with her it would mean she couldn't see me any more. It would spoil the friendship.'
'So you took it on that basis?' Mason asked.
'I've been waiting,' Dutton said.
'Did her father have any idea he was dying?'
'Yes. He knew. The doctors gave him eight months. They were too optimistic. He lasted six.'
'And now you feel that the will and the spendthrift trust didn't work out the way he had anticipated?'
Dutton said, 'It had exactly the opposite effect. For a few months, Desere was so terribly hurt and angry that she would hardly speak to me.
'She felt that her father had repudiated her; that he had insulted her intelligence; that he was trying to dominate her life even after he had passed away and- Well, she's like a wild colt. She doesn't want any restrictions. Show her a fence and she tries to jump it. Come toward her with a halter and she wants to run; and if she gets cornered, she wants to bite and kick.
'After the will was read, she felt her father had crowded her into a corner, so she started biting and kicking.'
'And, I take it,' Mason said, 'you were the target?'
'That's right.'
'And you felt that embezzling the trust assets would make everything all right?'
'I wasn't trying to make things all right. I was trying to keep them from going all wrong.'
'How?'
'She'd be a target for dead-beat fortune hunters if they knew the truth. Even as it is, she has a beatnik nogood moving in on her. He wants to marry her and 'manage' the few thousand she's going to get on the termination of the trust.'
Mason smiled. 'You don't approve of him as a husband for Desere?'
Dutton said grimly, 'If he marries her, I'll-I don't know what I would do, but someone should shoot the guy.'
Mason regarded Dutton thoughtfully. 'Perhaps,' he suggested, 'you should be a little more aggressive in your romantic affairs.'
'I have to play the waiting game a little longer,' Dutton said.
'You've been playing it without any results for four years now,' Mason said.
'Five,' Dutton corrected. 'I felt that as Desere grew more mature the difference in our ages would become insignificant. I want her to stop thinking of me as an older brother-a much older brother.'
Mason said, 'All right, I'm glad you've come clean. Now, I want you to do three things. First, make me a check for a thousand dollars as a retainer. Second, sign an undated declaration of trust, listing all the securities that are in your name but which you are holding as trustee for Desere Ellis. You don't necessarily need to tell her about it, but get a record that these properties are being held only as a trustee under the will, then if you die she is protected.'
'Third?' Dutton asked.
'Try to get Miss Ellis to come in to see me,' Mason said. 'I want to talk with her.'
'Why?'
'Someone has to tell her that there is more money coming to her at the termination of the trust than she had anticipated, and someone has to tell her why. If you try to tell her, you have to sketch yourself its a heel. If I tell her, I may be able to put you in the position of a hero.'
'Look here,' Dutton said, 'you can't tell her how 1 feel toward her. You can't-'
'Don't be foolish,' Mason interrupted. 'I'm riot running a matrimonial agency; I'm running a law office. You're going to pay me to keep you out of trouble. I want to keep you out of trouble.
'Your love life is none of my business except as it affects the job I have to do.'
Dutton took a checkbook from his pocket and started writing a check.
Chapter Two
Mason entered his private office the next morning to find Della Street opening the morning mail. He stood for a few moments watching her with appreciative eyes.
'Thanks,' he said abruptly.
She looked up in surprise. 'For what?'
'For just being,' Mason said. 'For being so much a part of things, so completely efficient and… and all the rest of it.'
'Thank you,' she said, her eyes suddenly soft.
'Any progress?'
'On what?' she asked.
'Come, come,' Mason said, smiling. 'Don't try to pull the wool over my eyes. On the romance, of course.'
'The Dutton case?'
'Exactly.'
'Nothing so far,' she said. 'Give the man a little time.'
'He may not have as much time as he thinks,' Mason said, seating himself in the client's overstuffed chair and watching Della Street's smoothly graceful figure as she stood at the desk opening letters, putting them in three pilesthe urgent on the left-hand corner of the desk, the personal-answer-required in the middle, and the general run-of-the-mill for secretarial attention on the right.
'Want some advice?' she asked.
Mason grinned. 'That's why I brought the subject up.'
She said, 'You can't play Dan Cupid.'
'Why not?'
'You don't have the build. You wear too many clothes, and you lack a bow and arrow.'
Mason grinned. 'Keep talking.'
'Sometimes,' Della Street said, choosing her words carefully as though she had rehearsed them, 'a woman will be close to a man for a long time, seeing him in the part in which he has cast himself and, unless he makes some direct approach, not regarding him as a romantic possibility.'
'And under those circumstances?' Mason asked.
'Under those circumstances,' Della Street said, 'nature gave the male the prerogative of taking the initiative; and if he isn't man enough to take it, it is quite possible the girl will never see him as a romantic possibility.'
'Go on,' Mason told her.
'But the one thing that would definitely wreck everything would be for someone else to try and take the intiative on behalf of this individual.'
'Longfellow, I believe, commented on that in the poem dealing with John Alden and Priscilla,' Mason said.
Della Street nodded.
'All right,' Mason told her, 'I've been forewarned. You want me to keep my bungling masculine touch under cover, is that it?'
The phone on Della Street 's desk rang.
She flashed him a quick smile, picked up the receiver and said, 'Yes, Gertie,' to the receptionist.
She said, 'Wait a moment. Hold on, Gertie, I'll see.' Della Street turned to Perry Mason. 'Desere Ellis is in the office,' she said.
Mason grinned. 'Let's take a look, Della.'
'Just a moment,' Della Street said. 'She is accompanied by a Mr. and Mrs. Heclley, apparently a mother and son.'
'They are all three of them together?' Mason asked.
Della Street nodded. 'As Gertie whispered confidentially, the mother is a determined creature with a rattrap mouth and monkey eyes; and the son is pure beatnik with a beard and a cool-cat manner which makes her flesh crawl. You know how Gertie is and how she loves to make snap appraisals of clients.'
