“Not for you,” Mason said. “You’re my secretary. Go down and make out the cheque to Eric Hansell for two thousand dollars. Incidentally, Della, when Mr Hansell calls on me this afternoon, you can step out of the office. My conversation with Mr Hansell will be confidential.”

  She studied him for a moment, then picked up the cheque and wordlessly left the office.

  When she had gone, Mason picked up the telephone and said to Gertie at the switchboard, “Get me the Drake Detective Agency, Gertie. I want to talk with Paul Drake.”

  When he had Paul Drake on the line, Mason said, “Ring up every bank in town, Paul. Tell them who you are. Here’s a tip you can pass on: A rather clever, personable young man is presenting cheques payable to himself in substantial amounts. These cheques apparently are drawn by men of considerable prominence who have large accounts. The man can identify himself as the payee. The cheques are forged. The signatures are usually traced in pencil from genuine signatures and then covered with India ink.

  “You can point out to the banks that India ink is used because it effectively covers the pencil marks of the tracing. Therefore, they should be suspicious of any cheques presented with India ink signatures, and make a careful investigation for possible forgeries.”

  “Thanks,” Drake said. “That’s a hot tip. I’m tickled to death to be able to do things like that for the banks. They remember it.”

  “Okay,” Mason said, “get busy,” and hung up the phone.

  Mason picked up the phone number Eric Hansell had left with John Racer Addison. It was Westmore 6-9832.

  He picked up the telephone, said to Gertie, “Get me Westmore six nine eight three two, Gertie. I want to talk with Mr Hansell at that number.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mason, wearing his topcoat, hat and gloves, paused in the outer office to bend over Gertie at the switchboard.

  “I’m going down to Paul Drake’s office,” he said. “I’m expecting Eric Hansell to come in in a few minutes. When he arrives, notify Della. She’ll take him into my private office. After he has entered my private office, call me in Drake’s office. Got that straight?”

  “Straight,” she said.

  “Okay,” Mason told her, “be a good girl.”

  “How good?” she asked, smiling.

  “Good as you can,” Mason told her, starting for the door.

  She pouted and said, “Now we’re right back where we started.”

  Mason left the office, walked down the corridor to the office of the Drake Detective Agency, opened the door, walked in and said to the girl at the switchboard, “Where’s Paul?”

  “In his office.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell him I’m coming in,” Mason said, and, opening the latched gate at the end of the partition, walked past a veritable rabbit warren of offices, to tap on the door marked MANAGER PRIVATE.

  “Come on in, Perry,” Drake called.

  Mason entered the office.

  Paul Drake looked up from some reports he was studying. He was almost as tall as Perry Mason, but built in a loose-jointed, disconnected manner which made his motions seem awkward and angular.

  “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

  Mason said, “I’m slipping a fast one over on a chiseller.”

  “Need any help?”

  Mason said, “I am hiding out for about ten minutes, Paul. Go ahead with your work.”

  “No, this is swell. I’ll talk with you. After all, you’re a customer.”

  “Have been,” Mason said, grinning.

  “Anything for me in this case?”

  “Probably, before it gets done.”

  “What’s cooking?”

  “Blackmail.”

  “Can’t we …”

  Mason interrupted by a shake of his head. “None of the usual stuff, Paul. In the first place, there isn’t time and in the second place, the client won’t stand for it. But I think it’s going to ripen into something that you can use before it gets done. How’s business?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “Got all the operatives you want?”

  “I have now. There was quite a shortage of good men for a while, but now I’ve got a swell staff.”

  “You rang up the banks?”

  “Sure. Where did you get the tip on that, Perry?”

  “Oh, something I picked up.”

  “None of the banks here had heard of it. The fellow must have moved in from out of town.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re playing ’em close to your chest this time, aren’t you?”

  Mason grinned.

  The phone rang.

  Drake picked up the receiver, said, “Hello. Yes, he’s here. He … okay, I’ll tell him.”

  He dropped the receiver back into place and said, “Gertie says to tell you your party is all fixed up.”

  Mason got up.

  “Okay, Paul. Thanks. Here I go.”

  “You’re meeting this blackmailer?”

  Mason nodded.

  “You’d better have a witness, Perry.”

  Mason grinned, and said, “This time a witness is the last thing I want.”

  “Bad as that?” Drake asked.

  “Worse,” Mason told him, and left Drake’s office, to walk down the hall.

  He entered through the reception room of his own office, nodded to Gertie at the switchboard, then went bustling on into the private office.

  Della Street had followed instructions to the letter. Eric Hansell was seated in a big overstuffed client’s chair. His hat, with the brim up, was on the corner of Mason’s desk. As Mason entered the room, she was saying, “Mr Mason will be right in. He had to step out for a moment and … oh, here he is now.”

  Mason nodded to Della, looked inquiringly over at the client’s chair. “Eric Hansell?” he asked.

  “Right,” Hansell said without getting up.

  Mason slipped the two thousand dollar cheque out of his pocket. He walked between the desk and Hansell, turned his back to the blackmailer. His gloved hands carefully placed the cheque for two thousand dollars on the inside of the hat, then Mason was taking his coat off, taking off his gloves. He placed the gloves in the coat pocket, walked over to the coat closet, hung up the coat, placed his hat on the shelf, straightened out his coat, turned to Hansell and said, “I understand you have something to say to me.”

