The Case of the Terrified Typist

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  The Case of the Terrified Typist

  A Perry Mason Mystery

  Erle Stanley Gardner

  Cast of Characters

  PERRY MASON—everyone thought he had lost a case for the first time, but Perry proceeded to demonstrate that he wouldn’t give up without a battle

  DELLA STREET—she was everything a man could want in a confidential secretary—and then some

  GERTIE—Mason’s flighty office receptionist, she was the first to observe that the temporary typist was terrified

  PAUL DRAKE—Perry’s favorite private eye, he got to know nearly every typist in town before the case was over

  ANN RIDDLE—her frosty blue eyes observed many goings-on from her vantage point behind a cigar counter, and she seemed eager to report on all she saw—at first

  WALTER IRVING—business associate of the accused, he did his best to fire the one man who might save his partner from a murder rap

  DUANE JEFFERSON—the accused seemed anxious to make things tough for his attorney by insisting on remaining incommunicado

  MARLINE CHAUMONT—the peregrinations of this chic French party girl strained the tracing facilities of the Drake Detective Agency to their utmost

  JUDGE HARTLEY—he expected a long, bitterly contested trial, but he was in for a few legal bombshells

  HAMILTON BURGER—smugly certain that this time he would whip his archfoe, Mason, the D.A. accepted the bravos of the crowd a little too soon

  YVONNE MANCO—her attempt to look demure on the witness stand was as unsuccessful as a sports car trying to imitate a family sedan

  JACK GILLY—shifty-eyed and furtive, he rented fishing boats for incredibly high fees, then watched their occupants with high-powered binoculars

  MAE WALLIS JORDAN—a perfect whiz at the typewriter, she corresponded with a South African diamond merchant she called “Prince Charming”—and the results were terrifying

  Foreword

  It is so trite to say that truth is stranger than fiction that one dislikes to use the expression, yet there is absolutely no other way of describing the strange situation that took place in Texas, where within the framework of the law a principality was created that was completely foreign to all of our American traditions.

  All of this started out innocently enough. A large section of Texas was peopled by Spanish-speaking citizens and an American acquired a position of leadership and started advising these people how to mark their ballots. Apparently he had their best interests at heart and received their virtually unanimous support.

  The community became known as the Principality of Duval and the man who gave the instructions to the voters was known as the “Duke of Duval.”

  Later on this situation developed to a point where successors to the Duke of Duval used their power to establish what was in effect a principality within a state. That principality became steeped in hatreds and ruled by fear, and fear ruled with an iron hand.

  The state seemed powerless. The whole machinery of government in Duval was in the hands of one person.

  Then my friend the Honorable John Ben Shepperd became the attorney general of the State of Texas.

  Shepperd went into Duval and started fighting.

  It was a knockdown drag-out fight. The story of what happened is so lurid, so utterly inconceivable that it staggers the imagination.

  John Ben Shepperd won that fight. It took courage, honesty, competence, resourcefulness and guts.

  When I first knew John Ben Shepperd, he was the attorney general of Texas. I am honored that he made me an honorary special assistant attorney general of Texas, and my commission as such hangs in my office today.

  Texans don’t do things the way other people do. If a Texan likes you, he is for you a hundred per cent. If he doesn’t like you, he may or may not be polite, but his formal politeness will be as frigid as a blizzard wind in the Texas Panhandle.

  Texas is a big, raw, blustering state with a highly developed sense of the dramatic, a spirit of the Old West still rampant, and is peopled by citizens who think only in terms of the superlative. This causes many people to doubt the sincerity of the Texan. The trouble is some of these critics simply don’t understand the Texan language and the Texan thought. When a Texan uses superlatives, he is completely sincere. He thinks in superlatives. He expresses himself in superlatives.

  On one of my recent trips to Texas, I was the speaker at a noonday banquet. My big plate tried in vain to hold a Texas-size steak which overflowed it at the edges.

  As soon as that banquet was over, the chief of police rushed me out to his automobile and with red light and screaming siren, we started for the airport.

