“There are—complications.”
“Tell me about it. How long have you been married?”
“Six weeks,” Garvin said somewhat belligerently.
“A second wife?” Mason asked.
“There’s the rub,” Garvin told him.
“Well, let’s have it,” Mason said.
Garvin settled himself in the overstuffed client’s chair, after first unbuttoning his double-breasted coat. “Mason,” he said, “how good are Mexican divorces?”
“They have a certain value,” Mason said. “It depends on the jurisdiction.”
“How much value?”
“Well,” Mason told him, “they all have a certain psychological value.”
“What do you mean?”
“Technically,” Mason said, “when a man has a Mexican divorce and remarries, the authorities could get tough about it. Actually they don’t do very much about it, where it appears the man acted in good faith, because if they did, they wouldn’t have enough jails in the country to hold all the persons charged with bigamy. It would break up all sorts of families, disrupt the domestic life of the state, and, after the state had gone to the trouble and expense of getting a conviction, the judge would usually impose a sentence of probation.”
“They’re good, then.”
“Some good,” Mason said smiling. “Of course if you want a careful, exact opinion, it would take study. While it isn’t generally known, the Mexican government doesn’t want to have its border courts made a dumping ground for our domestic entanglements. It’s done a lot to clean up situations which did exist. But our courts are under no legal obligation to be bound by the validity of Mexican divorces.”
“Hang it, Mason,” Garvin said, “I’m afraid I’m in a jam.”
“Suppose,” Mason said, “you begin at the beginning and tell me what it’s all about?”
“I married a girl named Ethel Carter ten years ago,” Garvin said. “She was a mighty sweet girl then. I remember how completely hypnotized I was—and hypnotism is the right word for it, too, Mason, don’t make any mistake about that. As it turned out, she was a cold, clever, scheming—well, I hate to use the word that comes to my mind in front of a lady,” and Garvin bowed in the direction of Della Street’s desk.
Mason said, “Love brings out the best in people. When love leaves, it frequently happens the best is gone. Perhaps there was trouble on both sides.”
Garvin shifted his position. “Well, perhaps,” he said, “it’s barely possible. But what I want you to realize now, Mason, is that she’s a holy terror.”
“In what way?” Mason asked.
“In every way,” Garvin said. “She’s—well, she’s a wildcat. You know, that old saying about ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’”
“How long have you been separated?”
“I don’t think the separation had so much to do with it,” Garvin said. “It was when I remarried. She became absolutely insane with rage.”
“By the way,” Mason asked, glancing significantly at Della Street, “what does your present wife look like?”
“A beautiful redhead, with the bluest of blue eyes, Mason. You can look right down into the depths. The fair, delicate skin that goes with a redhead of that type. Hang it, she’s beautiful! She’s a gem. She’s a marvel.”
Mason broke in, “I get it. While we’re on the subject of women, do you by any chance have a woman in your employ about twenty-three or twenty-four, with a good figure, trim, slim-waisted, long-legged, high-breasted, blonde hair, gray eyes …”
“In my employ!” Garvin said. “Good Lord, Mason, you make her sound like a Hollywood movie actress!”
“She’s good-looking,” Mason admitted.
Garvin shook his head. “Don’t know anyone.”
“Know anyone by the name of Colfax?” Mason asked.
Garvin thought. “Yes,” he said, “I had a business deal at one time with a man by the name of Colfax, some sort of a mining deal. I can’t remember much about it. I have a lot of things on my mind. However, I wanted to talk to you about my first wife.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well,” Garvin said, “we separated about a year ago. Now, there was something strange about that separation. My wife and I hadn’t been getting along too well and I’d been—well, I’d been turning to other interests, staying at the club a lot, playing a little poker, going out with the boys. But my wife was not sitting home, pining her life away … Hang it, Mason, we’d just reached the point where we’d started to grow apart. Frankly she bored me and I suppose I bored her. Anyway, when the separation came there were no hard feelings, no tears shed. It was just a plain business matter. I gave her a mine in New Mexico that looked pretty good.”
“Any formal property settlement drawn up?” Mason asked.
“Now, on that I admit I made a little mistake. I didn’t have it formal, but Ethel had always been pretty square that way. We talked things over and I gave her this mine and we were going to see how it turned out. If it turned out all right, she was going to take that as a complete property settlement; if it didn’t turn out so good, I told her we’d make some sort of an adjustment.”
“And did it turn out good?”
“I think it was all right,” Garvin said, “but the point is Ethel went out to New Mexico, stayed at the mine for a while, then wrote me she was going to Nevada to get a divorce. Then after a while I heard in a more or less roundabout way that she had a divorce.”
“A letter from her?”
“From one of our mutual friends.”
“You’ve saved that letter, and the letter from your wife?”
“Unfortunately I haven’t.”
“Did she get a divorce in Reno?”
“Apparently not.”
“Tell me the rest of it.”
“Well, I met Lorraine Evans.” His face lit up with a fatuous smile. “I can’t begin to tell you about Lorrie, Mason. It was just like turning back the hands of the clock. She has everything that I’d expected to find in Ethel when I first married her. Hang it, I still can’t believe my good fortune.”
