“What do you mean, against?” Mason asked. “You may be one of the best witnesses I have.”

  Drake, holding the door open for Nelson, said, “You get more goofy cases, Perry, than anyone else in the business.”

  “Or more goofy clients,” Mason said.

  In the doorway Jerry Nelson paused and shook his head. “That’s the thing I can’t understand,” he said. “That woman, when she came out, was the most perfectly poised woman you have ever seen in your life. She acted just completely natural. You wouldn’t have thought she even knew what a gun was, let alone having just caused a commotion with one.”

  “You can’t always tell about women,” Drake said.

  Mason grinned. “You can’t ever tell about women, Paul.”

  Chapter Three

  An atmosphere of tense expectancy hung over Perry Mason’s office until a few minutes before five o’clock when Perry Mason said, “Well, Della, I guess our client has decided she doesn’t need an attorney – and I’m hanged if I know why.”

  “Do you suppose they’ve been interrogating her and won’t let her get to a phone to put through a call?”

  “I don’t know,” Mason said. “I can think of a lot of explanations but none of them is logical. However, I’m not going to worry about it. Let’s close up shop, go home and call it a day. We should have closed the office at four-thirty and – Wait a minute, Della, it’s almost five. Let’s tune in on the five o’clock newscast and see if there is some mention made of what happened. It’ll be worth something to find out whether I’m going to have to try to defend a client on a charge of shooting up an airport with blank cartridges.”

  “About the only defence to that would be not guilty by reason of insanity,” Della Street said.

  Mason grinned.

  Della Street brought out the portable radio, tuned it in to the station and promptly at five o’clock twisted the knob, turning up the volume.

  There were comments on the international situation, on the stock market, and then the announcer said, “The local airport was thrown into a near panic today when an attractive young woman brandished a revolver, shouted ‘This is a stick-up!’ and then proceeded to fire three shots before retreating into the women’s rest room.

  “While police were organizing to storm the citadel, the woman in question casually emerged. Upon being identified by spectators and taken into custody by the police, the woman at first professed her innocence, then finally smilingly admitted that she had done the act as a prank. Frankly sceptical, police soon determined two facts which lent strong support to the young woman’s statement. One fact was that the revolver was loaded only with blank cartridges and apparently the three shells which had been fired were blanks. The other fact was that an inspection of the woman’s driving licence identified her as Minerva Minden, who has been designated in the past by at least one newspaper as the madcap heiress of Montrose.

  “Miss Minden has from time to time paid visits to Police Headquarters; once for deliberately smashing dishes in a restaurant in order to get the attention of a waiter; once for reckless driving and resisting an officer; once for driving while intoxicated; in addition to which she has received several citations for speeding.

  “The young heiress seemed to regard the entire matter as something in the nature of a lark, but Municipal Judge Carl Baldwin took a different view. When the defendant was brought before him to fix bail on charges of disturbing the peace and of discharging firearms in a public place, Judge Baldwin promptly proceeded to fix bail at two thousand dollars upon each count.

  “A somewhat chastened Miss Minden said she would plead guilty to the charges, put up cash bail and left the courtroom. She is to appear tomorrow morning at nine-thirty for a hearing on her application for probation and for receiving sentence.”

  The broadcaster then went on to discuss the weather, the barometric pressure and the temperature of the ocean water.

  “Well,” Della Street said, as she switched off the radio, “would you say our Miss Ambler is a double of Minerva Minden, the madcap heiress?”

  Mason’s eyes narrowed. “The crime,” he said, “was evidently premeditated, and the driving licence and the thumbprint were most certainly those of Dorrie Ambler – so now the scar of the appendectomy may assume considerable importance.”

  “But how?” Della Street asked. “What could be the explanation?”

  Mason said, “I can’t think of one, Della, but somehow I’m willing to bet …”

  The lawyer broke off as timid knuckles sounded against the door from his private office to the corridor.

  Mason glanced at his watch. “Fifteen minutes past five. Don’t open that door, Della. Go out through the door from the reception room and tell whoever it is that the office is closed for the day, that I’m not available; to telephone tomorrow morning at nine o’clock and ask you for an appointment.”

  Della Street nodded, slipped out of Mason’s private office into the reception room.

  A moment later she was back. “Guess who?” she asked.

  “Who?” Mason asked.

  “Dorrie Ambler.”

  “Did she see you?”

  Della Street shook her head. “I just opened the door from the reception room into the corridor and started to step out when I saw her. I thought perhaps you’d want to talk with her even if it is after hours.”

  Mason grinned, stepped to the door and opened it just as the young woman was dejectedly turning away.

  “Miss Ambler,” Mason said.

  She jumped and whirled.

  “The office is closed,” Mason said, “and I was on the point of leaving for the night, but if it’s a matter of some importance I’ll see you briefly.”

  “It’s a matter of great importance,” she said.

  “Come in,” Mason invited, holding the door open.

  Della Street smiled and nodded.

