“The Bureau of Internal Revenue would move in and want to examine everyone in connection with the case. They’d have to know that the money was being saved to pay some sort of a blackmail demand. They’d look Mrs Warren up, inquire into her past, and in no time at all would find out about the skeleton in her closet.

  “No, Della, the thing has to be handled very circumspectly, and completely under cover.”

  “And that’s why Mrs Warren has said nothing about the loss of the money?”

  “What could she say?” Mason asked. “What would you say?”

  Della Street was thoughtfully silent for a moment, then said, “Nothing, I guess, but it must be horribly frustrating to have forty-seven thousand dollars which has been carefully saved in cash disappear and not be able to utter even a word of protest.”

  “I think,” Mason said, “that describes it very accurately – a horribly frustrating experience.”

  Chapter Six

  Later that afternoon the telephone on Della Street’s desk rang a routine summons. Della picked up the receiver, said, “Yes, Gertie,” then suddenly her jaw sagged, her eyes grew large, and she said, “Why – Wait – Hold the phone a minute, Gertie.”

  Della Street turned to Perry Mason. “A man in the office says he is Collister D Gideon.”

  “Well, what do you know,” Mason said. “I guess we’re going to have to give Mr Gideon credit for being a pretty clever individual. By all means, Della, tell him to come in.”

  “But Chief, he – Good heavens, that means he must know …”

  “Know what?”

  “Everything.”

  Mason said. “If he gave Lorna Warren forty-seven thousand dollars to keep for him, he certainly knows about her present whereabouts. If he didn’t give her the money to keep for him, but regarded her as a loyal employee, he has probably kept up with what has been happening in her life and that complicates the problem.”

  “But what can you do?” Della asked. “If he shows up here …”

  “He has shown up here,” Mason said, “and that means he thinks he holds the high hand and is going to call for a showdown. I’m becoming very much interested in Collister Damon Gideon. Show the gentleman in, Della. Then tip Gertie to call Paul Drake and have a shadow put on Gideon as soon as he leaves the office.”

  Della Street said, “I’ll be right out, Gertie,” hung up the phone, vanished to the outer office and a few moments later returned leading a slim-waisted, well-dressed smiling individual in his late forties into the office.

  “This is Mr Mason,” she said.

  Gideon didn’t offer to shake hands.

  “How do you do, Mr Mason,” he said. “I don’t know how much you know about me, but I am assuming you know a great deal. May I be seated?”

  “By all means,” Mason said. “What makes you think I know anything about you?”

  “Putting two and two together.”

  “Would you mind telling me which two and two you put together?”

  “Not at all,” Gideon said, settling back in the chair, looking around the office with the swift survey of a man who has been forced by environment to make instantaneous and accurate appraisal of his surroundings.

  “You see, Mr Mason,” he said calmly, “I’m a crook.”

  “Indeed,” Mason said.

  “That is,” Gideon amended, “the government says I’m a crook, and a jury of my peers agreed with the government.”

  “And the aftermath?” Mason asked.

  “A term in a federal prison with very little time off.”

  Mason shook his head with what might have been a gesture of sympathy.

  “Now then,” Gideon said, “at the time I was in business and ran head on into the governmental forces of so-called righteousness, I had working for me a very beautiful young woman, a Margaret Lorna Neely.”

  “I take it she wasn’t involved,” Mason said.

  Gideon smiled. “The government tried to involve her but the charges didn’t stick. The jury acquitted her and convicted me. The government tried us together, possibly with malice aforethought, feeling that a jury acting on rather weak evidence would salve its conscience by acquitting one defendant and convicting the other.”

  “You don’t seem to be bitter about it,” Mason said.

  “I don’t seem to be bitter about it,” Gideon said. “It would do very little good to be bitter about it, and the last few years of my life have taught me a great deal, Mr Mason. One of the things I have learned is not to do things which can’t result in any ultimate benefit to me.”

  “Indeed,” Mason said.

  “Among other things, those years have taught me that the world, beneath its veneer of civilization, is geared to the ancient principle of survival of the fittest, and in the battle for survival the person who is utterly ruthless has a very decided advantage over the person who practices the so-called Golden Rule.”

  “I see,” Mason said. “You still haven’t told me why you came here.”

  “It pays to read the newspapers,” Gideon said, “particularly the society column, and I notice in the afternoon paper that at an informal gathering given by Horace Warren, the noted financier and progressive businessman, the guests were thrilled by the presence of Mr Perry Mason and his beautiful secretary, Miss Della Street.”

  Gideon made a slight bow in the direction of Della Street. “The newspaper account,” Gideon went on, “which you may have missed, Mr Mason, mentioned that the noted attorney was so busy with his law practice that he seldom had time for any social life and the guests lionized him.”

  “Indeed,” Mason said. “I hadn’t read the account.”

  “It was a very interesting account,” Gideon said. “Now, in view of the fact that Margaret Lorna Neely is the present Mrs Horace Warren, and in view of the fact that you seldom attend social gatherings, and in further view of the fact that both you and your secretary were there, I gathered that there was some official reason for your attendance.

