The Case of the Lonely Heiress Read online

  “Yes. I hadn’t thought of that last.”

  Mason said, “I’m not certain but what I should go and have a talk with her. After all, she’s already gone on the stand and testified at the time the will was first admitted to probate.”

  “That’s what Mr. Caddo told me,” Marilyn said. “He told me that since she’s done that, she’d have a hard time changing her testiony; that the thing for me to do is to see if I can’t get her to leave the country or something of that sort. And then, when the will was contested, her testimony could be read right into the record, the testimony she had given at the time the will was probated.”

  “Caddo told you that?”

  “Yes. He said that, under the circumstances, the parties to the controversy having been the same, I could simply read her testimony, on showing that she was out of the country and wasn’t available. He seemed to think I should get her out of the country.”

  “I see,” Mason commented.

  She said, “Mr. Caddo keeps asking questions about Rose Keeling. I don’t know just where he fits into the picture.”

  “Perhaps he wants to be the frame,” Mason suggested.

  She puckered her forehead. “Now, just what do you mean by that?”

  “A frame always has a very advantageous position, so far as the picture is concerned. However, let me think it over. I’ll give you a ring tomorrow morning.”

  “Could I have this man Green work for me?”

  Mason said with a smile, “That’s one of the things I was thinking of, young lady. I think that perhaps it might be better for you to retain the Drake Detective Agency and get Green to work with you as a detective, than to bother with my legal advice.”

  “But, Mr. Mason, I’d love to have you. I’ve heard a lot about you and I think that you know a lot about the case, and if you’ll just tell me frankly that you weren’t representing anyone …”

  “I’m not representing anyone connected with the will case,” Mason said. “I’m not representing anyone who has any interest in the estate or in any part of it. The person I was representing was interested only because he wanted to find out something about that ad.”

  “But why would anyone hire a lawyer to—my God!”

  “What is it?” Mason asked as she stopped abruptly.

  “Why, there’s only one person it could have been,” she said. “So that’s how he knew that the man I was talking with was a detective! Mr. Mason, do you mean to say that Mr. Caddo would have hired you, and then have warned me?”

  Mason said dryly, “I not only don’t mean to say anything about Mr. Caddo, I’m not saying anything about Mr. Caddo.”

  The dark eyes showed startled understanding.

  “So,” Mason said, turning to Drake, “I guess there’s no reason why Miss Marlow can’t have your operative working for her. His name, by the way, is Kenneth Barstow, not Irvin B. Green.”

  “Oh, I like that name,” Marilyn Marlow said.

  “I thought perhaps you would,” Mason said, smiling at Drake.

  She scribbled a telephone number on a card, pushed it across the desk to Mason. “You’ll call me in the morning?”

  “In the morning,” Mason said, “I’ll let you know.”

  8

  Mason, entering his office shortly after ten o’clock the next morning, found Della Street waiting in the private office, her finger to her lips.

  “Hi, Della. What’s up?” Mason said, keeping his voice low in response to her signal.

  “There’s someone in the outer office you don’t want to see.”

  “Man or woman?” Mason asked cheerfully.

  “Woman.”

  “What’s the pitch?”

  “Mrs. Robert Caddo.”

  Mason threw back his head and laughed. “Why don’t I want to see her, Della?”

  “She’s on the warpath.”

  “What about?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me.”

  “This Caddo family is becoming a nuisance.”

  “I told her you might not be in all day, that you saw people only by appointment, and that you wouldn’t see anyone unless I was able to give you a general idea of the nature of the business.”

  “So what?”

  “So she plunked herself down in a chair, clamped her lips together and said, ‘I’ll see him if it takes all week.’”

  “How long’s she been there?”

  “Over an hour. She was waiting in the corridor when Gertie opened the office and as soon as I came in, I went out and talked with her.”

  Mason laughed good-naturedly. “What sort of woman is she, Della?”