  “Sit down,” Mason invited. And then when she had complied, said, “So you’re really Minerva Minden, sometimes referred to as the madcap heiress of Montrose.”

  She met his eyes with a steady frank gaze. “I am not!” she said.

  Mason shook his head, his manner that of a parent reproving a mendacious child who persists in an incredible falsehood. “I’m afraid your denial isn’t going to carry much weight, but this is your party. You wanted to see me upon a matter of some importance and it’s only fair to remind you that you’re paying for my time. Moreover, one of the factors in fixing my charges is the financial ability of the client to pay. Now, you just go ahead and take all the time you want. Tell me any fairy story you want me to hear and remember that it’s costing you money, lots of money.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said.

  “I’m afraid I do,” Mason told her. “Now I’m going to tell you something else. When you were here in the office I knew that you had a gun in your purse. I hired a detective to shadow you. You were shadowed up to the airport, and a detective was standing within a few feet of you when you staged that demonstration.

  “Now then, Miss Minden, I’d like to know just what your game is, what you have in mind and how you expect me to fit into the picture.

  “For your further information, I don’t like to have clients lie to me, and I feel that after I have heard your story there is every possibility that I will not care to have you continue as a client.”

  She was watching him with wide eyes. “You’ve had me shadowed?”

  Mason nodded.

  “You knew there was a gun in my purse?”

  Again the lawyer nodded.

  She said, “Thank God!”

  Mason’s face showed his surprise.

  “Look,” she said, “I’m not Minerva Minden. I’m Dorrie Ambler, and the thing I did this afternoon at the airport was for the purpose of forcing Minerva Minden to tell what was really going on, but she was too smart for me. She outwitted me.”

  Mason’s eyes showed dawning interest. “Go ahead,” he said.

  She said, “It all started four days ago when I answered an ad for a young woman, either trained or untrained, who could do special work. The ad specified that applicants must be between twenty-two and twenty-six years of age, that they must be exactly five feet three inches tall, weighing not less than a hundred and ten pounds nor more than a hundred and fifteen pounds, and offered a salary of a thousand dollars a month.”

  Della Street flashed a glance at Perry Mason. “I saw that ad,” she said. “It only ran for one day.”

  “Go ahead,” Mason said to Dorrie Ambler.

  “Someone mailed me a copy of the ad and I applied for that job,” she said, “and so did scads of other people – and there was something phoney about it.”

  “Keep talking,” Mason said, his eyes now showing keen interest.

  “Well, to begin with, we were asked to go to a suite in a hotel in order to make application. A very efficient young woman sat at a desk in a room in that suite, on which had been pasted a sign, personnel manager.

  “Opening out of this suite were two rooms. One of them had a label, red room. The other had a label, black room. The young woman at the desk would give each applicant a ticket. The red tickets went to the red room, the black tickets went to the black room.”

  “Then what?” Mason asked.

  “As far as the red room is concerned I don’t know for sure, but I did talk with one girl who was given a ticket to the red room. She went in there and sat down and she said there were about twenty young women who came in and sat down in that room. They waited for about fifteen minutes and then a woman came to them and told them that there was no need for them to wait any longer; the situation was no longer open.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “you were given a ticket to the black room. What happened there?”

  “Apparently only about one applicant out of fifteen or twenty got a black ticket. I was one of them. I went in there and sat down and one other girl came in while I was there.

  “After I’d been there for ten or fifteen minutes, a door opened and a man said, ‘Step this way, please.’

  “I went into still another room in the suite – heavens, that suite in the hotel must have cost a small fortune.”

  “Who was the man?” Mason asked.

  “He said he was a vice president in charge of personnel, but the way he acted I think he was a lawyer.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “The way he threw questions at me.”

  “What sort of questions?”

  “He had me sit down and asked me a lot about my background, all about my parents, where I’d been employed, and so forth. Then he asked me to stand up and walk around. He was watching me like a hawk.”

  “Passes?” Mason asked.

  “I don’t think that was what he had in mind,” she said, “but he certainly was looking me over.”

  “And then?”

  “Then he asked me how my memory was and if I could give quick answers to questions and a lot of things like that, and then said, ‘What were you doing on the evening of the sixth of September?’

  “Well, that hadn’t been too long ago, and after thinking a minute I told him that I had been in my apartment. I hadn’t had a date that night although it had been a Saturday, and he asked me who was with me and I told him no one. He wanted to know if I’d been there the entire evening and I told him I had. Then he asked me if I’d had any visitors at all during the evening, or had had any phone calls, and a lot of personal questions of that sort, and then asked me for my telephone number and told me that I was being seriously considered for the job.”

  “Did he tell you what kind of a job it was?”

  “He said it was going to be a rather peculiar job, that I was going to have to undergo intensive training in order to hold down the position but that I would be paid during the period of training. He said that the pay was at the rate of a thousand dollars a month, that the position would be highly confidential, and that I would be photographed from time to time in various types of clothing.”

  “Did he say what type?” Mason asked.

