The Case of the Velvet Claws pm-1

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  “Okay,” said Mason, “you be in your office tomorrow morning, and I’ll get in touch with you there. But don’t back out on me now, because I’m turning down this three hundred and fifty dollar offer.”

  “Listen, I’d like to see you tonight and get the thing cleaned up right now.” There was a certain quaver of excitement in Locke’s voice.

  “You can’t do that,” Mason told him. “I could give you the information tonight, but I can’t give you the proofs until tomorrow.”

  “Well,” insisted Locke, “you could give me the information tonight, and then I’d pay you when you brought in the proofs tomorrow.”

  Mason gave a mocking laugh. “Now I’ll tell one,” he said.

  Locke said, irritably: “Oh, well, have it your own way.”

  Mason chuckled. “Thanks,” he said, “I think I will,” and hung up the receiver.

  He walked back to his automobile and sat in it for almost twenty minutes. At the end of that time, Frank Locke came out of the hotel, accompanied by a young woman. He had been shaved and massaged until his skin showed a trace of red under its sallow brown. He had the smugly complacent air of a man of the world, who rather enjoys knowing his way about.

  The young woman with him was not over twenty-one or two, if one could judge by her face. She had a well curved figure, which was displayed to advantage; a perfectly expressionless face; expensive garments and just the faintest suggestion of too much make-up about her. She was beautiful in a certain full blown manner.

  Perry Mason waited until they had taken a taxi, then he went into the hotel, and walked over to the telephone desk.

  The girl looked up with anxious eyes, put a surreptitious hand to the front of her waist, and pulled out a piece of paper.

  On the piece of paper had been scribbled a telephone number: Freyburg 629803.

  Perry Mason nodded to her and slipped the piece of paper in his pocket.

  “Was that the conversation—that line about paying for information?” he asked.

  “I can’t divulge what went over the line.”

  “I know,” said Mason, “but you’d tell me if that wasn’t the conversation, wouldn’t you?”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “All right, then, are you telling me anything?”

  “No!”

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” he told her, and grinned.

  Chapter 4

  Perry Mason walked into the Detective Bureau at Police Headquarters.

  “Drumm in here?” he asked.

  One of the men nodded, and jerked a thumb toward an inner door.

  Perry Mason walked in.

  “Sidney Drumm,” he said to one of the men who was sitting on the corner of a desk, smoking. Some one raised his voice, and yelled: “Oh, Drumm, come on out.”

  A door opened, and Sidney Drumm looked around until he saw Perry Mason, then grinned.

  “Hello, Perry,” he said.

  He was a tall, thin man, with high cheek bones, and washed-out eyes. He would have looked more natural with a green eye-shade on his forehead, a pen behind his ear, keeping a set of books on a high stool, than in the Detective Bureau at Police Headquarters, which was, perhaps, why he made such a good detective.

  Mason jerked his head and said, “I think I’ve got something, Sidney.”

  “Okay,” said Drumm, “be right with you.”

  Mason nodded and walked out into the corridor. Sidney Drumm joined him in about five minutes.

  “Shoot,” he said.

  “I’m chasing down a witness in something that may be of value to you,” Mason said to the detective. “I don’t know yet just where it’s going to lead. Right now, I’m working for a client, and I want to get the low down on a telephone number.”

  “What telephone number?”

  “Freyburg 629803,” said Mason. “If it’s the party I think it is, he’ll be as wise as a treeful of owls, and we can’t pull any of this wrong number business on him. I think it’s probably an unlisted number. You’ve got to get it right from the records of the telephone company, and I have an idea you’d better do it personally.”

  Drumm said: “Gee, guy, you’ve got a crust!”

  Perry Mason looked hurt.

  “I told you I was working for a client,” he said, “there’s twenty-five bucks in it for you. I thought you’d be willing to take a run down to the telephone company for twenty-five bucks.”

  Drumm grinned.