  “She’s younger than he is, not bad looking. But right now she’s not exuding any charm and she isn’t bothering with sex appeal. All she needs is a rolling pin to be perfectly typical.”

  Mason elevated one hip on the corner of his big desk, lit a cigarette and regarded Della Street with amused eyes. “What the devil do you suppose she wants here?”

  “I suppose Caddo is trying to use you as an alibi.”

  “Exactly,” Mason said, “and the alibi will be for his association with Marilyn Marlow. Hang it, Della, I’m going to talk with her!”

  “I warn you. She’s on the warpath.”

  “Irate women are all part of the day’s work in a law office. Let’s have a look at her, Della.”

  “Well, get over in your chair,” Della said. “Rumple up your hair, pull some law books around. Look busy and dignified. You try to meet this woman informally and you’ll have me calling a doctor to pull pieces of rolling pin out of your head.”

  Mason laughed, seated himself at the desk, opened some law books and held a fountain pen poised in his hand over a pad of paper. “How does this look, Della?”

  She surveyed him with critical eyes and said, “It looks staged. There’s no writing on the paper.”

  “Right you are,” Mason said, and immediately scrawled on the pad of yellow foolscap: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.”

  Della Street walked around to place a hand on his shoulder and peer over at what he had written.

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  “That is perfectly swell. I’ll tell Mrs. Caddo that you’re very busy working on an important matter, but that you’ll give her five or ten minutes.”

  “Shoot the works,” Mason told Della Street.

  Della left Mason’s private office, returned after a few seconds with Mrs. Caddo in tow.

  Mason heard Della Street say, “He’s absorbed in looking up a law point. Don’t interrupt him.”

  Following that cue, Mason started to scribble meaningless words on the sheet of foolscap.

  Mrs. Caddo pushed Della Street to one side and said in a high, shrill voice, “Well, I’ve got a problem for him to concentrate on. What does he mean by sending my husband out, chasing after some little hussy! If I had my way, a lawyer who does that would be made to pay damages. The idea of breaking up a home!”

  Mason glanced up, said somewhat absentmindedly, “Caddo … Caddo? You’re Mrs. Caddo? Where have I heard that name before, Della?”

  “You know where you’ve heard it!” Mrs. Caddo screamed at him. “You advised my husband. You told him to go out and cultivate this hussy, and then he tells me, ‘My lawyer will know all about it! A business matter,’ he says. He didn’t think I’d ever find out who his lawyer was but I fooled him. I looked in his checkbook and there it was, big as day, a check stub showing Perry Mason had nicked the family bankroll for five hundred bucks. For what? For sending my husband out fawning around on a snaky-hipped brunette, that’s what for!”

  Mason said, “Oh, yes, Robert Caddo, the publisher of the magazine. Sit down, Mrs. Caddo, and tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “You know perfectly well what’s bothering me. A publisher! Robert Caddo is running a racket.”

  “Indeed,” Mason said, raising his eyebrows.

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” she went on, moving towar
d Mason belligerently. “Such as he is, he’s mine! I’ve got my brand on him and I don’t intend to let him get away. I’ve put up with enough to turn my hair white. I’ve got too much of an investment in him to let him go. Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly,” Mason said.

  “If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t marry him for a million dollars, but he had a good line and after he’d talked me into it, I kept tagging along, thinking we’d work it out all right some way.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Seven years. And it doesn’t seem long at all when you look back on it—not over a hundred and fifty or two hundred.”

  Mason threw back his head and laughed.

  “Go ahead and laugh,” she said savagely. “I suppose it strikes you as funny. I wasn’t bad looking in those days and Robert had a little money. I wasn’t in love with him but I didn’t think he was going to turn out to be a complete heel. So we tied up for better or worse, and I really and truly tried to make a go of it.

  “I’ve put up with a lot since then. A couple of times I thought I’d pull out. But I stuck, and gradually, bit by bit, Bob has been getting a little property together. Now he’s getting to the age when he strays off the reservation now and then, and I don’t like it.”

