his eye meant that in this new case he had found a tantalizing puzzle.
Perry was staring at her and automatically Della looked at herself through his eyes. Her brown suede pumps were good. Her legs were perfect. If the beige tailored suit didn’t fit it was not because she hadn’t been to a good tailor. Her face was all right, and she had a new shade of lipstick. Her hat was outrageous. She hoped he was satisfied.
“Della,” Mason sighed, “sometimes I think you are getting blasé.”
“Yes?” she drawled ominously. “Do tell me about it.”
“You’re getting conservative, mercenary, cautious. You’re more interested in periods than you are in question marks.”
Della relaxed. “Someone around this office has to be practical,” she said. “But if it’s not too much to ask, what’s all the excitement about? I don’t mind leaving half a good dinner uneaten and rushing over here, but I would like to know which missionary ate the cannibal.”
“It was after you’d left the office,” he said. “I was getting ready to leave—doing some work on that brief in the Johnson case. A lawyer whom I know slightly telephoned and wanted an appointment for his niece and a little later she came in and talked to me.”
Della Street slipped from the desk to pick up a notebook from her desk. She drew up a chair, and her informal manner gave place to secretarial efficiency. “What were the names?” she asked.
“Gerald Shore’s the lawyer, has an office in the Debenture Investment Building. As I remember it, he handles rather a specialized branch of practice—does a good deal with mining corporations. Think he’s something of a gambler himself, does work largely for promoters, and takes fees partially in cash and partially in stocks in the companies he organizes.”
“Any money in it?” Della Street asked.
“Don’t be so damned mercenary,” Mason said, grinning. “I think he makes more out of it than money.”
“How do you mean?”
“He’s always chasing mirages. Our realistic philosophers hold that as being poor economy. Simply because a mirage has no definite substance, they overlook the fact that it’s such a lovely object to chase. They also lose sight of the fact that the mirage-chaser is getting great joy out of life. He’s always interested in what he’s chasing, which is more than you can say of many men who struggle toward more practical goals. Interest in life is the very best form of wealth.”
“Any retainer?”
“Not yet,” Mason admitted.
“I see. The niece’s name?”
“Helen Kendal.”
“Age?”
“About twenty-four. Very exciting violet eyes. On the blonde side. Nice chassis, nice assembly, nice accessories—definitely nice.”
“And no retainer,” Della Street muttered. “You say she’s a niece of Gerald Shore?”
“Yes. I’ll give you a brief sketch of the family history.” He reached for some scrawled notes and began to dictate. Swiftly and compactly, the salient facts in the case went into Della Street’s notebook.
On a January evening in 1932, Franklin Shore, then fifty-seven and in vigorous health, went into his study after dining with his wife. There he received a caller whom he must have admitted himself, since no servant had answered the door. A maid had seen somebody coming up the drive, and thought she recognized him as Gerald Shore, and Matilda Shore also thought that the voice she heard in the study was Gerald’s, but she had not heard it clearly enough to be sure and Gerald himself denied having been there.
Whoever the visitor was, he wanted money. Matilda Shore distinctly heard her husband’s voice, lifted in anger, refusing to lend it, saying something about the world’s being crowded with jackasses who only needed a few thousands to get back on Easy Street, when even a jackass ought to know that there was never going to be any such street again.
That was all of the talk Matilda Shore overheard. She went upstairs to read in bed and didn’t hear the visitor leave. She did not find out until next morning that Franklin Shore had also left.
Those were the days when a whisper could break a bank, so that Shore’s wife and business associates did not take the police into their confidence until Shore had been missing for some da
ys. Every effort, official and private, was thereafter made to locate him, but no trace of him could be found. The bank’s affairs proved to be in perfect order, so that, in spite of the headlines, the institution suffered no damage from its president’s disappearance. His own affairs were also in order, and, instead of explaining his action, that made it more mysterious, because, except for a few hundred dollars he habitually carried with him, he had apparently left without funds. His checkbook was found on his desk, with the date on a blank check filled in and a broken line indicating that he had begun to write the name of a payee and then evidently either changed his mind or been interrupted. The book showed a balance of $58,941.13 in his joint account with his wife, and this balance was proved correct except for one check for $10,000, drawn on a blank taken from another checkbook, about which Shore had telephoned his secretary before the disappearance.
