who has a penchant for young women. If you find any millionaires in the guy's background, I'd like to know about them.
'And it's very important that he has no inkling of the fact he's being investigated.'
'Okay,' Drake said, 'I'll get a line on him.'
'Here's another angle of the same picture,' Mason said. 'Dianne Alder, about twenty-four, with lots of this and that and these and those, blonde, blue-eyed, with lots and lots of figure. Living here at Bolero Beach. Mother died six months ago. Father died when she was ten years old. Worked as a secretary for a law firm. I'm interested in her. She's been living here for some time and it shouldn't be too difficult to get her background. What I am particularly interested in at the moment is finding out whether she's being kept under surveillance.'
'May I ask who your client is?' Drake said. 'I'd like to get the picture in proper perspective.'
'I'm the client,' Mason said. 'Get your men started.'
When Mason had hung up the telephone, Della Street said, 'You think she's under surveillance, Perry?'
'I'm just wondering,' Mason said. 'I'd like to know if someone knew she'd been talking with us and had delivered a warning. She seemed rather disturbed about something. If anyone is playing games, I want to find out about it and if I'm going to be asked to sit in on the game I want to draw cards.
'Comment?'
Della Street smiled. '
CHAPTER FOUR
Perry Mason had a court hearing set for Monday morning. The hearing ran over until midafternoon and it was not until three-thirty that the lawyer reached his office.
Della Street said, 'Paul has a preliminary report on your friend, Harrison T. Boring.'
'Good,' Mason said.
'I'll tell him you're here and he'll give you the lowdown.'
Della Street put through the call and a few moments later Paul Drake's code knock sounded on the door of Mason's private office.
Della Street opened the door and let him in.
'Hi, Beautiful,' he said. 'You certainly are a dish with all that beautiful sun tan.'
'You haven't seen it all,' she said demurely.
Mason said, 'She gave
'I understand from my operatives,' Drake said, 'that Dianne is quite somebody.'
'She certainly cuts a figure,' Della Street said.
'She's a nice kid, Paul,' Mason said, 'and I'm afraid that she's being victimized. What have you found out?'
'Well, of course, Dianne is an open book,' Drake said. 'My operatives quietly nosed around down there at Bolero Beach. She worked for a firm of attorneys, Corning, Chester and Corning. She hadn't been there too long. She hasn't had too much legal experience but she's an expert typist and shorthand operator. The point is, everyone likes her. The members of the partnership liked her, the clients liked her, and the other two stenographers liked her.
'Then something came along and she quit, but she didn't tell them why she was quitting. She quit almost overnight, simply giving them two weeks' notice.
'She'd been supporting her mother, who had been helpless for some eighteen months prior to her death. It had taken every cent the girl could earn and scrape together to pay the expenses of nursing. She'd work in the office daytimes and then come home and take over the job of being night nurse. It was quite a physical strain and quite a financial drain.'
'No one knew why she had quit?' Mason asked.
'No. She was rather mysterious about the whole thing, simply said she was going to take life a little easier, that she had been working very hard and had been under quite a strain. People who knew what she had been through sympathized with her and were glad to see her relaxing a bit.
'One of the girls in the office thought that Dianne was going to get married but didn't want anyone to know about it. She got that impression simply because of the manner in which Dianne parried questions about what she was going to do and whether she had another job lined up.
'Dianne's father was drowned when she was about ten years old. He and another fellow went off on a trip to Catalina and like all of these inexperienced guys who start off with outboard motors and open boats, they simply didn't realize the problems they were going to encounter. They ran into head winds apparently; ran out of gas, drifted around for a while and finally capsized. The Coast Guard found the overturned boat.'
'Bodies?' Mason asked.
'The body of the other man was found, but George Alder's body was never found. That caused complications. At the time there was quite a bit of property, but his affairs were more or less involved and there was a delay due to the fact that the body wasn't found. However, after a while the court accepted circumstantial evidence that the man had died, and the property, which was community property, went to the wife. She tried to straighten it out so she could salvage something but there were too many complications. And I guess by the time she got through meeting obligations and working out equities, the estate didn't amount to much.
'The mother worked as a secretary for a while and got Dianne through school and then through business college. For a while they both worked and got along pretty well financially. Then the mother had to quit work and finally became ill and was a heavy drag on Dianne during the last years of her life.
'Now then, we start in on Harrison T. Boring and there's a different story. Just as it was easy to find out about Dianne, it's hard to find out anything about Boring. The guy has a small account in a Hollywood bank. You can't find out much about it, of course, from the bank, but I did find out that he had references from Riverside, California. I started investigating around Riverside and picked up Boring's back trail there. Boring was in business but no one knew what business. He didn't have an office. He had an apartment and a telephone. He had an account at one of the banks, but the bank either didn't know anything about what he did for a living or wouldn't tell.
'However, we finally ran the guy to earth but we haven't been on the job long enough yet to tell you very much about him. Right at the moment he's somewhere in Hollywood. The place where he has desk space can evidently reach him on the phone whenever it's necessary.
'There's a phone listing under the name of the Hollywood Talent Scout Modeling Agency. It's the same number that's shared by all the clients, and the place where desk space is rented and where mail is answered.
'You wanted to find out about any millionaires in his background. There may be one. Boring has had some business dealings with a George D. Winlock. It's just business, but I don't know the nature of the business.
'Winlock is one of the big shots in Riverside, but he's very shy and retiring, very hard to see; handles most of his business through secretaries and attorneys; has a few close friends and spends quite a bit of his time aboard his yacht which he keeps at Santa Barbara.'
'Did you make any attempt to run down Winlock?'
'Not yet. I don't know very much about him. He drifted into Riverside, went to work as a real estate salesman, worked hard and was fairly successful. Then he took an option on some property out at Palm Springs, peddled the property, made a neat profit on the deal, picked up more property and within a few years was buying and selling property right and left. The guy apparently has an uncanny ability to know places that are going up in value.
'Of course, today the desert is booming. Air conditioning has made it possible to live comfortably the year around, and the pure air and dry climate have been responsible for attracting lots of people with a corresponding increase in real estate prices.
'Winlock got right in on the ground floor of the desert boom, and as fast as he could make a dollar he spread it out over just as much desert property as he could tie up. At one time he was spread out pretty thin and was pretty much in debt. Now he's cashing in. He's paid off his obligations and has become quite wealthy.'
'Married?' Mason asked.
