The Case of the Velvet Claws pm-1

by Erle Stanley Gardner

Perry Mason said nothing.

  “Spicy Bits can be bought off,” continued the politician. “I don’t know just how they work it. It’s some kind of a deal by which you buy advertising space and then don’t live up to the contract. They have a clause in there for liquidated damages, I understand. You’re a lawyer. You should know about that. And you should know how to handle it.”

  “Spicy Bits can’t be bought off now,” said Mason. “In the first place they wanted too much money. And in the second place, they’re out for blood now. It’s a question of no quarter given, and no quarter asked.”

  Harrison Burke drew himself up. “My dear man,” he said, “I think you are entirely mistaken. I see no reason why the paper should adopt that attitude.”

  Mason grinned at him, “You don’t?”

  “Certainly not,” said Burke.

  “Well, it happens that the power behind the throne in that paper, the man who really owns it, is George C. Belter. And the woman you were out with is his wife, who was contemplating suing him for divorce. Think that over.”

  Burke’s face was the color of putty.

  “That’s impossible,” he said. “Belter wouldn’t be mixed up in anything like that. He’s a gentleman.”

  “He may be a gentleman, but he owns the sheet,” said Mason.

  “Oh, but he couldn’t!” protested Burke.

  “Well, he does,” Mason repeated. “I’m giving you the information. Take it or leave it. It’s not my funeral. It’s yours. If you get out of this, it’ll be because you play your cards right and have some good advice. I’m ready to give you the advice.”

  Harrison Burke twisted his fingers together. “Exactly what is it that you want?” he asked.

  Mason said, “There’s only one way I know of to break that gang, and that’s to fight it with fire. They’re blackmailers, and I’m going to do some blackmailing myself. I’ve got some information that I’m trying to chase down. It’s costing money. The woman is out of money, and I don’t intend to finance it myself.

  “Every time the hour hand on that clock makes a circle, it means that I’ve put in more of my time, and that other people have put in more of their time. Expenses keep running up. As I see it, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be called on to do your share.”

  Harrison Burke blinked. “How much do you think it will cost?” he inquired, cautiously.

  “I want fifteen hundred dollars now, and if I get you out of it, it’s going to cost you more.”

  Burke wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. “I’ll have to think it over,” he said. “If I’m going to raise any money, I’ll have to make some arrangements to get it. You come back tomorrow morning, and I’ll let you know.”

  “This thing is moving fast,” Mason told him. “There’ll be a lot of water go under the bridge between now and tomorrow morning.”

  “Come back in two hours, then,” said Burke.

  Mason looked at the man and said, “All right. Listen, here’s what you’re planning to do. You’re going to look me up. I’ll tell you in advance what you’ll find. You’ll find that I’m a lawyer that has specialized in trial work, and in a lot of criminal work. Every fellow in this practice cultivates some sort of a specialty. I’m a specialist on getting people out of trouble. They come to me when they’re in all sorts of trouble, and I work them out. Most of my cases never come to court.

  “If you look me up through some family lawyer or some corporation lawyer, he’ll probably tell you that I’m a shyster. If you look me up through some chap in the District Attorney’s office, he’ll tell you that I’m a dangerous antagonist but he doesn’t know very much about me. If you look me up through a bank you won’t find out a damned thing.”

  Burke opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it and was silent.

  “Now maybe that information will cut down the amount of time you’re going to take to look me up,” went on Mason. “If you call up Eva Belter, she’ll probably be sore because I came to you. She wants to handle it all by herself. Or else she’s never thought of you. I don’t know which. If you call her up, ask for her maid and leave some message with the maid about a dress or something. Then she’ll call you back.”

  Harrison Burke looked surprised.

  “How did you know that?” he asked.

  “That’s the way she gets her messages,” said Mason. “Mine’s to tell about a dress. What’s yours?”

  “About the delivery of shoes,” Harrison Burke blurted.

  “It’s a good system,” Mason said, “providing she doesn’t get her wearing apparel mixed. And I’m not so sure about her maid.”

  Burke’s reserve seemed to have melted.

  “The maid,” he said, “doesn’t know anything. She simply delivers the message. Eva keeps the code. I didn’t know that she had any one else who used that sort of a code.”

  Perry Mason laughed.

  “Be your age,” he said.

  “As a matter of fact,” said Harrison Burke, with dignity, “Mrs. Belter called me on the telephone not over an hour ago. She said that she was in serious difficulties and had to raise a thousand dollars at once. She wanted me to help her. She didn’t say what the money was for.”

  Mason whistled.

  “Well,” he said, “that makes it different. I was afraid she wasn’t going to make you kick in. I don’t care how you come through, but I think you should help carry the load. I’m working for you just as much as I am for her, and it’s a fight that’s running into money.”

  Burke nodded. “Come back in half an hour,” he said, “and I’ll let you know.”

  Mason moved toward the door. “All right,” he remarked, “make it half an hour then. And you’d better get the money in cash. Because you won’t want to have any checks going through your bank account, in case there should be any publicity about what I’m doing or whom I’m representing.”

  Burke pushed back his chair, and made a politician’s tentative motion of extending his hand. Perry Mason did not see the hand, or, if he did, he did not bother to acknowledge it, but strode toward the door.

