“The fact that you were so interested in the name of my client, Mr. Foster.”

  Foster said somewhat sheepishly, “I may have been a little abrupt but, after all, I was trying to help you, Mr. Mason. That was what I primarily had in mind.”

  “And at the same time, helping yourself to a piece of cake,” Mason said. “Let’s see if I can reconstruct the situation. You’re running an agency for the location of lost heirs. Boring was working for you. All of a sudden he resigned his position and started quietly investigating something on his own.

  “You felt certain that this was some information he had uncovered in the course of his employment and something on which he was going to capitalize to his own advantage. You have been making every effort to find out what the estate is, and who the missing heir is, and hope you can get the information before Boring signs anyone up on a contract.”

  Montrose Foster seemed to grow smaller by the second as Mason was talking.

  “Well,” he said at length, “I guess you’ve either found out all there is to know or else you got Boring in such a position you were able to turn him inside out.”

  “What was the matter on which Boring was working when he quit you?” Mason said. “Perhaps that would be a clue.”

  “That’s a clue and a very nice one,” Foster said, “and it’s a very nice question, Mr. Mason but I’m afraid we’ve reached a point where we’re going to have to trade. You give me the name of the client and I’ll give you the name of the estate on which Boring was working.”

  Mason thought things over for a moment, then slowly shook his head.

  “It might save you a lot of time,” Foster said pleadingly.

  “That’s all right,” Mason told him. “I’ll spend the time.”

  “It will cost a lot of money.”

  “I have the money.”

  “You give me the name of your client,” Foster said, “and if that client hasn’t already signed up with Boring, I’ll run down the matter for twenty-five per cent. Surely, Mr. Mason, you can’t expect anything better than that. Our usual fee is fifty per cent and that’s in cases which don’t involve a great deal of work.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “I’ll take your offer under advisement.”

  “There isn’t time, Mr. Mason. This is a matter of considerable urgency.”

  Mason said, “I don’t do any horse-trading until I’ve seen the horse I’m trading for.”

  “I’ve put my cards on the table.”

  “No, you haven’t. You haven’t told me anything about yourself except to confess that the information you’ve been able to uncover has not been anything on which you could capitalize.”

  “All right, all right,” Foster said. “You’re too smart for me, Mr. Mason. You keep reading my mind, so to speak. I will put the cards on the table. If I could find the name of the heir, I’d start running it down from the other end and then I’d find it. As it is, you’re quite correct in assuming that I haven’t been able to get any satisfaction from checking over the estates which Boring was investigating.”

  “And you’ve talked with Boring?” Mason asked. “Offered to pool your information? Offered him a larger -commission than you customarily granted?”

  “Yes. He laughed at me.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Then I’m afraid I lost my temper. I told him what I thought of him in no uncertain terms.”

  “And what were the no uncertain terms?”

  “The man is a liar, a cheat, a sneak, a double-crosser, a back-stabber and entirely unscrupulous. He puts up a good front but he’s nothing more than a con man. He worked for me, let me carry him during all the lean times, then just as soon as he stumbled onto something juicy he manipulated things so he could put the whole deal in his pocket and walk off with it.”

  Mason flashed Della Street a quick glance. “I take it you didn’t have him tied up under contract. Therefore, there wasn’t any reason why he couldn’t quit his employment and go to work on his own, so I can’t see why you’re so bitter.”

  “This wasn’t something he did on his own, Mason. Don’t you understand? This was something he uncovered while he was working for me. I was paying him a salary and a commission and he stumbled onto this thing and then, instead of being loyal to his employer and his employment he sent me a letter of resignation and started developing it himself.”

  “If you don’t know what it was,” Mason asked, “how do you know it was something he uncovered as a part of his employment?”

  “Now look,” Foster said, “you’re pumping me for a lot of information. I know what you’re doing, but I have no choice except to ride along in the hope that you will see the advantages of co-operating with me.”

  “I’m afraid,” Mason said, “I don’t see those advantages clearly, at least at the present.”

  “Well, think them over,” Foster said. “You let me know the name of your client and I’ll start chasing down the thing from that angle. I have facilities for that sort of investigative work. That’s my specialty.”

  “And then you’ll want half of what my client gets?” Mason asked.

  “I told you I’ll make a deal with you, Mason. I’ll take twenty-five per cent and I’ll do all the work. You can, take twenty-five per cent as your fee and then your client will get the other half. Is that fair?”

  “No.”

  “What’s unfair about it?”

  “If I don’t do any of the work,” Mason said, “I shouldn’t charge my client twenty-five per cent of the inheritance.”

  “Well, you’ve got to live,” Foster said.

  “With myself,” Mason pointed out, smiling.

  “Oh, all right, all right. Think it over,” Foster said. “You’re going to be doing business with me sooner or later anyway.”

  “How so?”

  “Because I’m going to find out what Boring is working on if it takes my last cent. I’m going to see to it that he doesn’t profit by his double-crossing.”

  “That’s a very natural attitude; for you to take,” Mason said, “if you want to spend the effort and money.”

