The Case Of The Howling Dog pm-4

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  "It's a big place and in an exclusive neighborhood. Foley must have money; yet he and his wife were getting along with just a cook and a housekeeper. Apparently there was no butler, valet or chauffeur. I think you'll find they didn't do any entertaining at all. Ordinarily, I would have said the house was far too big for them, but not only are they living in it, without a chauffeur, but Foley is having an addition built onto the garage. It's of reinforced concrete, and the thing is being finished up this morning. They've poured the floor, and the rest of the building is finished."

  "Well, what's wrong with that?" asked Drake. "He's got a right to build an addition onto his garage, hasn't he?"

  "But what does he want it for?" asked Mason. "The garage is big enough to hold three cars. Foley has got two cars in there, and he doesn't keep a chauffeur."

  "Perhaps he wanted to get a car for his housekeeper," said Drake, grinning.

  "Perhaps," Mason admitted. "Or he may want separate quarters."

  "No use speculating," Drake said. "Where do I come in?"

  "I want you," said Mason, "to find out everything you can about Foley - where he came from and why; also the same thing about Cartright. I want you to put just as many men to work as you can use to advantage. I want the information, and I want it fast, and I want it in advance of the police, if I can get it.

  "I think you'll find there's something fishy about this whole business. I think you'll find that Cartright knows Foley, or has known him sometime in the past, and that he came to the neighborhood, rented the house that he did, for the deliberate purpose of spying on Foley. I want to know why."

  Paul Drake stroked his chin meditatively, then let his eyes casually drift to the lawyer's face.

  "Come clean," he said. "What's the lowdown?"

  "I've given you the lowdown, Paul."

  "Oh, no, you haven't, Perry. You're representing a client who complained about a howling dog. The client has gone by-by with a married woman. Apparently she's a good looking married woman. Everybody's happy except the outraged husband. He's gone up to the district attorney's office. You know that he isn't going to get very much out of the district attorney except a song and dance. There's no reason for you to get so worked up about this thing, unless there's something that you haven't told me about."

  "Well," said Mason slowly, "I think I may be representing more than one person. I haven't stopped to figure exactly the professional ethics of the situation, hut there's a chance I may be representing Mrs. Foley, as well."

  "Well," said Drake, grinning, "she's happy, isn't she?"

  "I don't know," said Perry Mason, his eyes narrowing. "I want to get all of the dope that I can on the entire situation, and I want to find out just who these people are, and where they came from."

  "Got any photographs?" asked Drake.

  "No, I haven't. I tried to get some, but couldn't get them. There's a deaf housekeeper out at Cartright's place, and I told you the hook-up on the housekeeper at Foley's place. I tried to bribe her to get some pictures, and didn't get anywhere with it. She'll tell Foley, that's a cinch. Apparently she's loyal to him. Here's another funny thing: just before I left, immigration officers came and picked up the Chink cook for deportation, on the ground that he didn't have a certificate, and I guess he didn't. He's a Chinese of around forty or forty-five, and unless he's native born, he's probably headed for China."

  "Will Foley put up a fight for him?"

  "The girl said he would," Mason answered.

  "What girl?"

  "The housekeeper."

  "Girl, eh?"

  "Well, she's a young woman."

  "You seem to think she's got plenty of IT."

  "She's got something," said Mason slowly, "and I don't know what it is. She's gone to a lot of trouble to make herself up so she looks plain and homely. Women don't ordinarily do that."

  Paul Drake grinned slowly.

  "Women ordinarily do anything they damned please," he said.

  Perry Mason said nothing for a few minutes, but drummed silently with his fingertips on the surface of the desk. Then he looked over at Paul Drake.

  "The housekeeper says that Mrs. Foley left there in a taxicab this morning. Now, Cartright left his place last night and didn't come back. He was in very much of a hurry, because he sent an important letter to me by special delivery, but had his housekeeper mail it. Now, if you can find the taxicab that called for Mrs. Foley, and find where she was taken, you're quite likely to find some trace of Cartright at that place. That is, if the housekeeper is telling the truth."

  "You think she isn't?"

  "I don't know. I want to get all of the facts, then I'll sift them and sort them. I want the most complete reports possible. Put enough men on it to familiarize yourself with every angle of the case. Find out who these people are, where they've been, what they're doing and why."

  "Put a tail on Foley?"

  "Yes, put a tail on Foley. But don't let him know it. I want him watched wherever he goes."

  Paul Drake got to his feet and ambled in a leisurely way toward the door.

  "I get you," he said, "I'll get started."

  He opened the door, stepped through the outer office and vanished.

  Apparently the man moved with a shambling, leisurely stride; yet an ordinary man would have been hard put to keep up with him. Paul Drake's efficiency, both in his work and in his motions, lay in the fact that he never became excited and never wasted time in lost motion.