  At the airport my friend the late Jim West, one of Texas’ rugged multimillionaires, had his plane waiting and as soon as he heard the siren screaming in the distance, he started warming up the motors. By the time the police car speeded onto the airport’s runway and stopped within a few feet of the airplane, the motors were warmed up and ready for a take-off.

  I was rushed up into the interior of the plane, the door slammed, the motors roared and the plane was in the air.

  An hour and a half later, almost an hour of which had been spent in flying over Jim West’s ranch, we came down at the ranch house. A servant put a gallon flagon in my hand. It was filled with cold, frothy beer. As fast as I lowered the flagon an inch or so, someone would reach over my shoulder with a couple more cans of ice-cold beer and keep it up to the brim.

  Shortly afterward we had a “little old barbecue.” I was given a steak that was so big it had to be served on a platter.

  When we had finished that repast, Jim West announced that his nearest neighbor, who lived thirty-odd miles away, wanted to meet our group and we were transported in specially made Jeeps to the ranch of Dolph Briscoe.

  Briscoe greeted us with typical Texas hospitality. He invited us in for a “snack.”

  The snack consisted of—you guessed it. And Dolph Briscoe was properly apologetic.

  “That steer,” he said in his Texas drawl, “played me false. I tried to make him weigh a ton, but after he got up to nineteen hundred and sixty pounds he just wouldn’t put on any more fat, and in order to have the meat properly aged for you folks when you got here, I had to kill him when he was just forty pounds short of a ton. I’m not going to lie to you folks, that there’s a Texas steer but he’s forty pounds short of a ton.”

  Now that’s Texas. If you don’t understand it, it seems weird and bizarre. If you understand it, you love it and you love the Texans, and your understanding has to be based on the fact that the underlying keynote of the Texan is sincerity. If he likes you, he wants to do everything he can for you.

  There is the old story of the Texan who went out to lunch with his friend. After lunch the friend stopped in at a Cadillac agency to look over a new car he was thinking of buying.

  When he finally made up his mind to buy the car, the Texan whipped out his checkbook. “Here,” he said, “this one is on me. You paid for the lunch.”

  That story is probably an exaggeration, but it is nevertheless typical.

  My friend John Ben Shepperd is a Texan. When he embarked upon a career of law enforcement as attorney general of Texas, he went all the way. Entirely at his own expense he published a newsletter roundup of crime and justice for the Lone Star State. He tried to see that all law enforcement officers knew what the law was.

  As my friend the Honorable Park Street, a prominent trial attornery of San Antonio and for years an associate of mine on the Court of Last Resort, expressed it, “Many a criminal is caught in Texas by a cowboy-booted constable or sheriff whose standard equipment includes a .45 revolver and a blue-backed Peace
Officer’s Handbook, written by John Ben Shepperd.”

  “Crime,” drawls John Ben Shepperd, “is not sluggish or unintelligent. It plays infinite variations on its own theme, developing new forms and methods. Like the hare and the tortoise, it outruns us unless we plod relentlessly along carrying the law forward on our backs.”

  From time to time, I made talks on law enforcement in Texas while John Ben Shepperd was the attorney general of the state.

  From the time my group arrived at the borders of Texas, we would be met by assistant attorneys general, airplanes and prominent citizens. We would be whisked from place to place at breath-taking schedule, yet the whole itinerary would be carefully planned to the last detail: Planes would be waiting for us at dawn, would take off on schedule and arrive on schedule for breakfast appointments and conferences. Lunches would be at points several hundred miles distant and we would be back in Austin for dinner. The pace was relentless and terrific. Yet the assistants assured me that this was the tempo at which John Ben Shepperd conducted his office.

  Heaven knows how many honors were conferred upon him. I do know that he was the deserving recipient of three honorary Doctor of Laws degrees, and I also know that one of the honors he valued at the top of the list was a simple plaque presented to him by United Mothers and Wives of Duval County. It says, “To John Ben Shepperd, who purchased with courage and Christian integrity the right of our children to grow up uncorrupted and unafraid.”

