"I was hoping that we were on the track of a potential murder before the potential corpse had really walked into the danger zone. I had visions of waiting until Harrison T. Boring had introduced Dianne to his millionaire pigeon and then stepping into the picture in a way that would cause Mr. Boring a maximum of embarrassment and perhaps feathering Dianne Alder's nest."

  "As to the latter," Della Street said, "we have to remember that every time Dianne's nest gets two feathers, Boring gets one of them."

  "That's what the contract says," Mason observed, "but sometimes things don't work out that way… Well, Della, I guess we'll have to give Mr. Harrison T. Boring the benefit of the doubt and you can return Dianne's contract to her. But we'll sort of keep an eye on her."

  "Yes," Della Street said, "I thought you would want to do that."

  Mason looked at her sharply but found nothing other than an expression of innocence on her face.

  Abruptly the telephone rang. Della Street picked up the instrument.

  "Hello," she said in a low voice. "This is Mr. Mason's suite."

  Dianne Alder's voice came over the phone in a rush of words.

  "Oh, Della, I'm glad I caught you!- Your Aunt told me where to find you.- Della, I have to have that contract back right away. I'm sorry I let you have it and I hope you didn't say anything about it to anybody."

  "Why?" Della asked.

  "Because… well, because I guess I shouldn't have let it out of my possession. There's a proviso in the contract that I'm to do everything I can to avoid premature publicity and- Gosh, Della, I guess I made a booboo even letting you have it or talking about the arrangement. You're the only one I've told anything at all about it. Mr. Boring impressed on me that if I started telling even my closest friends, the friends would tell their friends, the newspapers would get hold of it and make a feature story that would result in what he called premature publicity.

  "He said that when they got ready to unveil the new models they'd give me a lot of publicity. That was when I was to go on television and they were going to arrange for a movie test, but nothing must be done until they were ready. They said they didn't want irresponsible reporters to skim the cream off their campaign."

  "Do you want me to mail the contract?" Della Street asked.

  "If it's all right with you, I'll run up and get it."

  "Where are you now?"

  "I'm at a drugstore only about three blocks from the hotel."

  "Come on up," Della Street said.

  She cradled the phone, turned to Perry Mason and caught the interest in his eye.

  "Dianne?" Mason asked.

  "That's right."

  "Wants the contract back?"

  "Yes."

  Mason resumed his contemplative study of the ceiling. "Is she coming up to get the contract, Della?"

  "Yes."

  "What caused her sudden concern, Della?"

  "She didn't say."

  "When she comes," Mason said, "invite her in. I want to talk with her."

  Mason lit a cigarette, watched the smoke curl upward.

  At length he said, "I have become more than a little curious about Harrison T. Boring. He may be smarter than I thought."

  The lawyer lapsed into silence, remained thoughtful until the chimes sounded and Della Street opened the door.

  Dianne Alder said, "I won't come in, Della, thanks. Just hand me the papers and I'll be on my way."

  "Come on in," Mason invited.

  She stood on the threshold as Della Street opened the door wide. "Oh, thank you, Mr. Mason. Thank you so much, but I won't disturb you, I'll just run on."

  "Come in, I'd like to talk with you."

  "I…"

  Mason indicated a chair.

  Reluctantly, apparently qot knowing how to avoid the lawyer's invitation without giving offense, Dianne Alder came in and said, "Actually I'm in a hurry and I… I didn't want to disturb you. I let Della look over my contract. She was interested and… well, I wanted to be sure that it was good. You see, I'm depending a lot on that contract."

  "You have dependents?" Mason asked.

  "No longer. Mother died over six months ago."

  "Leave you any estate?" Mason asked casually.

  "Heavens, no. She left a will leaving everything to me, but there wasn't anything to leave. I was supporting her. That's why I had to keep on with a steady job. I had thought some of-well, moving to the city but Mother liked it here and I didn't want to leave her, and it's too far to commute."

  "Father living?"

  "No. He died when I was ten years old. Really, Mr. Mason, I don't like to intrude on your time, and I-well… someone is waiting for me."

  "I see," Mason said, and nodded to Della Street. "Better give her the contract, Della."

  Dianne took the contract, thanked Della Street, gave Mason a timid hand, said, "Thank you so much, Mr. Mason. It's been such a pleasure meeting you," and then, turning, walked rapidly out of the door and all but ran down the corridor.

  "Well?" Della Street said, closing the door.

  Mason shook his head. "That girl needs someone to look after her."

  "Isn't the contract all right?"

  "Is Boring all right?" Mason asked.

  "I don't know."

  "He's paying one hundred dollars a week," Mason said. "He agrees to pay fifty-two hundred dollars a year. Suppose he doesn't pay it. Then what?"

  "Why, he'd be liable for it, wouldn't he?"

  "If he has any property," Mason said. "It hasn't been determined that he has any property. No one seems to know very much about him.

  "Dianne Alder has given up a job. She's putting on weight-that's like rowing out of a bay when the tide is running out. It's mighty easy to go out but when you turn around and try to come back, you have to fight every inch of the way.