  When the detective had gone, Perry Mason summoned Della Street into his office.

  "Della," he said, "cancel every appointment that I've got. Hold everything wide open. Clear the decks for action."

  She let her shrewd hazel eyes study him in calm appraisal.

  "You know something?" she asked.

  "Nothing much," he told her. "It's just a hunch. I think something's going to break."

  "You mean in that Cartright case?"

  He nodded.

  "How about the money? Do you want that put in the bank?"

  He nodded again. He arose from his chair and started pacing the office, with the restless stride of a lion pacing a cage.

  "What is it?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

  "I don't know," he told her, "but things don't click."

  "How do you mean they don't click?"

  "They don't fit together. They look all right on the surface, except for a loose joint or two, but those loose joints are significant. There's something wrong."

  "Have you any idea what it is?"

  "Not yet, but I'm going to have."

  She walked toward the outer office, paused in the door to flash him a solicitous glance. Her eyes were warm with affection.

  He was pacing the floor back and forth, thumbs thrust in the armholes of his vest, head forward, eyes staring intently at the carpet.

  CHAPTER VII

  IT WAS ten minutes before five when Perry Mason called Pete Dorcas on the telephone.

  "Perry Mason talking, Pete. How do I stand with you?"

  "Not very high," said Dorcas, but there was a trace of humor in his rasping, querulous voice. "You're too damned belligerent. Any time a fellow tries to do you a favor, he gets into trouble. You get too enthusiastic over your clients."

  "I wasn't enthusiastic," said Mason; "I simply claimed the man wasn't crazy."

  Dorcas laughed.

  "Well," he said, "you're sure right on that. The man wasn't crazy. He played things pretty foxy."

  "What are you doing about it; anything?"

  "No. Foley came in here all steamed up. He wanted to get warrants issued right and left; wanted to turn the universe upside down, and then he wasn't so certain that he wanted the publicity. He asked me to wait until he communicated with me again."

  "Well, did you hear from him later?"

  "Yes, about ten minutes ago."

  "What did he say?"

  "Said that his wife had sent him a telegram from some little town down the state - Midwick, I think it was, begging h
im not to do anything that would bring about a lot of newspaper publicity. She said it wouldn't do him any good, and would do them all a lot of harm."

  "What did you do?"

  "Oh, the usual thing. I pigeonholed it. It's nothing except a man's wife running off with somebody else. They're free, white and twenty-one, and know what they're doing. Of course, if they set up a meretricious relationship, openly and defiantly in some community, that will be a problem for that community to handle, but we can't spend a lot of time and money bringing some fellow's wife back to him when she doesn't want to come.

  "Of course, he's got a good civil action against your client, Cartright, and the way Foley was talking this morning, he was going to file actions for alienation of affections, and everything else he could think of, but I have an idea he's changing his mind on that."

  "Well," Mason told him, "I just wanted you to know the way I felt about it. I gave you a fair deal right from the start. I gave you a chance to have a doctor there to look Cartright over."

  "Well, the man isn't crazy, that's a cinch," Dorcas said. "I'll buy you a cigar the next time I see you."

  "No, I'm going to buy you the cigars," Mason told him. "In fact, I'm having a box sent over right now. How long you going to be at the office?"

  "About fifteen minutes."

  "Stick around," said Mason, "the cigars will be there."

  He hung up the telephone, went to the door of his outer office and said to Della Street: "Ring up the cigar stand across the street from the Hall of Justice. Tell them to take a box of fifty-cent cigars up to Pete Dorcas, and charge them to me. I think he's got them coming."

  "Yes, sir," she said. "Mr. Drake telephoned while you were talking on the line to Dorcas. He says he's got something for you, and I told him to come up, that you'd be anxious to see him."

  "Where was he, down in his office?"

  "Yes."

  "All right," said Mason, "when he comes, send him right in."

  He walked back to his desk and had no sooner sat down than the door opened, and Paul Drake walked into the room with that same ungainly stride which masked such efficiency of motion as to make his advance seem unhurried, yet he was seated in a chair across from the lawyer, with a cigarette going, before the door check had closed the door.

  "Well," said Mason, "what have you found out?"

  "Lots of stuff."

  "All right, go ahead and tell me."

  Drake pulled a notebook from his pocket.

  "Is it so much you can't tell me without a notebook?" asked Mason.

  "It sure is, and it's cost you a lot of money."

  "I don't care about that, I wanted the information."

  "Well, we got it. We had to burn up the wires and get a couple of affiliated agencies working on the case."

  "Never mind that; give me the dope."

  "She isn't his wife," said Paul Drake.

  "Who isn't?"

