"If she's getting money for putting on weight," Della Street said wistfully, "she's living an ideal existence."

  "Until someone jerks the rug out from under her," Mason said, "and leaves her with all those curves."

  Della Street smiled. "I know how easy and rapid it is to put it on and how very slow and painful the process is of taking it off-but what in the world could anybody want with her- Well, you know, I mean why would anyone make a contract of that sort?"

  Mason said, "Since she's a friend of your Aunt Mae, it might be a good plan to find out."

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was nine o'clock the next morning when Mason's phone rang.

  "Are you decent?" Della Street asked.

  "Fully clothed and in my right mind," Mason said. "Where are you?"

  "I'm down in the lobby."

  "What gives?"

  "The contract."

  "What contract? Oh, you mean with Dianne Alder?"

  "Yes."

  "You know what it's all about?"

  "I've done better than that. I have her copy with me."

  "Good," Mason said. "Come on up. I'll meet you at the elevator."

  Mason met Della and asked, "Have you had breakfast?"

  "No. You?"

  Mason shook his head.

  "I'm famished," she said.

  "Come on in," Mason told her, "and we'll have some sent up to the suite and eat it out on the balcony overlooking the ocean."

  The lawyer called room service and placed an order for a ham steak, two orders of fried eggs, a big pot of coffee and toast.

  Della Street, walking over to the full-length mirror, surveyed herself critically. "I'm afraid," she said, "I'm being inspired by the example of Dianne Alder and am about to go overboard."

  "That breakfast won't be fattening," Mason said.

  "Hush," she told him. "I've been at the point where I've even been counting the calories in a glass of drinking water. And now, inspired by the example of Dianne getting paid for putting on weight, I feel that you should supplement that order with sweet rolls and hashbrown potatoes."

  "Shall I?" Mason asked, reaching for the phone.

  "Heavens, no!" she exclaimed. "Here, read this contract and prepare to lose a secretary. Why didn't someone tell me about this sooner?"

  "Inspired?" Mason asked.

  "To quote a famous phrase," Della Street said, "it's nice work if you can get it. I'm thinking of getting it. Eat all you want and get paid for it. Have a guaranteed income. Be free from worries so you can put on weight in the right places."

  "What," Mason asked, "are the right places?"

  "The places that meet the masculine eye," she said. Mason settled in his chair, glanced through the contract, frowned, started reading it more carefully.

  By the time the room service waiter arrived with the table and the breakfast order, Mason had completed a study of the contract.

  Della Street waited until after the table had been set on the balcony, the waiter had left the room, and Mason had taken the first sip of his coffee.

  "Well?" she asked.

  Mason said, "That's the damnedest contract I've ever read."

  "I thought you'd be interested in it."

  "The strange thing," Mason said, "is that on its face the contract seems so completely reasonable; in fact, so utterly benevolent. The party of the first part agrees that Dianne may fear she will have trouble getting secretarial employment if she puts on weight, and recognizes the fact that as of the time the contract is signed she is gainfully employed as a secretary in a law office at a salary of five thousand, two hundred dollars a year.

  "Since the party of the first part desires that she shall give up that employment and devote herself exclusively to her work as a model, it is guaranteed that she will receive an income of one hundred dollars a week, payable each Saturday morning.

  "On the other hand, Dianne, as party of the second part, agrees to put on twelve pounds within a period of ten weeks, to resign her position immediately on the signing of the contract, and loaf on the beach, getting as much of a sun tan as possible.

  "It is agreed that she will pose in bikini bathing suits as the party of the first part may desire, but she shall not be required to pose in the nude. And if she wishes, at the time of posing in a bikini bathing suit, she may have a woman companion present as her chaperon.

  "Now," Mason went on, "comes the peculiar part of the contract. It is stated that the parties contemplate that Dianne's total income may greatly exceed the sum of fifty-two hundred dollars a year; that the fifty-two hundred dollars is a minimum guarantee made by the party of the first part; and Dianne is entitled to have that and to keep that income without dividing it. If, however, her income exceeds that amount, she is to share it fifty-fifty with the party of the first part. And, since the party of the first part is taking a calculated risk, it is agreed that Dianne's gross income shall be computed for the purposes of the division as any money she may receive from any source whatever during the life of the contract.

  "The contract is to exist for two years, and the party of the first part has the right of renewing it for an additional two years. And, at the expiration of that time, a further right of renewal for another two years.

  "During all of the time the contract is in effect any and all monies received from any source whatever by the party of the second part other than the hundred-aweek guarantee are deemed to be gross income which shall be divided equally, whether such income comes from modeling, lecturing on health, posing, television, movies or from any other source whatever, including prizes in beauty contests, gifts from admirers or otherwise; inheritances, bequests, devices or otherwise; and it is recited that the party of the first part having guaranteed her income for the life of the contract, and having made plans to put her in the public eye, and to give her opportunities to greatly increase her income, is entitled to one-half of her gross income regardless of the source, and/or whether it is directly or indirectly the result of his efforts on her behalf or of the publicity resulting from his efforts under the contract."

