“It probably won’t,” Mason said. “How about staking an operative out at the post office?”
“Where at the post office?”
“At the General Delivery window. I want to get a line on a person who picks up a letter addressed to A. B. Vidal, General Delivery.”
“Can it wait until after lunch?” Drake asked.
“It can, but I don’t think it should,” Mason said. “Here’s the telephone. Get an operative on the job.”
“Well,” Drake said, “I was thinking of saving you a little money.”
“How come?”
“I’ve worked with the postal inspectors a couple of times,” Drake said, “and I think they’d do me a favor. They could save you the cost of one operative. You see, you can’t cover a place absolutely with one operative. A man can stand on his feet and lounge around only so long, and operatives, being human beings, have to powder their noses and report occasionally on the telephone.
“Now, if it’s all right for us to take a postal inspector into our confidence, I know I can fix it up so that I could just have one man waiting outside the building where he wouldn’t attract attention and the minute anyone showed up at a window and asked for mail addressed to A. B. Vidal, he would be stalled until my man could get a signal and be on the job.”
Mason nodded. “How long would it take a letter mailed in a post office box at the Union Depot to get delivered to General Delivery, Paul?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Drake said, “but I’d guess it wouldn’t take very long.”
Mason said, “Go to lunch, then drive down to the post office, contact your friend the postal inspector, tell him that I’m working on something that I don’t fully understand. It may tie in with a postal crime and it may not. I just don’t know. We want to find out about A. B. Vidal.”
“That’s a cinch,” Drake said. “Tell you what I’ll do, Perry. I’ll get my man on the phone and he’ll spot the letter as it comes in. He’ll call my office the minute the letter comes in and then I’ll have an operative down there and we’ll pick up Vidal. Now, after we get him, what do you want done with him?”
“I want to find out who he is, where he goes, what he does, and everything you can about him — whether he’s driving his own car or a rented car; whether he’s using a taxi and, above all, I want to find out where I can put my finger on him in case I want him.”
“Can do,” Drake said. “It’ll take a couple of men to do a job like that.”
“Use a couple of men, then,” Mason said. “And telephone your friend the inspector.”
Drake looked at his watch, said, “As a matter of fact he doesn’t go to lunch until one o’clock. I’ll give him a ring right now, take him out to lunch and get his co-operation.”
“Remember,” Mason said, “I want to check that envelope before it’s delivered. Be sure you don’t eat so much lunch that the letter is put in the General Delivery, Vidal comes and gets it and goes out, and—”
“Leave it to me,” Drake said. “After I’ve talked with my friend for five minutes, he’ll ring up the post office and put a stop order on the delivery. Regardless of when it comes in, it won’t get delivered until my men get on the job... There’s one thing, though, Perry. He’ll want to know the minute we find we’re working on something involving a violation of the postal laws.”
“Okay,” Mason said, “we’ll go that far with him — that is, I think we will. You can tell him that the minute you know there’s been a violation of the postal laws, you’ll let him know.”
“Meaning that you may not tell me?” Drake asked.
“Meaning you can promise him that much,” Mason said, “and no more.”
Drake stretched, yawned, said, “Okay. On my way, Perry. Forget about it. Everything will be okay. Tomorrow morning we’ll give you all the answers.”
Chapter Three
Mason, entering the office with the morning newspaper under his arm, grinned at Della Street, tossed his hat onto the bust of Blackstone which frowned austerely from the top of a filing cabinet, said, “What’s new, Della?”
“Your friend, Janice Wainwright, would like to talk with you just as soon as you come in. She seems very upset.”
“Oh, yes,” Mason said, “the letter. What about it? Have we a report on A. B. Vidal?”
“We have not,” Della Street said. “Paul Drake kept two men on the job until the General Delivery window-closed, then he put them on again this morning. He’s been tipped off in confidence that the letter to A. B. Vidal is waiting in General Delivery — an envelope which apparently contains some heavy object, such as a key.”
Mason nodded, said, “Janice leave a telephone number?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t the office number where she works. Shall I call her?”
“Go ahead. Let’s see what she wants.”
A few moments later Della Street nodded to Perry Mason, who picked up the phone and said, “Yes, Miss Wainwright. This is Mason. What’s the trouble?”
“Oh, Mr. Mason,” she said, “I’m so glad you called. Mr. Theilman seems to have disappeared. The police have been asking me questions and I just — well, I didn’t give them any answers that would help. I... I just don’t know what to do.”
“All right,” Mason said, “steady down. Now, let’s get this thing in order. You say he’s disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Well... of course I don’t know, but his wife does. She notified the police.”
“And what caused her to notify the police?”
“Well, he telephoned from Bakersfield last night. He’d been up there on business. He telephoned about eight o’clock and said she could expect him at eleven or eleven-thirty — just to go to bed and go to sleep, not to wait up for him. Well, when he hadn’t shown up by three, she telephoned the police and asked them to check with the highway patrol and see if there’d been any accident. The police did that and told her that there was none that involved her husband.
“So she was very much relieved and went back to bed and went to sleep. However, at seven o’clock when he hadn’t shown up she became worried again and called the business associate with whom he had been in conference in Bakersfield.”
“Who’s that?” Mason asked.
“Cole B. Troy. He and Mr. Theilman have some business interest together in the vicinity of Bakersfield — some real estate deals they’re putting across.”
“And what did Mr. Troy say?”
“He said Mr. Theilman left about nine o’clock; that he said something about phoning Mrs. Theilman, and had made a call while they were having dinner.”
“And then?” Mason asked.
“Well, then Mrs. Theilman called the police again and when I opened up the office at eight this morning there was a detective there who asked me some questions about whether Mr. Theilman had any appointments this morning, whether I expected him in, and if I knew anything that could have caused him to remain away from home.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Mason said, “that’s just a little unusual. Ordinarily they’d give a wife a little reassurance and wait for a while before they did anything, or simply put out a bulletin on missing persons. Sending a detective to a man’s office isn’t exactly routine procedure. Did he say why he was there?”
“Simply that Mr. Theilman seemed to have disappeared between Bakersfield and his home last night, and they wanted to know something about him.”
Mason’s eyes narrowed. “A plain-clothes officer?”
“That’s right.”