“It was on that oil lease.”

  “What oil lease?”

  “On the island.”

  “Oh, that,” her sister said scornfully. “That was one of those deals Lawton promoted … I thought it was all over.”

  “I thought so too but I guess it isn’t. The lease had some funny provision in it … that’s what the man told me.”

  “Jane Keller, will you tell me what you’re talking about?”

  “Well, Mr. Shelby seems to think he can reinstate the lease by paying five hundred dollars.”

  “Go on,” Martha snapped. “What would happen then?”

  “Well, that’s what I don’t know.”

  Martha had been carrying the two glasses of brandy over toward Jane’s chair. Now she stopped, her alert eyes wide with apprehension. “You mean something may happen to the sale?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Martha inhaled audibly, walked over to hand Jane one of the glasses of brandy. “Drink that,” she said, and without waiting to sit down tossed off her own glass of brandy at a single gesture.

  Jane Keller sipped the brandy, coughed, wiped her lips with the handkerchief she was holding in her left hand, and once more smiled that vague somewhat wan smile.

  Martha rattled out swiftly indignant words. “Now you listen to me, Jane Keller. Don’t depend on Lawton Keller. He isn’t worth a fig when it comes to real business. He’s just a glib talker, who could never get to first base with a man. He makes his living out of impressing women. You know Gregory never had any use for him.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Well, I would. Two years ago you had forty thousand dollars in insurance money. How much of it have you got left?”

  “Well, you can’t blame the things that happened on Lawton. Good heavens, Martha, he isn’t running the world!”

  “You’d think he was to hear him talk. I’ll bet he’s lost all of that money for you. The island’s all you have left.”

  “I should have sold the island earlier,” Jane said. “The trouble with Lawton was he didn’t have enough capital to really back his judgment. We had to play things on kind of a shoestring basis …”

  “A shoestring basis of forty thousand dollars!” Martha Stanhope snorted. “If he’d had more capital, he’d have been just that much farther in the red … Now I don’t know how Margie’s going to take this. You told her she could count on five thousand dollars when that sale went through. She’s marrying that discharged soldier and they’re going to buy that grocery business. The papers on that are all signed and …”

  “I know,” Jane said wearily, “but don’t worry about it now, Martha. It won’t stop the sale.”

  “What makes you think it won’t?”

  “Lawton tells me they’re just about ready to close the escrow. He wouldn’t doubt but what the deal might go through tomorrow.”

  Metal clicked against metal as a latchkey was fitted to the door of the apartment.

  Martha Stanhope said hastily, “That’s Margie now.”

  “We won’t say a word,” Jane warned.

  “Yes we will. You’ve got to tell her,” Martha said.

  “Well,” Jane observed, taking a hasty sip of her brandy, “I don’t know what there is to tell.”

  The door opened. Marjorie Stanhope included her mother and her aunt in her greeting, said, “What isn’t there to tell?”

  She was twenty-one and not particularly good-looking. Her figure had never curved out. There was a sallow appearance about her skin, and her black hair became stringy whenever she neglected weekly finger waves. Her eyes, wide and dark, could have made the face beautiful if there had been any animation in the girl’s manner. There was none. The face seldom had expression, and when it did change there was an utter lack of spontaneity about it. As Martha had complained on occasion, “She sits and looks at you and just looks and looks, and you haven’t the faintest idea of what she’s thinking.”

  “Well,” Marjorie asked, walking with characteristic, loose-jointed ease toward the closet, “what isn’t there to tell?”

  She let her soft tweed coat slide back down her arms, sniffed, and said, “Who has the alcoholic halitosis?”

  “We both have, dear,” her mother said. “There’s the brandy over there on the sideboard. Have a drink.”

  Margie took off her hat, ran her fingers around the edges of her hair, poured herself a drink, and said, “What gives?”

  “Your Aunt Jane’s in trouble, dear.”

  “Lawton?” Margie asked, raising the brandy glass to the light.

