The Case of the Baited Hook

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  He slammed the telephone receiver back on its hook, then suddenly started to laugh. “Dammit,” he said to Della Street. “One of those frosty, reserved, human adding-machines gets under my skin worse than a dozen shysters who try browbeating tactics.”

  He walked over to the closet and put on his hat.

  “Going over to beard the lion in his den?” she asked.

  “I’m going over to throw a scare into that old buzzard he’ll never forget,” Mason said, “and I’m going to skate on damn thin ice doing it. I hope he has his lawyer there, and I hope his lawyer tries to argue with me. . . . Wish me luck, sweetheart, because I’ll need it.”

  It was exactly fifteen minutes later that Perry Mason entered the imposing offices of Loftus & Cale. An attractive young woman looked up from a desk on which a brass plaque stamped “Information” had been fastened to a prismatic-shaped bit of wood.

  “Mr. Loftus,” Mason said.

  “Your name?”

  “Mason.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Mr. Loftus is expecting you.”

  “That’s nice,” Mason said.

  “Will you wait a few minutes?”

  Mason said, “No.”

  She appeared ill at ease. “Just a moment,” she said, and, turning in the swivel chair, plugged in a telephone line. “Mr. Mason is here, Mr. Loftus. He says he won’t wait.”

  There was evidently an argument at the other end of the line. The young woman listened attentively, then said simply, “But he won’t wait, Mr. Loftus.”

  There followed another moment of silence, then she turned to smile at Perry Mason. “You may go right on in,” she said, indicating a gate which led to a hallway. “It’s the second door on the left.”

  Mason pushed through the gate, marched down the corridor, and opened a door marked “Mr. Loftus, Private.”

  The man who sat behind the massive mahogany desk was somewhere in the sixties, with florid complexion, a face which was inclined to jowls, a cold lackluster eye, and thin white hair.

  Mason smiled coldly. “I told you over the phone I wouldn’t wait,” he said.

  Loftus said, in a rasping, authoritative voice, which was evidently more accustomed to giving orders than asking favors, “Sit down. My attorney is on his way over here.”

  “If you’d told me that earlier,” Mason said, “I’d have made an appointment which would have suited his convenience.”

  Loftus clenched his right fist, extended it in front of him, and gently lowered it to the desk. There was something more impressive in the gesture than would have been the case had he banged the top of the desk with explosive violence. “I don’t like criminal lawyers,” he said.

  “Neither do I,” Mason admitted, seating himself in what appeared to be the most comfortable chair in the office.

  “But you’re a criminal lawyer.”

  “It depends upon what you mean,” Mason observed. “I’m a lawyer. I’m not a criminal.”

  “You defend criminals.”

  “What is your definition of a criminal?” Mason asked.

  “A man who has committed a crime.”

  “And who decides that he has committed a crime?”

  “Why, a jury, I suppose.”

  “Exactly,” Mason said, with a smile. “So far, I have been very fortunate in having juries agree with me that the persons I represented were not criminals.”

  Loftus said, “That isn’t conclusive.”

  “Judges think it is,” Mason said, still smiling.

  “What interest can a man of your ilk possibly have in our business?”

  “I don’t like that word ilk,” Mason observed. “It may be I won’t like your business. In any event, I told you why I was calling on you. If you’d given me the information I asked over the telephone, you might have spared yourself a disagreeable interview.”

  “It’ll be disagreeable to you,” Loftus said, “not to me. I hate to go to the expense of consulting my legal department every time some pettifogging attorney wants to pry into my business. . . . But now I’ve started, I’m going to see it through.”

  “Very commendable,” Mason observed, carefully selecting a cigarette from his cigarette case, and lighting it.

  “Well, aren’t you going to tell me what you want?”

  “Not until your lawyer gets here,” Mason said.

  “But you said you wouldn’t wait.”

