'Well, see what you can find out in San Francisco,' Mason said. 'Find out who called on him at the hotel and all that sort of stuff. Let me know as soon as you get anything else. I'll be here for an hour or so. Then Della and I are going out to get some eats.'
Mason hung up the receiver and resumed his pacing of the office. He had taken only two turns, however, when Della Street said excitedly, 'Wait a minute, Chief. You were right after all. Here it is!'
'What?'
'The ad.'
He strode to her secretarial desk, stood with one hand on her shoulder, leaning over, looking at the ad she was indicating with the point of a polished nail: 'IF THE DAUGHTER OF CHARLES W. AND GRACE SEATON, WHO FORMERLY LIVED IN RENO, NEVADA, WILL GET IN TOUCH WITH BOX XYZ LOS ANGELES EXAMINER SHE WILL LEARN SOMETHING OF GREAT ADVANTAGE TO HERSELF.'
Mason whistled and said, 'In the personal column, eh?'
Della Street nodded, grinned up at him and said, 'You see, I have more faith in your judgment than you have. If you thought she was telling the truth about an ad, I was willing to gamble on it. But when we couldn't find it in the 'Help Wanted' or 'Business Opportunities,' I decided to take a look at the 'Personals.''
Mason said, 'Let's look at the Times and see if he has one in there. When was this?'
'Yesterday,' she said.
Mason pulled out the Times classified ad section of the same date, ran hurriedly down the 'Personals' and then gave a low whistle and said, 'Look at this, Della.'
Together, they stared at an ad reading: 'WANTED: INFORMATION WHICH WILL ENABLE ME TO GET IN TOUCH WITH A JANICE SEATON WHO WILL BE TWENTY-TWO YEARS OF AGE ON FEBRUARY 19TH. SHE IS A GRADUATE NURSE, RED-HEADED, BLUE EYES, ATTRACTIVE, WEIGHT ABOUT A HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN, HEIGHT FIVE FEET ONE. IS THE DAUGHTER OF CHARLES W. SEATON WHO WAS KILLED SIX MONTHS AGO IN AN AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT. $25 REWARD TO THE FIRST PERSON FURNISHING AUTHENTIC INFORMATION. BOX ABC LOS ANGELES TIMES.
Della Street picked up a pair of scissors and snipped both ads from the papers. 'Well?' she asked.
Mason grinned and said, 'Saves my face with Paul Drake.'
'And,' she told him, 'I take it the plot thickens?'
Mason frowned and said, 'Yes, it thickens like the gravy I made on my last camping trip-all in a bunch of lumps, which don't seem to be smoothing out.'
She laughed up at him and said, 'Did you apologize for the gravy, Chief?'
'Hell, no!' he told her. 'I told the boys that it was the latest thing out, something I'd learned from the chef in a famous New York restaurant; that it was Thousand-Island Gravy.
'Ring up Paul Drake, tell him we're going to dinner. Don't tell him anything about the ad. Let's see if he finds it. Tell him to meet us here after dinner.'
'Listen, Chief,' she told him, 'aren't you sort of getting the cart before the horse? We're finding out a lot about the bishop, but not very much for him. After all, what the bishop wanted to know was about a manslaughter case.'
Mason nodded thoughtfully and said, 'That's what he said he wanted to know about. But I smelled something big in the wind, and the scent keeps getting stronger. The thing which bothers me is that it's getting too strong. I tried putting two and two together, and the answer I get is six.'
Chapter 4
Perry Mason was in a rare good humor as he ordered cocktails and dinner. Della Street, watching him with the insight which comes from years of close association, said, as she tilted her cocktail glass, 'Riding the crest, aren't you, Chief?'
He nodded, eyes brimming with the joy of living. 'How I love a mystery, Della,' he said. 'I hate routine. I hate details. I like the thrill of matching my wits with crooks. I like to have people lie to me and catch them in their lies. I love to listen to people talk and wonder how much of it is true and how much of it is false. I want life, action, shifting conditions. I like to fit facts together, bit by bit, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.'
'And you think this stuttering bishop is trying to slip something over on you?' she asked.
Mason twisted the stem of his empty cocktail glass in his fingers. 'Darned if I know, Della,' he told her. 'The bishop's playing a deep game. I sensed it the minute he came into the office, and somehow, I have the feeling that he wanted to keep me in the dark as to his real purpose. That's why I'm going to get such a kick out of outguessing him, figuring what he wants before he's willing to let me know just what he wants. Come on, let's dance.' He swept her out on the dance floor, where they moved with the perfect rhythm of long practice together. The dance over, they returned to find the first course of the dinner set before them.
'Tell me about it,' she invited him, 'if you want to.'
'I want to,' Mason said. 'I want to run over all of the facts, just to see if I can't fit them together. Some of them you know, some of them you don't know.
'Let's begin at the beginning. A man who claims to be an Australian bishop comes to call on me. He's excited and he stutters. Every time he stutters, he gets mad at himself. Now why?'
'Because,' she said. 'he knows that a bishop shouldn't stutter. Perhaps it's some habit he's developed recently, due to an emotional shock, and he's wondering what will happen if he returns to Australia and stutters.'