  “Why the hell didn’t you say so in the first place?” he said. “Wait till I get my hat. We go down in your car or in mine?”

  “Better take both,” Mason said. “You go in yours, and I’ll go in mine. I may not be coming back this way.”

  “Okay,” the detective said. “I’ll meet you down there.”

  Mason went out, got in his machine, and drove to the main office of the telephone company. Drumm, in a police car, was there ahead of him.

  “I got to figuring,” said Drumm, “that it might be better if you didn’t go up there with me when I got the dope. So I’ve been up and got it for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “George C. Belter,” Drumm told him. “And the address is 556 Elmwood. You were right about its being an unlisted number. It’s supposed to be airtight. Information can’t even give out the number, let alone any information about it. So forget where you got it.”

  “Sure,” agreed Mason, pulling two tens and a five from his pocket.

  Drumm’s fingers closed over the money.

  “Baby,” he said, “these look good after that poker game I was in last night. Come around again some time when you’ve got another client like this one.”

  “I may have this client for some time,” Mason observed.

  “That’ll be fine,” Drumm said.

  Mason got in his car. His face was grim as he stepped on the starter and sent the machine speeding out toward Elmwood Drive.

  Elmwood Drive was in the more exclusive residential district of the city. Houses, set well back from the street, were fronted with bits of lawn, and the grounds were ornamented with well-kept hedges and trees. Mason slid his car to a stop before five hundred and fifty-six. It was a pretentious house, occupying the top of a small knoll. There were no other houses within some two hundred feet on either side, and the knoll had been landscaped to set off the magnificence of the house.

  Mason didn’t drive his car into the driveway, but parked it in the street, and went on foot to the front door. A light was burning on the porch. The evening was hot, and myriad insects clustered about the light, beating their wings against the big globe of frosted glass which surrounded the incandescent.

  When he had rung the second time, the door was opened by a butler in livery. Perry Mason took one of his cards from his pocket, and handed it to the butler.

  “Mr. Belter,” he said, “wasn’t expecting me, but he’ll see me.”

  The butler glanced at the card, and stood to one side.

  “Very good, sir. Will you come in, sir?”

  Perry Mason walked into a reception room, and the butler indicated a chair. Mason could hear him climbing stairs. Then he heard voices from an upper floor, and the sound of the butler’s feet coming down the stairs again.

  The butler stepped into the room, and said: “I beg your pardon, but Mr. Belter doesn’t seem to know you. Could you tell me what it was you wanted to see him about?”

  Mason looked at the man’s eyes, and said, shortly, “No.”

  The butler waited a moment, thinking that Mason might add to the comment, then, as nothing was said, turned and went back up the stairs. This time he was gone three or four minutes. When he returned, his face was wooden.

  “Please step this way,” he said. “Mr. Belter will see you.”

  Mason followed the man up the stairs and into a sitting room which was evidently one of a suite which opened from the hallway, taking up an entire wing of the house. The room was furnished with an eye to comfort and none for style. The cha
irs were massive and comfortable. No attempt had been made to follow any particular scheme of decoration, and the room radiated a masculinity which was untempered by feminine taste.

  A door to an inner room swung open, and a big man stood on the threshold.

  Perry Mason had a chance to look past this man, into the room from which he had emerged. It was a room fitted up as a study with book cases lining the walls, a massive desk and swivel chair in one corner, and, beyond that, a glimpse of a tiled bathroom.

  The man stepped into the room and pulled the door closed behind him.

  He was a huge bulk of a man with a face that was fat and pasty. There were puffs under his eyes. His chest was deep and his shoulders very broad. His hips were narrow, and Mason had the impression that the legs were probably thin. It was the eyes that commanded attention. They were hard as diamonds and utterly cold.

  For a second or two the man stood near the door, staring at Mason. Then he walked forward, and his gait strengthened the impression that his legs were taxed to capacity to carry about the great weight of his torso.

