The Case of the Careless Kitten

by The Case of the Careless Kitten (retail) (epub)

  “Coast all clear?” Mason asked.

  “I think so, yes.”

  “You haven’t been followed?”

  “Not as far as we can tell.”

  Helen Kendal said, “I’m quite certain no one has followed us.”

  Mason nodded toward the building in the middle of the next block where a section of blank wall rising above the top of the nearest house had been lettered “Castle Gate Hotel. Rooms One Dollar and Up. monthly rates. transients. Restaurant.” The sign had been faded and sooted by the grime of a big city.

  Mason took Helen Kendal’s arm. “You and I will go first,” he said. “Shore, you and Miss Street can follow, after an interval of twenty or thirty seconds. Don’t appear to be with us until we start up in the elevator.”

  Gerald Shore hesitated. “After all,” he said, “the person I want to see is my brother Franklin. I don’t care about seeing this man Leech. If my presence may frighten him, I’d prefer to sit and wait in the automobile.”

  Mason said, “Miss Street is going with me. That’ll make three of us. You may as well make four.”

  Shore reached a sudden decision. “No, I’ll wait here in the automobile, but the minute you meet my brother, I want you to tell him I’m here and that I simply must see him before he talks with anyone. Do you understand? Before he talks with anyone.”

  Mason regarded the man quizzically. “Before he talks with me?”

  “With anyone.”

  Mason shook his head. “If you want any such message delivered, deliver it yourself. The man has sent for me. He probably wants to consult me professionally.”

  Shore’s bow was courtly. “My mistake, counselor. I’m sorry. But I’ll wait here just the same. I doubt that my brother is in that hotel. When you come out with Leech, I’ll join you.”

  He walked back to a place near the corner where he had parked his automobile, unlocked the door, got in, and sat down.

  Mason smiled reassuringly at Helen Kendal. “We may as well go.”

  They walked along the echoing, all but deserted sidewalk to the drab entrance of the out-dated hotel. Mason held the door open for the two young women, followed them in.

  The lobby was some twenty feet wide, running back to terminate in a U-shaped desk and counter behind which was a switchboard. A somewhat bored clerk sat, reading one of the more lurid “true” detective magazines. Across from the clerk were two automatic elevators. There were some fifteen or twenty chairs in the lobby, for the most part arranged in a row along one wall. Half a dozen individuals sprawling dispiritedly in these chairs raised their eyes to look, at first casually, then with sharpened interest at the two trim, slim-waisted young women followed by the tall figure of the lawyer.

  The clerk at the desk glanced up from his magazine, and did them the honor of letting his attention remain on them.

  “You have a Henry Leech registered here?” Mason asked, as he reached the desk.

  “Yes.”

  “Been here long?” Mason asked.

  “About a year.”

  “Indeed! What’s his room?”

  “Three-eighteen.”

  “Will you ring him please?”

  The clerk, who apparently was also the telephone operator, moved over to the switchboard and plugged in a line. He pressed a button several times while holding an earpiece against his left ear. His eyes studied Della Street and Helen Kendal with an interest which he made no effort to conceal.

  “I’m sorry. He isn’t in.”

  Mason looked at his watch. “He was to meet me here at this time.”

  The clerk said, “I didn’t think he was in. A man came to see him two or three hours ago. He was out. I haven’t seen him come back. I . . .” He broke off as a special delivery messenger came up to the desk.

  “Got a special delivery for the clerk at the Castle Gate,” the boy said.

  The clerk signed for the special delivery, opened the letter, read it, then looked up at Mason. “Are you Mr. Perry Mason?” he asked. “That’s right.”

  “Well, I guess Leech was to meet you all right. It’s really for you—but he addressed it to me.”