  And so I dedicate this book to my friend—

  THE HONORABLE JOHN BEN SHEPPERD

  —Erie Stanley Gardner

  Temecula, 1955

  Chapter 1

  Perry Mason eyed the brief which Jackson, his law clerk, had submitted for his approval.

  Della Street, sitting across the desk from the lawyer, correctly interpreted the expression on Mason’s face.

  “What was wrong with it?” she asked.

  “Quite a few things,” Mason said. “In the first place, I’ve had to shorten it from ninety-six pages to thirty-two.”

  “Good heavens,” Della said. “Jackson told me he had already shortened it twice and he couldn’t take out another word.”

  Mason grinned. “How are we fixed for typists, Della?”

  “Stella is down with the flu and Annie is simply snowed under an avalanche of work.”

  “Then we’ll have to get an outside typist,” Mason told her. “This brief has to be ready for the printer tomorrow.”

  “All right. I’ll call the agency and have a typist sent up right away,” Della Street promised.

  “In the meantime,” Mason told her, “I’m going over this thing once again and see if I can’t take out another four or five pages. Briefs shouldn’t be written to impress the client. They should be concise, and above all, the writer should see that the Court has a clear grasp of the facts in the case before there is any argument about the law. The judges know the law. If they don’t, they have clerks who can look it up.”

  Mason picked up a thick blue pencil, held it poised in his hand, and once more started reading through the sheaf of pages, which already showed signs of heavy editing. Della Street went to the outer office to telephone for a typist.

  When she returned Mason looked up. “Get one?”

  “The agency doesn’t have one at the moment. That is, those they have are rather mediocre. I told them you wanted one who is fast, accurate and willing; that you didn’t want to have to read this thing through again and find a lot of typographical errors.”

  Mason nodded, went on with his editing. “When can we expect one, Della?”

  “They promised to have someone who would finish it by two-thirty tomorrow afternoon. But they said it might be a while before they could locate just the girl they wanted. I told them there were thirty-two pages.”

  “Twenty-nine and a half,” Mason corrected, smilingly. “I’ve just cut out another two and a half pages.”

  Mason was just finishing his final editing half an hour later when Gertie, the office receptionist, opened the door and said, “The typist is here, Mr. Mason.”

  Mason nodded and stretched back in his chair. Della started to pick up the brief, but hesitated as Gertie came in and carefully closed the door behind her.

  “What’s the trouble, Gertie?”

  “What did you say to frighten her, Mr. Mason?”

  Mason glanced at Della Street.

  “Heavens,” Della said, “I didn’t talk with her at all. We just rang up Miss Mosher at the agency.”

  “Well,” Gertie said, lowering her voice, “this girl’s scared to death.”

  Mason flashed a quick smile at Della Street. Gertie’s tendency to romanticize and dramatize every situation was so well known that it was something of an office joke.

  “What did you do to frighten her, Gertie?”

  “Me! What did I do? Nothing! I was answering a call at the switchboard. When I turned around, this girl was standing there by the reception desk. I hadn’t heard her come in. She tried to say something, but she could hardly talk. She just stood there. I didn’t think so much of it at the time, but afterward, when I got to thinking it over, I realized that she was sort of holding on the desk. I’ll bet her knees were weak and she—”

  “Never mind what you thought,” Mason interrupted, puzzled. “Let’s find out what happened, Gertie. What did you tell her?”

  “I just said, ‘I guess you’re the new typist,’ and she nodded. I said, ‘Well, you sit over at that desk and I’ll get the work for you.’”

  “And what did she do?”

  “She went over to the chair and sat down at the desk.”

  Mason said, “All right, Gertie. Thanks for telling us.”

  “She’s absolutely terrified,” Gertie insisted.

  “Well, that’s fine,” Mason said. “Some girls are that way when they’re starting on a new job. As I remember, Gertie, you had your troubles when you first came here, didn’t you?”

