The Case of the Velvet Claws pm-1

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  “Who do you represent?” he asked.

  “A possible advertiser in your paper,” said Mason.

  “All right. Go on. Let’s hear the rest of it,” Locke invited.

  “You know the rest of it,” said Mason.

  “Even if I did, I wouldn’t admit it,” Locke replied. “I don’t do anything except sell advertising space. You’ve got to come out in the open. You’re the one that comes all the way. I don’t budge an inch.”

  “Okay,” Mason said. “As an advertiser in your paper, I wouldn’t like to see it mix into that murder too closely. That is, I wouldn’t like to have it mention the name of any witness who might have been there, but whose name wasn’t included on the list which was given to the District Attorney. I would particularly dislike to see your paper come out with the name of some prominent witness whose name had been omitted from that list, and ask why he was not summoned as a witness and questioned. And, still speaking as an advertiser, I would dislike very much to see any comment made in any way about this witness having a companion with him, or any surmises as to the identity of that companion. Now then, how much is advertising space going to cost me?”

  “Well,” said Locke, “if you’re going to dictate the policies of the paper, you’ll have to take quite a bit of advertising. It would have to be handled under a contract. I would draw up an advertising contract with you, and agree to sell you the space over a period of time. The agreement would contain a clause for liquidated damages in the event you broke the contract. Then, if you didn’t want to take all the advertising, you could pay over the sum of liquidated damages.”

  Perry Mason said: “I could pay over that sum just as soon as I broke the contract?”

  “Sure,” said Locke.

  “And I could break the contract just as soon as it was drawn up, eh?”

  “No,” said Locke. “We wouldn’t like that. You’d have to wait a day or two.”

  “There’d be no action taken while I was waiting, of course,” said Mason.

  “Of course.”

  Mason took out a cigarette case, fished out a cigarette with his long, capable fingers, lit it, and surveyed Locke with eyes that were cold and uncordial.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ve said everything I came to say. Now I’m listening.”

  Locke got up from his chair and took several paces up and down the floor. His head was thrust forward, and his chocolate colored eyes blinked rapidly.

  “I’ve got to think this thing over,” he said.

  Mason took out his watch and looked at it. “All right, you’ve got ten minutes to do your thinking in.”

  “No, no,” said Locke. “It’s going to take a little while to think it over.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Mason.

  “I say it is.”

  “You’ve got ten minutes,” insisted Mason.

  “You’re the one that came to me,” said Locke. “I didn’t come to you.”

  Mason said: “Don’t be foolish. Remember that I’m representing a client. You’ve got to make a proposition to me, and I’ve got to see that it’s transmitted to my client. And it isn’t going to be easy to get in touch with that client.”

  Locke raised his eyebrows. “Like that, eh?” he said.

  “Like that,” said Mason.

  Locke said: “Well, maybe I could think it over in ten minutes. But I’ve got to call the office.”

  “Okay,” said Mason. “Go ahead and call your office. I’ll wait right here.”

  Locke went at once to the elevator and went down to the main floor. Mason strolled to the railing of the mezzanine and watched him cross the lobby. Locke did not go to the telephone booths, but left the hotel.

  Mason went to the elevators, pressed the button, went down to the lobby, straight through the door, and crossed the street. He stood in a doorway, smoking and watching the buildings across the street.

  After three or four minutes, Locke came out of a drug store and walked into the hotel.

  Mason crossed the street, entered the hotel a few steps behind Locke, and followed him until he came abreast of the telephone booths. Then Mason stepped into one of the telephone booths, left the door open, thrust out his head and called: “Oh, Locke.”

  Locke whirled, his chocolate brown eyes suddenly wide with alarm, and stared at Mason.

  “Got to thinking,” explained Mason, “that I’d better telephone and see if I could get in touch with my client. So that I could give you an immediate answer. But I can’t get a call through. Nobody answers. I’m waiting to get a nickel back.”

  Locke nodded. His eyes were still suspicious.

  “Let the nickel go,” he said. “Our time’s worth more than that.”

  Mason said: “Maybe yours is,” and stepped back to the telephone. He jiggled the receiver two or three times, then shrugged his shoulders with an exclamation of disgust, and left the telephone booth. The two men rode together in the elevator to the mezzanine floor, and returned to the chairs they had occupied.

  “Well?” said Mason.

  “I’ve been thinking the thing over,” said Frank Locke, and hesitated.

  Mason commented, dryly: “Well, I presumed that you had.”

  “You know,” said Locke, “the situation that you’ve brought up, without mentioning any names, might have a very important political angle.”

  “Again,” said Mason, “still without mentioning any names, it might not. But there’s no use you and me sitting here trying to kid each other like a couple of horse traders. What’s your price?”

  “The advertising contract,” said Locke, “would have to have a proviso that in the event it was breached, a payment of twenty thousand dollars would be made as liquidated damages.”

  “You’re crazy!” exclaimed Mason.

  Frank Locke shrugged his shoulders. “You’re the one that wanted to buy the advertising,” he said. “I don’t know as I’m anxious to sell it to you.”