  “No, he didn’t. Of course I became suspicious right away and told him there was no use wasting each other’s time, did he mean I’d be posing in the nude, and he said definitely not, that it was perfectly legitimate and above board, but that I’d be photographed from time to time in various types of clothing; that the people I was to work for didn’t want posed photographs. They wanted pictures of young women on the street, that I wasn’t to be alarmed if someone pointed a camera at me and took pictures of me on the street, that that would be done often enough so that I would lose all self-consciousness.”

  “And then what?”

  “Well, then I went home and after I’d been there about two hours the telephone rang and he told me I’d been selected for the position.”

  “You were unemployed at the time?” Mason asked.

  “As it happened, I was. I’d been foolish enough to think I could support myself by selling encyclopaedias on a door-to-door basis.”

  “Couldn’t you?” Mason asked.

  “I suppose I could,” she said, “if I’d absolutely had to. But I just didn’t have the stamina for it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You ring doorbells,” she said. “Someone comes to the door. You only get invited in about once out of five times if you’re really good. If you’re not, you’re apt not to get invited in at all.”

  “If you do, what happens?”

  “Then you get in and make your sales pitch and answer questions and arrange for a follow-up.”

  “A follow-up?” Mason asked.

  “Yes, you call during the daytime and the woman doesn’t like to take on that much of an obligation without consulting her husband. So if you’ve really made a good pitch you’re invited to come back in the evening when he’s home.”

  “And you didn’t like it?” Mason asked.

  “I liked it all right but it was just too darned exhausting. In order to stay with a job of that sort you have to develop a shell. You become as thoroughly professional as a – as a professional politician.”

  “So you quit?” Mason asked.

  “Well, I didn’t exactly quit but I made up my mind that I’d only work mornings. Afternoons are rather non-productive anyway because so many times you find women who are planning on going to a club meeting or have got their housework caught up and want to do something else during the afternoon. They are either not going to give you the time to let you talk with them or they’re impatient when they do talk with you.”

  “I see,” Mason said. “Go ahead.”

  “All right,” she said. “I went back to my apartment. It was a day when I was resting. I didn’t feel too full of pep anyway and I was taking life easy when the phone rang and I was told that I’d been selected and asked to come back to the hotel.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I went to the hotel and everything had changed. There was no longer the woman at the desk, but this man was sitting in the parlour of the suite and he told me to sit down and he’d tell me something about the duties of the job.

  “He gave me the plaid suit I was wearing this morning, the blouse, the stockings, even the underthings. He told me that this was to be my first assignment, that he wanted me to put on these clothes and wear them until I got accustomed to them, that I was to get them so they looked as though they were a part of my personality, and I was not to be at all self-conscious. He suggested that I could step in to the bedroom and try the clothes on.”

  “Did you?” Mason asked.

  “I did after some hesitancy,” she said, “and believe me, I saw that both doors into that bedroom were locked. I just had a feeling that I had got into something that was a little too much for me.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “go on. What happened? Did he make passes?”

  “No, I had the deal sized up a hundred per cent wrong. The man was a perfect gentleman. I put on the clothes and came out. He looked me over, nodded approvingly and then gave me a hat and told me I was to wear that hat. He told me that my duties would be very light for the first few days, that I was to sleep late the next morning, that I was to get up and have had breakfast by ten-thirty; that I was to go to the intersection of Hollywood and Vine and cross the street fifty times. At the end of that time I was free to go home.”

  “Crossing the street from what direction?” Mason asked.

  “He said it didn’t make any difference. Just walk back and forth across the street, being careful to obey the signals, and that I was to remember not to pay any attention to anybody who might be there with a camera.”

  “Was somebody there?” Mason asked.

  “Yes, a man was there with a camera. He took pictures mostly of me but occasionally he would take a picture of someone else.”

  “And you walked back and forth?” Mason asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “The clothes fit you?”

  “As though they’d been made for me. They were the ones I wore this morning.”

  “Now then,” Mason said, “this is an important point. Were these clothes new or had they been worn?”

  “They were new. They hadn’t been sent to the cleaner as nearly as I could tell. They had, however, evidently been made specially. There were even some bits of the basting threads left in the seams.”

  “Did you,” Mason asked, “ever see any of the pictures?”

  “No, just the man with the camera.”

  “All right, go on. What happened?”

  “I was told to telephone a certain unlisted number for instructions. I telephoned the number and was told that everything was okay. I had done all that I needed to do for the day and I could have the rest of the time off.”

  “Then what?” Mason asked.

  She said, “I did a little detective work on my own.”

  “Such as what?”

  “I called the unlisted number, disguised my voice and asked for Mac. The man said I had the wrong number and asked what number I was calling and I gave him the number. It was, of course, the correct number. He said I had made a mistake and had the wrong number. I told him that I didn’t, that I knew the number Mac had given me. So then he started getting a little mysterious and I think a little concerned. He said, ‘Look, this is a detective agency, Billings and Compton. We don’t have any Mac working for us,’ and I said, ‘A detective agency, huh?’ And slammed up the phone.”