  Hansell sized Mason up with green, impudent eyes, then looked across at Della Street. He took a long, deliberate drag at the cigarette he was holding in thin, nicotine-stained fingers and said, “Not now.”

  “That’s all, Della,” Mason said.

  Della Street glided from the office.

  Mason went over and sat down in the swivel chair behind the desk.

  Hansell’s appraisal was slow, steady, insolent.

  “What do you want?” Mason asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You called on a client of mine.”

  “Did I?”

  “You know you did.”

  “I get around a lot. I call on lots of people. I don’t ask ‘em who their doctor is or who their lawyer is. I don’t give a damn.”

  “All right,” Mason said, his face cold and granite hard, “you called on one of my clients.”

  “So what?”

  “So I called you.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “No purpose.”

  “I didn’t come here to play ring-around-the-rosy.”

  “How about button-button-who’s-got-the-button?”

  “I’d rather play showdown.”

  “What are you holding?” Mason asked.

  “You know. Four aces. And if you’ve got this joint wired for sound, it’ll be just too bad for …”

  “It isn’t wired.”

  “A lot of you lawyers get half smart.”

  “The place isn’t wired.”

  “Okay. If it is, you’d be sorry. Your client will fire you.”

  “You’re associated with George Whittley Dundas?”

  “I work for him.”

  “Salary?”

  “Never mind about my arrangements. They’re satisfactory. I get the compensation I want and Dundas gets the facts – the ones I choose to present to him.”

  “And the ones you don’t choose to present?”

  “They’re lost in a deep well of silence.”

  “When you give the facts to Dundas, he publishes them, is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “When you don’t give them to Dundas, they don’t get published.”

  “Right.”

  “What influences you in making your decision?”

  “Various things.”

  “Money?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m asking.”

  “I’m not answering.”

  Mason said, “We’re not going to get anywhere this way.”

  “Be your age,” Hansell said. “You didn’t study law in a seminary, did you?”

  “How much?”

  Hansell shook his head and said, “Phooey.”

  “After all,” Mason said, “we have to have something to put our sights on.”

  “Do your Christmas shopping early,” Hansell told him.

  “How early?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  Mason said, “I presume you have your facts straight?”

  “I always have my facts straight. Your client went overboard for a cutie he picked up on a hitchhike. He used his influence to get her placed in a friendly hotel. He knew the manager. He could call on her there but he didn’t. The trick got picked up for vagrancy. Addison’s high-priced lawyer came running to the rescue. Nice story: ‘What big shot got a cutie a room, only to have the trick get picked up for vagrancy before Sugar Daddy could reach for the gravy? What made Perry Mason, the high-priced lawyer, rush to jail to bail Miss Innocence out?’ It would break my heart not to turn a story like that over to Dundas.”

  “Your heart’s been broken before?”

  “Life’s full of disappointments.”

  Mason said, “Okay, I’ll get in touch with you.”

  “Hell, you’re in touch with me now.”

  “I said I’d get in touch with you later.”

  Hansell’s face flushed. “I’m not accustomed to traipsing around to people’s offices. Next time you can come to me.”

  He heaved himself up out of the chair, snapped his cigarette butt insolently in the direction of Mason’s wastebasket, missed it by an inch or two and let the butt continue to smoulder on the floor. “You have my address,” he said. “When you want to see me, telephone and make an appointment and come to me – and if your client is smart that’ll be before seven o’clock tonight. Dundas has a deadline of ten o’clock and he’d want to have time really to do justice to this story.”

  “Would he pay more than Addison?”

  “How much would Addison pay?”

  “How much would Dundas pay?”

  Hansell said to Mason, his voice sharp with anger and disappointment, “Don’t get me wrong. Dundas publishes stuff I give him because that stuff is good. He keeps me on his payroll because I hand him enough good stuff to make it worth his while to pay me. That means that I have to pass in a lot of good hot material, a hell of a lot of it.”

  “Well?” Mason asked.

  “If I didn’t have Dundas, I wouldn’t have any avenue of publicity,” Hansell said. “For the love of Mike, do I have to draw you diagrams? Cripes! For an attorney you’re the greenest …”

  He picked up his hat, suddenly stopped in a posture of frozen interest. After a moment he picked the cheque out of the hat, looked at it, then looked at Mason. “I’ll be damned!” he said.

  Mason said nothing.

  Hansell looked at the cheque once more, then walked across to where he had flipped the cigarette butt, picked it up, ground it out and deposited the butt in the ashtray on Mason’s desk. “I missed your wastebasket,” he said.

  Mason said nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” Hansell told him.

  “That’s all right.”

  “You know, in this business, Mason, we meet all sorts of people.”

  Mason nodded.

  “But,” Hansell went on, “we don’t like cheques.”

  “We don’t like blackmailers.”