  Mason surmised that the man was somewhere in the late forties, and there was that in his manner which indicated he was completely cruel and ruthless in his dealings.

  Standing, Mason was a good four inches shorter than this man, although his shoulders were as broad.

  “Mr. Belter?” he asked.

  The man nodded, planted his feet wide apart, and stared at Mason.

  “What do you want?” he snapped.

  Mason said, “I’m sorry to come to your house, but I wanted to talk over a matter of business.”

  “What about?”

  “About a certain story that Spicy Bits threatens to publish. I don’t want it published.”

  The diamond-hard eyes never so much as changed expression. They stared fixedly at Perry Mason.

  “Why come here about it?” asked Belter.

  “Because I think you’re the one that I want to see.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “I think you are.”

  “I’m not. Don’t know anything at all about Spicy Bits. I’ve read the sheet once in a while. It’s a dirty, blackmailing rag, if you ask me.”

  Mason’s eyes became hard. His body seemed to lean forward slightly from the hips.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.”

  “Telling me what?” Belter asked.

  “Telling you that I’m an attorney, and I’m representing a client that Spicy Bits is trying to blackmail, and I don’t like the set-up. I’m telling you that I don’t intend to pay the price that’s demanded, and I’m telling you further that I don’t intend to pay a damned cent. I’m not going to buy any advertising in your sheet, and your sheet isn’t going to publish the story about my client. Get that, and get it straight!”

  Belter sneered. “It serves me right,” he said, “for seeing the first shyster ambulance chaser that comes pounding at the door. I should have had the butler kick you out. You’re either drunk or crazy. Or both. Personally, I have an idea it’s both. Now are you going to get out, or shall I call the police?”

  “I’ll get out,” Mason said, “when I finish what I was saying. You’ve kept in the background in this thing, and had Locke for your goat to stand out in front and take it. You’ve sat back and raked in the cash. You’ve received dividends out of blackmail. All right. Here’s where you get an assessment.”

  Belter stood staring at Mason, saying nothing.

  “I don’t know whether you know who I am, or whether you know what I want,” Mason went on, “but you can find out pretty quick by getting in touch with Locke. I’m telling you that if Spicy Bits publishes anything about my client, I’ll rip off the mask of the man who owns the damned rag! Do you get that?”

  “All right,” Belter remarked. “You’ve made your threat. Now I’ll make mine. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t give a damn. Maybe your reputation is sufficiently spotless so that you can afford to go around and make threats. Then again, maybe it isn’t. Perhaps you’d better watch some of your own fences before you start throwing mud over other people’s.”

  Mason nodded curtly. “Of course, I expected that,” he said.

  “Well,” Belter said, “you won’t be disappointed then. But don’t think that’s an admission that I’m mixed up with Spicy Bits. I don’t know a damned thing about it. And I don’t want to. Now get out!”

  Mason turned and walked through the door.

  The butler was on the threshold. He spoke to Belter.

  “I beg your pardon, sir, but your wife wants very much to see you before she goes out, and she’s just leaving.”

  Belter walked toward the door. “All right,” he said. “Take a good look at this man, Digley. If you ever see him on the place again, throw him off. Call a cop if you have to.”

  Mason turned and stared at the butler.

  “Better call two cops, Digley,” he observed. “You might need ’em.”

  He walked down the stairs, conscious of the fact that the other two men were descending immediately behind him. As he reached the lower hallway, a woman glided out from a corner near the door.

  “I hope I didn’t interrupt you, George,” she said, “but…”

  Her eyes met those of Perry Mason.

  She was the woman who had called on Mason at his office, and given the name of Eva Griffin.

  Her face drained of color. The blue eyes became dark with sudden panic. Then, by an effort, she controlled the expression of her face, and the blue eyes enlarged to that wide-eyed stare of baby innocence which she had practiced when she had been in the office with Mason.