  “No, dear. It’s trouble over an oil lease. It may affect the sale of the island property.”

  Margie had started to drink. Abruptly her hand became motionless. Then she lowered the glass, but looked neither at her mother nor at her Aunt Jane.

  After a moment of strained silence she said, “All right, go on.”

  It was Jane Keller who started speaking rapidly. “It won’t make any difference, Margie. Things are going to be all right; it’s just a technicality that’s bobbed up. I don’t even know there’s going to be any trouble about the sale. Lawton thinks the deal will go through escrow within the next day or two.”

  Margie paid no attention to the rapid words of reassurance. She said over her shoulder, “I suppose that means the loan’s off. I’ll tell Frank.”

  Both her mother and Aunt Jane started talking at once. “Don’t do anything like that,” Jane said almost sharply.

  “It isn’t that serious, dear,” Martha Stanhope soothed.

  Margie turned then to look at her mother. “Not that serious? Here’s Frank Bomar, one leg shot away. He’s not looking for charity, but wanting to build up a business. He’s proud. He wouldn’t marry me unless he had some way of making a living. We’ve signed the papers on this grocery store and put up our money. The rest was promised for next week. We’re going to get married Saturday. Everything is contingent on this loan from Aunt Jane. I didn’t ask for it; she volunteered it. Okay, suppose something happens to it. We lose the store. We lose Frank’s two thousand. What does it do to Frank? I guess you people don’t know what it means to be changed overnight from a perfect specimen of physical manhood to a cripple. I guess you don’t know what it means to come back to a country that you’ve been fighting for that takes it all as matter-of-course where …”

  She broke off abruptly, twisted her somewhat thin shoulders, raised the brandy glass to her lips, tilted her head back, and took the brandy neat in one swift gulp, put the empty glass down on the table, said to her mother, “Okay, where do we go from here?” and walked out of the room.

  There was nothing sulky, nothing dramatic in her manner; she walked with calm, loose-jointed deliberation, closed the door softly behind her.

  Jane glanced helplessly at her sister. “I’m sorry.”

  Martha said nothing.

  “I presume she’s gone to her bedroom to have a good cry,” Jane said.

  Martha Stanhope said, “She won’t be crying. She’ll sit down in a chair, fasten her eyes on the wall and simply sit there.”

  “Thinking?” Jane asked.

  “I suppose so. … But you’ll never know what she’s thinking about. Speak to her and she’ll answer just as calmly and patiently as though there wasn’t a thing wrong. Honestly, Jane, I just don’t know what goes on in that girl’s mind. I wish she’d cry or scream or have a tantrum or get angry or something. But she just shuts herself up inside of herself and you don’t have the faintest idea what she’s thinking.”

  “Well, Lawton wants me to get over there right away. He …”

  Martha Stanhope walked over to the coat closet, took out her hat and coat.

  “Where are you going, Martha?”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “To Lawton? He …”

  “Lawton nothing,” Martha Stanhope said sarcastically, “he’s the one who got you into this, signing that oil lease. … That’s when you should have seen a lawyer, before you signed it. I’m going to tell Margie where we’re going.”

  “Where are we going?” Jane asked.

  Martha said, “We’re going to see Perry Mason. … Wait a second. I’ll tell Margie.”

  She tapped at the door of Marjorie’s bedroom, hesitated a moment, stepped inside, then softly closed the door.

  It was nearly a minute later that she emerged, closed the door and said, “All right, Jane, let’s go.”

  “What was she doing?” Jane Keller asked.

  “Sitting in a chair, looking out the window,” Martha Stanhope said in a flat, expressionless voice.

  Chapter 4

  Martha Stanhope determinedly pushed open the door marked PERRY MASON, Attorney at Law, ENTRANCE, then held the door for Jane Keller, who was lagging somewhat dubiously behind.

  The receptionist looked up from the switchboard, smiled, said, “Good afternoon.”

  “Is Mr. Mason in?”

