The Case of the Terrified Typist

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  “That’s not like Miss Mosher,” Mason said. “She’s usually very efficient. When she sent this girl up, she should have destroyed the memo. Oh, well, it doesn’t make any difference.”

  “Miss Mosher’s due back in about an hour,” Della Street said. “I left word for her to call when she comes in.”

  Again Mason tackled the work on his desk, stopping to see a client who had a three-thirty appointment, then returning to dictation.

  At four-thirty Della Street went out to the outer office, came back and said, “She’s still going like a house afire, Chief. She’s really pounding them out.”

  Mason said, “That copy had been pretty badly hashed up and blue-penciled with strike-outs and interlineations.”

  “It doesn’t seem to bother her a bit,” Della Street said. “There’s lightning in that girl’s finger tips. She—”

  The telephone on Della Street’s desk shrilled insistently. Della Street, with her hand on the receiver, finished the sentence, “… certainly knows how to play a tune on a keyboard.”

  She picked up the receiver, said, “Hello…. Oh, yes, Miss Mosher. We were calling about the typist you sent up…. What? … You didn’t? … Mae Wallis? … She said she came from your agency. She said you sent her…. Why, yes, that’s what I understood she said…. Well, I’m sorry, Miss Mosher. There’s been some mistake—but this girl’s certainly competent…. Why, yes, she’s got the work almost finished. I’m terribly sorry, I’ll speak with her and—Are you going to be there for a while? … Well, I’ll speak with her and call you back. But that’s what she said … yes, from your agency …. All right, let me call you back.”

  Della Street dropped the phone into its cradle.

  “Mystery?” Mason asked.

  “I’ll say. Miss Mosher says she hasn’t sent anyone up. She’s had a hard time getting girls lined up, particularly ones with qualifications to suit you.”

  “Well, she got one this time,” Mason said, fingering through the brief. “Or at least someone got her.”

  “So what do we do?” Della Street asked.

  “By all means, find out where she came from. Are you sure she said Miss Mosher sent her?”

  “That’s what Gertie said.”

  “Are you,” Mason asked, “going entirely on what Gertie said?”

  Della Street nodded.

  “You didn’t talk it over with Miss Wallis?”

  “No. She was out there waiting to go to work. While I was talking with you, she found where the paper and carbons were kept in the desk. She’d ratcheted them into the machine, and just held out her hand for the copy. She asked if I wanted an original and three carbons. I said that we only used an original and two for stuff that was going to the printer. She said she had one extra carbon in the machine, but that she wouldn’t bother to take it out. She said that she’d only make an original and two on the next. Then she put the papers down on the desk, held her fingers poised over the keyboard for a second, then started banging out copy.”

  “Permit me,” Mason said, “to call your attention to something which clearly demonstrates the fallacy of human testimony. You were doubtless sincere in telling Miss Mosher that Mae Wallis said she had been sent up from her agency, but if you will recall Gertie’s exact words, you will remember that she said the girl seemed frightened and self-conscious, so Gertie asked her if she was the new typist. The girl nodded, and Gertie showed her to the desk. At no time did Gertie say to us that she asked her if Miss Mosher had sent her.”

  “Well,” Della Street said, “I had the distinct impression—”

  “Certainly you did,” Mason said. “So did I. Only long years of cross-examining witnesses have trained me to listen carefully to what a person actually says. I am quite certain that Gertie never told us she had specifically asked this girl if she came from Miss Mosher’s agency.”

  “Well, where could she have come from?”

  “Let’s get her in and ask her,” Mason said. “And let’s not let her get away, Della. I’d like to catch up on some of this back work tomorrow, and this girl is really a wonder.”

  Della Street nodded, left her desk, went to the outer office, returned in a moment and made motions of powdering her nose.

  “Did you leave word?” Mason asked.

  “Yes, I told Gertie to send her in as soon as she came back.”

  “How’s the brief coming?”

  Della Street said, “She’s well along with it. The work’s on her desk. It hasn’t been separated yet. The originals and carbons are together. She certainly does neat work, doesn’t she?”

  Mason nodded, tilted back in his swivel chair, lit a cigarette and said, “Well, we’ll wait until she shows up and see what she has to say for herself, Della. When you stop to think about this, it presents an intriguing problem.”

  After Mason had smoked a leisurely cigarette Della Street once more went to the outer office and again returned.

  Mason frowned, said, “She’s probably one of those high-strung girls who use up a lot of nervous energy banging away at the typewriter and then go for a complete rest, smoking a cigarette or …”

  “Or?” Della Street asked, as Mason paused.

  “…or taking a drink. Now, wait a minute, Della. Although there’s nothing particularly confidential about that brief, if we keep her on here for four or five days, she’s going to be doing some stuff that is confidential. Suppose you slip down to the powder room, Della, and see if perhaps our demon typist has a little flask in her purse and is now engaged in chewing on a clove.”