There were the usual whispers. Several times during the few months before he vanished, Shore had been seen with a woman, unknown to any of those who reported having seen the pair, but good-looking, noticeably well dressed and somewhere in the thirties. But there was nothing to suggest that she had left in Shore’s company, except for a picture post card, from Miami, Florida, postmarked June 5, 1932, which his niece had received six months after the disappearance. The message, in handwriting identified by experts as unmistakably that of Franklin Shore, read:
No idea how much longer we shall be here, but we’re enjoying the mild climate and, believe it or not, swimming.
With lots of love,
Your Uncle Franklin
The plural pronouns, of course, seemed to justify the whispers about the blonde unknown, but the investigators who were hurried to Miami found no trace of Franklin Shore. He had a number of acquaintances there, and the fact that none of them had seen him argued that he could not have made any long stay.
His will was found. It left the bulk of his estate to his wife, with twenty-thousand-dollar legacies to his niece and brother.
“How about them?” Della Street looked up hopefully from her book.
“They haven’t been paid. The niece has been living with her aunt for years. Gerald Shore has, I think, had some indirect benefits. But the legacies are still payable—that is, they will be if Franklin Shore is dead.”
“But nothing has been heard from him for . . .”
“That’s just the point,” Mason said. “Something has. He telephoned his niece today. She’s to meet him tonight. He insisted that I be present at the interview. I’m going to take you along.”
“Do I take a notebook?” she asked.
“By all means a notebook,” Mason said. “We’re going to have notes, so we’ll know everything that’s said, and be able to discuss the significance of the things that aren’t said.”
“But why doesn’t he get in touch with his wife and come back home?”
“That’s just the point. There was something mysterious about his disappearance, some talk at the time of his having run away with a younger woman. Apparently, he isn’t too certain of the reception his wife will give him.”
“She knows nothing about his being here now?”
“No. Franklin specifically instructed his niece to say nothing to anyone. She did confide in her Uncle Gerald, the one who telephoned me.”
“Is Matilda Shore the forgiving kind?” Della Street asked.
Mason grinned. “Definitely not, and reading between the lines of Helen Kendal’s story, I’d say she’s a most objectionable, peculiar character. What’s more, there’s an old love affair involved, too. The man is dead, but his son, George Alber, is the spitting image of his father and Matilda is very much attached to him. I gather that Gerald Shore views that relationship with alarm.”
“Why?”
“In young Alber,” Mason said, “she sees the image of the man whom she once loved. Her only living relatives being Gerald Shore and Helen Kendal, ordinarily, they’d be the beneficiaries under her will. Sometime ago, before young Alber read ‘Welcome’ on the mat, she intimated that they were not only her heirs but would inherit the entire fortune.”
“It is a fortune?”
“Yes.”
“Enter Alber!”
Mason grinned. “Enter Alber. Gerald Shore thinks he’s turning loose all his charm, and there’s no question about the fact that he has become a frequent visitor at the house.”
“Good heavens, you don’t mean that this woman of sixty-four is going to marry this . . .”
“Probably not,” Mason said. “But she wants her niece to marry him. And Alber seems to like that idea. Matilda Shore has become quite a despot, and she controls the purse strings. However, you haven’t heard all the ramifications of the case yet. Not only was there this mysterious telephone call, but a kitten was poisoned this afternoon.”
Della raised her eyebrows. “What has the poisoned kitten to do with the return of Franklin Shore?”
“Perhaps nothing, perhaps a lot.”
“In what way?”
“It was probably an inside job.”
“Why inside?”
“Because, checking up as best they can, the cat doesn’t seem to have been out of the house after three o’clock in the afternoon. The symptoms of poisoning developed right around five o’clock. The veterinary says the poison was administered not over fifteen or twenty minutes before the cat was brought to him for treatment. That was about quarter past five.”