  “I don’t like to wait in outer offices,” Mason observed, “unless it’s necessary, and I don’t like to discuss legal points of business with a man I’m going to trim unless his attorney is present. . . . Suppose we talk about baseball or politics.”

  Loftus half rose from his chair. His face assumed a slightly purplish tinge. “I’m going to warn you, young man,” he said, “that you’re due for the surprise of your life. Your rather spectacular courtroom victories have been made possible because you were pitted against underpaid public servants and political appointees. You’re going up against the best and highest-priced brains in the legal business now.”

  “That’s nice,” Mason said. “I always like to . . .”

  The door was pushed open. A tall, broad-shouldered man with high cheekbones came bursting into the office. He was carrying a brief case in his hand. “I told you not to see him until I got here,” he said to Loftus.

  Mason smiled affably. “I wouldn’t wait,” he said. “I take it you’re the legal department.”

  The man eyed him without cordiality. “I’m Ganten,” he said, “senior partner of Ganten, Kline & Shaw. You’re Mason. I’ve seen you in court. What do you want?”

  “I asked Mr. Loftus over the telephone,” Mason said, “to tell me what he knew of a transaction involving the sale of fifty thousand shares of stock in the Western Prospecting Company to Albert Tidings as trustee. He refused.”

  “He did quite right to refuse,” Ganten said coldly, seating himself and carefully placing his brief case on the floor by the side of his chair.

  Mason smiled. “Personally, I think it was poor judgment.”

  “I don’t care to have you question my judgment,” Loftus said angrily.

  Mason said, “Perhaps I’d better explain my position, and call your attention to certain facts. I’m representing Byrl Gailord, the beneficiary under the trust. . . . That is, I’ve been consulted in her behalf.”

  “Go ahead and represent her,” Loftus said. “We have nothing to do with what happens between her and the trustee.”

  “For your information,” Mason said, “Albert Tidings was killed.”

  Loftus and Ganten exchanged glances. Ganten said, “If you don’t mind, Mr. Loftus, I’ll handle the interview.”

  “I’m not going to be browbeaten,” Loftus said. “I read about Tidings’ death in the paper. It doesn’t mean a damn thing—not so far as . . .”

  “Please, Mr. Loftus,” Ganten interrupted. “Let me do the talking. This lawyer is trying to trap you into making some admission.”

  Mason laughed. “I was the one who suggested to Mr. Loftus that he have his attorney present at this interview.”

  Ganten said coldly, “Well, I’m here. Go ahead with the interview.”

  Mason seemed to be enjoying himself. He inhaled deeply, and then watched the cigarette smoke as he exhaled it through half-parted lips. “Unfortunately,” he said, “there seems to be some difference of opinion as to when Tidings met his death.”

  “What has that to do with the stock sale?” Loftus asked. “We had no infor—”

  “Please, Mr. Loftus,” Ganten interposed hastily.

  Mason said, “It may have a good deal to do with that stock sale. The transaction, as I understand it, was concluded by Mr. Tidings’ secretary. Tidings had left his office before the matter was concluded. Tidings was acting in the capacity of trustee.”

  “What does all that have to do with us?” Ganten asked.

  Mason said, “Simply this. The medical examiner claims that Tidings couldn’t possibly have been alive after t
en o’clock Tuesday morning.”

  “That’s poppycock,” Loftus said. “His secretary saw him after that. His secretary talked with him over the telephone after the deal had been concluded.”

  “His secretary might have been mistaken,” Mason said.

  “Bosh,” Loftus remarked explosively.

  Ganten said, “Apparently it hasn’t occurred to you, Mr. Mason, that the medical examiner might be mistaken.”

  “It has,” Mason admitted. “I’m willing to grant you the possibility that the medical examiner was mistaken. You’re not willing to grant me the possibility that it was Tidings’ secretary who made the mistake.”

  Ganten half turned in his chair so that he was facing Mason. “Is it your position,” he inquired coldly, “that if it should appear that Mr. Tidings was dead at the time the secretary concluded the transaction, there is any liability on the part of my clients?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars’ worth of it,” Mason announced cheerfully.