  Mason said, “You’re young yet, Mrs. Caddo. You certainly are far from being unattractive. If you think your life has been ruined …”

  “I didn’t say my life had been ruined. I’m not one of these women to come wailing around that they’ve given a man the best years of their lives. Bob Caddo never had the best years of my life, although he may think he had. But what gets my nanny goat is to have him go traipsing around after this brunette and pull the line that he’s merely following his lawyer’s advice.”

  “That would bother me too,” Mason said. “Suppose you sit down and tell me about it.”

  “I’m too mad to sit down.”

  Mason said, “Stand up and tell me about it, then.”

  She said, “Who’s Marilyn Marlow?”

  “What about her?” Mason asked.

  “Bob has gone for her, head over heels. She’s got some property. Bob thinks he can sink his grub hooks in that property and throw me overboard.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Just as certain as I need to be. He’s been gallivanting around lately and I wasn’t born yesterday. I’m not so dumb, even if I am a big blonde. I tailed along and found out where he was going. Then I gave him a piece of my mind when he finally got back home with the old story about being out on business. He tried to back it up and told me that it was business, that this Marlow girl had been using his magazine and that there were some legal difficulties and he had retained ‘a prominent lawyer’ to advise him and that the lawyer told him that he had better stick close to her and try to work out some sort of a settlement.”

  “Your husband told you that?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re certain there’s no opportunity for a misunderstanding?”

  “None whatever.”

  Mason sighed, and said, “Mrs. Caddo, none of us is perfect. We all of us have our little faults. These are imperfections in character which range from the trivial to the serious, and none of us is free from them, but in addition to what other minor imperfections he may have, your husband is a liar and I would appreciate it if you’d tell him I said so.”

  “Humph!” she said, quite evidently surprised at Mason’s frankness.

  “And you are free to quote me on that,” Mason went on. “Tell your husband to come in and see me in case he feels aggrieved.”

  She regarded Mason quizzically. “Say, I believe you’re regular. I came in here to throw inkwells, but you seem to be on the up-and-up. Who’s Rose Keeling?”

  “Are there two women?”

  “I don’t get the sketch,” she admitted. “I caught Bob off first base. I snitched a little red notebook he carries in his inside pocket. When he finds that’s gone, he’ll have a fit. He had two names in there, this Marilyn Marlow and Rose Keeling. This isn’t the first time and it isn’t going to be the last time. I know that I have to put up with a certain amount of that stuff, but believe you me, Mr. Mason, once I catch up with him I see that there isn’t any great amount of pleasure left in it for him. I’m a wildcat when I get started.”

  Mason said, “Sit down and let’s discuss the matter. Do you think that being a wildcat, as you term it, buys you anything?”

  Mrs. Caddo sank down in the big client’s chair and grinned at Perry Mason. “I know very well it does. That’s the way to handle Bob.”

  “Of course,” Mason said, “all of these tirades, these fits of temper, gradually leave an indelible mark upon your character.”

  “Oh, I suppose so,” she said wearily, “but just between you and me and the guidepost, Mr. Mason, I go through these tantrums just to protect my vested interests. They aren’t fits of temper. They’re an act.

  “You see, Bob has piled up quite a little money in this racket of his. He’s smart enough to keep it where I can’t get my hands on it. I don’t mind too much if he philanders around a little, but I don’t want to have some little siren come along and then walk off with my share of the money. So whenever I think anything is getting serious, I raise Cain with Bob, then I find out who the woman is, and I certainly do put on an act with those women! And believe me, I’m good at that.”

  “I daresay you are,” Mason said.