  The clerk handed Mason a sheet of paper on which a message had been neatly typewritten:

  To clerk at Castle Gate Hotel:

  A gentleman will call for me tonight. He is Perry Mason, lawyer. Please tell him I cannot keep appointment, but he is to come at once to place indicated. Circumstances have necessitated a change in plans. This is unfortunate. Tell him to drive, please, to reservoir near top of road back of Hollywood according to course traced on map enclosed herewith. Once more excuse, please, change in plans. It is unavoidable.

  Henry Leech

  The signature as well as the message was typewritten. The map which was enclosed with the letter was an Auto Club map of Hollywood and vicinity. An ink line had been traced along Hollywood Boulevard, turning to the right on Ivar Street, then following a winding course to a spot on the map marked storage reservoir.

  The clerk said, “I thought he went out—a couple of hours ago. I haven’t seen him return.”

  Mason studied the special delivery letter, abruptly folded both letter and map, and shoved them down into the side pocket of his coat. “Let’s go,” he said.

  6

  THE HEADLIGHTS of the two automobiles twisted and turned, alternately showing dazzling circles against a cut bank, then swinging out to send parallel cones of light across dark canyons. The road snaked its way up the mountains, climbing steadily. Mason and Della Street drove the car in the lead, Gerald Shore and his niece following in their car.

  “Did it strike you there was anything strange about that letter of instructions?” Mason asked Della, deftly spinning the wheel to follow the curves in the road.

  Della Street, her eyes shifting alternately from the map to the road ahead, said, “It has a vaguely familiar sound as though I knew the person who had written it—sort of a style of expression, I guess you might call it.”

  Mason laughed. “If you heard it read aloud in the proper tone of voice, you’d recognize at once what it was.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  Mason said, “Try bowing and smiling as you read the lines out loud. Read them without expression, in a monotone, and see what you get.”

  Della Street unfolded the letter from the envelope, started reading. At the end of the fourth line, she said, “Good heavens, it’s the way a Japanese would write.”

  Mason said, “You couldn’t have made a letter sound more Japanese if you’d deliberately set out to do it. And notice that the signature is typewritten—also that the letter is addressed simply to the clerk at the Castle Gate Hotel. Leech has been staying there for a year. He’d almost certainly have known the clerk by name, and would have addressed the letter accordingly.”

  “Then you don’t think we’ll find Leech up here? You think this is a wild-goose chase?”

  “I don’t know. I noticed that peculiar style of expression and wondered if you’d noticed it, too.”

  “I hadn’t at the time. I suppose I would have if I’d heard it read aloud. Now that you’ve pointed it out, it’s perfectly plain.”

  Mason shifted the car into second, pushed the throttle well down, sent the big machine screaming around the curves. For the space of several minutes his hands and arms were busy with the steering wheel; then the road straightened somewhat and leveled off. All around them was a black rim of quiet mountains. Above this rim were the steady stars. Below and behind, a carpet of twinkling lights extended in a huge crescent for mile upon mile, marking the location of Los Angeles, Hollywood, and the suburban towns, an apparently unbroken cluster of myriad pin-pointed lights interspersed here and there with blobs of color from neon signs. Against this vast sea of illumination, the outlines of the mountains up which they had climbed were dark, patient silhouettes.

  Mason slipped the car back into high gear, eased the pressure on the throttle, and the powerful silent motor in the big car became a mere whi
sper of synchronized power. Through the open windows the silence of the mountains seeped in, a silence that was broken only by the sound of tires gliding over the road, and the ominous whooo whooo whooo of an owl.

  A moment later the lights of Gerald Shore’s car were reflected back from windshield and rear-view mirror in Mason’s car, partially blinding him by their glare, so that it was not until Mason was almost on top of the parked unlighted automobile that he saw it and swerved sharply to the right. A few yards ahead, the road curved abruptly, and a circular fringe of eucalypti marked the location of a reservoir.

  “This is it,” Della said.

  Mason pulled his car to the side of the road and parked. Gerald Shore swung in behind the lawyer. Both drivers switched off headlights and motors.

