“Do you folks have anything on this A. B. Vidal?” Mason asked. “Does he have a record? Do you know anything about him?”
Orland grinned and said, “I’m sure I can’t tell you, Mr. Mason.”
Mason smiled. “I can appreciate your position,” he said. “Is there anything else?”
“I’d like to know the things you say you can’t tell me,” Orland said.
“And,” Mason told him, “I would like to know the things you say you can’t tell me.”
Orland turned to Paul Drake. “Mason has done most of the talking here,” he said. “Now I’d like to hear from you. Remember, you have a license. You’re bound by business ethics and you can’t hold out information dealing with the commission of a crime. Now then, Mr. Drake, without any interruptions, please, tell us exactly what you know.”
Drake said easily, “What Perry has told you has taken a big load off my mind. Perry wanted me to pick up the trail of an A. B. Vidal at the post office when Vidal called for a letter. I naturally wanted to make it as painless as possible and so I got in touch with one of my friends who is a postal inspector, told him I had reason to believe Vidal might be using the mails in connection with the commission of a crime, and arranged to be notified when a letter came in for Vidal. I fixed things so I could put a stake-out on the job, and when Vidal picked up the letter I could have my men get a line on him.”
“And the locker at the Union Depot?” Orland asked.
“Mason said he wanted to find out something about the lockers at the Union Depot. He asked me if I could help him and I told him I thought I could, that I’d helped out a fellow down there who—”
“What’s his name?” Orland interrupted.
“Smith.”
“Smitty, eh?” Orland said. “Sure. I know him. What happened?”
Drake said, “I phoned Smitty and asked him to meet me. We got down there and Mr. Mason—”
“Now, just a minute. Who do you mean by ‘we’?”
“Perry Mason, his secretary, Della Street, and me.”
“You all went down there?”
“That’s right. We returned only a few minutes ago.”
“And what happened?”
“Smitty met us down there. Mason told him he wanted to take a look in locker FO82, and Smitty told him he’d inspect the locker but Mason couldn’t touch anything that was in it. Smitty opened the locker. There was nothing in it.”
“You’re still keeping men at the post office?” Orland asked.
“I am not. I withdrew the men and told the postal inspectors not to bother with Vidal as far as I was concerned.”
“You did that on your own, or in accordance with instructions from Perry Mason?”
Drake looked helplessly at Perry Mason.
“He was acting on my instructions,” Mason said.
“Okay,” Orland said, “that’s all I need to know — provided that’s all you know, Drake.”
“That,” Drake said, “is all I know.”
Orland turned to Mason.
“And that,” Mason said, “is all I can tell you.”
Orland left the office.
Mason turned to Drake. “All right, Paul,” he said, “you’re in the clear. You’ve told him everything you know.”
“Thanks a lot,” Drake said. “The fact that you came in here like that and did the job you did helped me out a lot.”
“All right,” Mason told him. “You’ve told him all you knew at the time. Now then, you’re going to learn some more. It’s all right for you to tell the police what you know when they ask you questions. You don’t have to run down the hall to tell them something you find out after the police have left.”
“Now, wait a minute, Perry,” Drake remonstrated, “I don’t want to know anything that—”
“Do you want a job or not?”
“I’m running an agency. I need all the jobs I can get.”
“All right,” Mason said, “you’ve got a job.”
“What is it?”
“Morley Theilman,” Mason said. “I want to know about him.”
“What about him?”
“I’d like to find where he is at the present time. Last night he was in Bakersfield. He was with Cole B. Troy, a business associate. He left Troy about nine o’clock. He never reached home. His wife called the police.
“Now I want to find Theilman. Put some men on the job and see what you can find out.”
“If the police are working on it, they’ll have run down all the leads,” Drake said.
“Exactly,” Mason told him, “but since the police aren’t confiding in us, I want to get all the information they have and more, if possible.”
“Okay,” Drake said. “I’ve got a good correspondent in Bakersfield. I can pick up the phone and get him on the job.”
“There’s the phone,” Mason said, “pick it up.”
As Drake reached for the phone, Mason left the office, pausing in Drake’s reception room to ask the switchboard operator to notify Della Street not to expect him back before noon.
Chapter Five
Perry Mason, consulting the address he had copied from the phone book, turned into Dillington Drive, a winding road which followed the contour of the hill and looked out over a lazy, haze-filled valley.
The lawyer drove slowly and stopped at number 631, a modern house of flat roof, glass sliding panels, and sloping lawn. His watch showed the time to be eleven-ten.
Mason climbed a gentle incline on broad cement steppingstones and pressed a button.
Chimes sounded in the interior of the house. A few moments later a door opened and a strikingly beautiful woman in her late twenties stood looking up at the lawyer with clear blue eyes.
“Mrs. Theilman?” Mason asked.
“Yes,” she said guardedly.
“I’m Perry Mason, an attorney,” the lawyer said. “I would like to talk with you — about your husband.”
“Come in,” she invited.
Mason entered a room which was mellow with subdued sunlight filtering through pearl-gray drapes. There was wall-to-wall oyster-shell-colored carpeting on the floor. The chairs were deep and comfortable. The whole room, while tastefully decorated, gave the impression that it had been designed for living, rather than to conform to any particular style of interior decoration.
“Won’t you be seated, Mr. Mason?”
Mason thanked her, seated himself, and said, “Mrs. Theilman, I’m sorry that I can’t put all of my cards on the table at this time. I understand, however, that you are anxious to get information concerning your husband, and I am just as anxious as you are.
“I am representing an undisclosed client. I am satisfied that I am not representing any interests that are adverse to you. Otherwise I would not be here. As far as I know, there is no reason why you can’t talk frankly with me and, to the best of my knowledge at the present time, I think it would be to your interest to do so.”
“Did my husband consult you?” she asked.
Mason said, “Frankly, he did not, Mrs. Theilman, although I have the feeling that my interest in the matter may be connected with what is best for him.
“Now I’m going to tell you very frankly the reason I am here. You have reported to the police that your husband has disappeared. You have apparently reported to the police that you felt your husband was being blackmailed by an individual named A. B. Vidal. The police have questioned me because of an interest I had shown in Mr. Vidal sometime earlier. I gave the police all the information I was able to give them.”
“You’re not representing Mr. Vidal, are you?”
“No, I’ve never seen Vidal in my life as far as I know, and from all the information I have at the present time I consider his interests are adverse to those of your husband.”