“And you expect I’ll lose it?”
“I’m sure you will. When Pete showed up on one of his occasional homecomings and found Nell ensconced in a house where a tenderfoot had money to spend for mines, the temptation proved too much for him. He proceeded to take Bradisson to the cleaners. Pete’s an innocent-appearing chap, but he pulls some mighty fast ones. He’s a terrible liar, a whimsical crook who readily admits his own trickery, only blaming everything on his secondary personality, the unscrupulous ‘Bob’ who takes over every so often.”
“And why do you want to have it known you’ve retained me to fight the fraud?” Mason asked.
“That,” Clarke said, “is something I can’t tell you. I— Oh, here’s Miss Starler now.”
Mason turned to watch the woman who came swinging along the sandy path — a woman in her early thirties, Mason judged, with finespun hair that glinted gold in the sunlight, slate-gray eyes that seemed just a little wistful, and a mouth that could smile easily.
Clarke said hastily in a low voice, “My doctor says she’s too sympathetic to be on general duty. He likes to get her out on chronic cases where — Decided to check up on me, eh? Come on over and meet the company.”
Clarke performed introductions. Velma Starler said, “Remember, you’re supposed to lie down for half an hour after eating. Stretch out over there in the shade and relax.”
She turned to Mason with a laugh. “He’s rather an obstreperous patient. Now that Salty has entered the picture, I have my hands full trying to make him behave.”
Clarke said, “Just a little business to do today, Velma. We’ll have it over within half an hour. Then I’ll rest.”
She frowned slightly, said, “I promised Dr. Kenward I would make you rest every day.
“And Nell Sims,” Velma went on, “wants to know if you won’t please come in and have a bite of civilized grub.”
“Civilized grub!” Salty growled. “A lot of spiced-up lettuce leaves and green vegetables. He ain’t used to that stuff. He’s used to good plain grub, and that’s what he’s getting out here.”
Velma’s laughter was easy and spontaneous. It made the others want to laugh too. And Mason could see the nerve tension which had gripped Banning Clarke as he recited his business troubles relax under her easy, good-natured affability.
“The trouble with you men,” she said, “is that you’ve been partners too long. Mr. Clarke thinks that anything Salty cooks is all right. It’s like Nell Sims says: ‘The real way to a man’s stomach is through his heart.’ ”
Mason said, smiling, “Well, that’s a novel way of quoting an old proverb.”
“Wait until you meet Nell Sims,” she said. “She’s full of those things. Well, I’ll be running back to the house. I’m very glad to have seen you, and I hope you get things cleaned up so Mr. Clarke doesn’t worry about them.” Her glance at Mason was significant.
“We’ll try,” the lawyer promised.
Della Street said, “I’ll go get my portable typewriter out of the car and—”
“I’ll get it,” Salty said. “I know right where it is. I saw you put it in.”
Velma Starler said, “Well, I’ll be running along. I — Oh, oh — here comes Nell Sims with your fruit juice.”
She turned to Perry Mason, said jokingly, “There seem to be three dietitians on the job. Dr. Kenward tries to work out a balanced diet, but Nell Sims thinks he needs more fruits and salads, and Salty Bowers thinks he needs more of what he calls plain victuals.”
The woman who had rounded the patch of cactus carrying a tray on which was a big glass of tomato juice stopped abruptly.
“It’s all right, Nell,” Banning Clarke said. “This is Miss Street and Mr. Mason — Mr. Perry Mason, the noted lawyer. He’s going to represent you in that fraud case.”
“Oh he is, is he?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s going to pay him?”
“I am.”
“How much?”
“Never you mind.”
She said inclusively to Della Street and Perry Mason, “How do you do,” and added abruptly, “I’m not going to pay you anything. My husband sold that mine, I didn’t.”
Nell Sims was somewhere in the fifties, a strong woman whose shoulders had been stooped by hard toil, a competent big-boned worker who had never shirked a job in her life. Her eyes, black and inscrutable, had receded back of heavy dark eyebrows, to peer out at the world over heavy pouches; but she gave an impression of robust strength, of two-fisted competency.
“Nell insists that I don’t get the proper vitamins in my camp cooking,” Clarke explained. “She’s always following me around with fruit juice.”
“Better get fruit juice from Nature than bills from doctors,” Nell said. “I’m always telling him that a stitch in time is worth a pound of cure. I’ve got some nice lunch up at the house if you folks would like to eat.”
“Thanks. We’ve just had lunch,” Mason said.
Nell Sims surveyed the empty plates piled on the sand, and all but sniffed. “That Salty’s going to be the death of you yet,” she said to Banning Clarke. “ ‘Ptomaine Stew’ they used to call the stuff he cooked up when he was cooking out at the Desert Mesa Mine. I’ve known him for thirty-five years. He ain’t never—”
Salty came around the big cactus clump carrying Della Street’s portable typewriter and her brief case. “What’s that you’re saying about me?”
“Drat this cactus,” Nell exclaimed irritably. “You can’t see around the stuff and it don’t give you no privacy. Land sakes, you can’t even talk about a body without him sticking his ears in on the conversation. Well, it just serves you right, Salty Bowers. They say an eavesdropper never gathers no moss.”
Salty grinned good-naturedly. “Professional jealousy,” he explained to Perry Mason.
“Jealousy nothing,” Nell said. “That slum you cook would kill a horse.”
“I’ve always thrived on it.”
“Yes, you have! — You used to come sneaking into my restaurant so as to get some decent home-cooked food. The trouble with you, Salty Bowers, is that you ain’t scientific. You don’t know nothing about these here vitamins, and you cook everything in grease. Taking that stuff into the system is just loading it up with so much poison.”
Salty grinned and let it go at that.
“Nell has just so much sputtering to do,” Clarke explained; “but she’s fond of Salty, aren’t you, Nell?”
“Crazy about him,” she said sarcastically. “He’s without an equal in his field — so’s sandpaper. As a cook I think he’s one of the best burro packers in the business. Well, give me that empty glass and I’ll be getting out of here. Don’t want me to take those dishes up to the house and give them a decent wash, do you?”
Salty pulled a brier pipe from his pocket, tamped tobacco into it, grinned up at Nell and shook his head. “You get ’em all soapy.”
“Know what he does to dishes?” Nell asked Della Street. “Spreads them out on the ground, rubs sand in them until the sand comes out dry, then he scalds them off with about a cupful of water.”
“Only way on earth to get dishes really clean,” Salty said, puffing contentedly at his pipe. “Out in the desert you have to wash ’em that way because you haven’t much water; but if you come right down to it, that cleans ’em. You take good clean sand and scour ’em out, and then wash the sand out, and you’ve got a clean dish.”
“Clean!” Nell sputtered.
“And I mean good and clean.”
“Just plain poison,” Nell insisted. “I don’t know what bad influence brought you back to poison Banning. You’d ought to be up at the house cooking for that brother-in-law of his. A little poisoning would do that man good.”