  The receptionist said, “Mr. Mason has left for the evening.”

  “Oh dear … Isn’t there some way I could see him?”

  “I’ll let you talk with his secretary, Della Street.”

  “Please do.”

  The receptionist plugged in a line, said, “Miss Street, there are two women here who seem very anxious to see Mr. Mason. Could you … Thanks.”

  She pulled out the plug, smiled once more at the women, said, “Please be seated. Mr. Mason’s personal secretary will be here in a moment.”

  The women sat down, exchanged glances. Jane Keller seemed definitely apprehensive as to whether what she was doing would meet with Lawton Keller’s approval.

  Martha Stanhope, her chin up, lips tight, met her sister’s eyes with a glance that was almost hypnotic in its firm determination.

  “Don’t you think, Martha, that while we’re waiting I could call Lawton and …”

  “No.”

  Jane sighed, said dubiously, “Well … of course …”

  The door that was marked PRIVATE opened and Della Street, trim, efficient, was smiling at them. “I’m sorry. Mr. Mason has left for the evening. But, if you’ll give me your names and tell me generally what you wanted to see him about …”

  Martha Stanhope did the talking and Della Street made notes, getting the names, the addresses and the nature of their business.

  When Martha had finished speaking, Della frowned down at her shorthand notes, said, “Mr. Mason won’t be in any more this evening but Mr. Jackson is here.”

  “Who’s Mr. Jackson?”

  “He’s an assistant to Mr. Mason … Frankly, Mr. Mason doesn’t do very much except important cases in court and …”

  “I know,” Jane Keller said. “I didn’t think he’d be interested.”

  “But,” Della Street went on, “he’s always interested in cases where there is an apparent injustice. I think you’d better talk with Mr. Jackson. It’s after five now and you won’t find any other lawyers in their offices, I’m afraid.”

  “We’ll talk with him,” Martha Stanhope said grimly.

  “This way please,” Della Street said.

  Jackson was a legally erudite man who was never so happy as when his nose was buried in a law book, searching for some precedent which would give him a case that was “on all fours.”

  He seldom left the office before six or six-thirty, and then tore himself away from his law books with obvious reluctance, a man with a vast memory, studious habits and a meticulously formal type of mind. His eyes seemed more at home resting on the printed pages of his books than on the human faces of his clients.

  Jackson at one time confessed to Perry Mason, “My greatest trouble is translating the problems of my clients into the proper legal category. Once I get them definitely fixed, however, I never have any trouble. I just keep on searching until I find a precedent. But it’s hard for me to translate life into law.”

  The lower part of Jackson’s face showed a certain nervous tension. His nose was long and thin. The taut mouth turned down slightly at the corners, and there were deep calipers stretching down from the nostrils. There was no tension, however, about the upper part of his head where the high forehead was placid in its tranquillity, the calm of absolute knowledge.

  Jackson was, in his patient way, a genius at uncovering the exact needle he wanted from the haystack of legal decisions.

  Naturally a cautious individual on his own account, he never ventured to pilot his clients through uncharted paths in the legal domain. Once Jackson had translated the problem of a client into its proper legal category, he delved into the books until he found where a similar case had gone to a court of last resort. Thereafter, unless the client impatiently took the bit in his teeth, he was never permitted to make a move which had not previously been made by some other litigant, duly taken to court, and thereafter adjudicated by some appellate tribunal.

  So long as Jackson was following in the footsteps of some previous litigant he was crisp, decisive, and sure of himself. But if it ever became necessary for his feet to leave the charted legal paths and explore new realms, the man froze to a standstill.

  When Jackson had married, he had proposed to an attractive widow some five years his senior, but quite definitely a widow. As Perry Mason had pointed out to Della Street, even in matrimonial affairs, Jackson was afraid to blaze a trail on his own initiative.

  Jackson sat thoughtfully silent as he listened to Jane Keller’s story, interspersed from time to time with comments from Martha Stanhope.

