“And this time he came home about two o’clock in the afternoon?”

  “It was a little before two. I don’t know the exact time.”

  “And there was some mail for him that you had placed on the table?”

  “There were, I think, three letters.”

  “Do you remember whether they were business letters; that is, whether the envelopes had been addressed in handwriting or—”

  She smiled and said, “There were no scented envelopes addressed in a feminine handwriting, if that’s what you mean, Mr. Mason. I would have noticed those. No, there were just three or four letters that were the ordinary type of business letter one would expect. That is, the envelopes indicated it was just a batch of routine mail.”

  “But this letter from Vidal may have been one of the three or four letters?”

  “I think it must have been. I can’t tell positively.”

  “Did you notice the envelope at that time?”

  “Mr. Mason, it’s just as I’ve told you, I don’t know when that envelope came in.”

  “Did you notice the postmark on the envelope?” Mason asked.

  “You mean when I took it out of his pocket?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. I didn’t want to pry into his affairs. I saw the message and of course I was startled. I looked at the envelope and I remembered the name of A. B. Vidal on the return address and, of course, the address of General Delivery. But I didn’t—It’s difficult to explain, Mr. Mason. I didn’t want to pry into my husband’s affairs. I simply took the letter, looked at it, felt in the pocket, found the envelope was in there, and transferred both letter and envelope to his other suit. Of course, I was concerned but I still didn’t want to pry. I’m not the sort of wife who is jealous or prying. I think wives who have those reactions are simply torturing themselves and undermining the very foundation of their marriage.”

  “You’re happily married?” Mason asked.

  “Very happily married.”

  “This is a delicate question,” Mason said, “but are you—Well, is your husband approximately the same age as you are? I gather he isn’t because he has evidently been in business long enough to establish himself financially and you are … “

  “Yes, yes. Go on,” she said, smiling, as Mason hesitated. “A woman always likes to hear that.”

  “Well, you’re quite young,” Mason said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  After a moment’s silence she added, “I’m not as young as you think, but I am younger than my husband, Mr. Mason, and since I know the other questions which will naturally be in your mind, I am a second wife. My husband was married to a woman who was nagging, jealous and the exact antithesis of what I try to be. She was inordinately suspicious, she kept asking him for explanations of everything he did, she undermined the happiness of the marriage by making home a place which Mr. Theilman wanted to avoid.”

  “Was it this house?” Mason asked.

  “Heavens, no,” she said. “I didn’t want to have anything around me that would remind me of that woman. I had Morley, my husband, sell that house furnished and we moved into this place and I furnished it according to my own ideas.”

  “You did a very fine job,” Mason said, looking appreciatively around the room.

  “Thank you again.”

  “Now then,” Mason said, “you reported to the police that your husband had disappeared.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did the letter which you had read from A. B. Vidal have anything to do with that?”

  “A great deal,” she said, “a very great deal. If it hadn’t been for that, I probably wouldn’t have even given it a second thought.”

  “He telephoned you last night?”

  “About eight o’clock last night. He said he would be back around eleven or eleven-thirty. He telephoned from Bakersfield. When he hadn’t shown up by three o’clock, I became worried. I asked the police to check accidents and hospitals and when that report was negative I was very much relieved, and was able to go back to bed and sleep. I assure you, Mr. Mason, that I understand there are times when a man can change his mind about going home. I don’t expect any husband of mine to be a plaster saint. He wasn’t when I married him, and I’m not foolish enough to think that marriage to me is going to change him. Just the same, when he wasn’t home by seven, when I awoke, I became seriously alarmed.”

  “What, generally, is the nature of your husband’s business?”

  “Real estate. He speculates—buys and sells and subdivides.”

  “You mean he acts as a realtor on—”

  “Lord, no! The real estate commissions on sales wouldn’t pay office overhead—not the way my husband does things. He’s a speculator.”

  “I take it then, he has quite a pretentious office.”

  “On the contrary, his actual office is … well, it’s well furnished and all that, but my husband does a great deal of his business on the outside. He doesn’t wait for people to come to him. He goes out and meets opportunity halfway.”

  “How many secretaries?” Mason asked casually.

  “One.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Janice Wainwright … I get so exasperated at that girl, I sometimes want to grab her and pull her hair.”

  “Why?” Mason asked. “Does she—”

  “Make passes? Anything but. That’s the trouble with her. Ever since I entered the picture she’s become the most mouse-like little creature you ever saw. She fixes her mouth so it looks positively hideous. She slicks her hair back and wears huge spectacles—the most unbecoming type she can possibly get.”

  “You say this was since you entered the picture?”

  “Since I entered the picture,” Mrs. Theilman said.

  “Then you knew her before that time?”

  “I had seen her,” she said cautiously, “yes.”

  “And she wasn’t like that before your marriage?”

  “Heavens, no. She was an attractive girl.”

  “Do you think your husband knew she was attractive?”