  Mason picked up his knife and fork, divided the ham steak in half, put a piece on Della Street 's plate, one on his own, and gave his attention to the ham and eggs.

  "Well?" Della Street asked.

  "Dianne is a nice girl," Mason said.

  "She has a striking figure," Della Street said.

  Mason nodded.

  "She might be described as whistle bait," Della Street went on.

  "Well?" Mason asked.

  "Do you suppose the party of the first part is completely unaware of these things?"

  Mason said, "In the course of my legal career I've seen quite a few approaches. I've never seen one quite like this, if that's what the party of the first part has in mind."

  "In the course of my secretarial career," Della Street said demurely, "I've seen them all, but this is a new one.",

  "According to the letter of that contract," Mason said, "if Dianne Alder should meet a millionaire, receive a gift of a hundred thousand dollars and should then marry, or if her husband should die and leave her the million dollars, the party of the first part would be entitled to fifty per cent."

  "Marrying a million dollars is not one of the normal occupational hazards of a legal secretary in a relatively small beach town," Della Street said.

  Suddenly Mason snapped his fingers.

  "You've got it?" Della Street asked.

  "I have an explanation," Mason said. "I don't know whether it's the explanation but it's quite an explanation."

  "What?" Della Street asked. "This thing has me completely baffled."

  Mason said, "Let us suppose that the party of the first part, this Harrison T. Boring, whoever he may be, is acquainted with some very wealthy and rather eccentric person-some person who is quite impressionable as far as a certain type of voluptuous blonde beauty is concerned.

  "Let us further suppose Boring has been scouting around, looking for just the girl he wants. He's been spending the summer on the beaches, looking them over in bathing suits. He's picked Dianne as being nearest to type, but she is perhaps slightly lacking in curves."

  "Wait a minute," Della Street interjected. "If Dianne's lacking in curves, I'm a reincarnated beanpole."

  "I know, I know," Mason said, brushing her levity aside. "But this individual has particular and rather peculiar tastes. He's very wealthy and he likes young women with lots of corn-fed beauty, not fat but, as Dianne expressed it, "firm fleshed."

  "Probably some old goat," Della Street said, her eyes narrowing.

  "Sure, why not?" Mason said. "Perhaps some rich old codger who is trying to turn back the hands of the clock. Perhaps he had a love affair with a blonde who was exceptionally voluptuous and yet at the same time had the frank, blue-eyed gaze that characterizes Dianne.

  "So Boring makes a contract with Dianne. He gets her to put on weight. He gets her to follow his instructions to the letter. At the proper time he introduces her to this pigeon he has all picked out, and from there on Boring takes charge.

  "Any one of several things can happen. Either the pigeon becomes involved with Dianne, in which event Boring acts as the blackmailing mastermind who manipulates the shakedown, or the man lavishes Dianne with gifts, or perhaps, if Boring manipulates it right, the parties commit matrimony."

  "And then," Della Street asked, "Boring would be getting fifty per cent of Dianne's housekeeping allowance? After all, marriage can be rather disillusioning under certain circumstances."

  "Then," Mason said, "comes the proviso that any money she receives within the time limit of the contract, whether by inheritance, descent, bequest or devise, is considered part of her gross income. Boring arranges that the wealthy husband leads a short but happy life, and Dianne comes into her inheritance with Boring standing around with a carving knife ready to slice off his share."

  Della Street thought that over for a moment. "Well, what do you know," she said.

  "And that," Mason said, "explains the peculiar optional extension provisions of the contract. It can run for two years, four years or six years at the option of the party of the first part. Quite evidently he hopes that the matter will be all concluded with the two-year period, but in the event it isn't and the husband should be more resistant than he anticipates, he can renew the contract for another two years, and if the husband still manages to survive the perils of existence for that fouryear period, he can still renew for another two years."

  "And where," Della Street asked, "would that leave Dianne Alder? Do you suppose he would plan to have her convicted of the murder?"

  "No, no, not that," Mason said. "He couldn't afford to."

  "Why not?"

  "Because," Mason pointed out, "a murderer can't inherit from his victim. Therefore Boring has to manipulate things in such a way that the wealthy husband dies what seems to be a natural death. Or, if murdered, that some other person has to be the murderer. Dianne, as the bereaved widow, steps into an inheritance of a few million dollars, and Boring, as the person who brought Dianne into the public eye and thereby arranged for the meeting with her future husband, produces his contract and wants a fifty-fifty split."

  "With that much involved, wouldn't the contract be contested on the grounds of public policy, undue influence and a lot of other things?"

  "Sure it would," Mason said, "but with that much involved and with a contract of this sort in the background, Dianne would make a settlement. If she became a wealthy widow with social possibilities ahead of her, she would hardly want to have this chapter of her career brought into the open; the diet, the putting on weight, the deliberate entrapment of her husband, and all the rest of it."

  "In other words," Della Street said, "Harrison T. Boring walked down the beaches looking for a precise type of feminine beauty. When his eyes lit on Dianne, he recognized her as a potential bonanza."

  "Bear in mind," Mason said thoughtfully, "that there are certain other things. Dianne has the build of a striptease dancer but essentially has the background of a darn nice girl. Those are the things on which Harrison T. Boring wants to capitalize, and I may point out that the combination is not very easy to come by.

