"He's kept that promise?" Mason asked.
"Absolutely," Julia Branner said, and there were tears in her eyes. "When we're young we're impulsive. We do things without thinking that we're bound to regret them afterwards. I got married on impulse and I released all claims on my daughter on impulse. I've regretted doing both…" Her lips quivered. She blinked rapidly and said, "Not that it makes a d-d-damned bit of difference-regrets, I mean." She tossed her head and went on, "Don't worry, Mr. Mason, I'm not going to bawl. I've fought my way through life. I've violated damn near all the conventions at one time or another, and I've paid the price. I haven't whimpered and I'm not going to whimper."
"Go on," Mason said.
"After several years I came back to the States. I found that Renwold Brownley was wallowing in money. Apparently Oscar didn't have anything except what Renwold wanted to give him. Naturally, I thought Oscar should do something for me. I got in touch with him. He wrote me a very short letter. So far as he was concerned, I was merely a fugitive from justice. The old man was very bitter. If I returned to California, I'd be prosecuted on that manslaughter charge… Oh, I saw the sketch, all right, but what could I do? I was a nurse working for wages. Oscar'd got a divorce on some charge or another. Renwold Brownley had millions. There was a manslaughter warrant out for me. Not that I cared particularly about coming to California. I didn't want Oscar back. I did think he might make some sort of settlement, but my hands were tied. The charge against me wasn't just one of drunken driving; it was a manslaughter charge and, with Renwold Brownley's money and political backing against me, I'd have been railroaded to the penitentiary, lost my citizenship, lost my standing as a nurse, lost my ability to earn a living… Anyway, that's the way I felt about it. I was too frightened even to consult a lawyer because I didn't dare to confide in one."
"Go on," Mason said, his voice showing interest.
"The only thing I wanted was to have my daughter get something of what was rightfully hers. So I wrote to Australia. The Reverend William Mallory had become a bishop by that time, but he couldn't give me any help. He reminded me of my promise and of his. My daughter had been taken by people who were good to her. She thought they were her own father and mother. They were so attached to her they'd have died rather than let her think differently. They didn't have any great amount of money but they were fairly well fixed. I learned the my daughter had a natural aptitude for nursing and had wanted to do that more than anything else on earth. She was in a hospital, studying. She wanted to train herself to nurse children-she would. She came by it honestly. Mr. Mason, I moved heaven and earth to find her. I'd made a promise, but what the hell's a promise when it's the case of a mother trying to find her own daughter? I spent every cent I could get, hiring detectives. They couldn't find her. Bishop Mallory had been too smart. He'd covered the trail too well, and he wouldn't talk. And then I got this wire from Bishop Mallory. I though he was going to tell me everything. My girl is of age now. There's no reason why she shouldn't know, and I think the people who adopted her have died, but the bishop wouldn't tell me anything. He only said I was to see you. But I did find out that after Oscar died, Renwold realized there was a grandchild somewhere, and he'd employed detectives to find her. He'd taken a girl named Janice in to live with him… But, Bishop Mallory tells me she isn't the real Janice. She's fraud." She paused, staring with hot, defiant eyes at the lawyer.
"What do you want me to do?" Mason asked.
"Nothing for me, but I want you to rip the mask off of the spurious granddaughter. I want you to find my daughter and see that she's recognized as a Brownley."
"That wouldn't necessarily mean anything," Mason said. "Renwold could make a will disinheriting her. I think there's another grandchild, isn't there-a grandson?"
"Yes, a Philip Brownley. But somehow I think Renwold would never disinherit Janice. I think he'd do something for her."
"And that's all?" Mason asked.
"That's all."
"Nothing for yourself?"
"Not a damned cent… You don't mind my cussing once in a while, do you? It makes me feel better. I've been kicked around and I've found I have to either bawl or cuss. Personally, I prefer to cuss."
Mason regarded her in slow appraisal and suddenly said, "Julia, why are you carrying that gun?"