  "The woman who lived with Foley at 4889 Milpas Drive, and went under the name of Evelyn Foley."

  "Well," said Mason, "that's no great shock to me. To tell you the truth, Paul, that's one of the reasons I wanted you to work on the case. I had an idea that she wasn't."

  "How did you get that idea? From something Cartright told you?" asked the detective.

  "You tell me what you know first," said Mason.

  "Well," said Drake, "the woman's name wasn't Evelyn. That's her middle name. Her first name was Paula. Her full name is Paula Evelyn Cartright. She's the wife of your client, Arthur Cartright."

  Perry Mason slowly nodded.

  "You haven't surprised me yet, Paul," he said.

  "Well, I probably won't surprise you with anything, then," said Drake, thumbing the pages of his notebook. "Here's the dope: Clinton Foley's real name is Clinton Forbes. He and his wife, Bessie Forbes, lived in Santa Barbara. They were friendly with Arthur Cartright and Paula Cartright. The friendship between Forbes and Mrs. Cartright ripened into an intimacy, and they ran away together. Neither Bessie Forbes nor Arthur Cartright knew where the others had gone. It was quite a scandal in Santa Barbara. The people mingled with the better class of society there, and you can imagine what a choice bit of scandal it made. Forbes was independently wealthy, and he translated all of his belongings into cash so that he could carry it with him, without leaving any back trail. They left by automobile, and left no clews as to where they were going.

  "Cartright, however, managed to find them. I don't know how he did it. He traced Forbes, and found that Clinton Foley was, in reality, Clinton Forbes, and that the woman who went under the name of Evelyn Foley was, in reality, Paula Cartright, his wife."

  "Then," said Perry Mason slowly, "why did Cartright get the adjoining house and spy on Foley, or Forbes, whichever you want to call him?"

  "What the devil could he do?" asked Drake. "The woman left of her own free will. She ran away from him. He couldn't have gone over and said: 'Here I am, sweet heart,' and have her fall into his arms."

  "You haven't got the idea yet," Mason said.

  Drake looked at him for a moment, and then said: "You mean he was plotting revenge?"

  "Yes," Mason said.

  "Well," the detective drawled, "when he finally got around to springing his plan for revenge, it didn't amount to anything more than complaining about the howling of a dog. That's not much of a revenge. You've heard the story about the irate husband who cut holes in the umbrella of a man who was entertaining his wife."

  "Wait a minute," Mason said. "I'm not joking; I'm serious."

  "Well, all right," Drake remarked. "Suppose you are serious? What does that buy us?"

  "The theory of the district attorney's office is that Cartright complained about the howling dog merely in order to get Foley away from home, so Cartright could run off with Foley's wife."

  "Well?" asked the detective.

  "It doesn't make sense," the lawyer said. "In the first place, why go to all that elaborate trouble in order to get Foley away from home? In the second place, there must have been some previous talks between Cartright and his wife. He must have known where she was, and she must have known where he was. Those talks necessarily took place in the absence of Foley. Having decided that they were going to go back together and patch things up, why the devil didn't Cartright walk over to the place, cuss Foley out and take his wife?"

  "Probably because he didn't have the guts," Drake said. "There are people like that."

  "All right," Mason agreed patiently, "let's suppose you're right on that. Then he went to the law, didn't he?"

  "Yes."

  "How much simpler it would have been to go to the law and complain that Foley was living in a meretricious relationship with his wife, and have the law step in. Or, he could have hired me as his attorney, and I'd have gone out there and pulled the woman out of the house damned quick. That is, if she wanted to get away. Or, the woman could simply have walked out. After all, Cartright had all of the legal rights on his side."

  Drake shook his head.

  "Well," he said, "that's up to you. What you wanted me to do was to get the facts. You were going to put them together."

  Mason nodded slowly.

  "What do you think happened?" asked Drake.

  "I don't know," Mason said, "but I'm telling you that the thing doesn't click. It doesn't fit together and it doesn't make sense, and the farther we go into it, the less sense it makes."

  "Now, then ' Drake said, "who are you representing?"

  "I'm not entirely certain," Mason said slowly. "I'm representing Arthur Cartright, and I may be representing his wife, or I may be representing Foley's wife. By the way, what happened to her?"

  "You mean Forbes?" asked the detective.

  "Foley or Forbes, it's all the same. I know him as Foley; that's the way I first met him, so that's the way I describe him."

  "Well," said Drake, "we haven't had any luck on tracing Mrs. Forbes yet. Naturally, she felt quite a bit disgraced and she left Santa Barbara, but we don't know where
she went. You know how a woman would feel about those things, particularly when a man didn't give her any warning, but simply disappeared and took a friend's wife with him."

  Mason nodded slowly, and reached for his hat.