  “Of course he knew she was attractive. He’d hired her, hadn’t he? And his first marriage had been unhappy for a period of some ten years. And if he hadn’t made passes at her, he was just a plain damn fool. And, further-more, I think she was pretty much in love with him then, and I know she’s in love with him now.”

  “How do you know that?” Mason asked.

  “Because she’s making herself look all frumpy so I won’t try to get her fired. Whenever a girl does that … Well, if she thinks that much of a man she thinks a lot of him.”

  “In other words, then, her effort to make herself look plain has back-fired. It’s had exactly the opposite effect of what she was trying to achieve.”

  “It certainly has. It shows that she’s in love with Morley. At least, it convinces me she is.”

  “And you don’t resent it?”

  “Why should I resent it? If the girl wants to be in love with him, that’s her business.”

  “And despite the fact you think there may have been some, let us say romantic interludes, you still make no effort to have him get a new secretary?”

  Mrs. Theilman’s laugh was throaty. “Look, Mr. Mason,” she said, “this conversation is taking a highly personal turn.”

  Mason smiled and said, “I’m sorry if I’ve gone too far.”

  “You haven’t,” she said, “you’ve just opened a few doors and I walked through. I’m a frank creature myself and I accept the biological facts of life at face value.

  “Now then, Mr. Mason, you can look around here and you see a very fine house, expensively furnished, and you can rest assured that I have no intention of letting some secretary grab my man away from me. I don’t care how Janice feels toward Morley. The thing that I’m concerned with is how Morley feels toward Janice. If she wants to make herself unattractive so she can hang around him, that’s okay with me. If she wants to make herself attractive, that’s still okay. And if he can’t forget what you have delicately referred to as romantic interludes, that’s still okay.

  “But let that woman or any other woman start trying to get her hands into my security, and I’ll jerk the rug out from under her so fast she won’t know when she hit the floor … And I won’t do it by being a little bitch or making a scene or fixing things so my husband doesn’t want to come home nights.

  “In short, Mr. Mason, the point is that I know my way around and I’m also smart enough to know that any time Morley L. Theilman isn’t happier at home than he is any other place, he isn’t going to want to come home.

  “What’s more, I’m not foolish enough to try and hold a man by a sense of legal obligation. In case you hadn’t noticed, Mr. Mason, but I’m quite certain you have, I have looks and I don’t intend to waste those looks on any man who doesn’t appreciate them.

  “According to my book that’s the main trouble with unhappy marriages. If a woman finds her husband is slipping, she doesn’t have guts enough and nerve enough to stand up and face the facts and clear out of the picture while she still is attractive to other men. She temporizes and nags and becomes frustrated and loses her looks and then the inevitable happens and she’s cast out on the world and sings the same old familiar dirge that she gave her husband the best years of her life.

  “I’m giving Morley Theilman the best years of my life and I want him to know it and I want him to appreciate it and I want to be compensated for it.

  “Now then, Mr. Mason, somehow or other you’ve drawn me out and know a lot more about me than I permit most men to know. You have a very adroit way of getting people to talk. I’ve said all I want to and I probably wouldn’t have said that much if it hadn’t been for the fact that I’m worried sick about Morley and I needed a shoulder to cry on.

  “Now then, I’ve done my crying and that’s that.”

  “You say you’re worried about your husband?”

  “Of course I’m worried about him.”

  “You think something may have happened to him?”

  “Mr. Mason, I’m not clairvoyant. I’m a wife. And I’m a worried wife. And if you were in my position I think you’d be worried.

  “I gather that you’re looking for my husband. Somehow I have an idea your methods are going to be highly personalized, somewhat individual and perhaps a little more spectacular than those of the police. I’m not going to detain you any longer. I want you to get on the job … I don’t suppose you’d be in a position to accept a retainer from me and act as my attorney?”

  “Do you think you need one?”

  “I’ve asked you a question. Answer my question and then I’ll answer yours.”

  “No,” said Mason thoughtfully, “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be in a position to accept a retainer from you. I might, but on the other hand certain interests might become adverse. I don’t think they would, but there’s always that outside possibility.”

  “That answers my question,” she said, “and because of that answer there’s no reason for me to answer yours … I’ll tell you this much, Mr. Mason. I think Morley is in trouble. I think he’s in deep trouble and I think he’s dealing with people who could play rough.”

  She rose and walked toward the door. “Thank you for dropping in, Mr. Mason, it was a pleasure meeting you.”

  The lawyer followed her to the door, conscious of her superb figure, the well-tailored, tight-fitting dress; conscious also of the fact that she knew he was appraising her figure and didn’t resent it.

  At the doorway she turned suddenly and extended her hand. Her blue eyes laughed up into his. “Thank you very much, Mr. Mason,” she said, “for all that you’ve told me.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you more,” Mason said.

  “But you did,” she answered.

  “Did what?” Mason asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “Told me more,” she said. “More, perhaps, than you realized,” and with that she gently closed the door.

  * * *

  Back in his office Mason said to Della Street, “Anything new from Paul, Della?”

  “Not yet.”

  “All right,” Mason said. “I have a job for you.”