  “Troubles!” Gertie exclaimed. “Mr. Mason, after I got in the office and realized I’d forgotten to take the gum out of my mouth, I was just absolutely gone. I turned to jelly. I didn’t know what to do. I—”

  “Well, get back to the board,” Mason told her. “I think I can hear it buzzing from here.”

  “Oh Lord, yes,” Gertie said. “I can hear it now myself.”

  She jerked open the door and made a dash for the switchboard in the outer office.

  Mason handed Della Street the brief and said, “Go out and get her started, Della.”

  When Della Street came back at the end of ten minutes Mason asked, “How’s our terrified typist, Della?”

  Della Street said, “If that’s a terrified typist, let’s call Miss Mosher and tell her to frighten all of them before sending them out.”

  “Good?” Mason asked.

  “Listen,” Della Street said.

  She eased open the door to the outer office. The sound of clattering typewriter keys came through in a steady staccato.

  “Sounds like hail on a tin roof,” Mason said.

  Della Street closed the door. “I’ve never seen anything like it. That girl pulled the typewriter over to her, ratcheted in the paper, looked at the copy, put her hands over the keyboard and that typewriter literally exploded into action. And yet, somehow, Chief, I think Gertie was right. I think she became frightened at the idea of coming up here. It may be that she knows something about you, or your fame has caused her to become self-conscious. After all,” Della Street added dryly, “you’re not entirely unknown, you know.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “let’s get at that pile of mail and skim off a few of the important letters. At that rate the brief will be done in plenty of time.”

  Della Street nodded.

  “You have her at the desk by the door to the law library?”

  “That seemed to be the only place to put her, Chief. I fixed up the desk there when I knew we were going to need an extra typist. You know how Stella is about anyone usin
g her typewriter. She thinks a strange typist throws it all out of kilter.”

  Mason nodded, said, “If this girl is good, Della, you might arrange to keep her on for a week or two. We can keep her busy, can’t we?”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Better ring up Miss Mosher and tell her.”

  Della Street hesitated. “Would it be all right if we waited until we’ve had a chance to study her work? She’s fast, all right, but we’d better be sure she’s accurate.”

  Mason nodded, said, “Good idea, Della. Let’s wait and see.”

  Chapter 2

  Della Street placed a sheaf of pages on Mason’s desk. “Those are the first ten pages of the brief, Chief.”

  Mason looked at the typewritten sheets, gave a low whistle and said, “Now that’s what I call typing!”

  Della Street picked up one of the pages, tilted it so that the light reflected from the smooth surface. “I’ve tried this with two or three sheets,” she said, “and I can’t see where there’s been a single erasure. She has a wonderful touch and she certainly is hammering it out.”

  Mason said, “Ring up Miss Mosher. Find out something about this girl. What’s her name, Della?”

  “Mae Wallis.”

  “Get Miss Mosher on the line.”

  Della Street picked up the telephone, said to Gertie at the switchboard, “Mr. Mason wants Miss Mosher at the secretarial agency, Gertie…. Never mind, I’ll hold the line.”

  A moment later Della Street said, “Hello, Miss Mosher? … Oh, she is? … Well, I’m calling about the typist she sent up to Mr. Mason’s office. This is Della Street, Mr. Mason’s secretary…. Are you sure? … Well, she must have left a note somewhere…. Yes, yes … well, I’m sorry…. No, we don’t want two girls …. No, no. Miss Mosher sent one up—a Mae Wallis. I’m trying to find out whether she’ll be available for steady work during the next week…. Please ask Miss Mosher to call when she comes in.”

  Della Street hung up the phone, turned to Perry Mason. “Miss Mosher is out. The girl she left in charge doesn’t know about anyone having been sent up. She found a note on the desk to get us a typist. It was a memo Miss Mosher left before she went out. The names of three girls were on it, and this assistant has been trying to locate the girls. One of them was laid up with flu, another one was on a job, and she was trying to locate the third when I called in.”