  Ganten assumed the manner of one talking to a child. “I am afraid, Mr. Mason, that your legal experience has been confined too much to courtroom technicalities, under the distorted rules of criminal procedure.”

  “Suppose you leave my legal experience out of it,” Mason suggested, “and get down to brass tacks.”

  “Very well,” Ganten announced, and then turned to Loftus. “There’s absolutely nothing to this, Mr. Loftus,” he said. “He hasn’t a leg to stand on. Even conceding for the sake of the argument that Tidings was dead at the time of the transaction, there can be no liability on your part. He can’t even question the authority of the trustee.

  “Under the law, the death of a trustee creates a vacancy which is filled by the appointment of another trustee in a court of competent jurisdiction. Until that appointment is made, the administrator of the decedent trustee assumes charge of the property. . . . There is no question but what Mr. Mattern was acting in accordance with specific instructions given by Mr. Tidings. There’s absolutely nothing to this claim.”

  Loftus said, with a smile which was almost a sneer, “You see, Mr. Mason, Mr. Ganten is an expert in matters of this sort. He’s a specialist on contracts.”

  “And contractual relationships,” Ganten supplemented.

  “That’s nice,” Mason said. “How is he on the law of agency?”

  “I have also specialized on that,” Ganten said.

  “Then,” Mason observed, “perhaps you have given some thought to the law of agency as it applies to this case.”

  “It doesn’t apply to this case at all,” Ganten observed patronizingly. “My clients are acting as brokers. That’s a definite subdivision of the agency relationship. They act as intermediaries . . .”

  “Forget it,” Mason said. “I’m talking about Mattern.”

  “About Mattern!” Ganten said in surprise. “What in the world does he have to do with it?”

  Mason said with a smile, “You closed the deal with Mattern. You treated Mattern as the agent of Tidings. He was the agent of Tidings. But the very minute Tidings died, that relationship was automatically terminated by law. The authority of an agent—unless it is coupled with an interest—expires immediately upon the death of the principal.”

  Loftus said, “Bosh,” again, but a quick glance at Ganten’s face caused him to show sudden signs of concern. “What is it, Ganten?” he asked.

  Ganten said, “That’s not going to get you anywhere, Mr. Mason. A complete agreement had been reached between the parties. Mattern was merely the instrumentality by which that agreement was consummated, and Tidings had given Mattern specific, definite instructions prior to his appearance at our office. . . . As you study the law of agency, Mr. Mason, you will find that there are various fine distinctions limiting the application of the general code sections on which you seem to be relying.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “you might examine Restatement of the Law. Take for instance pages 309-310 of the volume on Agency and notice the illustrations therein cited as representing judicial applications of the doctrine that death of the principal terminates the authority of the agent. I call your attention particularly to the following:

  “ ‘P purchases an option on Blackaire and authorizes A to sell it. Two hours before the expiration of the option and while A is in the process of executing a sale of it to T, P dies. A’s authority is terminated.

  “ ‘P employs H, a stockbroker, to purchase at the market 10,000 shares of stock in A’s name but for P’s account. P dies, this being unknown to anyone. A few moments thereafter, A purchases the shares. A had no authority to purchase.’ ”

  Ganten blinked his eyes rapidly, his only outward symptom of nervousness, but he avoided glancing in the direction of his client.

  Once more the door was pushed open, and a short, thick-set, genial individual in the early fifties pushed his way into the room. “Good morning, Mr. Loftus,” he said. “Good morning,” and walked across the office to grasp Loftus’ hand and pump it up and down. Then he turned to include the other two occupants of the room with his genial smile.

  “Mr. Ganten of my legal department,” Loftus introduced, “and Mr. Perry Mason who is trying to upset that fifty-thousand-dollar sale of Western Prospecting stock. . . . Gentlemen, this is Mr. Emery B. Bolus, the president of the Western Prospecting Company.”