  Mason’s face showed nothing whatever. He stared at the woman with eyes that were perfectly calm and serene.

  “Well?” asked Belter. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” she said, and her voice sounded thin and frightened. “I just didn’t know you were busy. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

  Belter said, “Don’t mind him. He’s just a shyster who got in under false pretenses—and is leaving in a hurry.”

  Mason whirled on his heel.

  “Listen, you,” he said, “I’m going to tell you…”

  The butler grabbed his arm. “This way, sir,” he said.

  Mason’s powerful shoulders swung in a pivot that was like the swing of a golf professional. The butler was hurled across the hallway and slammed against the wall with force that jarred the pictures on their hangings. Perry Mason strode directly to the massive form of George Belter.

  “I decided to give you a break,” he said, “and now I’ve changed my mind. You publish a word about my client, or about me in your sheet, and you’ll go to jail for the next twenty years. D’you hear?”

  The diamond-hard eyes stared at him with the uncordial glitter of a snake’s eyes staring into the face of a man armed with a club. George Belter’s right hand was in his coat pocket.

  “It’s a good thing,” he said, “that you stopped right when you did. Make a move to lay a hand on me, and I’ll blow your heart out! I’ve got witnesses to show it’s self-defense, and I don’t know but what it would be a good thing to do anyway.”

  “Don’t bother,” Mason said, evenly, “you can’t stop me that way. There are others who know what I know, and know where I am and why.”

  Belter’s lip curled.

  “The trouble with you is,” he said, “that you keep singing the same tune. You’ve already played that game for all that it’s worth. If you think that I’m afraid of anything that a cheap, blackmailing ambulance chaser can try to pin on me, you’re mistaken. I’m telling you to get out, for the last time!”

  Mason turned on his heel. “All right. I’m getting out. I’ve said all I’ve got to say.”

  George Belter’s sarcastic comment reached his ears as he gained the door.

  “At least twice,” said Belter. “Some of it you’ve said three times.”

  Chapter 5

&nbs
p; Eva Belter sat in Perry Mason’s private office, and sobbed quietly into a handkerchief.

  Perry Mason sat behind the desk with his coat off, and watched her with wary eyes and an entire absence of sympathy.

  “You shouldn’t have done it,” she said, between sniffs.

  “How was I supposed to know that?” asked Perry Mason.

  “He’s utterly ruthless,” she said.

  Mason nodded his head.

  “I’m pretty ruthless myself,” he observed.

  “Why didn’t you put the ad in the Examiner?”

  “They wanted too much money. They seemed to think I was going to play Santa Claus.”

  “They knew it was important,” she wailed. “There’s a lot at stake.”

  Mason said nothing.

  The woman sobbed silently for a moment, then raised her eyes, and stared in mute anguish at Perry Mason.

  “You should never have threatened him,” she said. “You should never have come to the house. You can’t do anything with him by threats. Whenever he gets in a corner, he always fights his way out. He never asks for quarter, and he never gives any.”

  “Well, what’s he going to do about it?” asked Mason.

  “He’ll ruin you,” she sobbed. “He’ll find every lawsuit that you’ve got, and accuse you of jury bribing, of suborning perjury, and of unprofessional conduct. He’ll hound you out of the city.”

  “The minute he puts anything about me in his paper,” said Mason, grimly, “I’ll sue him for libel, and I’ll keep on bringing a suit every time he mentions my name.”

  She shook her head with tears on her cheeks.

  “You can’t do that,” she said, “He’s too smart. He’s got lawyers who tell him just what he can do, and just what he can’t do. He’ll get around behind your back, and frighten the judges who are sitting on your cases. He’ll make the judges give adverse decisions. He’ll keep under cover and fight you at every turn of the road.”

  Perry Mason drummed on the edge of his desk. “Baloney,” he said.

  “Oh, why,” she wailed, “did you come out there? Why didn’t you simply put an ad in the paper?”