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 person 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 Shore’s wife and business associates did not take the police into their confidence until Shore had been missing for some days. 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 had 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, post-marked June 5th, 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.