'And generally she's right,' Mason said. 'Have Gertie send the three of them in.'
Della Street relayed the message, then went to the door communicating with the outer office and held it open.
Hedley came in first-a broad-shouldered young man with a spade beard, calmly contemptuous eyes, a sport shirt open at the neck disclosing a hairy chest, a pair of rather wrinkled slacks, and sandals over bare feet. He was carrying a coat over his arm.
Behind him was his mother, a woman of around fifty, not as tall as her son. She was rather dumpy and had a sharp pointed nose on each side of which alert brown eyes glittered as she made a quick appraisal of Mason; the eyes darted to Della Street, then around the office.
Behind Mrs. Hedley, Desere Ellis-slightly taller than average, her skin deeply tanned, honey-blonde hair, steady blue eyes and a figure a little on the spare side-seemed paled into insignificance.
'How do you do?' Mason said. 'I'm Perry Mason.'
The man, stalking forward and pushing out a hand, said, 'I'm Fred Hedley. This is my mother, Rosanna, and my fiancee, Miss Ellis.'
Mason nodded. 'Won't you be seated?'
They found chairs. Desere looked at Della Street.
'My confidential secretary,' Mason explained. 'She takes notes on interviews, keeps things straight, and is my right hand.'
Fred Hedley cleared his throat, but it was his mother who hurriedly interposed to assume the conversational initiative.
'Desere was told to come and see you,' she said. 'We gathered it was about her trust.'
'I see,' Mason said, noncommittally.
'We'd like to know about it,' Mrs. Hedley said.
'Just what was it you wanted to know?' Mason asked.
Fred Hedley said, 'The reason why Desere should be told to come and see you.'
'Who told her?' Mason asked.
'The trustee, Kerry Dutton.'
Mason's eyes locked with Hedley's. 'Do you know him?' he asked.
'I've met him,' Hedley said in a lukewarm voice. And then added as though disposing of Kerry Dutton for all time, 'A square, a moneygrabber. He's an outsider.'
'He's a very dear friend,' Desere Ellis interposed, 'and my father had the greatest confidence in him.'
'Perhaps too much confidence,' Mrs. Hedley snapped.
'You see,' Desere explained, 'my father thought I was not to be trusted with money. There was rather a fair sum of money, and Father left it to Kerry as trustee so that I could have enough each year to keep me going for four years, but not enough to go out and splurge and wake up broke. I think Daddy was more afraid of my gambling than anything else.'
'I see,' Mason observed noncommittally, and then asked, 'Do you have any predilection for gambling, Miss Ellis?'
She laughed nervously. 'I guess Daddy thought so. I guess he thought I had a predilection for just about everything.'
Mrs. Hedley said, 'The reason we're here is that we understand the trustee has finally come around to the idea for an endowment.'
'An endowment?' Mason asked.
'Fred's idea,' she said. 'He wants to have it so that-'
Fred Hedley held up his hand. 'Never mind telling him the details, Mom.'
'I think Mr. Mason should know them.'
'Then I'll tell him,' Hedley said.
He turned to face the lawyer. 'Get one thing straight, Mr. Mason. I'm not a visionary; I'm not a goof. I play around with a bunch of poets and artists but I'm essentially an executive type.'
Warming to his subject, he got up from the chair, leaned forward and placed his hands on Mason's desk.
'The trouble with our civilization,' he said, 'is that it can't develop itself. It tends to wash itself out.
'I think we are beginning to realize that every country needs to develop geniuses; but here in this country we can't do it because the genius can't develop; he starves to death.
'Look at the artists, the poets, the writers I know who could be developed into geniuses. I don't mean, Mr. Mason, that anybody has to develop them. All they need is to be left alone-just be free to develop their own talents.'
'And they can't do it?' Mason asked.
'They can't do it,' Hedley said, 'because they can't make a living while they're doing it. They're starving to death. You can't develop anything on an empty stomach except an appetite.'
'And you have some idea?' Mason asked.
'I want to endow up-and-coming poets, writers, artists, thinkers-principally, thinkers.'
'What kind of thinkers?'
'Political thinkers.'
'What kind of politics?' Mason asked.
'Now, there you go, Mr. Mason. You're trying to pin me down. Probably because of the beard. You think I'm a goof. I'm not. I go with a beat crowd, but I don't just want to drift along with the stream. I stay cool, but I want to do something.'
'Such as what?'
'I want to think.'
'You called Dutton a square,' Mason said. 'Why?'
'Because he is a square.'
'What's a square?'
'He doesn't belong; he's narrow-minded; he's all wrapped up in a conventional concept of moneygrubbing.
'Times are changing. The whole world has changed. You can't get anywhere any more with the conventional type of thinking-not in art, not in writing, not in poetry, not in political thinking.'
Mason glanced at Desere Ellis. 'You are planning to finance this idea he has?'
'I wish I could,' she said, 'but I don't see how I can. As I told the Hedleys, Dad's money is just about used up. I wish now I hadn't been quite so extravagant. Sometimes I even wish Kerry Dutton had been more firm with me and had done more of what Dad wanted him to.'
'In what way?' Mason asked.
'Not giving me money to throw away.'
'You threw it away?'
She made a little gesture. 'Oh, I was always taking off for Europe, or someplace, and buying new cars, new clothes, living it up. Once you start in, you can go through money pretty fast, Mr. Mason.'
'And Dutton gave you the money?'
'I think his idea was that he'd take the money Dad left and pay it out in installments so that I would have a steady income until the time came when the trust was terminated.'
'And then you'd have nothing?' Mason asked.
'Then I'd have nothing,' she said. 'Then I'd have to consider seriously how I was going to make a living.'
'Did you remonstrate at all with Dutton?' Mason asked.
'Remonstrate with him?' she said, and laughed. 'I remonstrated with him all the time.'
'About giving you so much money?'
'About not giving me enough. I asked him how did he or anyone else know if I would live until the trust terminated. Why not go through life seeing what there was to see, living what there was to live, and then cross the bridge of the trust termination when I came to it.'
Fred Hedley said, 'If you ask my opinion, Mr. Mason, it was one hell of a way to handle a trust. Particularly, a spendthrift trust of that sort. Her father recognized that tendency in his daughter and wanted to guard against it. If Dutton had been on the job, we'd have a lot more money now for our foundation.'