  “Also,” Della Street said, “I’ll take a whiff to see if I smell marijuana smoke.”

  “Know it when you smell it?” Mason asked, smiling.

  “Of course,” she retorted. “I woudn’t be working for one of the greatest trial attorneys in the country without having learned at least to recognize some of the more common forms of law violation.”

  “All right,” Mason said. “Go on down and tell her that we want to see her, Della. Try and chat with her informally for a minute and size her up a bit. You didn’t talk with her very much, did you?”

  “Just got her name, and that’s about all. I remember asking her how she spelled her first name, and she told me M-A-E.”

  Mason nodded. Della Street left the room and was back within a couple of minutes.

  “She isn’t there, Chief.”

  “Well, where the devil is she?” Mason asked.

  Della Street shrugged her shoulders. “She just got up and went out.”

  “Say anything to Gertie about where she was going?”

  “Not a word. She just got up and walked out, and Gertie assumed she was going to the washroom.”

  “Now that’s strange,” Mason said. “Isn’t that room kept locked?”

  “Della Street nodded.

  “She should have asked for a key,” Mason said. “Even if she didn’t know it was locked, she’d have asked Gertie how to find it. How about her hat and coat?”

  “Apparently she wasn’t wearing any. She has her purse with her.”

  “Run out and pick up the last of the work she was doing, will you, Della? Let’s take a look at it.”

  Della Street went out and returned with the typed pages. Mason looked them over.

  “She has a few pages to go,” Della Street said.

  Mason pursed his lips, said, “It shouldn’t take her long, Della, I certainly cut the insides out of those last few pages. That’s where Jackson was waxing eloquent, bombarding the Court with a peroration on liberties, constitutional rights and due process of law.”

  “He was so proud of that,” Della Street said. “You didn’t take it all out, did you?”

  “I took out most of it,” Mason said. “An appellate court isn’t interested in eloquence. It’s interested in the law and the facts to which it is going to apply the law.

  “Good Lord, Della, do you realize that if that appellate judges tried to read every line of all the briefs that are submitted to
them, they could work for twelve hours each day without doing one other thing, and still couldn’t read the briefs?”

  “Good heavens, no! Aren’t they supposed to read them?”

  “Theoretically, yes,” Mason said. “But actually, it’s a practical impossibility.”

  “So what do they do?”

  “Most of them look through the briefs, get the law points, skip the impassioned pleas, then turn the briefs over to their law clerks.

  “It’s my experience that a man does a lot better when he sets forth an absolutely impartial, thoroughly honest statement of facts, including those that are unfavorable to his side as well as those that are favorable, thus giving the appellate court the courtesy of assuming the judge knows the law.

  “The attorney can be of help in letting the judge know the case to which the law is to be applied and the facts in the case. But if the judge didn’t know what the law was, he wouldn’t have been placed on the appellate bench in the first place. Della, what the devil do you suppose happened to that girl?”

  “She must be in the building somewhere.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Well, there again—well, it’s just one of those presumptions. She certainly is coming back for her money. She put in a whale of an afternoon’s work.”

  “She should have stayed to finish the brief,” Mason said. “It wouldn’t have taken her over another forty or fifty minutes, at the rate she was working.”

  “Chief,” Della Street said, “you seem to be acting on the assumption that she’s walked out and left us.”

  “It’s a feeling I have.”

  Della Street said, “She probably went down to the cigar counter to buy some cigarettes.”

  “In which event, she’d have been back long before this.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. But … but, Chief, she’s bound to collect the money for the work she’s done.”

  Mason carefully arranged the pages of the brief. “Well, she’s helped us out of quite a hole.” He broke off as a series of peculiarly spaced knocks sounded on the corridor door of his private office.

  “That will be Paul Drake,” Mason said. “I wonder what brings him around. Let him in, Della.”

  Della Street opened the door. Paul Drake, head of the Drake Detective Agency, with offices down the corridor by the elevator, grinned at them and said, “What were you people doing during all of the excitement?”

  “Excitement?” Mason asked.

  “Cops crawling all over the building,” Drake said. “And you two sitting here engaged in the prosaic activities of running a humdrum law office.”

  “Darned if we weren’t,” Mason said. “Sit down, Paul. Have a cigarette. Tell us what it’s all about. We’ve been putting in our time writing briefs.”

  “You would,” Drake told him, sliding down into the big overstuffed chair reserved for clients, and lighting a cigarette.

  “What’s the trouble?” Mason asked.

  “Police chasing some dame up here on this floor,” Drake said. “Didn’t they search your office?”

  Mason flashed a swift, warning glance at Della Street.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “They must have.”

  Mason said to Della Street, “See if Gertie’s gone home, Della.”

  Della Street opened the door to the outer office, said, “She’s just going home, Chief.”

  “Can you catch her?”

  “Sure. She’s just at the door.” Della Street raised her voice. “Oh, Gertie! Can you look in here for a minute?”