She grabbed instinctively at the bag in her lap, pushed it to the other side of her body. Mason's eyes bored steadily into hers. "Answer me," he said.
She said slowly, "I had to go back and forth from the hospital at all hours of the night. Some of the nurses were annoyed. The police themselves suggested it would be a good thing for me to carry a gun."
"And you have a permit for it?"
"Yes, of course."
"Why are you carrying it now?"
"I don't know. I've always carried it ever since I bought it. It's become second nature, just like carrying lipstick. I swear that's the only reason, Mr. Mason."
"If," Mason said, "you have a permit to carry that gun, it means that the number is registered with the police. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes, of course."
"Did you," Mason asked, "know that Bishop Mallory sailed very suddenly and unexpectedly on the Monterey, leaving his baggage in his room at the Regal Hotel?"
She clamped her lips together in a firm line and said, "I'd prefer not to discuss Bishop Mallory. After all, the question which concerns me relates only to my daughter."
"And when do you want me to start?" Mason asked.
She got to her feet and said, "Right now. I want you to fight that cold-blooded devil until he yells for mercy. I want you to prove that he was the one responsible for getting a manslaughter warrant issued for me and keeping me out of the state so he could wreck my marriage and discriminate against my daughter. Not that I want a cent, I simply want him licked. I want you to make the old devil realize that money can't buy him immunity to do just as he d-d-damn pleases." There were no tears in her eyes now, but her mouth was writhing. Her hot eyes stared at the lawyer.
Perry Mason regarded her for several long seconds, then picked up the telephone on his desk and said to Della Street, "Call Renwold C. Brownley."
Chapter 6
Midnight rain, lashing down from a sodden sky, and borne on the wings of a whipping south wind, moistened the leaves of the shrubbery about Renwold C. Brownley's Beverly Hills mansion. The headlights of Mason's automobile reflected from the shiny surfaces of the green leaves as his car swung in a skidding turn around the driveway.
The lawyer stopped his car under the protection of a porte-cochere. A butler whose countenance was as uncordial as the weather opened the door and said, "Mr. Mason?"
The lawyer nodded.
"This way," the butler said. "Mr. Brownley is waiting for you." He made no effort to relieve Mason of his coat or hat. He ushered Mason through a reception hall into a huge library paneled with dark wainscoting. Subdued lights illuminated tiers of shelved books, deep chairs, spacious alcoves, inviting window seats.
The man who sat at the massive mahogany table was as unrelentingly austere as some fabled judge of the Inquisition. His hair was white and so fine that the eyebrows were all but invisible, giving to his head a peculiar vulture-like appearance, making his scrutiny seem a lidless, cold survey. "So you're Perry Mason," he said, in a voice which held no trace of welcome. It was the voice of one who is inspecting for the first time an interesting specimen.
Mason shook moisture from his rain coat as he flung it from his shoulders and dropped it uninvited over the back of a chair. Standing with his shoulders squared, feet spread slightly apart, the soft shaded lights of the library illuminating his granite-hard profile and steady, patient eyes, he said, "Yes, I'm Mason, and you're Brownley." And the lawyer contrived to put in his tone exactly that same lack of sympathy which had characterized the voice of the older man.
"Sit down," Brownley said. "In some ways I'm glad you came, Mr. Mason."
"Thanks," Mason told him. "I'll sit down after
a while. I prefer to stand right now. Just why is it you're glad I came?"
"You said you wanted to talk with me about Janice?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Mason, you're a very clever lawyer."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. I'm not paying you a compliment. It's an admission. Under the circumstances, perhaps, rather a grudging admission. I have followed your exploits in the press with a feeling of amazement. Also with a feeling of curiosity. I'll admit that I've been interested in you, that I've wanted to meet you. In fact, upon one case I even thought of consulting you, but one hardly places matters of, shall we say financial importance, in the hands of an attorney whose forte seems to be mental agility rather than…"
"Responsibility?" Mason asked sarcastically as Brownley hesitated.