  Almost instantly, the silence of the mountain spaces engulfed them. From under the hood of Mason’s car, the cooling motor block gave forth little cracks of sound which were magnified by the surrounding silence until they became as distinct explosions. The sound of Gerald Shore’s feet coming up from behind seemed unusually loud.

  Adjusting his voice to the quiet which surrounded them, Gerald Shore said, “That must be the car back there, but I didn’t see anyone in it.”

  There was an uncertain note in Della Street’s laugh. “It doesn’t look like much of a party to me,” she announced with nervous flippancy. “Are you sure they said Tuesday night?”

  Helen Kendal’s voice from behind Gerald Shore was sharp with apprehension. “There’s someone in that automobile, sitting behind the steering wheel. He hasn’t moved, just keeps sitting there, waiting.”

  “Got a flashlight?” Shore asked. “Somehow, I feel uneasy about this whole business. There’s no reason why my brother should have decoyed us up here simply to meet him.”

  Mason said, “I’ll get a flashlight.” He opened the glove compartment of the car, pulled out a three-cell electric flashlight, and said, “Come on, let’s go.”

  They formed a compact little group as they marched back along the road, the flashlight spraying a circular spot of white light on the ground.

  The parked automobile remained dark, silent, and motionless. There was no sign of life from within it.

  Abruptly, Mason raised the spotlight so that the rays shone through the windshield. Helen Kendal only half checked the exclamation of startled horror which came to her lips.

  The body was slumped awkwardly against the steering wheel. The right arm was half circled around the wheel. The head was tilted to one side and rested against the shoulder. A sinister red stream had flowed down from the left temple, had divided at the line of the cheekbone, contrasting in color with the hue of the dead flesh.

  Mason stood still, holding the spotlight focused on the inert body. He said over his shoulder to Gerald Shore, “I don’t suppose you could identify this man Leech.”

  “No. I’ve never met him.”

  “This isn’t your brother?” Mason asked, moving a little to one side so that the spotlight would illuminate the features to better advantage.

  “No.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes.”

  Mason deliberated a moment, then said, “Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide is always claiming that I violate the law by moving bodies and destroying clues before the police get on the job. This time I’m going to be above suspicion. If Miss Kendal isn’t afraid to stay here, I’m going to leave you two to watch the body while Miss Street and I rush down to the nearest telephone and notify the Homicide Squad.”

  Shore hesitated for a moment, said at length, “It will only take one to do the telephoning. I’d like more than one witness here.”

  “Willing to stay?” Mason asked Della Street.

  She met his eyes. “Of course.”

  “Okay. . . . Miss Kendal, what’s your aunt’s telephone number?”

  “Roxwood 3-3987. Why? Are you going to notify her?”

  “No,” Mason said, “but I thought I might call the house. I may want to ask the houseboy a question.”

  Mason jumped in his car, hurriedly slammed the door shut, stepped on the throttle, and went snarling in second gear down the winding grade. He stopped at the first house where he saw a light, ran up the steps, and rang the doorbell.

  It was a somewhat pretentious mansion, typical of California sidehill construction, one floor on the street side; then descending in a series of floors and balconies on the downhill side away from the road.

  Mason saw the figure of a man moving leisurely across a corridor. A porch light clicked, etching him into sharp brilliance. A small window in the door slid back. A pair of keen, gray eyes surveyed the lawyer. “What is it?” a man’s voice asked.

  Mason said, “My name is Perry Mason. I want to use your telephone to notify the Homicide Squad that a man’s body has been found in an automobile up by the reservoir at the top of the hill.”

  “Perry Mason, the lawyer?” the man asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve heard of you. Come in.”

  The door opened. The man, wearing a smoking jacket and slippers, peered curiously at Mason, and said, “I’ve read a lot about you in the newspapers. Never thought I’d meet you this way. The phone’s there on that little stand.”

  Mason thanked him, picked up the phone, dialed Homicide, and asked for Lieutenant Tragg. A few moments later, he heard Lieutenant Tragg’s crisp, incisive voice on the line.

