Barkler was in the late fifties, weatherbeaten, wiry and hard. He walked with a slight limp. Mason acknowledged introductions, motioned them to chairs, and waited.
Emily Milicant dropped into a chair and immediately seemed to become thin. Her black eyes, staring out from above the hollowing cheeks, conveyed the impression of an emotional intensity which was burning up her mental energy.
Barkler took a pipe from his pocket with the manner of a man who intended that his contribution to the conference was to be an attentive silence.
Emily Milicant’s eyes met those of Mason with the force of physical impact. “I presume,” she said, “that Phyllis has told you all about me. It was delicate and tactful of her, but entirely unnecessary. I could have covered the situation in fewer words. So far as the Leeds family are concerned, Mr. Mason, with the exception of Phyllis here,” — and she indicated Phyllis by rotating her forearm on the elbow and twisting the wrist quickly as though to shake a gesture off her fingertips, — “I’m an adventuress. I have ceased to be known as Emily Milicant. I am referred to as ‘that woman.’”
Mason nodded noncommittally.
“That’s quite all right, Mr. Mason,” she rushed on. “I can take it. But I’m not going to be pushed around.”
“I think,” Mason said, “Miss Leeds has covered the preliminaries. What is the specific point on which you wanted my advice?”
“Mr. Leeds is being blackmailed,” she said.
“How do you know?” Mason asked.
“I was with him day before yesterday,” she said, “when his bank telephoned. Alden — Mr. Leeds — seemed very much disturbed. I heard him say, ‘I don’t care if the check is for a million dollars, go ahead and cash it — and I don’t care if it’s presented by a newsboy or a streetwalker. That endorsement makes the check payable to bearer.’ He was getting ready to slam up the receiver when the man at the other end of the line said something else, and I could hear what it was.”
“What was it?” Mason asked.
She leaned forward impressively. “The cashier at the bank, I suppose it was, said, ‘Mr. Leeds, this young woman is flashily dressed. She’s asking for the twenty thousand dollars in cash.’ ‘That’s the face of the check, isn’t it?’ Leeds asked. The voice said, ‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Leeds. I just wanted to be certain.’ ‘You’re certain now,’ Alden said, and slammed the telephone receiver back into place.
“When he turned away from the telephone, I think he realized for the first time that I had heard his end of the conversation. He seemed to hold his breath for a moment as though thinking rapidly back over what had been said at his end of the line. Then he said to me, ‘Banks are a confounded nuisance. I gave a newsboy a check for twenty dollars last night and put an endorsement on the check that would enable him to cash it without any difficulty. And a bank underling has to start acting officious. You’d think I didn’t know how to run my own business.’”
Phyllis Leeds entered the conversation. “When Emily told me about it,” she said, “I realized right away what a dreadful thing it would be if Uncle Alden had been victimized by swindlers or blackmailers. Uncle Freeman would pounce on it at once as an excuse to show that Uncle Alden couldn’t be trusted to handle his own money.”
“So what did you do?” Mason asked.
“I went to the bank,” she said. “I handle Uncle Alden’s financial matters — keeping his bank account in balance and his correspondence and things like that. I told the bank I was having trouble in my accounts and asked them to give me the amount of Uncle Alden’s balance and the canceled checks. I think the bank cashier knew what I was after, and was really relieved. He got the checks for me at once. The last one was a check for twenty thousand dollars signed by Uncle Alden, and payable to L. C. Conway. It was endorsed on the back, ‘L. C. Conway’ and down below that appeared in Uncle’s handwriting, ‘This endorsement guaranteed. Check to be cashed without identification or further endorsement.”
“The effect,” Mason said, “being virtually to make it a check payable to bearer. Why didn’t he do that in the first place?”
“Because,” she said, “I don’t think he wanted this young woman’s name to appear on the check.”
“It was cashed by the bank without her endorsement?”
“Yes. The bank cashier insisted on her endorsing the check. She refused to do so. Then he rang up Uncle Alden and had the conversation Emily overheard. After that, the cashier told this woman she didn’t need to endorse the check, but that she’d have to leave her name and address and give a receipt before he’d let her have the money.”
“Then what happened?”
“The girl was furious. She wanted to telephone Uncle Alden, but she either didn’t know his number or pretended she didn’t. The cashier wouldn’t give her Uncle Alden’s unlisted number. So finally she wrote her name and address, and gave him a receipt.”
“Fictitious?” Mason asked.
“Apparently, it wasn’t. The cashier made her show her driving license, and an envelope addressed to her at that address.”
Mason said, “Your uncle might not welcome the cashier’s activities.”
“I’m quite certain that he wouldn’t,” she said.
Emily Milicant said, with quick nervousness, “You know blackmailers never quit.”
“You have the check?” Mason asked Phyllis Leeds.
“Yes.” She took the canceled check from her purse, and handed it to Mason.
“What,” Mason asked, “do you want me to do?”
“Find out about the blackmail, and if possible get the money back before the other relatives can find out about it.”
Mason smiled, and said, “That’s rather a large order.”
“It would be for most people. You can take it in your stride.”
“Have you any clues?” Mason asked.
“None, except those I gave you.”
Mason turned his eyes to Barkler who sat smoking placidly. “What’s your idea about this, Barkler?” he asked.
Barkler gave his pipe a couple of puffs, removed it from his mouth, said, “He ain’t being blackmailed,” and resumed his smoking.
Phyllis Leeds laughed nervously.
“Mr. Barkler knew Uncle Alden in the Klondike,” she said. “He claims no man on earth could blackmail him, says Uncle Alden’s too handy with a gun.”
Barkler said, by way of correction and without removing his pipe, “Not the Klondike, the Tanana.”
“It amounts to the same thing,” she said.
Barkler seemed not to have heard her.
“He and Uncle Alden stumbled onto each other a year ago,” Phyllis explained. “They’re great friends — old cronies, you know.”
“Cronies, hell! We’re pards,” Barkler said, “and don’t make no mistake about Alden. He ain’t being blackmailed.”
Phyllis Leeds said quietly to the lawyer, “The check you hold speaks for itself.”
Mason said, “If I take this case, I’ll need money — money for my services, money for investigation. I’ll hire a detective agency and put men to work. It’ll be expensive.”
Barkler took the pipe out of his mouth and said, “Cheap lawyers ain’t no good anyhow. Alden ain’t being blackmailed, Phyllis. He’s in trouble of some kind. Give Mason a check and let him go to work... But it ain’t blackmail. You can lay to that.”
Phyllis Leeds opened her purse and took out a checkbook.
“How much,” she asked Perry Mason, “do you want?”
Chapter 2
Paul Drake, head of the Drake Detective Agency, relaxed all over the big, leather chair in Mason’s office. His backbone, seeming to have no more rigidity than a piece of garden hose, bent forward until his chin came close to his knees. His feet were propped against the opposite arm of the chair. He habitually sat sideways in the big chair, and adopted an attitude of extreme fatigue. His eyes were dull and expressionless, his voice had a tired drawl. His appearance of general lassitude and lugubrious disinterest in life kept anyone from suspecting he might be a private detective.