Mason located the 6800 block on Washington Heights, but missed 6831 the first time he went down the block. It was only after he turned and came back that he found a little bungalow type of house sitting back from the street.
Mason stopped his car, left the parking lights on, and his feet crunched up the gravel walk leading to the house.
A neighbor’s dog began barking with steady insistence.
Mason heard annoyed tones from the adjoining house telling the dog to shut up.
The lawyer climbed up on the steps of the small porch and groped for a bell button. Unable to find it, he knocked on the door.
There was no answer from within.
Mason knocked the second time.
Bare feet thudded to the floor in the interior of the house. The dog in the neighboring house started a crescendo of barking and then abruptly became silent.
At length a porch light clicked. The door opened a crack, held from opening farther by a brass chain which stretched taut across the narrow opening.
A man’s voice from the inside said, “Who is it?”
“I’m an attorney from the city,” Mason said. “I want to talk with you.”
“What about?”
“About your wife.”
“My wife?”
“That’s right. Rose Calvert. She’s your wife, isn’t she?”
“You better ask her whose wife she is,” the man said.
Mason said, “I’m sorry. I don’t want to discuss the matter out here where the entire neighborhood can hear. I drove down here to see you because I feel it’s important.”
“What’s important?”
“What I want to see you about.”
“Now, you look here,” the man said. “I’m not going to consent to a single thing. I’m hoping Rose will come to her senses. If she does, all right. If she doesn’t, I’m not going to make things any easier for her or for that fellow who has her hypnotized, and that’s final!”
He started to close the door.
“Just a moment,” Mason said. “I don’t want you to consent to anything. I just want to get some information.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s important.”
“Who’s it important to?”
“It may be important to you.”
The man on the other side o£ the door hesitated, then finally said, “Well, all right. You can come in. But this is a hell of an hour to get a man out of bed to start asking questions.”
“I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t urgent,” Mason said.
“What’s urgent about it?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Mason said, “and I don’t want to alarm you until I am sure. I’m an attorney, but I’m not representing your wife in any way. I’m not representing anyone connected with the aspect of the case in which you’re interested. I just want to get some information, and then perhaps I can give you some.”
“Well, come on in.”
The chain was removed and the door swung open.
The man who stood, tousle-haired and barefooted, in the entrance hallway was wearing striped pajamas. He was nearly six feet tall, slender, about thirty-two, with dark, smoldering eyes and long, black hair which had tumbled about his head.
“Come on in,” he said, yawning.
“Thanks. I’m Perry Mason,” the lawyer told him, shaking hands. “I’m an attorney and I’m working on a case in which it has become necessary to get some information about your wife.”
“We’re all split up,” Calvert said shortly. “Maybe you came to the wrong place.”
Mason said, “I want to talk with you.”
“There’s not much I can tell you about her, except that she wants a divorce.”
“There are no children?”
The man shook his head.
“How long have you been married?”
“Two and a half years. Can you tell me what this is all about? I’m sorry. I may have been a little bit short with you. I wake up kinda jumpy sometimes.”
Mason said, “I have something to tell you, but I want to be pretty certain I’m right before I tell you. This may take a little time. Fifteen or twenty minutes. Do you want to get some clothes on?”
“I’ll get a blanket to wrap around me,” the man said.
He vanished into the bedroom, came back with a blanket and wrapped it around him.
“Sit down there in that chair by the table,” he told Mason.
Mason seated himself, said, “This is a nice little bungalow you have here.”
The man made a little gesture of dismissal. “I rent it furnished. After we broke up, I thought for a while Rose would come back to me, but now I’ve about given up.”
“Were you living together down here?”
“No, I moved down here about three months ago — that was right after we split up.”
“What’s your occupation?”
“Running a service station.”
“Would you think me terribly presumptuous if I asked you to tell me about what happened in your marriage, how it happened you broke up, and—?”
“I guess it’s all right,” Calvert said. “We got off to a good start. We had been going together a couple of months. She was in a brokerage office. I was a salesman. We sort of clicked and we got married.
“She didn’t want children right at first. We decided we’d wait on that and that we’d both keep on working.
“Then an uncle of mine died and left me quite a nest egg. Not too much. It figured about sixty thousand, by the time taxes were taken out of it. So then I felt we could start having a family.”
“How much of that nest egg do you have left?” Mason asked.
Calvert’s lips tightened. “I’ve got all of it left.”
“Good boy I” Mason told him.
“And if I’d listened to her, I wouldn’t have had any of it left,” Calvert went on. “That was one of the things that started the trouble. She wanted to live it up, to travel, to get clothes, to do all the things, that take money.
“I wanted to save this money to invest in something. I wanted a business of our own. I didn’t want her to keep on working. I wanted children.”
“Did she want children?”
“She couldn’t be bothered.”
“All right, what happened?”
“Well, we got along all right, but I could see the novelty of marriage was wearing off and — Rose is a woman that men notice. She has a figure and she’s proud of it. She likes people to notice it.”
“And they do?” Mason asked.
“They do.”
“Precisely what caused the final split-up?”
“A man by the name of Gifford Farrell.”
“With Texas Global?”
“That’s right. He’s fighting a proxy battle. There are ads in the Los Angeles newspapers. He’s trying to get enough proxies to take over.”
“How long has he known your wife?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it was entirely his fault, but he certainly was on the make and she fell for him.”
“How long had it been going on?” Mason asked.
“I tell you I don’t know. I guess quite a while. I wanted to get ahead by plugging along and keeping my eye on the main chance.
“This Farrell is just like Rose. He’s a gambler, a guy who shoots the works, rides around in high-powered automobiles, spends three and four hundred dollars on a suit of clothes, wouldn’t think of looking at a pair of shoes that didn’t cost over twenty dollars. He’s a showman, likes to go out to night clubs and all of that.”
“And now your wife wants a divorce?”
“That’s right.”
Mason took his cigarette case from his pocket. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Not at all. I’ll join you. I smoke a good deal myself. Here.”
The man passed over an ash tray which was pretty well filled with cigarette stubs, said, “Wait a minute! I’ll empty that.”
He went out into the kitchen, dumped the ashes into a wood stove, came back with the ash tray, inspected the cigarettes in Mason’s cigarette case, said, “Thanks, I have my own brand.”