The Case of the Velvet Claws   ::   Гарднер Эрл Стенли

Nobody ever called on me to organize a corporation, and I’ve never yet probated an estate. I haven’t drawn up over a dozen contracts in my life, and I wouldn’t know how to go about foreclosing a mortgage. People that come to me don’t come to me because they like the looks of my eyes, or the way my office is furnished, or because they’ve known me at a club. They come to me because they need me. They come to me because they want to hire me for what I can do.”

She looked up at him then. “Just what is it that you do, Mr Mason?” she asked.

He snapped out two words at her. “I fight!”

She nodded vigorously. “That’s exactly what I want you to do for me.”

He sat down again in his swivel chair, and lit a cigarette. The atmosphere seemed to have been cleared as though the two personalities had created an electrical storm which had subsided. “All right,” he said. “Now we’ve wasted enough time with preliminaries. Get down to earth, and tell me what it is you want. Tell me first who you are and how you happened to come to me. Maybe it’ll make it easier for you if you start in that way.”

She began to speak rapidly, as though she had rehearsed what she was saying.

“I am married. My name is Eva Griffin, and I reside at 2271 Grove Street. I have trouble that I can’t very well discuss with the attorneys who have heretofore represented me. A friend who asked her name withheld, told me about you. She said that you were more than a lawyer. That you went out and did things.”

She was silent for a moment, and then asked: “Is it true?”

Perry Mason nodded his head.

“I suppose so,” he said. “Most attorneys hire clerks and detectives to work up their cases, and find out about the evidence. I don’t, for the simple reason that I can’t trust any one to do that sort of stuff in the kind of cases I handle. I don’t handle very many, but when I do I’m well paid, and I usually give good results. When I hire a detective, he’s hired to get just one fact.”

She nodded quickly and eagerly. Now that the ice was broken, she seemed eager to go on with her story.

“You read in the paper about the holdup at the Beechwood Inn last night? There were some guests, you know, in the main dining room, and some in the private dining rooms. A man tried to hold up the guests, and somebody shot him.”

Perry Mason nodded. “I read about it,” he said.

“I was there.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Know anything about who did the shooting?”

She lowered her eyes for a moment, and then raised them to his. “No,” she said.

He looked at her, narrowed his eyes and scowled.

She met the stare for a second or two, then lowered her eyes.

Perry Mason continued to wait as though she had not answered his question.

After a moment she raised her eyes once more, and fidgeted uneasily in the chair. “Well,” she said, “if you’re going to be my attorney, I should tell you the truth. Yes.”

Mason’s nod seemed more of satisfaction than affirmation.

“Go on,” he told her.

“We tried to get out, and couldn’t. The entrances were all watched. It seems somebody had put through a call to the police department before the shooting, just when the holdup started. Before we could get out, the police had the place sewed up.”

“Who is ‘we’?” he asked.

She studied the tip of her shoe, then said in a mumbled voice: “Harrison Burke.”

Perry Mason said, slowly: “You mean Harrison Burke, the one who’s candidate for…”

“Yes,” she snapped, as though she would interrupt him before he could say anything concerning Harrison Burke.

“What were you doing there with him?”

“Dining and dancing.”

“Well?” he inquired.

“Well,” she said, “we went back into the private dining room, and kept out of sight until the officers started taking the names of the witnesses. The sergeant in charge was a friend of Harrison’s, and he knew that it would be fatal for the newspapers to get hold of the fact that we were there. So he let us stay on in the dining room until after everything was finished, and then he smuggled us out of the back door.”

“Anybody see you?” asked Mason.

She shook her head. “Nobody that I know.”

“All right,” he said, “go on from there.”

She looked up at him and said, abruptly: “Do you know Frank Locke?”

He nodded his head. “You mean the one that edits Spicy Bits?”

She clamped her lips together in a firm line, and nodded her head in silent assent.

“What about him?” asked Perry Mason.

“He knows about it,” she said.

“Going to publish it?” he asked.

She nodded.

Perry Mason fingered a paper weight on his desk. His hand was well formed, long and tapering, yet the fingers seemed filled with competent strength. It seemed the hand could have a grip of crushing force should the occasion require.

“You can buy him off,” he said.

“No,” she said, “I can’t. You’ve got to.”

“Why can’t Harrison Burke?” he asked.

“Don’t you understand?” she said. “Harrison Burke might explain his having been at the Beechwood Inn with a married woman. But he could never explain paying hush money to silence a scandal sheet from publishing the fact. He’s got to keep out of this. They may trap him.”

Perry Mason drummed with his fingers on the top of the desk.

“And you want me to square the thing?” he asked.

“I want you to square it.”

“How high would you pay?”

She rushed on in swift conversation now, leaning toward him and talking rapidly.

“Listen,” she said, “I’m going to tell you something. Remember what it is, but don’t ask me how I happened to know. I don’t think you can buy Frank Locke off. You’ve got to go higher. Frank Locke pretends to own Spicy Bits. You know the kind of a publication it is. It’s just a blackmailing sheet, and that’s all it’s for. They are in the market for all they can get. But Frank Locke is only a figurehead. There’s somebody behind him. Somebody who is higher. Somebody who really owns the paper. They’ve got a good attorney who tries to keep them clear of blackmailing charges and libel suits. But in case anything ever went wrong, Frank Locke is there to take all the blame.”

She quit talking.

There was a moment or two of silence.

“I’m listening,” said Perry Mason.

She bit her lip for a moment, then raised her eyes once more, and continued speaking in the same rapid tone. “They’ve found out about Harrison being there. They don’t know who the woman was that was with him.