  “Do you have a copy of this printed oil lease?” he asked.

  “No, I haven’t,” Jane said. “My brother-in-law, Lawton, has it.”

  “I am very much interested in the exact wording of that provision,” Jackson said.

  Martha Stanhope said, “It wouldn’t take her over half an hour or three quarters of an hour at the most to go out and get it.”

  Jackson looked at his watch. “I’m afraid that would be pretty late. There’s nothing that can be done tonight, in any event. However,” he added somewhat wistfully, “I would like to get the facts clear in my own mind so that I could make a quick search and see if a similar provision hasn’t been adjudicated somewhere. A printed contract indicates a definite possibility that an exactly identical provision has been construed by some court in some state.”

  “How would you go about finding that?” Martha asked.

  Jackson waved his hand towards the law library. “The cases decided by courts of last resort in all of the states are printed and bound,” he said. “We have them.”

  “And you can find a case like that?”

  “Oh yes,” Jackson said smiling reassuringly, “I can find it … I can nearly always find a case in point. It’s just a question of knowing where to look and how to look, and then staying with it long enough.”

  “Well, Jane could go out. We might be able to get a cab. …”

  “I could telephone Lawton,” Jane said, “and get him to read that to me over the telephone and we could write it down.”

  Jackson said, “That’s an idea.” He pushed back his chair abruptly and said, “Wait there please,” and after a perfunctory knock on the door of Mason’s private office, said to Della Street, “Mr. Mason won’t be back any more tonight I suppose?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “There’s a clause in this oil lease that I’d like to work on. Would you mind taking it down in shorthand for me if we can get someone to read it to us over the telephone?”

  “Certainly not,” Della Street said picking up her notebook. “I’ll be glad to.”

  Jackson’s smile was apologetic. “The stenographers have all left for the evening,” he said. “I guess we’re holding down the office.”

  “It’s all right with me,” Della said. “I’ll write it out for you.”

  They entered Jackson’s office. Gertie, the receptionist and telephone operator, had gone home, so Jackson’s line was connected with the outside line through the switchboard. He dialed the number Jane Keller gave him, listened while Jane Keller carried on a conversation with her brother-in-law, a conversation which got down to the point at issue only after several minutes of voluble explanation as to the reason for the call and the necessity of consulting a lawyer.

  Lawton said angrily, “Those lawyers will get their grub hooks into the deal and mess it all up. You’ll wind up paying out all your dough. I can read and I know that lease like a book. No lawyer can …”

  “I know, dear, but Martha felt we should see Mr. Mason, and it means so much to her—on account of Margie, you know.”

  “Margie!” Lawton exclaimed bitterly. “Sure, it means a lot to Martha. All those buzzard relations of yours, standing in line every time you put across a business deal … I can’t keep enough operating capital to make investments if you’re going to keep dissipating it with loans to your relatives.”

  “I know, Lawton dear, but please read me the provision in the lease over the telephone. … There’s a girl coming to the phone to take it down.”

  Della Street’s voice came over the wire, “I’m on an extension line, Mrs. Keller. If this gentleman will go ahead and read, I’ll take it down in shorthand.”

  Lawton Keller, realizing there was another listener on the line, promptly modified his tone, said efficiently, “Just a moment,” and then started reading the provision in the lease.

  A few minutes later Della Street handed a neatly typed copy of the six months clause to Jackson.

  Jackson became utterly oblivious of his clients as he perused the provision in question.

  At length he looked up. “It looks like a joker,” he said. “Now I am wondering about what’s in the other part of the lease. I’m afraid I’m going to need the whole document. … Look here, why don’t you get the lease and put it through the mail slot in the door of the office here. In that way I’ll get it first thing in the morning and will be able to reach a decision more promptly.”

  “You can let us know right away, as soon as you see it?”

  “It may take a little time,” Jackson said. “I wouldn’t want to limit myself on that.”

  Martha nodded to Jane Keller. “All right, Jane, we’ll go out and get the lease.”