  "Suppose that some Saturday morning the hundred dollars isn't forthcoming. Suppose she rings the telephone of Harrison T. Boring at the modeling agency and finds the phone has been disconnected?"

  "Yes," Della Street said, "I can see where that would put Dianne in an embarrassing predicament. But, of course, if she were working at a job, the boss could tell her that he was handing her two weeks" wages and had no further need for her services."

  "He could," Mason said, "but if he hired her in the first place and her services were satisfactory, he would have no particular reason to dispense with them."

  "Perhaps Boring would have no reason to dispense with her services," Della Street said.

  "That depends on what he was looking for in the first place," Mason pointed out. "If Dianne marries a millionaire, she has to pay over half of what she gets during a six-year period. If Boring quits paying, Dianne may have nothing but an added twelve pounds of weight and a worthless piece of paper."

  Abruptly the lawyer reached a decision. "Get Paul Drake at the Drake Detective Agency, Della."

  Della Street said, "Here we go again."

  "We do, for a fact," Mason said. "This thing has aroused my curiosity. As an attorney I don't like to stand with my hands in my pockets and watch Dianne being taken for a ride.

  "I know I'm getting the cart before the horse, but I'll bet odds that before we get finished Dianne will be asking for our help. When she does, I want to be one jump ahead of Boring instead of one jump behind."

  Della Street said archly, "Would you be so solicitous of her welfare if she were flat-chested?"

  Mason grinned. "Frankly, Della, I don't know. But I think my motivation at the moment is one of extreme curiosity, plus a desire to give Boring a lesson about picking on credulous young women."

  "All right," she said, "I'll call Paul. He usually comes into the office around this time on Sundays to check up on the reports made by his various operatives over Friday and Saturday."

  Della Street put through the call. After a few moments she said, "Hello, Paul… The boss wants to talk with you."

  Mason moved over to the telephone. "Hi, Paul. I have a job for you. A gentleman by the name of Harrison T. Boring. He has a business. It's called the Hollywood Talent Scout Modeling Agency. It's a Hollywood address and that's all I know for sure."

  "What about him?" Drake asked.

  "Get a line on him," Mason said, "and I'm particularly interested in knowing if he is cultivating some millionaire who has a penchant for young women. If you find any millionaires in the guy's background, I'd like to know about them.

  "And it's very important that he has no inkling of the fact he's being investigated."

  "Okay," Drake said, "I'll get a line on him."

  "Here's another angle of the same picture," Mason said. "Dianne Alder, about twenty-four, with lots of this and that and these and those, blonde, blue-eyed, with lots and lots of figure. Living here at Bolero Beach. Mother died six months ago. Father died when she was ten years old. Worked as a secretary for a law firm. I'm interested in her. She's been living here for some time and it shouldn't be too difficult to get her background. What I am particularly interested in at the moment is finding out whether she's being kept under surveillance."

  "May I ask who your client is?" Drake said. "I'd like to get the picture in proper perspective."

  "I'm the client," Mason said. "Get your men started."

  When Mason had hung up the telephone, Della Street said, "You think she's under surveillance, Perry?"

  "I'm just wondering," Mason said. "I'd like to know if someone knew she'd been talking with us and had delivered a warning. She seemed rather disturbed about something. If anyone is playing games, I want to find out about it and if I'm going to be asked to sit in on the game I want to draw cards.

  "Comment?"

  Della Street smiled. "No comment, but I still wonder what would happen if she'd been flat-chested."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Perry Mason had a court hearing set for Monday morning. The hearing ran over until midafternoon and it was not until three-thirty that the lawyer reached his office.

  Della Street said, "Paul has a preliminary report on your friend, Harrison T. Boring."

  "Good," Mason said.

  "I'll tell him you're here and he'll give you the lowdown."

  Della Street put through the call and a few moments later Paul Drake's code knock sounded on the door of Mason's private office.

  Della Street opened the door and let him in.

  "Hi, Beautiful," he said. "You certainly are a dish with all that beautiful sun tan."

  "You haven't seen it all," she said demurely.

  Mason said, "She gave me an overdose of sun just sitting out on the beach, looking at Dianne Alder. Wait until you see her, Paul."

  "I understand from my operatives," Drake said, "that Dianne is quite somebody."

  "She certainly cuts a figure," Della Street said.

  "She's a nice kid, Paul," Mason said, "and I'm afraid that she's being victimized. What have you found out?"

  "Well, of course, Dianne is an open book," Drake said. "My operatives quietly nosed around down there at Bolero Beach. She worked for a firm of attorneys, Corning, Chester and Corning. She hadn't been there too long. She hasn't had too much legal experience but she's an expert typist and shorthand operator. The point is, everyone likes her. The members of the partnership liked her, the clients liked her, and the other two stenographers liked her.

  "Then something came along and she quit, but she didn't tell them why she was quitting. She quit almost overnight, simply giving them two weeks" notice.

  "She'd been supporting her mother, who had been helpless for some eighteen months prior to her death. It had taken every cent the girl could earn and scrape together to pay the expenses of nursing. She'd work in the office daytimes and then come home and take over the job of being night nurse. It was quite a physical strain and quite a financial drain."