"No, that isn't what I meant," Brownley said, "but your skill lies along the lines of the spectacular and the dramatic. As you become older, Mr. Mason, you'll find that men who have large interests tend to fight shy of the spectacular and the dramatic."
"In other words, you didn't consult me."
"That's right."
"And since you didn't elect to avail yourself of my services I am at perfect liberty to offer those services to people who are on the other side."
The ghost of a smile twitched the lips of the man who sat a the mahogany table surrounded by the environments of his wealth, entrenched in an aura of financial power as though it had been a fortress. "Well put," he said. "Your skill in turning my own comments back on me is well in keeping with what I've heard of your talents."
Mason said, "I've explained to you generally over the telephone what brings me here. It's about your granddaughter. Regardless of what you may think, Mr. Brownley, I'm not merely a paid gladiator fighting for those who have the funds with which to employ me. I'm a fighter, yes, and I like to feel that I fight for those who aren't able to fight for themselves, but I don't offer my services indiscriminately. I fight to aid justice."
"Are you asking me, Mr. Mason, to believe that you only seek to right wrongs?" Brownley asked in a thinly skeptical voice.
"I'm not asking you to believe one Goddamn thing," Mason told him. "I'm telling you. You can believe it or not."
Brownley frowned. "There's no call to get abusive, Mr. Mason," he said.
"I think," the lawyer told him, "that I'm the best judge of that, Mr. Brownley." And with that he sat down and lit a cigarette, conscious that the super-composure of the financier had been considerably jarred. "Now then," Mason went on, "whenever a man has something which other men want, he's subject to all sorts of pressure. You have money. Other men want it. They try all sorts of schemes to get you to give up that money. I have a certain ability as a fighter and men try to impose upon my credulity in order to enlist my sympathies.
"Now I'm going to put my cards on the table with you. The whole chain of events leading up to my interest in this matter has been very unusual. I'm not certain that it hasn't been an elaborate build-up in order to gain my partisan support. If it has, I don't want to lend any such ability as I may have to perpetrating an injustice or bolstering a fraud. If, on the other hand, the chain of circumstances isn't part of an elaborate stage-setting, but represents a genuine sequence of events, there's a very great possibility that the person whom you believe to be the daughter of your son Oscar and Julia Branner isn't related to you."
"You have some authority for making this assertion?" Brownley asked.
"Naturally." Mason paused to regard the smoldering tip of his cigarette, then, letting his eyes meet the lidless scrutiny of the other man, said, "I have it on the authority of the only surviving parent, Julia Branner herself."
There was no sign of emotion upon Brownley's face. His smile was distinctly frosty. "And may I ask," he inquired, "who in turn has identified Julia Branner?"
Mason held his face in rigid immobility. "No one," he admitted, "and that is why I came to you. If there is any fraud on my side of the case, you are the person to expose it."
"And if I convince you that such fraud exists?" Brownley asked.
Mason made a spreading gesture with his palms and said, "The case will no longer interest me. But understand, Mr. Brownley, I must be convinced."
"Julia Branner," Brownley said, "is an adventuress. My detectives have gathered things concerning her past life before she met my son. It is rather an extraordinary compilation."
Mason conveyed his cigarette to his lips, inhaled deeply, smiled and spoke as he exhaled, the cigarette smoke clothing the words with a smoky aura. "Doubtless," he said, "there are many women whose pasts, if viewed under the microscopes of such investigation, would appear checkered."
"This woman is an adventuress."
"You are referring now to the Julia Branner who married your son?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then," Mason pointed out, "the fact that she is an adventuress has nothing whatever to do with the legal status of the child she bore."
