“Shall I ask them to come in?” Mason inquired.

  “If you will, please.”

  Mason picked up the telephone, and said, “Ask Miss Milicant and Mr. Barkler to come in, please.” He dropped the receiver into place and glanced expectantly at the door to the outer office.

  Emily Milicant had quite evidently tried to preserve the contours of youth although she was somewhere between forty-five and fifty-five. She had starved her face into submission, but her body was more obstinate. Despite the hollows under her cheekbones and the wide intensity of her staring, black eyes, she retained little rolls of fat just above the hipbones. Dieting had made her face gaunt, her neck almost scrawny, but the fit of her dress across the hips-lacked the smooth symmetry which she had so evidently tried to achieve.

  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?”

  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, looped his chin close to his upthrust 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 a tired drawl. His appearance of general lassitude and lugubrious disinterest in life kept anyone from suspecting he might be a private detective.

  Drake said, “Give me a cigarette, Perry, and I’ll tell you the sad news.”

  “Get it?” Mason said to Della Street, tossing the detective his cigarette case. “The big moocher comes in here and bums my cigarettes to report that he’s foozled a case.”

  “Nuts to you,” Drake said, extracting a cigarette and snapping a match into flame. “I did some good work on that case. The blonde who cashed the check gave the name of Marcia Whittaker. Her address checked with the address on her automobile license—but it wasn’t her address. However, the name was right, and it didn’t take me long to locate where she’d been living.”

  “Been living?” Mason asked.

  “Sure,” Drake said. “She hadn’t figured on having to give her name at the bank. When the cashier demanded it, she was smart enough to give him the right name so it checked with her driving license. She was also smart enough to go home, pack up her things and move out that afternoon.”

  “Any back trail?” Mason asked.

  “Of course not. What the hell do you think she moved for?”

  “And that,” Mason said sarcastically, “represents the result of your complete investigation, I take it.”

  Drake was silent while he drew in a lungful of smoke, then blew it out, and resumed his account as casually as though he had not heard Mason’s comment. “I did a little snooping around the place where she had her apartment. The banker had described her as hard. That was only the first half.”

  “You mean hard and fast?” Della Street asked.

  “You guessed it,” Drake said. “So I hunted up the landlady and ran a blazer on her about the kind of joint she was running and scared her into convulsions. She said she’d do anything she could, but the girl hadn’t left any forwarding address and all that. I told her I wanted to know something about the men who had called on Marcia Whittaker. That lead didn’t pan out. Then I asked the manager if she gave apartments to every tramp who showed up without asking for references. She said she certainly didn’t. She usually asked for references, although she admitted that if a girl gave references that sounded all right and didn’t hesitate or hem and haw about it, she seldom wrote to the references.

  “So we looked up Marcia Whittaker and found that when she’d taken the place, she’d given as a reference an L. C. Conway, manager of the Conway Appliance Company at 692 Herrod Avenue.”

  Mason lit a cigarette. “Not bad, Paul.”

  “Just luck,” Drake said, wearily. “Don’t give me any credit for that—although you’d have been the first to blame me if the name hadn’t been there. Anyway, it was a lucky break. I went down to 692 Herrod Avenue. The Conway Appliance Company had had an office there for a couple of months. It had received lots of mail, and then it had moved out suddenly and left no forwarding address.

  “I got a description of L. C. Conway.” Drake pulled a notebook from his pocket, opened it, and read, “L. C. Conway, about fifty-five, around five foot ten, weight a hundred and ninety pounds, bald in front, with dark, curly hair coming to a point about the top middle of his head. Has a slight limp, due to something wrong with right foot. . . . No one knew where he lived or what he did.”

  Mason frowned. “Couldn’t find a thing?” he asked.

  “Nope,” Drake said, “but I found one thing that was significant.”

  “What?”

  “The day after he moved, all mail quit coming to the office.”

  Mason studied his cigarette thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “Meaning a forwarding address had been left at the post office?”

  “Yep.”

  “Any chance of getting it?”

  “None whatever,” Drake said, “but I bought a post office money order for twenty-five bucks payable to the Conway Appliance Company, scribbled a note that it was in payment of the merchandise I’d ordered a couple of months ago, and asked him to send it by mail to a phony address. I sent it to 692 Herrod Avenue.”

  “How did you know what kind of merchandise he was selling?” Mason asked.

  “I didn’t,” Drake said, “but a guy like that isn’t going to turn down twenty-five bucks, and he isn’t going to take a chance on cashing a post office money order without giving the sucker some sort of a run for his money.”

  Mason nodded. “Good work, Paul. Get an answer?”

