“Now, it’s not necessary to make any more detailed explanation than that. We...”
Gage broke off as one of the secretaries entered the door.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but Mr. Franklin Gage has just returned.”
“Ask him to come in, please,” Homer Gage said. “Tell him that Mr. Perry Mason, an attorney of Los Angeles, is here and that it may be we will have to consult our own legal department.”
“Why don’t you do that?” Perry Mason said. “I’d much prefer talking with an attorney.”
“No, no, no, not yet. I simply wanted Mr. Franklin Gage to understand the situation. He... here he is now.”
Mason turned. The tall, distinguished-looking gentleman who stood in the doorway wore an affable smile on the lower part of his face, but his eyes were appraising and unsmiling. They were eyes which were wide and round and somehow seemed to dominate the face.
He was in his late forties, wore rimless spectacles which seemed somehow to emphasize the rather wide eyes. The mouth was large, the lips rather thick, and the smile was that of a man who is accustomed to using suave tactics in getting what he wants out of life.
“Mr. Mason, Mr. Franklin Gage,” Homer Gage said.
Mason stood up.
Franklin Gage gave him a hand which seemed cushioned with flesh, as though the man’s body had built up a layer of insulation in the right hand.
“Ah, yes, Mr. Mason,” Gage said, “I’ve heard a great deal about you. Your reputation is not confined to Los Angeles by any means. It’s a pleasure to meet you. What can we do for you, Mr. Mason?”
Homer Gage was quick to answer that question. “Mr. Mason is calling about Diana Douglas,” he said. “You’ll remember she’s been absent for the last three or four days.
“We weren’t particularly busy at the time and I gave her some time off. Her brother was seriously injured in an automobile accident and has been unconscious.”
“I understand he passed away early this morning,” Mason said.
The two Gages exchanged glances.
“Good heavens!” Homer said.
“The poor kid,” Franklin muttered sympathetically.
“I’m glad you told us,” Homer Gage said.
Franklin Gage turned to his nephew. “The firm must send flowers, Homer.”
“Certainly. I’ll attend to that.”
“And contact Diana and see if there’s anything we can do. We must express our sympathies.”
“I’m afraid Mr. Mason doesn’t want us to have any direct contact with Diana,” Homer Gage explained. “And even if he had no objections, I don’t think it would be wise — not until we consult our lawyers.”
“Nonsense!” Franklin Gage snapped. “We can certainly be guided by the humanities and plain decency.”
“I think you’d better listen to Mr. Mason,” Homer said.
“And why should that make any difference?” Franklin inquired, his voice now losing its tone of cordiality.
Homer rushed in with a hurried explanation. “Well, it seems that Diana Douglas made a quick trip to Los Angeles for some reason and somehow word got out that she had traveled under an assumed name.
“Then Stewart Garland, in checking the cash, said that there seemed to be quite a discrepancy — a rough estimate fixed this discrepancy at some twenty thousand dollars. Quite naturally, I wanted to find out about it and I wanted to interrogate Diana Douglas.”
“You mean you interrogated her about the cash shortage?” Franklin Gage asked.
“Well, not directly,” Homer said. “I may have acted rather hastily, but when I found she was registered at a hotel under an assumed name, I asked a very close friend of mine on the police force what to do about it and he said he’d arrange to have her interrogated by some friends of his in the Los Angeles Police Department.
“Mr. Mason seems to feel that what we did amounted to an accusation of embezzlement against her and constituted a defamation of character.”
“Tut, tut,” Franklin Gage said to Homer, “you shouldn’t have jumped at conclusions. A lot of people have access to that cash drawer — the way we do business, you know. I, myself, had ten thousand dollars which I took from the cash drawer in order to complete a deal I was working on. Unfortunately, the deal fell through. I returned the cash a few minutes ago.”
“That would seem to leave us with a shortage of only ten thousand dollars then,” Homer Gage said, his manner greatly deflated.
“You can’t tell if there’s been any shortage until you check everything,” the older man replied. “You know how that cash vault is. We keep large sums there and whenever any of the executives need money they simply take out what they need and then leave a note stating what they have taken out. And sometimes those notes aren’t up-to-date. That is, if a man’s in a hurry he won’t bother to leave a note.
“In my case I was negotiating for a deal which, unfortunately, fell through. I took out ten thousand dollars and didn’t leave any note stating I had done so. I had no idea that there was going to be all this talk of embezzlement... The way we’re organized, Homer, you should have waited until you got all of us together before you even had any idea of embezzlement or let any talk of that sort get started.”
“I’m sorry, but Diana Douglas used an assumed name, went to Los Angeles, and registered in a hotel as Diana Deering. Under those circumstances I felt that we—”
“How did you find out about all this?” Franklin Gage asked.
“Well, frankly, I didn’t find out about it,” Homer Gage said, now quite apparently on the defensive and somewhat flustered. “I wanted to ask Diana about the cash and whether she had any slips that had been taken from the cash safe which she intended to post... Well, I found she wasn’t in her apartment. She wasn’t at the hospital with her brother, although she had been there faithfully for some two or three hours right after the accident. Then she seemed to have disappeared.
“Well, I had this friend on the police force and I asked him how a man would go about locating a young woman under those circumstances and he said he’d run down a couple of leads.
“Well, of course, he used common sense, something which I could have done if I’d only thought of it. He knew that Diana was concerned about her brother, so he went to the hospital, interrogated the telephone operator, and found that calls had been coming in regularly from Los Angeles to find out about Edgar Douglas’ condition. A number had been left to be notified if there was any change. The officer found that number was the number of the Willatson Hotel in Los Angeles and that a Diana Deering had put in the calls. By checking her description he soon had it pretty well established that Diana Deering was Diana Douglas, so then he suggested that it would be a good plan to question her because — well, you can see the position I was in.”
“I’m not going to make any comment at this time,” Franklin Gage said, “but Diana Douglas has been a very loyal employee and I have the utmost confidence in her integrity. I’m sorry that Mr. Mason has adopted the attitude there has been any defamation of character. I also feel that we had better check up rather carefully on that cash situation before we talk about any shortage... You will understand, Mr. Mason, that at times there is as much as a hundred thousand dollars in our cash safe.”
Mason raised his eyebrows.
“I know that seems large to you,” Franklin Gage went on, “but it seems small to us because this is a very unusual type of business.
“This isn’t like dealing in automobiles where there is a registration number and a pink slip. In this business the person who has possession of the articles is to all intents and purposes the owner — unless, of course, he has stolen the articles — and that is a chance we have to take.