  “What?”

  “Go grab a quick lunch and look up the case of Theilman versus Theilman,” Mason said. “See if the case came to trial or whether it was settled. Find out the exact dates. Look in the newspaper files and see what you can dig up.”

  Della Street put a notebook and some pencils into her purse, smiled at Mason and said, “On my way. What was Mrs. Theilman like?”

  “That,” Mason said, “is hard to tell. She’s difficult to describe.”

  “Oh-oh,” Della Street said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “When a man refers to a woman as being difficult to describe, and she’s young, attractive, and has been a corespondent … “

  “What makes you think she was a corespondent?” Mason asked.

  “The same thing that makes you think so,” Della Street said. “That’s why you’re sending me out to look up the reports on the case, isn’t it?”

  “I guess it is.” Mason grinned.

  “I’m quite sure it is,” Della Street said, and went out.

  Chapter Six

  In an hour and a half Della Street was back in the office.

  “Well?” Mason asked.

  She said, “There’s a difference in viewpoint.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said Mrs. Theilman was hard to describe. She might be hard for a man to describe but she’s easy for a woman.”

  “How do you describe her?” Mason asked.

  “You wouldn’t like it,” she said.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “The woman who is now Mrs. Morley Theilman,” Della Street said, “was in Las Vegas wearing the highly impossible name of Day Dawns. She was a hostess, an entertainer, a show girl, and she had her eye out for the main chance.”

  “You mean she was for sale?” Mason asked.

  Della Street said, “Let’s put it this way. She was for rent. Now she’s on a long-term lease.”

  “You mean she was a cheap little—?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Della Street interrupted. “There was nothing cheap about her. She’s class to her finger tips and, believe it or not, there’s nothing common about her. But she knew which side of the bread had the butter. In fact, she studied all there was to know about butter.

  “Of course, we must remember that some of the things I got were contained in the complaint of Carlotta Theilman versus Morley Theilman, in which Day Dawns was named as a corespondent.”

  “Pictures?” Mason asked.

  “Scads of pictures.”

  “I mean of Carlotta.”

  “Carlotta wasn’t photogenic,” Della Street said. “And Carlotta let her figure get out of hand—the exact opposite of her successor, whose figure was always very much in hand.

  “Carlotta, of course, was no match for Day Dawns. It was perhaps this feeling of futility that caused her to exhibit so much bitterness.”

  “What happened with the divorce suit?” Mason asked.

  “Settled. Carlotta Theilman apparently got something like half a million dollars in cash. Morley bought his way out.”

  “He seems to have had plenty left,” Mason said.

  “Have you ever seen his picture?” Della Street asked.

  Mason shook his head.

  “He looks like a go-getter,” she said, “even in the newspaper pictures.

  He has an aggressive, dynamic, masculine personality—somehow you get the impression he isn’t a one-woman man.”

  “Isn’t or wasn’t?” Mason asked.

  Della Street frowned. “I hadn’t thought of it in exactly that light,” she said.“Well, think of it now.”

  After a moment Della Street shook her head. “I can’t tell just from pictures,” she said. “I could tell if I saw him. You know, Chief, this Janice Wainwright may not be so dumb. There’s just a chance she might be playing things on a long-time basis.”

  “She isn’t fooling Mrs. Theilman any,” Mason said.

  “What makes you think she isn’t?”

  “Mrs. Theilman has noticed that Janice has done everything she could to submerge her beauty and appear to be plain and unattractive.”

  Della Street said, “And you say she isn’t fooling Mrs. Theilman?”

  “No.”

  “That may be the greatest fooling of all,” Della Street said. “The second Mrs. Theilman is a plaything, a highly polished, perfectly poised, expensive plaything. She’s on her way up. As long as she’s on her way up, she’s going to keep planning. She doesn’t intend to remain static. When she quits moving up, she’ll move out.

  “After she’s been with Morley Theilman long enough to get a good property settlement, she isn’t going to remain with a man fifteen years her senior and settle down.

  “She’s going to keep a tight hold on Morley Theilman until she’s entirely finished with him. When she is entirely finished with him, Morley Theilman is going to have had all that he wants of sleek sex. He’s going to look around for the plain, sincere, sweet, simple and honest in life. Janice Wainwright just may be grooming herself for the part of the third Mrs. Theilman.

  “The second Mrs. Theilman is working for a goal—an objective. She’s swapping physical charm for future security. Janice Wainwright is in love.”

  “With a man fifteen years her senior?” Mason asked.

  “Make it ten,” Della Street said.

  She opened her purse, took out her notebook, thumbed through the pages and said, “At the time of the divorce Morley Theilman was thirty-four. That was four years ago. It makes him thirty-eight now. Janice is probably about twenty-eight.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “I guess we’d better talk with our client, Della, and find out just what the situation is. Give her a ring.”

  Della Street put through the call and shook her head. “No answer at Theilman’s office.”

  “What was the number Janice gave you this morning?”

  “I have it here,” Della Street said. “She said it was the number of her apartment.”