“And what,” Della Street asked, “became of the baby?”
“I think,” Mason told her, “that when we start asking questions about that, we’ll find our client will tell us to go fly a kite.”
“Why?” Della Street asked.
“If we knew the answer to that,” Mason said, “we’d probably know why The Cloverville Gazette sent a private detective out here and why someone is paying to have me shadowed.”
Mason, feeling in a particularly happy mood, brought out the coffee percolator and said, “I think that entitles us to a coffee break, Della.”
They had only started drinking their coffee when the telephone rang and Gertie said, “Ellen Smith is here.”
“Tell her to come in,” Mason said. “Wait a minute. Della will come out and get her.”
Della Street went to the outer office and, a few moments later, came back with a woman who was almost exactly the same height and build as Ellen Adair.
Mason looked her over approvingly.
“Credentials?” he asked.
She opened her purse and showed him her credentials as one of Drake’s operatives.
“We have to be cautious in a deal of this sort,” Mason said. “Sit down. We’ve got about ten or fifteen minutes to kill, and I take it you could perhaps use a cup of coffee.”
“I’d love it.”
“Do you mind telling me your exact age?” Mason asked.
“Thirty-two to prospective employers, thirty to prospective swains, and thirty-eight when accuracy is essential.”
Mason grinned. “I think you have what it takes.”
Della handed the woman a cup of coffee.
Then the woman said, “Would you mind telling me what this is all about?”
“Frankly,” Mason said, “we don’t know. I am going to tell you this much about which I am certain.
“Since you will take the name of Ellen Smith for the purpose of this job, we are going to call you Ellen Smith and not your true name.
“You are taking the name of Ellen Smith because people are going to mistake you for an Ellen Calvert who at one time lived in the Midwest in a rural city which has since grown considerably.
“You — as Ellen Calvert — left that city twenty years ago under mysterious circumstances, and certain people are trying to find out what those circumstances were, where you have been, and what happened to you.
“I think that there are a lot of other things which these people are trying to find out, but I’m not prepared to say what they are.
“The reason you are here is that I was approached a short time ago by a man who put me in such a position that he felt certain I would telephone my client — who, incidentally, is the real Ellen Calvert — and ask her to come in to discuss a proposition which he had made.
“I know that I have been shadowed and I have every reason to believe the office is being kept under surveillance. Because you are about the same build and age as the real Ellen Calvert, when you leave this office you will be shadowed.
“Now, as I understand it, the Drake Detective Agency has an apartment which they use from time to time.”
“That’s right. Mr. Drake keeps people there when he has some witness whom he doesn’t dare to register in a local hotel. It’s also a place where operatives can take a potential witness when they want to get a statement. The place is bugged and a tape recorder takes down things that are said.
“It’s not a particularly large or expensive apartment. It’s just a utility place.”
“I think it will do,” Mason said. “When you leave here you’re to take a taxi and go to that apartment. It has a back door?”
“Front and back, yes. There’s a service entrance in the back.”
Mason said, “Once you have been shadowed to that apartment, once you produce a key and go inside as though you owned the place, there will be a period of an hour or so when you will be free.
“I feel that you will be shadowed as far as the apartment, then the detective who shadows you will leave to make a report to his agency. Having run you to earth, so to speak, they will do nothing more for an hour or two, or perhaps a day or two, while they await instructions.
“Now then, as soon as you have entered the apartment with a latchkey, go right through the apartment. Slip out the back door. That opens on an alley?”
“Yes.”
“Drake will have an operative waiting with a car to pick you up. You can go to your own apartment, pack up suitcases with whatever you will need for a stay of several days.
“Since I can’t get you bona fide employment which would stand up under scrutiny, you are going to have to take the part of a young woman who is temporarily out of a job. You will live economically. You will go to the cheaper family restaurants and you will buy provisions at the supermarket.”
“There’s one within a block and a half of the place,” she said.
Mason nodded. “You will use taxicabs when you have to, but as sparingly as possible. I don’t dare have you use one of Drake’s automobiles because they could and would trace the license number.
“I think that sooner or later someone will come to the door and start talking with you. No matter what the approach is, no matter how plausible it may seem, you are to slam the door in his face.
“He may be offering you an opportunity to enroll in a contest where there will be prizes. He may be selling lottery tickets. He may come right out and accuse you of being Ellen Calvert and tell you that there’s no use trying to keep up the pretense, that your story is known to him. He may simply offer you money for your story. He may come right out and tell you he is a private detective, that he wants certain facts and that it will be easier for you to give him those facts for him to have to get them the hard way.”
“No matter what the approach is, I’m to slam the door in his face?”
“Yes.”
“Do I deny that I am Ellen Calvert?”
“You are tight-lipped,” Mason said. “You simply slam the door. The apartment has a telephone?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know the number?”
“Paul Drake has it.”
“I’ll get it from Paul,” Mason said.
“Anything else?”
“When you leave here,” Mason said, “you are to be very much disturbed, yet with it all you have a queenly dignity. Keep your head up, but show that you are emotionally upset. You wipe an imaginary tear from your eye. You twist your handkerchief. Halfway to the elevator, you pause as though you had thought of something important. You turn around and take two or three steps back toward the office, then shrug your shoulders, apparently change your mind, go back to the elevator... Now, of course, you’re familiar with this apartment?”
“I’ve used it several times. I had a female witness to keep under cover.”
“It would be better,” Mason said, “if you know the exact route, to go there by bus rather than by taxicab.”
“That’s easy,” she said, smiling. “Not all of our clients are sufficiently affluent to afford cab bills for operatives and I’ve gone there half-a-dozen times by bus.”
“It’s highly-important that you don’t make any mistakes on that,” Mason said. “If you get on the wrong bus, it would be a dead giveaway. You’ll probably be followed from the minute you leave the office, and it will make it much easier if you give your shadow an opportunity to get aboard the same bus with you.”
She nodded. “I think I’ve got the picture.”
“Under no circumstances,” Mason said, “at any time are you to use the name of Ellen Calvert or to admit that you are Ellen Calvert. If anybody presses you for a name, you say that you are Ellen Smith. The main thing is to keep the door closed whenever anyone tries to interrogate you, but you will do it under circumstances which indicate you definitely have something to conceal.”