“I know. She’s a gem! She’s a dream! But now let’s get on with it,” Mason said impatiently.
“Well, I hadn’t bothered about records before, but after I met her and—well, I wanted to be sure I was free, so I wrote to Reno and tried to find records of my wife’s divorce, and apparently there weren’t any.”
“Then what?”
“Well,” Garvin said uncomfortably, “I’d acted on the assumption, of course, that there had been a divorce in Reno, particularly after receiving that letter from our friend about Ethel’s divorce.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, I—I tell you, Mason, I’d naturally acted on the assumption I was a free man and …”
“What did you do?” Mason asked.
“Well, I’d gone pretty damn far by the time I found out that there was some question about a Reno divorce … I still thought that there was a divorce there, all right, but that the records were missing or something.”
“So what did you do?” Mason asked.
“Well,” Garvin said, “I went down to Mexico and had a talk with a lawyer there who told me I could establish a residence by some sort of proxy and—well, he made it sound pretty good. Anyway, I got a Mexican divorce and Lorrie and I were married afterwards in Mexico. We followed a procedure worked out by a lawyer in Mexico. He seemed to know his business.”
“And then what happened?” Mason asked.
“Well,” Garvin said, “I’m worried about Ethel. She’s—she’s suddenly turned bitter. She wants a property settlement. She wants things that would completely ruin me. She wants—me!”
“And so,” Mason said, “you find yourself with two wives on your hands?”
“Well,” Garvin said, stroking his heavy jaw, “I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, Mason. I’d rather be a happy bridegroom than a dubious one. I hoped that Mexican divorce would be goo
d. I wanted to find out something about it.”
Mason said, “I’ll look into your Mexican divorce. Where’s your first wife now?”
“She’s right here, in the city somewhere, but I don’t know where. She telephoned me from a pay station. She won’t give me her address.”
“She has a lawyer?”
“She says she’s going to handle the property settlement by herself.”
“Doesn’t want to pay a lawyer’s fee?” Mason asked.
“No,” Garvin said, “she’s smarter than any two lawyers in the country—present company excepted, of course. The woman’s damned clever. She was my secretary before I married her, and believe me, she certainly knows her way around when it comes to business—a smart woman.”
“All right,” Mason said, “I’ll see what I can do. It’s going to cost you money.”
“I expected that.”
“By the way,” Mason said, “your present wife—was she down at your office last night?”
“Down at the office? My wife? Heavens, no!”
“I thought I saw a light up there,” Mason said. “I was looking out of the window, and I noticed light striking the upper landing of the fire escape. I believe your office is directly above mine.”
“That’s right, it is,” Garvin said, “but you couldn’t have seen a light in my office. It must have been in the office up above that, Mason. No one works in my office at night.”
“I see,” Mason said. “Well, I’ll look into it. Go into that other office and dictate all the data to Miss Street. Give her all the names, addresses, descriptions, anything else you can think of. And leave a check for a thousand-dollar retainer. We’ll get busy on it.”
Chapter 3
It was midaftemoon when Paul Drake entered Mason’s office, walking with a loose-jointed gait that gave him the appearance of extreme indolence.
“Hi, Perry.”
“How are you, Paul? You certainly don’t look the romantic picture.”
“What do you mean, the romantic picture?”
Mason grinned, “I was thinking of the description I heard a short time ago of the private detective. A young woman was very much thrilled with the glamour of your occupation, but there was a shudder that went along with the thrill.”
“Oh, that,” Paul Drake said in a bored voice as he seated himself in the big client’s chair. “It’s a hell of a job.”
“What have you found out about the Garvin Mining, Exploration and Development Company?” Mason asked.
Drake lit a cigarette, sprawled around in the chair until he had his legs draped over one of the overstuffed arms, the other used as support for the small of his back. “Garvin,” he said, “is an impulsive sort of a guy.”
“In what way?”
“He married his secretary, an Ethel Carter. They got along fine together. Everything was all hunky-dory until the new wore off, and after the new wore off Garvin started looking around.”
“I know,” Mason said, “then he married Lorraine Evans.”
“In between there were two or three other affairs that didn’t terminate in marriage.”
“And what about Ethel Carter Garvin?”
“Now there,” Drake said, “you have a problem. She’s reported to have divorced him in Reno, but there’s no record of the divorce.”
“And what about the company, Paul?”
“It’s a corporation. Sort of a holding company. Garvin is a sharpshooter. He picks up mines and prospects. When he finds something that looks good, he turns it in to the Edward Charles Garvin Company, which is a partnership consisting of Garvin and a dummy. Then the partnership turns it over to the Garvin Mining, Exploration and Development Company at a fat profit.”
“How come?” Mason asked.
“Just his way of doing business.”
“Income tax?”
“How would I know? You’re the lawyer.”
Mason said, “If he’s on the board of directors of the Garvin Mining, Exploration and Development Company, he’s hardly in a position to make a profit on selling stuff to his own company.”