“What kind of poison?” Della Street asked. “A kind that could have been administered to a human being?”
“That’s the rub,” Mason admitted. “Apparently, it was a strychnine poisoning. Strychnia has a bitter taste. An animal would swallow it if the poison were skillfully embedded in small balls of meat, because animals seldom chew. But a human being would have detected the bitter taste; particularly if the meat had been cooked.”
“And you want me to go with you tonight?”
“Yes. A man by the name of Leech is going to escort us to the place where Franklin is hiding.”
“Why’s he hiding?”
Mason laughed. “Why did he disappear in the first place? I’ve often wondered about that, Della. Why a man who was enough of a realist to keep selling stocks short during the years which followed the crash of twenty-nine, who was making money hand over fist, who had everything that he wanted in life, should suddenly disappear and take none of the money with him.”
“Perhaps he’d been salting some away,” Della Street said.
“Not in these days of income taxes,” Mason pointed out.
“He might have falsified his books.”
“An individual with a smaller income might have done that, but Franklin Shore’s affairs were too complex. No, Della, we’re in the way of solving an ancient mystery. The solution is going to be interesting and may be highly exciting. You want to get the picture of Matilda Shore as Helen Kendal painted it. A morose, strong-minded woman with over a million dollars locked in her grasping hands, approaching the end of life, something of a Tartar, addicted to chirping lovebirds, a servant who has always posed as a Korean, but who acts, looks, and talks like a Japanese. She’s kept alive by one thing—the desire to be there waiting when her husband finally returns. Come on, Della, we’re on the trail of another adventure in crime!”
Della grimaced. “There’s no crime yet,” she pointed out.
“Well,” Mason said, walking over to the hat closet and whipping on his coat, “at least we have one attempted crime.”
“What’s that?”
“The kitten.”
“The case of the poisoned kitten?” she asked.
She slipped a notebook and half a dozen pencils into her purse, and then stood by the desk as though worried about something.
“Coming?” demanded Perry impatiently.
“Chief, have you ever seen a kitten eat?”
“Does a duck swim? Why?”
“A cat usually picks at its food. That kitten must have been terribly hungry to gulp down
those balls of meat.”
“This kitten was just careless, I guess. Hurry up.”
“Very careless,” nodded Della. “I think when I open the file for this case I’ll call it ‘The Case of the Careless Kitten.’ ”
5
IN MASON’S car, driving toward the Castle Gate Hotel, Della Street asked, “Did Franklin Shore put all of his property in his wife’s name?”
“Just about all, as I understand it. There were joint accounts in the bank.”
“How long before the disappearance?”
“It had been going on for three or four years.”
“Then if she wants to keep him from coming back, she could . . .”
“Couldn’t keep him from coming back physically,” Mason interrupted, “but she certainly could embarrass his come-back financially. Suppose the moment he showed up, she filed suit for divorce, asked for a property award, and all that out of what little property remains in his name? Get the sketch? She’d claim the other property was all hers.”
“You think that’s what she’s planning?”
Mason said, “He certainly has some reason for wanting me there at the conference. I don’t think he wants me to play tiddlywinks.”
They were silent for several blocks, then Della Street asked, “Where do we meet the others?”
“A block from the Castle Gate Hotel.”
“What kind of a place is it?”
“Second-rate, down-at-the-heel hotel, an outward front of respectability, but it’s a thin veneer.”
“And Henry Leech wanted Helen Kendal and you to come alone?”
“Yes.”
“Think he’ll object to the four of us?”
“I don’t know. There are some peculiar angles, and I want notes taken so I’ll know what is said, and what isn’t said. . . . Up on the next corner is where we meet the others. Here’s a good parking place.”
Mason eased the car into the curb, switched off the lights and ignition, helped Della Street out, and locked the door. Two figures detached themselves from the shadows of a doorway. Gerald Shore came forward to shake hands. Introductions were performed in a low voice.
The Case of the Careless Kitten Page 4