  She said, “Well, I’m not going to take up any more of your time, Mr. Mason. It was nice of you to see me. You’ve been perfectly splendid about this. I came up here to make a scene and raise a rumpus in general, but somehow I don’t think it would have impressed you too much anyway. That’s the only thing that will hold Bob in line. He knows that about the time he gets to the gooey stage I’m going to come tearing along behind like a tornado and make everyone dig for the cyclone cellar. I knew this Marilyn Marlow wasn’t business, but it isn’t just a philandering proposition either. There’s something back of it all that I don’t like. I think Bob would like to pull a fast one there. Anyhow, I’m going to pay my respects to Marilyn Marlow and I’m going to call on Rose Keeling, and when I get done with those two women they’ll realize that crime doesn’t pay.”

  Mason said, “I think, Mrs. Caddo, that perhaps this time it might be better just to work on your husband a little.….”

  “Nope,” she said determinedly, “it’s a system I’m playing, Mr. Mason. I don’t ever dare to vary it. The last time Bob did any philandering, I went up to the woman’s apartment, and I really wrecked the place. I tore her clothes off, blacked her eyes, smashed a mirror, just to give her bad luck for seven long years, and threw a few dishes around. The landlady came up and threatened to call the police and I told her to go ahead and call them and let it get put in the papers the sort of place she was running and the kind of tenants she had and the goings on that had been taking place there. Believe me, that put her in her place.

  “After that I had the field all to myself and when I left, the landlady canceled the lease on the little tramp and I understand now she’s living in a dirty little bedroom and paying five times what it’s worth.

  “Bob is a funny chap. He likes to play the wolf, but he hates a scene, and if I make enough of a scene it’s just like spanking a small kid. He shudders every time he thinks of the punishment…. You’ve been perfectly grand, Mr. Mason. I’m glad now I didn’t slam the inkwells around. I was just going to sit out in the other office until I was certain you were in, and then I was going to push past that receptionist out there, march on in here and spread a little gloom around the place. I knew that would get back to Bob and I figured you’d make him pay for it. Well, thanks for seeing me, Mr. Mason. You’re a good sport.”

  “I would respectfully suggest,” Mason said, “that in this particular instance you curtail your righteous indignation and refrain from calling on the two women whose names you have …”

 
; “I’m sorry, Mr. Mason. I’m afraid you’re like Bob. I guess you don’t like a scene.”

  “On the contrary,” Mason said, “I love them.”

  “Boy, I’d like to have you along on this one,” Mrs. Caddo said. “It’s going to be a humdinger. Well, good-by. I guess I can get out this door all right…. No, don’t get up. And do me one favor, Mr. Mason—if Bob asks if I was here, tell him I raised a row in the office and that you expect him to pay for the damages. Will you do that for me? No, I suppose you won’t. You’re truthful. But anyhow you’re nice and I know you’ll protect my confidence. Good morning.”

  The door banged shut behind her.

  Mason glanced at Della Street and said, “The joys of matrimony!”

  “I don’t blame her a bit,” Della Street said. “You can take a look at Bob Caddo and see what he is. One of these old wolves that run around pawing girls and trying to cut corners. She’s absolutely right. That’s the only way of holding him, and …”

  “Get Marilyn Marlow on the phone,” Mason said wearily, “and I guess you’d better tell her to warn her friend, Rose Keeling, that I think a cyclone is on the way and it might be just as well if they weren’t available. I guess we owe that much to a client.”

  “She’s going to be a client? You were to call her this morning.”

  “That’s right. We’ll kill two birds with one phone call. I’ll tell her I’ll try to handle Rose Keeling for her and that an irate wife is on the warpath. I …”

  The office door pushed open. Gertie, the receptionist, white-faced, said, “Gee, Mr. Mason, I heard her go out. Her husband’s out there and he’s worried sick. Gosh, it was just luck he didn’t walk in while she was out there. If he had, I’d have been in the middle of a real domestic battle.”

  Mason grinned. “He knows how near he came to getting caught, Gertie?”

  “Evidently not. He wanted to know if his wife had been here. I told him that he’d have to ask you about that, and he’s out there pacing the floor like a caged lion.”

  “I take it that he’s disturbed at the idea his wife may have been talking with me,” Mason said.