  “Yep,” Drake said, squirming around sideways so that he could get his left hand into the inside pocket of his coat. “Found out what the bird’s selling all right and got his address.”

  “What’s he selling?”

  “Crooked crap dice by the looks of things,” Drake said, pulling a letter from his pocket and reading. “Dear Sir: It is our policy to make deliveries by messenger and never through the mail. Your valued order received, but you neglected to state whether you had any preference in color or size. Unless we hear from you to the contrary, we will deliver two pair of our regular ivory cubes. There will, of course, be the usual premium.”

  “How’s it signed?” Mason asked.

  “Signed ‘Guy T. Serle, President,’ ” Drake said.

  “Address?” Mason asked.

  “Uh huh. 209 East Ranchester.”

  “So then what?” Mason asked.

  Drake said, “Thought I’d drop in for instructions. Think I’d better let him make a delivery?”

  “Yes,” Mason said, “and tail the man who makes it. Try and pick up Conway and put a tail on him. Find out who Serle is.”

  Drake said, “Okay, Perry. Of course, this delivery guy will probably be a rat-faced punk who thinks he’s a big shot because he’s peddling phoney dice, but he may lead to something. I’ll . . . ”

  He broke off as Mason’s telephone shrilled into sound.

  Mason said, “All right, Paul, be seeing you. Keep me posted,” and picked up the receiver. The girl at the switchboard said, “Miss Leeds on the line, says it’s a matter of the greatest importance.”

  Mason said, “Put her on,” then, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece, said to Drake, who was halfway to the exit door, “Stick around a minute, Paul. This is the Leeds girl calling now. . . . Yes, hello. . . . Yes, this is Mr. Mason, Miss Leeds.”

  Phyllis Leeds was so excited that her voice was high-pitched. “Mr. Mason,” she said, “the most terrible thing has happened.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “let’s have it.”

  “Jason Carrel, one of the relatives, has put Uncle Alden in a sanitarium and won’t tell me where it is.”

  “How did that happen?” Mason asked.

  “He called early this morning to take Uncle Alden for an automobile ride. When they didn’t come back within an hour, I got worried. Uncle Alden doesn’t like long rides, and I don’t think he likes to ride with Jason anyway. I went around to Jason’s house. Sure enough, his car was in the garage. I asked him where Uncle Alden was, and he said that Uncle Alden had been taken very sick while they were riding and that he’d rushed him to a sanitarium and called a doctor, that the doctor had insisted upon absolute rest and quiet for at least two days. He said he was just coming to tell me about it when I arrived.”

  Mason said, “All right, I’ll fix that in short order. Now listen, this is more important than it sounds. Does your uncle love to gamble?”

  “Why, no, not particularly.”

  “Does he ever shoot craps for large stakes?”

  “Why, no . . . well, wait a minute. He was in a little game a few days ago—oh, maybe a week ago.”

  “With whom was he playing?”

  “John Milicant.”

  “Related to Emily?” Mason asked.

  “Yes, he’s her brother.”

  “How much did the brother lose?” Mason asked.

  “I don’t know. I think he won.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know. There was a little talk back and forth, a little kidding.”

  “Was the game for high stakes?”

  “No—just twenty-five cents a throw or something like that. I don’t know much about how to play the game.”

  “Where can I find John Milicant?”

  “I don’t know just where he lives. I can find out from Emily.”

  Mason said, “Get him. Bring him into the office. I want to talk with him. Don’t worry about your uncle. I’ll get out a writ of habeas corpus and serve it on Jason Carrel.”

  “And there’s nothing else for me to do?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing I can do to help Uncle?”

  “Not a thing,” Mason said. “Bring in John Milicant and forget about it. Quit worrying.”

  He hung up the telephone, said to Paul Drake, “Okay, Paul. It’s nothing important. The relatives are closing in on the old man, that’s all. Go ahead and get busy on the Conway Appliance Company.”

  As Drake left the office, Mason said to Della Street, “Get out a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. I’ll present it to Judge Treadwell, and well give Jason Carrel a jolt right between the eyes.”

  3

  WHEN MASON and Della Street returned from lunch, Paul Drake had already returned and was waiting for them.

  “What’s new, Paul?” Mason asked.

  Drake said, “We’ve located Marcia Whittaker.”

  “Good work, Paul. How did you do it?”

  “Oh, just a lot of leg work,” Drake said wearily. “We covered the Bureau of Light, Water and Gas. She had an application in for electric lights and gas. It’s an unfurnished flat. She’s evidently buying furniture and settling down.”