  “Perry Mason,” the lawyer said. “I have something to report.”

  Tragg said, “You aren’t going to tell me you’ve found another body?”

  “Certainly not,” Mason replied promptly.

  “Well, that’s better. What’s the trouble?”

  Mason said, “I’ve quit discovering bodies, but one of the persons who was with me discovered a body in an automobile up near a reservoir above Hollywood. If you want to start now, I’ll meet you at the corner of Hollywood and Ivar and show you the way up.”

  “Oh,” Lieutenant Tragg said with elaborate politeness, “someone who was with you discovered the body.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Since you’ve used up your quota,” Tragg said sarcastically, “I presume you’ve let your very estimable secretary claim the credit for this one?”

  Mason said, “It’s all right with me if you want to sit at the phone making wisecracks instead of investigating a murder, but it’ll sound like hell in the newspapers.”

  Tragg said, “Okay, you win. I’ll be right out.”

  Mason hung up the telephone and dialed Roxwood 3-3987.

  After several seconds during which Mason could hear the sound of the ringing bell at the other end of the line, a woman’s voice answered the telephone. “Yes. What is it?” she asked in sharp, high-pitched accents.

  “You have a Japanese houseboy,” Mason said. “I’d like to talk . . .”

  “He isn’t Japanese. He’s Korean!”

  “All right, whatever nationality he is, I want to talk with him.”

  “He isn’t here.”

  “Oh, he isn’t?”

  “No.”

  “When did he leave?” Mason asked.

  “About an hour or so ago.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m the cook and housekeeper. It’s supposed to be my night off, but I came in just as they left and they told me to stay here and answer the telephone in case anyone called.”

  “Could you tell me if this Korean servant had been in the house all the evening?”

  “Well—I couldn’t exactly—I think he was out for a while.”

  “And where is he now?”

  “Out.”

  “Can’t you give me any more information than that?”

  “No.”

  “I’m Mr. Mason. I’m calling on behalf of Gerald Shore and I want to know where this houseboy is now.”

  “You’re calling for Mr. Shore?”

  “That’s right.”

  “If I tell you where Komo is now, you’ll
see that—there won’t be any trouble?”

  “No. I’ll take care of that.”

  “He’s taken Mrs. Shore to the Exeter Hospital.”

  “To the Exeter Hospital?” Mason repeated in surprise.

  “Yes. She was taken very sick, all of a sudden like, looked as though she’d been . . .”

  “As though she’d been what?” Mason asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “About a quarter of nine, I think.”

  “Looked as though she’d been what?” Mason insisted.

  The woman at the other end of the line hesitated a moment, then said sharply, “Poisoned. But don’t tell anyone I said so,” and hung up the telephone.

  7

  THE HOMICIDE Squad car, screaming along Hollywood Boulevard, swerved and swayed through frozen traffic. Pedestrians stood staring at the speeding car, watching it swerve and twist until the red tail-light disappeared and the normal traffic once more came to life and motion.

  Mason stepped out from in front of his parked car to stand in the beam of the headlights of the oncoming police machine. As the big car slid to a stop, a door swung open, and Lieutenant Tragg said tersely, “Get in.”

  Mason climbed in, noticing that the rear seat beside Lieutenant Tragg had apparently been reserved for him.

  “Where to?” Tragg asked.

  Mason took the folded map from his pocket. “There’s the map which gave me my directions.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “It came in a letter.”

  “Where’s the letter?”

  Mason passed it over. Tragg took it, but held it, making no attempt as yet to read it.

  The officer who was driving the car looked back at Tragg for instructions.

  Tragg said, “Take it easy a minute, Floyd. The man up there in the automobile is dead. He isn’t going to make any moves that will confuse us. Mr. Mason is very much alive.”

  “Meaning that I’m apt to make confusing moves?” Mason asked with a smile.

  Tragg said, “Well, I always like to interview you as soon as possible after one of your nocturnal adventures makes my presence necessary. I find that sometimes simplifies matters.”