  Gertie, ready to leave for the evening, came to stand in the doorway of the office. “What is it, Mr. Mason?”

  “Any officers in here this afternoon?” Mason asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Gertie said. “There was some sort of a burglary down the corridor.”

  Again Mason caught Della’s eye.

  “What did they want?” Mason asked.

  “Wanted to know if everyone in the office was accounted for, whether you had anyone in with you, and whether we had seen anything of a girl burglar.”

  “And what did you tell them?” Mason asked, keeping his voice entirely without expression.

  “I told them you were alone, except for Miss Street, your confidential secretary. That we only had the regular employees here in the office and a relief typist from our regular agency who was working on a brief.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then they left. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Mason said. “I was just wondering, that’s all.”

  “Should I have notified you? I know you don’t like to be disturbed when you’re working on correspondence.”

  “No, it’s all right,” Mason said. “I just wanted to get it straight, Gertie. That’s all. Good night, and have a good time.”

  “How did you know I have a date?” Gertie asked.

  “I saw it in your eyes,” Mason said, grinning. “Good night, Gertie.”

  “Good night,” she said.

  “Well,” Drake said, “there you are. If you’d happened to have had some woman client in your private office, the police would have insisted on talking to you and on getting a look at the client.”

  “You mean they searched the floor?” Mason asked.

  “They really went through the joint,” Drake told him. “You see, the office where the trouble occurred is right across from the women’s restroom. One of the stenographers, opening the restroom door, saw this young woman whose back was toward her fumbling with the lock on the office door, trying first one key then another.

  “The stenographer became suspicious. She stood there watching. About the fourth or fifth key, the girl managed to get into the office.”

  “What office was it?” Mason asked.

  “The South African Gem Importing and Exploration Company.”

  “Go on, Paul.”

  “Well, this stenographer was a pretty smart babe. She telephoned the manager of the building and then she went out to stand by the elevators to see if this girl would come out and take an elevator. If she did that, the stenographer had made up her mind she’d try to follow.”

  “That could have been dangerous,” Mason said.

  “I know, but this is one very spunky gal.”

  “She could have recognized the woman?”

  “Not the woman. But she knew the way the woman was dressed. You know the way women are, Perry. She hadn’t seen the woman’s face, but she knew the exact color and cut of her skirt and jacket, the shade of her stockings and shoes; the way she had her hair done, the color of her hair, and all that.”

  “I see,” Mason said, glancing surreptitiously at Della Street. “That description was, of course, given to the police?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And they didn’t find her?”

  “No, they didn’t find a thing. But the manager of the building gave them a passkey to get into the office of the gem importing company. The place looked as if a cyclone had struck it. Evidently, this girl had made a very hurried search. Drawers had been pulled out, papers dumped out on the floor, a chair had been overturned, a typewriter stand upset, with the typewriter lying on its side on the floor.”

  “No sign of the girl?”

  “No sign of anyone. The two partners who own the business, chaps named Jefferson and Irving, came in right on the heels of the police. They had been out to lunch, and they were amazed to find how much destruction had taken place during their brief absence.”

  Mason said, “The girl probably ran down the stairs to another floor and took the elevator from there.”

  Drake shook his head. “The building manager got this stenographer who had given the description, and they went down to stand at the elevators. They watched everyone who went out. When the police showed up—and believe me, that was only a matter of a minute or two; these radio cars are right on the job—well, when the police showed up, the manager of the building briefed them on what had happened. So the police went up and t
he girl and the manager continued to stand at the elevators. The police weren’t conspicuous about it, but they dropped in at every office on the floor, just checking up.”

  “And I suppose the restrooms,” Mason said.

  “Oh, sure. They sent a couple of girls into the restrooms right away. That was the first place they looked.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “we seem to be doing all right, Paul. If I don’t go out and get tangled up in crime, crime comes to me—at least indirectly. So Jefferson and Irving came in right after the police arrived, is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And the manager of the building was down there at the elevators, waiting for this girl to come out?”

  “That’s right.”

  Mason said, “He knew, of course, the office that the girl was burglarizing?”

  “Of course. He told the police what office it was and all about it. He even gave them a passkey so they could get in.”

  “And then he waited down there at the elevators with the stenographer who had seen this woman burglarizing the office?”

  “That’s right.”

  “A lot of elaborate precautions to catch a sneak thief.”

  “Well, I’m not supposed to talk about clients, Perry, and I wouldn’t to anyone else, but as you know, I represent the owners of the building. It seems this gem importing company is expecting half a million dollars’ worth of diamonds before long.”

  “The deuce!”

  “That’s right. You know the way they do things these days—insure ’em and ship ’em by mail.”

  “The strange thing,” Mason said thoughtfully, “is that if Irving and Jefferson came in right on the heels of the police, with the manager of the building standing down there at the elevators, he didn’t stop them and tell them that they’d find police in their office and—

  “What’s the matter?” Mason asked, as Drake suddenly sat bolt upright.