  Bolus remained genial. He shook hands with Ganten, and then grasped Mason’s hand cordially. “Glad to meet you gentlemen,” he said. “What’s this about upsetting that sale? The sale has already been completed. The transaction, so far as our company is concerned, is closed.”

  “Stock transfer been duly entered on the books?” Mason asked.

  Bolus hesitated a minute, then said, “Yes.”

  “Don’t answer his questions,” Ganten said after a moment. “I’ll do the talking. Your interests and those of my client are identical, Mr. Bolus.”

  Mason said, “Rather a damaging admission coming from an attorney who has specialized in the law of agency and of contracts, Mr. Ganten. . . . I don’t want to suggest how you should conduct your office, but if your investigation should disclose that the facts are as I contend, then it would be very much to the interest of your clients to help me impound that fifty thousand dollars until the validity of the transaction can be determined. Otherwise, any judgment which we might recover would leave your clients holding the bag. If we’re going to get judgment, it’s to your interest to see that it’s paid with that fifty thousand dollars Bolus is holding, instead of fifty thousand your clients will have to dig up out of their own pockets.”

  Mason got to his feet.

  Bolus said genially, “Come, come, boys. What’s all this?”

  Loftus said, “Mason contends that Tidings was dead when we closed the deal on that stock. It’s in the morning papers.”

  For a moment there was silence in the room, then Bolus turned to Ganten. “Well, Mr. Ganten,” he said, “as attorney for Loftus & Cale, you can take care of our interests in the matter. Personally, I’m not going to concern myself with legal technicalities.”

  Loftus said raspingly, “Just a minute, Ganten. Are we apt to tie our hands doing that? You heard what Mason said.”

  Ganten said cautiously, “Well, perhaps it would be better, under the circumstances, for Mr. Bolus to consult his own counsel.”

  Bolus said, “Come, come, Loftus. You’re not going to let Mason’s goofy ideas interfere with our cordial relationship, are you?”

  “Where’s that fifty thousand dollars?” Loftus asked.

  Bolus tugged at his ear. “Well now,” he said, “let’s find out just where we stand before I start making statements to you. Do you consider there’s any possibility you folks might try to go after that fifty thousand dollars?”

  Mason said, “Of course, they’re going after it.”

  Ganten glared at Mason. “The whole situation is absurd,” he said. “Tidings was alive and well when that agreement was concluded. There’s positive, irrefutable ev
idence to that effect.”

  Mason yawned.

  Bolus said, “That’s not answering my question. Is there any possibility that you people are going to try and impound that fifty thousand dollars?”

  Ganten said, “It might not be a bad idea to simply hold matters in abeyance until we’ve investigated the case in all its ramifications.”

  “What do you mean by holding them in abeyance?”

  “Oh, just take steps to preserve the status quo.”

  Bolus lost his smile. “I don’t know what you mean by the status quo,” he said.

  “Just see that everyone is protected,” Loftus explained hurriedly.

  Bolus said, “The way I’m going to protect myself is by putting that fifty thousand dollars into circulation.”

  “I don’t think that would be wise,” Loftus said.

  “Why wouldn’t it?” Bolus asked, his eyes glinting. “Your own attorney has said that the claim is absurd.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s a claim.”

  “And what do you propose to do about it?”

  “We’ll investigate it,” Ganten said.

  “Go ahead and investigate,” Bolus said. “Investigate all you damn please, but don’t pull any of this status quo business on me. It’s my money isn’t it?”

  “The corporation’s money,” Ganten corrected.

  Bolus said, “You folks have the stock. I have the money. I don’t give a damn what you do with the stock, and you aren’t going to tell me what to do with the money.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Ganten said. “You’ll admit that you don’t want to become involved in litigation. I think the whole thing is absurd. I think a few days’ investigation will clear up the entire matter. We will use all of our facilities to see that that investigation is made promptly and thoroughly.”

  “And in the meantime?” Bolus asked.