  “I’ve got the time, I’ve got the money, I’ll make the effort,” Foster said. “Think my proposition over, Mr. Mason. Here’s one of my cards. I’m located in Riverside. You can reach me on the phone at any time, day or night. Call the office during the daytime, and the night number is my residence.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Mason said. “I’ll think it over.”

  As Della Street held the corridor door open for Montrose Foster, he twisted his head with a quick, terrier-like motion, wreathed his face into a smile and hurried out into the corridor.

  The door slowly closed behind him and Della Street turned to Mason.

  “The plot thickens,” she said.

  “The plot,” Mason said, frowning thoughtfully, “develops lumps similar to what my friend, on a camping trip, called Thousand Island gravy.”

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Let’s start taking stock of the situation,” he said. “Foster was the brains behind a lost heirs organization. He dug out the cases and carried the financial burden. Boring, with his impressive manner and his dignified approach, was the contact man.

  “Now then, if any unusual case had been uncovered, if any information had been turned up, one would think Foster would have been the man to do it, not Boring.”

  “I see your point,” Della Street said.

  “Yet Boring is the one who turns up the case and despite the fact that Foster had been directing his activities, Foster doesn’t have a single lead as to what the case is. So now Foster is desperately trying to find out who the heir is and start backtracking from that angle.”

  “Well,” Della Street said, “it’s a tribute to your thinking that you figured it out this far, largely from studying the contract.”

  “I’m not handing myself any bouquets,” Mason said. “I should have figured it out sooner… Now then, Foster is evidently having Boring shadowed.”

  “Otherwise he wouldn’t have known he came here?”

  Mason nodded.

  “And we’re having Boring shadowed,” Della Street said.

  “Shadows on shadows,” Mason told her. “Come on, Della, we’re going to have dinner on the office expense account and think things over. Then I’ll drive you home.”

  “Cocktails?” Della Street asked, with a smile.

  “The works,” Mason said. “Somehow I feel like celebrating. I love to get into a situation where everyone is trying to double-cross everyone else.”

  “What about Dianne? Do we talk with her and tell her what we have discovered?”

  “Not yet,” Mason said. “We do a little thinking first; in fact, we do a lot of thinking.”

  Chapter 6

  A routine court hearing on Tuesday morning developed into a legal battle which ran over into the afternoon and it was three-thirty that afternoon before Mason checked in at his office.

  “Hello, Della,” the lawyer said. “What’s new?”

  “Mostly routine,” she said. “How did the court hearing go?”

  Mason grinned. ‘Things were looking pretty black an then the attorney on the other side started arguing with the judge over a minor point and the argument progressed to a point where there was considerable heat on both sides. By the time the hearing was finished the judge decided it our way.”

  “And what did you do?” she asked, with exaggerated innocence. “I suppose you just stood there with your hands in your pockets while the attorney and the judge were arguing.”

  “I tried to act the part of a peacemaker,” Mason said. “I poured oil on the troubled flames.”

  Della Street laughed. “I’ll bet you did just that.”

  “What’s new with our case involving the curvaceous blonde, Della?”

  “There seems to be a lot of activity centering in Riverside,” she said. “Paul Drake reports that Harrison Boring has gone to Riverside. He is now registered in the Restawhile Motel and is in Unit 10.

  “Drake’s man also reports that Boring is being shadowed by another agency.”

  “You mean he’s wearing two tails and doesn’t know about either one?” Mason asked.

  “Apparently not,” Della Street said. “Of course, under the circumstances Drake’s man is being most discreet and is relying as much as possible on electronic shadowing devices which send out audible signals to the car following. He thinks the other agency is using contact observation with no electronic shadowing. So far, Boring apparently isn’t suspicious. Paul says the man is hurrying around, covering a lot of territory.”

  Mason settled back in his swivel chair. “Hurrying around, eh?” he said musingly.

  “Here’s the mail,” Della Street said, sliding a stack of letters across Mason’s desk.

  Mason picked up the top letter, started to read it, put it down, then pushed the pile of mail to one side, sat for more than a minute in thoughtful silence.

  “Something?” Della Street asked.

  “I’m toying with an idea,” Mason said, “and hang it, the more I think of it, the more plausible it seems.”

  “Want to talk it out or let it incubate?” she asked.

  “I think I’d like to talk it out,” Mason said, “and let’s see if it isn’t logical. Boring was working on lost heirs, obscure estates. Yet when Foster tried to backtrack his activities, he couldn’t find anything. Nevertheless, Foster is a pretty thoroughgoing chap and he has the inside track. In the first place, he knows all the routine methods of investigation and in the second place he knew exactly where Boring had been and what activities he had engaged in. Yet nothing that he has been able to uncover gives any clue to what triggered Boring’s break with him.”

  Della Street, knowing that Mason was simply thinking out loud, sat thoughtfully attentive, furnishing him with a silent audience.

  “So suddenly Harrison T. Boring comes to Dianne Alder,” Mason said, “and ties her up on a contract, but the contract is so disguised that neither she nor anyone else who might look at the contract would tumble to the fact that it was a lost heir’s contract; the sugar-coating disguised the pill to such an extent that the whole thing looked like a piece of candy.”

  Della Street merely nodded.