“That’s where he’s smart,” Drake said. “He isn’t even a member of the board of directors. He’s the guy that tells ’em what to do, but he’s merely the general manager.”
“And owns a majority of the stock?”
“No, apparently he controls the whole thing, however, by keeping the confidence of a widely scattered list of stockholders. You can figure the thing out, Perry. He picks up properties, puts them in his partnership, holds them long enough, until they’re developed to a point where the value is pretty well assured. Then he gives the Garvin Mining, Exploration and Development Company an opportunity to take them off his hands at a profit. He keeps the management in his own hands, pays himself a nice fat salary and a bonus based on profits. Where the guy is smart is in operating the company in such a way that the stockholders make a nice profit. As long as they’re getting a juicy profit, they don’t care very much what happens. Everyone who owns stock in the company thinks Edward Charles Garvin is the last word in acumen as a manager … Now, that’s all I could find out about it, just offhand. There’s no Virginia Colfax in the picture, and I don’t get any trace of a blonde-haired gal such as you described.”
“Well,” Mason said, “it was just an exploratory job when I first got in touch with you. Now it’s going to be a real job. Garvin’s first wife is somewhere here in the city. I want to find her and put a shadow on her and know what she’s doing twenty-four hours a day.”
“Okay,” Drake said. “I don’t know just how long it’ll take us to locate her. Depends on whether she’s really trying to keep under cover.”
“When you get her, don’t lose sight of her.”
“I won’t.”
Drake started to get up out of the chair, then, as an after-thought pushed his hand down into his pocket and brought out a folded paper.
“What’s that?” Mason asked.
“Proxy for the next stockholders’ meeting of the Garvin Mining, Exploration and Development Company,” Drake told him. “I got my information from a stockholder about most of the setup.”
“How in the world did you ever locate a stockholder in the short time you had to work in?” Mason asked.
“Oh,” Drake said, “it’s just one of those things—part of the job.”
“You interest me, Paul. How did you do it?”
“Well, I have a couple of friends who are interested in gold mining. I rang them up and asked them about Garvin’s company. They gave me quite a bit of the background. I asked them if they could put me in touch with a stockholder so I could get the information right from the back door of the stable, so to speak, and one of my friends knew a chap he thought knew Garvin. He rang him up and found that he was a stockholder in the company.”
“You didn’t interview him?” Mason asked.
“Of course not. I had my friend gently pump him. This guy started talking because a funny thing had happened. He had been out of the state for a while and when he got back, found this proxy in his mail for the stockholders’ meeting, day after tomorrow. He couldn’t understand it because he’d already sent in another proxy before he left. Proxies have to be on file with the secretary for a period of ten days prior to the stockholders’ meeting.”
Mason held out his hand, took the proxy, opened it, and glanced through it, then frowned and said, “The man said he’d already sent in a proxy?”
“That’s right.”
Mason glanced through the proxy, then dropped it on the desk. “That’s made out in a peculiar way, Paul.”
“How come?”
“This proxy provides that the voting rights are given to E. C. Garvin, holder of Certificate Number 123 of stock in the corporation.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t know,” Mason said, “but usually a proxy is made out in favor of a certain individual and it’s not necessary to tack on a lot of descriptive material …
And he had already signed one proxy?”
“Yeah. He told this friend of mine he thought they’d sent the second one to him by mistake.”
“Okay,” Mason said. “We’ll let it go at that. Take a look around and see what you can find out about Garvin’s first wife, Paul.”
Drake slid off the chair and said, “I should have a line on her pretty quick. You don’t know whether she’s staying in a hotel, an apartment house, or where?”
“No faintest idea,” Mason said.
“Know anything about who her friends or associates are?”
The lawyer shook his head.
“You seem to think a detective can pull a rabbit out of the hat just any old time he reaches in,” Drake complained. “You might at least give a guy something to work on.”
“I can give you a five-hundred-dollar retainer to work on,” Mason said.
“Okay,” Drake grinned, “tell Della to make out a check and send it along.”
Drake crossed the office, opened the door and walked rapidly down the corridor toward his own office.
Mason picked up the proxy, studied it.
”Why do you think that’s so important?” Della Street asked.
“Because of a remarkable coincidence,” Mason told her, folding the proxy and putting it in his pocket. “Does it occur to you,” Mason asked, “that the initials of Edward Charles Garvin are exactly the same as those of Ethel Carter Garvin? Now then, note that this proxy is issued to the E. C. Garvin who holds Stock Certificate Number 123 in the corporation and that all prior proxies are hereby revoked.”
“You mean,” Della Street asked, “that …”
“Exactly,” Mason interrupted. “I mean that if it should turn out that the holder of Certificate Number 123 is Ethel Carter Garvin, then every one of the stockholders who has signed one of these second proxies has automatically revoked the proxy that he had previously given to Edward Garvin, and his wife can walk into the stockholders’ meeting with a fistful of proxies, put in her own board of directors, fire Edward as general manager, and run things to suit herself.”
“Oh, oh!” Della exclaimed.
Mason said, “See if you can get hold of Garvin, Della. We’ll find out about this.”
The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom Page 3