  “Furthermore, being something of an egotist, I assumed that it was barely possible my release from prison had something to do with the reason you were there.

  “Now, if Mrs Warren had wanted to consult you, she would have gone to your office. If Mr Warren had wanted to consult you, he might not have cared to call on you at the office. The fact that you were there at his house as a guest would indicate that you had been retained to size up the situation more or less surreptitiously, so to speak.”

  “In my profession,” Mason said, “I have always found that reasoning from a premise may be fallacious and is almost certain to lead to erroneous conclusions.”

  “Isn’t that the truth!” Gideon exclaimed. “You know, I’ve been betrayed by mistakes of that sort so that I’ve learned not to make them. However, let’s get back to the matter in hand, Mr Mason.”

  “In what way?” Mason asked.

  “The authorities have been very anxious to locate Margaret Lorna Neely. They seemed to think that I knew where she was.

  “Of course, all my correspondence for the last few years has been rigorously censored and I have had to keep in the background. I didn’t dare write anyone, nor did I care to have anyone write me. However, I have managed to keep certain bits of information locked up in my head where they couldn’t be pried out by inquisitive government officials.

  “Would you believe it, Mr Mason, the government has actually intimated that shortly before my arrest I managed to get some forty-seven thousand dollars in cash and conceal it somewhere so it would be available on my release. They felt perhaps that my co-defendant, Margaret Lorna Neely, might have been selected as the person to keep this money for me, or perhaps half this sum of money. I don’t suppose you would realize it, living in a position of social and financial security, Mr Mason, but at times government investigators can become very arbitrary, very insulting, and very arrogant.”

  “I hadn’t noticed it,” Mason said.

  “I didn’t think you would have, because, after all, Mr Mason, the tactics which a government investigator would use with you are somewhat different from the tactics which a government investigator would use with a person convicted of conspiracy to use the mails to defraud.”

  “The charge was conspiracy?” Mason asked.

  “That was one of the charges. They had five counts. The jury acquitted me on three, just in order to make it appear they were impartial and fair, and convicted me on two.

  “The principal charge was conspiracy because in that way they were able to drag my secretary into court and smear her reputation with all that publicity. Thank heavens she was able to disappear in such a manner that they lost track of her entirely.”

  “She must have been very clever to have engineered such a disappearance,” Mason said.

  “She is very clever.”

  “And perhaps she had clever friends,” Mason ventured.

  “That is always a possibility,” Gideon admitted. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Not at all.”

  Gideon waved back the cigarettes which Mason extended toward him, took a long slender cigar from his pocket, lit it, got it burning to suit him, then settled back in the chair and smiled affably at Mason. The aroma suggested the cigar was expensive.

  “With your legal mind,” Gideon said, “you doubtless know why I am here.”

  “I would prefer to have you tell me,” Mason said.

  “That’s going to be rather crude.”

  “Miss Street and I have encountered crude approaches before,” Mason said.

  “I know, but a crude approach is so dreadfully inartistic.”

  “The approach so far seems to have been rather artistic,” Mason said. “So it all may average up.”

  Gideon sighed. “Well, if I have to get down to brass tacks, I will. You see, the government finally released me after they had held me in prison for every minute of every day that they could legally hold me.”

  Mason, watching the man, said nothing.

  “Immediately after my conviction,” Gideon said, “I was told that if I produced the forty-seven thousand dollars the sentence would be much lighter. Then after I was sentenced I was told that if I produced the forty-seven thousand dollars I would stand a very good chance of getting parole.”

  “You accepted none of these offers?” Mason asked.

  “None of them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Gideon said, “I had no idea where the forty-seven thousand dollars was. I couldn’t have produced it if I had wanted to.”

  “Now that you have been released,” Mason said, “I take it that the interest of the government has ceased.”

  “Are you kidding?” Gideon asked. “Now that I have been released, the government bloodhounds are baying on my trail hoping that I’ll lead them to the money, whereupon they’ll pounce upon it and have the last laugh. They’ll say, in effect, ‘You can’t beat the law, Gideon. You served a lot of extra time in prison so you could enjoy that forty-seven thousand dollars when you got out. Now then, we’ve got the money and you’ve served the time. Ha-ha-ha!’

  “And of course they’ll see that every prison inmate knows all about it and gloat over the fact that you can’t beat the law and that they made a sucker out of me.”

  “So they are following you,” Mason asked.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “They followed you here?” Mason asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I see,” Mason said, frowning.

  “I can see that you do,” Gideon said, smiling. “I’m trying to make an artistic approach on this, Mr Mason, even if the main gambit will have to be rather crude.

  “You see, the government feels that in dealing with a crook it is dealing with a person of very inferior intelligence. When the government does a shadow job on a crook, it is at times very naïve.

  “In my case, for instance, they have a rough shadow on my trail.”

  “A rough shadow?” Mason asked.