Brownley wet his lips, hesitated a moment, then went on with the cold, relentless manner of a banker analyzing the defects in a financial statement: "Fortunately for all concerned, the child she bore was removed from her influence at an early age. I don't care to divulge exactly how that happened nor where it happened. That information was gathered for me by men who were exclusively and entirely in my employ, and who were actuated solely by a desire to protect my interests. I happen to know, and doubtless you can verify, that Julia Branner herself made futile but nevertheless expensive efforts to secure this same information for herself. It happened that, because of the added facilities at my command, I was successful where she had failed."
"Has Julia ever sought to capitalize upon her connection with your family…? I am asking you now to set aside your prejudices and give me a fair answer."
Brownley's face was grim. "She has never sought to capitalize," he admitted, "because I have forestalled any such effort on her part."
"I take it," Mason said, "you are referring to the fact that you were able to place her in the position of being a fugitive from justice."
"You may interpret my statement any way you wish," Brownley said. "I am making no admissions."
"I think it only fair to warn you that if I interest myself in this case," Mason pointed out, "I shall endeavor to protect the interests of my client all along the line, and if it appears that she became a technical fugitive from justice because of influence which was brought to bear by you, I shall seek to make you pay for having exerted that influence."
"Naturally," Brownley said, "I would hardly expect Perry Mason to fight half-heartedly, but I don't think you are going to interest yourself in Julia Branner's behalf. In the first place, I have every reason to believe that the real Julia Branner is dead and that you are the one who has taken up with an impostor."
"Nothing which you have said," Mason pointed out, "in any way proves that the young woman whom you have recognized as your granddaughter is in fact the daughter of Julia Branner, wherever Julia Branner may be. On the other hand, I have some evidence which leads me to believe you have been the victim of either a fraud or a mistake."
Brownley said slowly, "Mr. Mason, I am not going to divulge my defenses to any claims which you may make."
"In that case," the lawyer said emphatically, "you can do nothing to convince me I shouldn't take the case."
Brownley sat for several seconds in frowning concentration. At length he said, "I will go this far and this far alone, Mr. Mason," and his long, thin fingers took a sealskin wallet from his pocket, opened it and extracted a letter. Mason watched the man with interest as he calmly and deliberately tore the printed portion of the letterhead from the stationery and then, after a moment, tore off the signature.
"You will understand, Mr. Mason," Brownley said, fingering the mutilated letter speculatively, "that when I made an investigation I made a most complete investigation. I had certain irrefutable facts which I could use as base lines in making my survey. The nature of th
ose facts are highly confidential, but I employed the best investigators money could buy. I believe you are being victimized. I am morally certain the woman who has presented herself to you as Julia Branner is not the woman who married my son. I know that the person who will be produced by her as her child will not be the daughter of my dead son, and I have reason to believe that your own interest in the matter has been excited largely because you feel a certain person whom you consider above reproach, and who should be in a position to have accurate information, had interested himself in the person who seeks to become your client. Therefore, I am willing to show you this letter. I will not tell you whom it is from, but will merely state that I consider the source to be above reproach."
Brownley extended the letter. Mason read:
"As a result of our investigation, we feel that we can state definitely an attempt will be made to discredit the real Janice Brownley and substitute in her place an impostor. The parties who will be interested in doing this have been fully conversant with the situation for some months and have been carefully awaiting the most auspicious time to launch their activities. In order to be successful, they will have to interest some attorney of ability who will be able to finance the fight, and in order to convince such an attorney, it will be necessary to have some influence brought to bear upon him.
"These parties deliberately waited until Bishop William Mallory, of Sydney, Australia, took a sabbatical year. He announced his intention to spend this year in travel and study and, to safeguard himself from interruptions, kept his itinerary a closely guarded secret.
"Our investigator has established an inside contact with these parties and we are, therefore, in a position to inform you that a clever impostor will pose as Bishop Mallory, contact some attorney, who has been carefully selected well in advance, and persuade him to act in the matter. This spurious bishop will appear upon the scene only long enough to impress the attorney. He will then disappear.
The Case of the Stuttering Bishop pm-9 Page 6
