“Carl Moar tried to take the easy way. As is so often the case, it turned out to be the hard way, yet we must not judge him too harshly. He had confidence in Evelyn Whiting. He was a thinker, something of a dreamer. He didn’t have a great deal of what is known as worldly wisdom. He lived in an artificial world peopled largely by his own ideas and administered largely according to his own ideals. Evelyn Whiting had but little difficulty in convincing him that Morgan Eves was innocent. She had less difficulty because she herself really believed it. It looked like a good chance for Moar to do the right thing and at the same time pick up enough money to give Belle her chance …”

  Belle Newberry, her eyes filled with tears, said simply, “I loved him.”

  Mrs. Moar avoided Belle’s eyes. “I, too, loved him,” she said, “in a way. I don’t think I had a proper appreciation of his character. I was too ready to believe that he’d embezzled that money. But there was no other explanation I could think of. Carl loved Belle. I don’t think he loved me. I think he’d been a bachelor too long to ever fit into the give and take of married life. What he did, he did for Belle, to give her a chance to travel, to meet people of a different class. … It was a terrible mistake—but he thought he was planning for the best.”

  Mason pushed back his chair. “Well,” he said, “I don’t want to rush things, but Della and I must be leaving. My Los Angeles office phoned me an hour ago. A client is impatiently waiting to see me on a matter of the greatest importance. We’re flying down to Los Angeles in a chartered plane. How about it, Della, are you ready?”

  She nodded.

  Hungerford said, “Just a moment, if you please. I have an announcement to make. It won’t be made public for some time because of the tragic circumstances which have gripped us all, but … Well …”

  Della Street raised her glass. “You don’t need to tell us the rest of it, Roy,” she said, laughing. “It’s a toast we’ll gladly pledge.”

  In the plane flying southward, Della Street snuggled close to Perry Mason, slipped her hand down into his. “Didn’t she look beautiful, Chief?”

  “Belle?” he asked.

  “Yes. Her eyes were all starry and she was so radiantly, quietly happy, so sure of her love—and of his.”

  “She’s a mighty fine girl,” Mason said. “There’s only one I know of who can beat her. I’m hoping that sometime she’ll—”

  She withdrew her hand from his. “Now wait a minute, Chief,” she protested. “Let’s not get too sentimental. You know as well as I do that you’d hate a home if you had one. You’re a stormy petrel flying from one murder case to another. If you had a wife you’d put her in a fine home—and leave her there. You don’t want a wife. But you do need a secretary who can take chances with you—and you have another case waiting in Los Angeles.”

  Mason’s eyes squinted thoughtfully. “I wonder,” he said, “just what that case is. Jackson said it had an unusual angle he thought would interest me.”

  About the Author

  Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

  Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) is a prolific American author best known for his works centered on the lawyer-detective Perry Mason. At the time of his death in March of 1970, in Ventura, California, Gardner was “the most widely read of all American writers” and “the most widely translated author in the world,” according to social historian Russell Nye. The first Perry Mason novel, The Case of The Velvet Claws, published in 1933, had sold twenty-eight million copies in its first fifteen years. In the mid-1950s, the Perry Mason novels were selling at the rate of twenty thousand copies a day. There have been six motion pictures based on his work and the hugely popular Perry Mason television series starring Raymond Burr, which aired for nine years and 271 episodes.

  Table of Contents

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  About the Author

 

 

  Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Substitute Face

 

 

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