  "Usually a girl with Dianne's physical attributes has developed an attitude of sophistication, a certain degree of worldly wisdom, and the unmistakable earmarks of experience, whereas Dianne is essentially shy, selfconscious, easily embarrassed, slightly naive and delightfully easy on the eyes."

  "I see that Dianne has impressed you by her good points," Della Street said.

  Mason's eyes were level-lidded with concentration. "What has Dianne told you about Boring, anything?"

  "Very little. She knows very little.

  "Dianne was a legal secretary. She was, of course, conscious of her figure. She was also conscious of the fact that if her waist should expand, the rest of her figure would be damaged. So she did a lot of swimming and walking. She would quit work at five o'clock during the summer afternoons, then, taking advantage of daylight saving time, get into her swimming suit, come down on the beach and walk and swim."

  "Unescorted?" Mason asked.

  "She tried to be. She wanted exercise. The average man who wanted to swim with her wasn't particularly keen on that sort of exercise; in fact, very few of them could keep up with her. She walked and ran and swam and, of course, acquired a delightful sun tan.

  "Since women of that build like to admire themselves in the nude in front of mirrors, and are painfully conscious of the white streaks which mar the smooth sun tan where convention decrees a minimum of clothing should be worn, Dianne supplemented her weekday swimming parties by lying in the nude in a sun bath she had constructed in the privacy of the back yard.

  "About three weeks before this contract was signed she noticed that she was being stared at rather persistently and finally followed by a man whom she describes as being in his thirties, with keen eyes and a dignified, distinguished manner. He looked like an actor."

  "And what happened?"

  "Nothing at first. Dianne is accustomed to attracting attention. She's accustomed to having men try to make passes at her and she takes all of that in her stride.

  "Then one day Boring approached her and said he had a business proposition he'd like to discuss with her and she told him to get lost. He said that this was purely legitimate; that it had to do with the possibility of her getting gainful employment in Hollywood and was sh interested.

  "Naturally, Dianne was interested. So Boring gave her this story about a new trend in fashion, about the fact that women were becoming neurotic by paying too much attention to slim figures; that one of the most popular actresses, with women, was Mae West; that if Mae West had only started a new type of dress style it would have gone over like a house afire; that nature didn't intend women to have thin figures after they had reached maturity as women.

  "Dianne said he was very convincing and of course the offer he made was quite attractive.

  "All Dianne had to do was to put on weight and put in a lot of time training so that the flesh she put on was firm flesh and not fat. Boring was very insistent about that."

  "All right," Mason said, "she signed the contract. Did she get any advice on it? She was working for lawyers and-"

  "No, she didn't," Della Street interjected. "Boring was particularly insistent that she keep the entire matter completely confidential, that no one should know about it; that under no circumstances was she to mention the reason why she was resigning from her secretarial position.

  "Boring explained that he wanted to have this new style of his so highly personalized that women would become aware of Dianne's beauty before they realized that they were being given a new style. Boring said that women were very resistant to new styles until they became a vogue and then they fell all over themselves falling in line.

  "Boring has ideas for Dianne to attract a lot of public attention and then he is going to have her put on a series of health lectures. He's going to give her scripts that she is to follow, speeches she is to make, explaining that nature intended a woman to have curves and that men really like women with curves; that the slim, neurotic models are an artificial by-product of the dress designer's art.

  "Boring told her that he could set the country afire with the right kind of approach to this thing and that all women would throw diets out of the window, start putting on weight and would only be anxious to have the weight firm flesh instead of bulging fat; that he intended to open up a series of Dianne Alder studios for healthful figures and charming curves."

  Mason said, "Hang it! The guy could be right at that, Della."

  "It would be a job," Della said. "Something you wouldn't want to gamble a hundred dollars a week on."

  "It depends," Mason said. "The stakes are big enough… All right, now what happened after the contract was signed? Did Boring insist that she become cuddly with him?"

  "That is the strange part," Della Street said. "Dianne rather felt that that would be a part of the contract and was rather hesitant about it until finally Boring, discovering the reason for her hesitancy, told her that once she signed the contract she would see very little of him; that he was going to be busy in Hollywood, New York and Paris, laying the foundations for this new type of promotion. So finally Dianne signed the contract.

  "She hasn't seen Boring since but she hears from him on the telephone. Every once in a while he will call her and from the nature of the conversation Dianne knows that he is keeping a close watch on what she is doing."

  "Now, that's interesting," Mason said.

  "Dianne finds it rather disconcerting."

  "How does she receive her hundred dollars, Della?" Mason asked.

  "Every Saturday morning there is an envelope in the mail with a check. The checks are signed by the Hollywood Talent Scout Modeling Agency, per Harrison T. Boring, president."

  "Well," Mason said, "I don't like to give up a good murder mystery before it's even got off the ground, Della, but there's just a chance this whole idea may be on the up-and-up. Boring's idea sounds pretty farfetched and fishy when it's written in the cold phraseology of a contract, but the more you think of his explanation, the more plausible it sounds.