  Mason got to his feet. “You don’t act as though you wanted to sell anything,” he remarked. He walked to the elevator and Locke followed him.

  “Maybe you’ll want to buy some advertising again sometime,” Locke said. “Our rates are somewhat elastic, you know.”

  “Meaning that they’re going down?” queried Mason.

  “Meaning that they may go up, in this case.”

  “Oh,” said Mason, shortly.

  He paused abruptly, and whirled, staring at Locke with cold, hostile eyes.

  “Listen,” he said. “I know what I’m up against. And I’m telling you right now that you can’t get away with it.”

  “Can’t get away with what?” said Locke.

  “You know damned well what you can’t get away with,” said Mason. “By God! You fellows have run a blackmailing sheet here and made people eat out of your hands long enough. I’m telling you right now where you head in!”

  Locke regained something of his composure, and shrugged his shoulders.

  “I’ve had fellows try to tell me that before,” he said.

  “I didn’t say I was trying to tell you,” said Mason. “I said I was telling you.”

  “And I heard you,” said Locke. “There’s no need of raising your voice.”

  “Okay,” said Mason. “Just so you know what I mean. By God! I’m starting after you fellows right now.”

  Locke smiled. “Very well. In the meantime, would you mind pressing the elevator button, or else get out of the way, so that I can press it.”

  Mason turned and pressed the button. They rode down in silence, walked across the lobby.

  When they reached the street, Locke smiled.

  “Well,” he said, his brown eyes staring at Perry Mason, “there’s no hard feelings.”

  Perry Mason turned his back.

  “The hell there ain’t,” he said.

  Chapter 3

  Perry Mason sat in his automobile, and lit a cigarette from the butt of the one he had just smoked. His face was set in lines of patien
t concentration, his eyes glittered. He seemed like some pugilist seated in his corner, waiting for the gong to ring. Yet there was no expression of nervousness upon his face. The only thing which indicated strain was the fact that he had been lighting cigarettes, one after the other, for more than an hour.

  Directly across the street was the building in which Spicy Bits had its editorial offices.

  Mason was half way through the last cigarette in the package, when Frank Locke came out of the building.

  Locke walked with a furtive manner, glancing about him mechanically, with eyes that didn’t seem to be looking for anything in particular, but were peering, purely as a matter of habit. His appearance was that of a fox who has been prowling until after daylight and is caught slinking back to his lair by the rays of the early sun.

  Perry Mason flipped away the cigarette and pressed his foot on the starter. The light coupe slid away from the curb and into the stream of traffic.

  Locke turned to the right at the corner and hailed a taxicab. Mason trailed the cab closely until traffic thinned slightly, when he dropped farther behind.

  Frank Locke got out in the middle of the block, paid off the cab, and went down an areaway where he knocked on the door. A panel slid back; then the door opened. Mason could see a man bow and smile. Locke walked in and the man slammed the door shut.

  Perry Mason parked his car half a block away, took out a fresh package of cigarettes, broke the cellophane, and started smoking again.

  Frank Locke was in the speakeasy for three quarters of an hour. Then he came out, looked quickly about him, and walked to the corner. The alcohol had given him a certain air of assurance, and caused him to throw his shoulders back slightly.

  Perry Mason watched while Locke found a cruising cab, and climbed in. Mason trailed along behind the cab until Locke discharged it in front of a hotel. Then he parked his car, went into the hotel lobby, and looked cautiously around him. There was no sign of Locke.

  Mason looked the lobby over. The place was a commercial type of hotel, catering to salesmen and conventions. There was a line of telephone booths, with an operator stationed at a desk. Quite a few people were in the lobby.

  Perry Mason moved slowly and cautiously about, looking the people over. Then he walked over to the desk.

  “Can you tell me,” he asked the clerk, “whether or not Frank Locke has a room here?”

  The clerk ran his finger down the card index system, and said, “We have a John Lock.”

  “No,” said Mason, “this is Frank Locke.”

  “He’s not with us. Sorry,” said the clerk.

  “That’s all right,” said Mason, turning away.

  He crossed the lobby to the dining room and looked in there. There were a few people eating at the tables but Locke was not among them. There was a barber shop in the basement, and Mason went down the stairs and peered in through the glass partition.

  Locke was in the third chair from the end, his face covered with hot towels. Mason recognized him by the tweed suit, and tan shoes.

  Mason nodded and went back up the stairs to the lobby. He crossed to the girl at the telephone desk.

  “All the booth calls are handled through you?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Okay. I can show you how to pick up twenty dollars pretty easy.”

  She stared at him, and asked, “Are you kidding me?”

  Mason shook his head. “Listen,” he said, “I want to get a number, and that’s all.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Just this,” he said, “I’m going to put through a call for a man. He probably won’t take the call right away, but will come up here to get it later on. He’s in the barber shop now. After he talks with me, he’s going to call a number. I want to know what that number is.”

  “But,” said the girl, “suppose he doesn’t put the call through here?”

  “In that case,” Mason told her, “you’ve done the best you can, and you get the twenty bucks anyway.”