  "No one knew why she had quit?" Mason asked.

  "No. She was rather mysterious about the whole thing, simply said she was going to take life a little easier, that she had been working very hard and had been under quite a strain. People who knew what she had been through sympathized with her and were glad to see her relaxing a bit.

  "One of the girls in the office thought that Dianne was going to get married but didn't want anyone to know about it. She got that impression simply because of the manner in which Dianne parried questions about what she was going to do and whether she had another job lined up.

  "Dianne's father was drowned when she was about ten years old. He and another fellow went off on a trip to Catalina and like all of these inexperienced guys who start off with outboard motors and open boats, they simply didn't realize the problems they were going to encounter. They ran into head winds apparently; ran out of gas, drifted around for a while and finally capsized. The Coast Guard found the overturned boat."

  "Bodies?" Mason asked.

  "The body of the other man was found, but George Alder's body was never found. That caused complications. At the time there was quite a bit of property, but his affairs were more or less involved and there was a delay due to the fact that the body wasn't found. However, after a while the court accepted circumstantial evidence that the man had died, and the property, which was community property, went to the wife. She tried to straighten it out so she could salvage something but there were too many complications. And I guess by the time she got through meeting obligations and working out equities, the estate didn't amount to much.

  "The mother worked as a secretary for a while and got Dianne through school and then through business college. For a while they both worked and got along pretty well financially. Then the mother had to quit work and finally became ill and was a heavy drag on Dianne during the last years of her life.

  "Now then, we start in on Harrison T. Boring and there's a different story. Just as it was easy to find out about Dianne, it's hard to find out anything about Boring. The guy has a small account in a Hollywood bank. You can't find out much about it, of course, from the bank, but I did find out that he had references from Riverside, California. I started investigating around Riverside and picked up Boring's back trail there. Boring was in business but no one knew what business. He didn't have an office. He had an apartment and a telephone. He had an account at one of the banks, but the bank either didn't know anything about what he did for a living or wouldn't tell.

  "However, we finally ran the guy to earth but we haven't been on the job long enough yet to tell you very much about him. Right at the moment he's somewhere in Hollywood. The place where he has desk space can evidently reach him on the phone whenever it's necessary.

  "There's a phone listing under the name of the Hollywood Talent Scout Modeling Agency. It's the same number that's shared by all the clients, and the place where desk space is rented and where mail is answered.

  "You wanted to find out about any millionaires in his background. There may be one. Boring has had some business dealings with a George D. Winlock. It's just business, but I don't know the nature of the business.

  "Winlock is one of the big shots in Riverside, but he's very shy and retiring, very hard to see; handles most of his business through secretaries and attorneys; has a few close friends and spends quite a bit of his time aboard his yacht which he keeps at Santa Barbara."

  "Did you make any attempt to run down Winlock?"

  "Not yet. I don't know very much about him. He drifted into Riverside, went to work as a real estate salesman, worked hard and was fairly successful. Then he took an option on some property out at Palm Springs, peddled the property, made a neat profit on the deal, picked up more property and within a few years was buying and selling property right and left. The guy apparently has an uncanny ability to know places that are going up in value.

  "Of course, today the desert is booming. Air conditioning has made it possible to live comfortably the year around, and the pure air and dry climate have been responsible for attracting lots of people with a corresponding increase in real estate prices.

  "Winlock got right in on the ground floor of the desert boom, and as fast as he could make a dollar he spread it out over just as much desert property as he could tie up. At one time he was spread out pretty thin and was pretty much in debt. Now he's cashing in. He's paid off his obligations and has become quite wealthy."

  "Married?" Mason asked.

  "Married to a woman who has been married before and who has a grown son, Marvin Harvey Palmer.

  "That's just about all I can tell you on short notice."

  "When did Winlock come to Riverside?" Mason asked.

  "I didn't get the date. It was around fifteen years ago."

  Mason drummed with his fingers on the edge of the desk, looked up and said, "See what you can find out about Winlock, Paul."

  Drake said, "What do you want me to do, Perry? Shall I put a man on Winlock?"

  "Not at the moment," Mason said. "Boring yes, but Winlock, no."

  "I already have a man working on Boring," Drake said. "He's in Hollywood at the moment and I've got a man ready to tail him as soon as contact can be made. I can put a round-the-clock tail on him if that's what you want."

  "Probably the one man is sufficient at the moment," Mason said. "The point is that he mustn't get suspicious. I don't want him to feel anyone is taking an interest in him.

  "What about the Hollywood Talent Scout Modeling Agency, Paul? Did you get anything on it?"

  "It's just a letterhead business," Drake said. "The address is at one of those answering-service places where they have a telephone, a secretary and a business address that serves a dozen or so companies. The whole thing is handled by one woman who rents an office and then subrents desk space and gives a telephone-answering, mail-forwarding service."

  "Okay, Paul," Mason said. "Stay with it until you find out what it's all about. Remember that technically I don't have any client. I'm doing this on my own so don't get your neck stuck out."

  "Will do," Drake said and went out in a rush, slamming the door behind him.