  “Now then,” Mason went on, “Montrose Foster. Regardless of the fact that he’s a little terrier, but no one’s dummy, he begins to think that perhaps he should start working on the case from the other end and is anxious to find out who Boring has been seeing.”

  Again Della Street nodded.

  “He is having Boring shadowed. He undoubtedly knows that Boring is seeing Winlock. But Winlock doesn’t seem to be the solution to the problem, at least as far as Foster is concerned.

  “Now, that’s where we’re one step ahead of Montrose Foster. We know that whatever lead Harrison Boring may have uncovered, he followed it to Dianne Alder. Dianne Alder is the target in the case, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

  Mason was silent for a few seconds, then he said, “Yet, having found Dianne Alder and having tied her up, Boring suddenly lets her go.

  “Now, why?”

  Della Street merely sat looking at him, making no comment.

  “The reason is, of course,” Mason said, “that the advantage Boring intended to get from his contract with Dianne—and that must have been a considerable advantage for him to put out a hundred dollars a week—has been superseded by something much more profitable to Harrison Boring.”

  “Such as what?” Della Street asked. “Blackmail.”

  “Blackmail!” she exclaimed.

  “That’s right,” Mason said. “He started out on a missing heir’s contract and he suddenly shifted to blackmail. That is about the only explanation that would account for his going to all that trouble to sign Dianne up on a missing heir’s contract and then suddenly drop her.”

  “But why would blackmail tie in with missing heirs?” she asked.

  “Because,” Mason said, “we’ve been looking at the whole picture backwards. There aren’t any missing heir.”

  “But I thought you just said Dianne was a missing heir.”

  “We may have started in with that idea,” Mason said, “but it’s a false premise and that’s why we aren’t getting anywhere, and that’s why Montrose Foster isn’t getting anywhere. Dianne Alder isn’t a missing heir; this is a case of a missing testator.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dianne’s father was killed some fourteen years ago, drowned accidentally while boating in the channel, but his body was never found.”

  “Then, you mean…?”

  “I mean,” Mason said, “that his body wasn’t found because he wasn’t dead. He was rescued in some way and decided to leave the impression that he was dead. He went out and began life all over and probably amassed something of a fortune.

  “He probably was tired of his home life, wanted to disappear the way many men do, but never had the opportunity until that boating accident.”

  “So then?” Della Street asked, with sudden excitement.

  “So then,” Mason said, “we start looking for a wealthy man-someone who has no background beyond fourteen years ago, someone who couldn’t divorce his wife because he was supposed to be dead, someone who has since remarried, someone who is exceedingly vulnerable, therefore, to blackmail.

  “Dianne, as his daughter, would have a claim, which could be enforced.”

  “But didn’t Dianne’s mother take all of the estate?” Della Street asked.

  “All that she knew about,” Mason said. “All the estate that Dianne’s father left at the time of his disappearance. But technically he was still married to Dianne’s mother. Technically anything that he acquired after his disappearance and before the death of Dianne’s mother was community property.”

  “Then,” Della Street said, with sudden excitement, “the key to the whole thing is George D. Winlock.”

  “Exactly,” Mason said. “Winlock, the wealthy man whom Harrison Boring is cultivating at the moment; Winlock, the real estate speculator who showed up in Riverside about fourteen years ago as a salesman, who started plunging in real estate, became wealthy, and is now one of the town’s leading citizens; Winlock, who has a high social position, a wife who really isn’t a wife.… No wonder Boring was willing to let Dianne off the hook! He had landed a bigger fish.”

  “I take it,” Della Street said, “that we go to Riverside.”

  Mason grinned. “Get your things packed, Della. Put in some notebooks and pencils. We go to Riverside.”

  “And we see George D. Winlock?”

  “We make some very careful investigations,” Mason said, “and we are very, very careful indeed not to upset any apple carts, not to make any accusations, not to jump to any false conclusions, but very definitely we see George D. Winlock.”

  “And when we see him?”

  “We see him as Dianne Aider’s attorney, and the minute we do that I think you will find that Harrison T. Boring’s blackmail has been dried up at the source. And, since Boring has repudiated his contract with Dianne, whatever we can get for her by way of a settlement will be pure velvet to her.

  “How long will it take you to get some things packed, Della?”

  She smiled. “Five minutes. I’ve been through this same thing so often that I’m now keeping an overnight bag in the coat closet.”

  Chapter 7

  Sid Nye, Paul Drakes right-hand man, was waiting for Perry Mason when he and Della Street arrived at the colorful Mission Inn Hotel in Riverside.

  “Hello, Sid,” Mason said, shaking hands. “You know Della Street. What’s new?”

  “Something I want to talk over with you,” Nye said. “I talked with Paul on the phone and he said you were on your way up here and should be here any minute.”

  Della Street filled out the registration cards, and Mason, Nye and Della were shown up to the lawyer’s suite, Mason ordered a round of drinks, and Nye, settling himself comfortably in the chair, said, “The fat seems to be in the fire.”

  “Just what happened?” Mason asked.

  “I don’t know all of the ramifications of the case,” Nye said, “but it seems that you were having a Harrison T. Boring shadowed.”