'Swell,' he told her. 'That's a good logical explanation. That's the one which occurred to me right at the start. But suppose the man isn't a bishop but is some crook masquerading, for one reason or another, as Bishop Mallory of Sydney, Australia. He's inclined to stutter when he becomes excited. Therefore, he tries his darnedest not to stutter, the result being that he stutters just that much more. He's afraid that stuttering is going to give him away.' She nodded slowly.
'Now then,' Mason said, 'this bishop wants to see me about a manslaughter case. He doesn't mention names, but it's virtually certain the manslaughter case is one involving the Julia Branner who became Mrs. Oscar Brownley, Oscar Brownley being the older of Renwold C. Brownley's two sons.
'I don't need to tell you about Brownley. The younger son died six or seven years ago. Oscar went away with his wife, no one knows just where. Then he came back. The woman didn't. Manslaughter charges were pending against her in Orange County. But those charges weren't filed until some time after the automobile accident.'
'Well?' she asked.
'Well,' Mason said, 'suppose I should tell you that Renwold Brownley knew that his son Oscar was coming back to him and was afraid the woman was going to try to come back. Wouldn't it be a smart move for Renwold Brownley to pull some political wires and get a warrant of arrest issued for her? Then the minute she returned to California he could have her thrown into jail on a manslaughter charge.'
Della Street nodded absently, pushed back her soup dish and said, 'Aren't there two grandchildren living with Brownley?'
'That's right,' he said. 'Philip Brownley, whose father was the younger son, and a girl whose first name I've forgotten, who's the daughter of Oscar. Now Bishop Mallory comes over on the Monterey, stays four or five days in San Francisco, puts some ads in the local papers and…'
'Wait a minute,' she interrupted. 'I've just remembered something. You say the bishop came over on the Monterey?'
'Yes, why?'
She laughed nervously and said, 'Chief, you know a lot about human nature. Why do stenographers, secretaries and shop girls read the society news?'
'I'll bite. Why do they?'
She shrugged her shoulders. For a moment her eyes were wistful. 'I'm darned if I know, Chief. I wouldn't want to live unless I could work for a living, and yet I like to read about who's at Palm Springs, who's doing what in Hollywood and all the rest of it, and every secretary I know does the same thing.'
Watching her narrowly, Mason said, 'Skip the preliminaries, Della, and tell me what this's all about.'
She said slowly, 'I happen to remember that Janice Alma Brownley, the granddaughter of Renwold C. Brownley, was a passenger on the Monterey from Sydney to San Francisco, and the newspapers said that the attractive young heiress was the center of social life aboard the ship, or words to that effect, if you get what I mean. You see, Chief, you don't know the granddaughter's first name, but I can tell you lots about her.'
Mason stared across the table at her and said, 'Twelve.'
'What?' she asked.
'Twelve,' he repeated, a twinkle in his eyes.
'Chief, what on earth are you talking about?'
'I told you a minute ago that when I added two and two in this case I didn't get four, but six, and it bothered me,' he said. 'Now I add two and two and make twelve.'
'Twelve what?'
He shook his head and said, 'Let's not even think of it for a while. It's not often that we have a chance to relax, Della. Let's eat, drink and be merry, have a few dances, go back to the office and get Paul Drake in for a conference. By that time the thing I'm chasing will probably turn out to be just a mirage. But in the meantime,' he said, somewhat wistfully, 'just in case it shouldn't be a mirage, what a gosh-awful case it would be. A regular humdinger of a case. A gee whillikins of a case!'
'Tell me, Chief.'
He shook his head and said, 'It can't be true, Della. It's just a mirage. Lets not talk about it and then we won't be disappointed if Paul Drake unearths information which shows we're all wet.'
She regarded him thoughtfully and said, 'Do you mean that this girl…'
'Tut, tut,' he told her warningly, 'don't argue with the boss. Come on, Della, this is a fox-trot. Remember now, we're giving our minds a recess.'
Mason refused to be hurried through the dinner, or to discuss any business. Della Street matched his mood. For more than an hour they enjoyed one of those rare periods of intimacy which comes to people who have worked together, sharing disappointments and triumphs, who understand each other so perfectly that there is no need for any of the little hypocrisies which are so frequently the rule rather than the exception in human contacts.
Not until after the dessert had been taken away and the lawyer had sipped the very last drop of his liqueur did he sigh and say, 'Well, Della, let's go back to our mirage-chasing and prove that it really is a mirage after all.'
'You think it is?' she asked.
'I don't know,' he told her, 'but I'm afraid to think it isn't. In any event, let's telephone Drake to meet us at the office.'
'Listen, Chief,' she said, 'I've been thinking. Suppose this woman, knowing there was a felony warrant out for her arrest in California, fled to Australia and suppose…'
'Not a word,' he said, gripping her shoulder. 'Let's not go jumping around in the clouds. We'll keep our feet on the ground. You telephone Paul Drake to meet us at the office, and I'll get a cab.'
She nodded, but her eyes were preoccupied. 'Of course,' she said, 'if he shouldn't be the real bishop but should be an impostor…'
Mason pointed a rigid forefinger at her, crooked his thumb as though it had been the trigger of a revolver, and said, 'Halt, or I fire.'
She laughed and said, 'I'll call Paul while I'm powdering my nose, Chief,' and vanished into the dressing room.
Paul Drake tapped on the door of Perry Mason's private office and Della Street let him in. 'You two look well fed,' Drake remarked, grinning at them.