  “I’m not supposed to give out information about those things,” the girl protested.

  “That’s why you’re getting twenty bucks for it,” Mason said smiling. “That, and listening in on the call.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t listen in on a call, and tell you what was said.”

  “You don’t have to. I’ll tell you what’s said. All I want you to do is check up on it, so as to make sure that the number I get is the number I want.”

  She hesitated, looked furtively about her as though fearful that some one might know what they were talking about, merely from a casual inspection.

  Perry Mason took out two ten dollar bills from his pocket, folded them, and twisted them quietly.

  The eyes of the girl dropped to the bills, and remained there. “Okay,” she said, at length.

  Mason passed over the twenty dollars.

  “The man’s name,” he told her, “is Locke. I’ll call in in about two minutes, and have him paged. Now the conversation will be this. Locke will call a party and ask if it’s all right to pay four hundred dollars for information about the name of a woman. The party will tell him it’s all right.”

  The girl nodded her head, slowly.

  “Do incoming calls come in through you?” asked Mason.

  “No,” she said, “not unless you ask for station thirteen.”

  “All right, I’ll ask for station thirteen.”

  He grinned at her, and went out.

  He found a drug store in the next block which had a public telephone. He called the number of the hotel, and asked for station thirteen.

  “Okay,” he said, when he heard the girl’s voice. “I’m calling for Frank Locke. Have him paged and be sure that you tell him to come to your station for the call. He probably won’t come now, but I’ll hold the line. He’s in the barber shop. But don’t tell the bellboy that I said he was. Simply tell him to look in the barber shop.”

  “I getcha,” said the girl.

  He held the line for some two minutes, and then the girl’s voice said, “He said to leave your number, and he’d call you back.”

  “That’s fine,” said Mason, “the number is Harrison 23850. But tell the bellboy to be sure that he goes to your station to get the call.”

  “Sure, don’t worry about that.”

  “All right,” said Mason, “tell him to ask for Mr. Smith at that number.”

  “Any initials?”

  “No, just Smith, and the number. That’s all.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I gotcha.”

  Mason hung up.

  He waited approximately ten minutes, and then the telephone rang.

  He answered it in a high-pitched, querulous voice, and heard Locke’s voice speaking cautiously at the other end of the wire.

  “Listen,” said Mason, using the high-pitched voice, “let’s not have any misunderstanding about this. You’re Frank Locke from Spicy Bits?”

  “Yes,” said Locke. “Who are you, and how did you know where to reach me?”

  “I got into the office about two minutes after you’d left, and they told me that I could reach you in a speakeasy out on Webster Street, or later on, here in the hotel.”

  “How the devil did they know that?” asked Locke.

  “I don’t know,” said Mason. “That’s what they told me. That’s all.”

  “Well, what was it you wanted?”

  “Listen,” said Mason, “I know you don’t want to talk business over the telephone. But this has got to be handled fast. You folks aren’t in business for your health. I know that, the same as everybody else does. And I ain’t in business for my health either.”

  “Listen,” Locke’s voice was cautious. “I don’t know who you are, but you’d better come and see me personally. How far are you from the hotel here?”

  Mason said, “I’m nowheres near the hotel. Now listen, I can give you something that’s valuable to you. I won’t give it out over the telephone, and, if you don’t want it, I’ve go
t another market for the information. All I want to know is whether or not you’re interested. Would you like to find out the name of the woman that was with Harrison Burke last night?”

  There was silence over the telephone for some four or five seconds.

  “We’re a publication that deals with spicy bits of information about prominent people,” said Locke, “and we’re always glad to receive any information that is news.”

  “Nix on that hooey,” said Mason. “You know what happened. And I know what happened. A list was made up, and Harrison Burke’s name wasn’t on that list. Neither was the name of the woman who was with him. Now, is it worth a thousand dollars to you to have absolute proof who that woman was?”

  “No,” said Locke, firmly and decisively.

  “Well, that’s all right,” said Mason hastily. “Is it worth five hundred to you?”

  “No.”

  “Well,” insisted Mason, putting a whining note in his voice, “I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll let you have it for four hundred dollars. And that’s absolutely bottom price. I’ve got another market that’s offering three hundred and fifty. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble getting you located, and it’s going to take four hundred for you to sit in.”

  “Four hundred is a lot of money.”

  “The information I’ve got,” said Mason, “is a lot of information.”

  “You’d have to give me something besides the information,” said Locke. “I’d want something we could use as proof if we ran into a libel suit.”

  “Sure,” said Mason, “you give me the four hundred dollars when I give you the proof.”

  Locke was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, “Well, I’ll have to think it over a little while. I’ll call you back and let you know.”

  “I’ll wait here at this number,” Mason said. “You call me back here,” and hung up.

  He sat on a stool at the ice cream counter and drank a glass of plain carbonated water, without haste and without showing any emotion. His eyes were thoughtful, but his manner was calm.

  At the end of six or seven minutes the telephone rang again, and Mason answered it. “Smith talking,” he whined.

  Locke’s voice came over the wire. “Yes, we’d be willing to pay that price provided we could get the proof.”