  “Surely, with your experience in criminal law, you understand the function of a rough shadow,” Gideon said. “A rough shadow is just what the name implies. It’s a shadow who is so obvious a person simply can’t miss him.

  “If you’d have your secretary step to the corridor door and open it, I dare say you’d find the rough shadow standing at the corner of the corridor. When the door opened he would very ostentatiously show his embarrassment. Then he would turn and walk along the corridor, peering at the names and numbers on the doors as though looking for some office he was having difficulty finding.”

  “That’s the rough shadow?” Mason asked.

  “That’s the rough shadow.”

  “I would assume that the government expected to accomplish very little by such crude tactics.”

  “The government expects to accomplish a lot,” Gideon said. “The rough shadow is always very ostentatious but rather inept. It is no job at all for a clever man to elude his surveillance. Even a simple thing like driving through a traffic signal just as it is changing would shake the rough shadow.”

  Gideon stopped talking, watched Mason’s face through a blue haze of cigar smoke. His half-closed eyes studied the lawyer thoughtfully.

  After a moment he went on. “That, of course, is when the smooth shadow takes over. The smooth shadows are in the background. I don’t see them. At least, I’m not supposed to. Having ditched the rough shadow, I will be flushed with confidence and go to a little motel somewhere, register under an assumed name; then get up in the dead of night, move to some other motel; then perhaps into a rooming house, and then, convinced that the government is no longer in touch with me, I’ll go and dig up the forty-seven thousand dollars. At least, that’s what the government thinks.”

  “And then they’ll pounce on you?”

  “Then they’ll pounce on me. The smooth shadows will have been keeping up with me all the time.”

  “Can’t you ditch them?” Mason asked.

  “Oh, it can be done,” Gideon said. “It’s not a simple matter but there are ways. It takes time, however, and a certain amount of capital.

  “Now, very frankly, Mr Mason, I have time but I don’t have much capital.”

  “I see,” Mason said.

  “I thought you could remedy that.”

  “In what way?”

  “I felt that Mr Horace Warren would be glad to make some contribution toward my rehabilitation.”

  “You assume Mr Warren is my client?”

  “I assume he is a friend, otherwise you would not have been at his house last night. I also assume your presence at that little gathering was not without some significance. I feel that you have some official contact with someone who is interested. But I see no reason to cudgel my brains over a point which, as far as I’m concerned, is immaterial. The point is that Mr Warren would follow any suggestion you might make which had for its purpose seeing that his wife’s past was not brought into the pitiless glare of publicity.”

  “And you are threatening to–”

  Gideon held up his hand. “No, no, please, Mr Mason. Please!”

  “I must have misunderstood you then,” Mason said.

  “You certainly did. The point is this, Mr Mason. Every move that I make is being reported to the governmental agencies. The fact that I am here this afternoon is causing a lot of speculation. Why did I come here? What possible connection can I have with you or you with me? My correspondence has been censored for years. I’ve had no contact with you. You haven’t written me and I haven’t written you.

  “Therefore the authorities will assume that you must be representing the person who has the forty-seven thousand dollars and that I am calling on you to try and make a deal.”

  “I see,” Mason said.

  “So the government will start checking on your clients, particularly those who have been in touch with you or with whom you have been in touch during the past few days, or with whom you will be in touch after I leave this office.

  “You’ll be surprised how efficient some of these government operatives are. They can put two and two together just as I have. They doubtless have read or will read the society column in the evening paper.”

  “And so?” Mason asked.

  “And so they’ll wonder why it happens you broke your usual rule to attend what was seemingly a purely social gathering. They’ll start probing into the background of the guests, and eventually, of the host and hostess.

  “That would be unfortunate, Mr Mason.”

  The lawyer remained silent.

  “Now then,” Gideon said, “if Mr Warren would make a contribution toward my financial welfare, it would give me the margin I need to ditch the government’s smooth shadows, vanish completely and be on my way.”

  “Otherwise?” Mason asked.

  “Otherwise,” Gideon said, “I am trapped in an economic net. They stripped me clean when they sent me to prison. They released me with only what is referred to as ‘gate money’.”

  Mason regarded the man’s clothes and the cigar. “You seem to have done very well for yourself in a short period of time.”

  Gideon smiled. “Let us say,” he said, “that I am resourceful and not entirely unintelligent.”

  “And so you come to me?” Mason asked.

  “And so I come to you,” Gideon said.

  “And if your requests are not complied with?”

  “Then I keep coming to you,” Gideon said. “Every time I come to you it causes more and more speculation on the part of the government. And if, after my visits, you get in touch with Horace Warren or his wife, that triggers an investigation which would be disastrous to the welfare of your clients.”

  “This is a very interesting form of blackmail,” Mason said.

  “Please, please, Mr Mason! Don’t use that word! This is not blackmail. I have the greatest respect for Horace Warren and I am very, very fond of his wife. I wish them every happiness. I am trying to give them an opportunity to achieve that happiness.