  “Okay,” Hansell said, a twisted smile distorting his face, showing yellowed teeth, “get nasty if you want to. It’s your party. You’re paying for it – and remember, if there’s any funny stuff about this or if you’ve got this office wired, you’re the one that’s going to be sorry. I’m a legitimate newsman. I stumbled onto a scandal about John Racer Addison. I went to him to try and get it confirmed. You’re trying to bribe me not to publish it. I’m only taking the cheque because it’ll show the facts are right.”

  Mason said nothing.

  “A nice little cutie!” Hansell went on. “Old fatherly John Racer Addison was putting her in hotel rooms, getting her out when she was arrested on a charge of vagrancy. Dear old Daddy Addison – now then, damn it, if you’ve got the place wired for sound, you can put the whole record on.

  “And I’ll tell you something else. The stuff is all in an envelope, ready to go to Dundas. If anything happens to me, the envelope will be in the mail in time to make the deadline. Dundas would give his eye teeth to publish an item like that, naming names.”

  Mason said wearily, “I told you the place isn’t wired.”

  “Well, if it is, it’ll make a good story.”

  Mason yawned.

  “Damn it, we don’t like cheques,” Hansell said after a while.

  Mason said, “I know. You told me that before. You’d like the money in small bills. You’d put ‘em in your pocket and walk out. Then next month you’d be back with the same story and again and again and again. The way it is now, in order to get that two grand, you put your John Hancock on the back of the cheque and shove it through the bank. If you come back with a repeat, things are going to be tough.”

  Hansell sneered. “So you think you’re smart. You give a cheque. Hell, that ain’t smart, for my money it’s dumb.”

  Mason yawned.

  “Hell, I’m not going to even be diplomatic about it. I’m in the saddle. Your client wouldn’t pay me because he thought I’d be back. He sent for you because he thought you’d be smart enough to figure out some way so I couldn’t come back for more. He’d have paid five grand. You told him how smart you were and to make a cheque for two grand. All right, you’re supposed to be smart. Now let’s see how smart you are.”

  Hansell folded the cheque, slipped it down in his vest pocket, said, “Okay, wise guy. Let’s see you earn your fee.”

  Mason yawned again.

  Hansell pulled his hat down on his head at a jaunty angle.

  “You can go out through that door,” Mason told him.

  Hansell walked over to the exit door, pulled it open, paused in the doorway, turned back to regard Mason with his impudent, twisted smile.

  “Wise guy!” he said sarcastically, and walked out.

  The door clicked shut behind him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was shortly before closing time when the telephone on Della Street’s desk rang. She picked up the receiver, said, “Just a moment, Gertie,” turned to Mason and said, “John Racer Addison again.”

  “On the line?” Mason asked.

  “In the office.”

  Mason frowned, said, “Okay, Della. Bring him in.”

  Della Street said, “I’ll be right out, Gertie,” hung up the telephone and went out to escort Addison into the private office.

  “Hello, Addison,” Mason said. “I’m expecting developments in that matter about which you consulted me. However, there’s nothing I want to discuss with you. The situation is …”

  “No, no,” Addison said. “It’s not that.”

  “Sit down,” Mason invited.

  “I can’t sit down,” Addison said, waddling back and forth across the office with short, nervous strides, pacing frenziedly. His hands were clasped and he started cracking his knuckles, one at a time.

  Della Street indicated with a little grimace that her teeth were on edge, but Addison continued popping his knuckles as he walked.

  “What is it?” Mason asked.

  “All hell’s broke loose,” Addison said.

  “Your little virgin again?” Mason asked.

  “My virgin?”

  “The vagabond virgin.”

  “Oh,” Addison said, as though he had entirely forgotten about that. “What did you do with that?”

  “All fixed up, I think,” Mason told him. “Remember if anyone should ask you if you know Eric Hansell, you can’t recall the name, and you’re very sure you’ve never had any business dealings with him.”

  “Of course, of course,” Addison said impatiently. “My God, Mason, I turned that matter over to you. I expect you to handle it. Charge me whatever it’s worth, but get me out of it. I’ll go to ten thousand – dammit, I’ll go anywhere I have to. Don’t bring that up now. I’ve got enough to worry me!”

  “I take it,” Mason said, “this is something new.”

  “Something new,” Addison said, looking almost angrily at Della Street.

  “It’s all right,” Mason told him. “Della stays here. Now quit beating around the bush. What’s the trouble?”

  “My partner, Edgar Z Ferrell, I told you about him.”

  “That’s right, on vacation in the Northwest, handling a business deal up there and then going fishing.”

  Addison said, “Mason, what I’m going to tell you has to be absolutely confidential.”

  “You’ve never had any leaks so far, have you?” Mason asked.

  “This is something different. This is a mess!”

  “Go ahead.”

  Mason said, “Ferrell is a peculiar chap. He’s married to a very attractive woman. What Lorraine Ferrell ever saw in Edgar is more than I know. She’s a pippin, a swell looker, a smart witty woman with lots of oomph.”

  “I take it,” Mason said; “that your partner, Ferrell, does not have oomph?”

  “He’s a stick, a stump, a drip, a droop. My God, he’s dumb!”

  “Go on.”

  “I’ll have to tell you about this from the beginning,” Addison said.