  “Half an hour,” he said, on the threshold, and slammed the door behind him.

  As he put his hand on the door catch of his automobile, a man tapped him on the shoulder.

  Mason turned.

  The man was a heavy-set individual with impudent eyes.

  “I want an interview, Mr. Mason,” he said.

  “Interview?” said Mason. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Crandall,” said the man. “A reporter for Spicy Bits. We’re interested in the doings of prominent people, Mr. Mason. And I’d like an interview with you as to what you discussed with Harrison Burke.”

  Slowly, deliberately, Perry Mason took his hand from the automobile door catch, turned around on his heel, and surveyed the man.

  “So,” he said, “that’s the kind of tactics you folks are going to use, is it?”

  Crandall continued to stare with his impudent eyes.

  “Don’t get hard,” he said, “because it won’t buy you anything.”

  “The hell it won’t,” said Perry Mason. He measured the distance, and slammed a straight left full into the grinning mouth. Crandall’s head shot back. He staggered for two steps, then went down like a sack of meal.

  Passing pedestrians paused to stare, and collected in a little group.

  Mason paid no attention to them, but turned, jerked open the door of his machine, got in, slammed the door shut, stepped on the starter, and pushed the car out into traffic.

  From a nearby drug store, he called Harrison Burke’s office.

  When he had Burke on the line, he said, “Mason talking, Burke. Better not go out. And better get somebody to act as a bodyguard. The paper we talked about has got a couple of strong arm men sticking around, ready to muscle into your business in any way that’ll do the most damage. When you get that money for me, send it over to my office by messenger. Get somebody you can trust and don’t tell them what
’s in the package. Put it in a sealed envelope, as though it might be papers.”

  Harrison Burke started to say something.

  Perry Mason savagely slammed the receiver on the hook, strode out of the telephone booth and into his car.

  Chapter 7

  A storm was whipping up from the southeast. Slow, leaden clouds drifted across the night sky, and bombarded the ground with great mushrooms of spattering water.

  Wind was tugging at the corners of the apartment house where Perry Mason lived. A window was open only about half an inch at the bottom, but enough wind came through that opening to billow the curtains and keep them flapping.

  Mason sat up in bed and groped for the telephone in the dark. He found the instrument, put it to his ear and said, “Hello.”

  The voice of Eva Belter sounded swift and panic-stricken over the wire.

  “Thank God I’ve got you! Get in your car and come at once! This is Eva Belter.”

  Perry Mason was still sleepy.

  “Come where?” he said. “What’s the matter?”

  “Something awful has happened,” she said. “Don’t come to the house. I’m not there.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m down at a drug store on Griswold Avenue. Drive out the Avenue and you’ll see the lights in the drug store. I’ll be standing in front of it.”

  Perry Mason was getting his faculties together.

  “Listen,” he said, “I’ve answered night calls before, where people have been trying to take me for a ride. Let’s make sure that there isn’t anything phony about this.”

  She screamed at him over the telephone.

  “Oh, don’t be so damned cautious! Come out here at once. I tell you I’m in serious trouble. You can recognize my voice all right.”

  Mason said calmly, “Yes. I know all that. What was the name you gave me the first time you came to the office?”

  “Griffin!” she shrieked.

  “Okay,” said Mason. “Coming out.”

  He climbed into his clothes, slipped a revolver in his hip pocket, pulled on a raincoat, and a cap which came down low over his forehead, switched out the lights, and left the apartment. His car was in the garage, and he nursed it into action; moved out into the rain before the motor was fully warmed.

  The car spat and back-fired as he turned the corner. Mason kept the choke out and stepped on the gas. Rain whipped against the windshield. Little geysers of water mushroomed up from the pavement where the big drops splashed down were turned to brilliance by the illumination of his headlights.

  Mason ignored the possibility of any other traffic on the road as he swept past the intersections with increasing speed. He turned to the right on Griswold Avenue, and ran for a mile and a half before he slowed down and commenced to look for lights.

  He saw her standing in front of a drug store. She had on a coat and no hat, and was heedless of the rain, which had soaked her hair thoroughly. Her eyes were wide and scared.

  Perry Mason swung into the curb and brought the car to a stop.

  “I thought you’d never get here,” she said, as he opened the door for her.

  She climbed in, and Perry saw that she wore an evening gown, satin shoes, and a man’s coat. She was soaking wet and water trickled down to the floorboards of the car.

  “What’s the trouble?” Perry Mason asked.

  She stared at him with her white, wet face, and said, “Drive out to the house, quick!”

  “What’s the trouble?” he repeated.

  “My husband’s been murdered,” she wailed.

  Mason snapped on the dome light in the car.

  “Don’t do that!” she said.

  He looked at her face. “Tell me about it,” he said, calmly.

  “Will you get this car started?”

  “Not until I know the facts,” he replied, almost casually.

  “We’ve got to get there before the police do.”

  “Why have we?”

  “Because we’ve got to.”

  Mason shook his head. “No,” he said, “we’re not going to talk to the police until I know exactly what happened.”

  “Oh,” she said, “it was terrible!”

  “Who killed him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, what do you know?”

  “Will you turn off that damned light?” she snapped.

  “After you’ve finished telling me what happened,” he persisted.

  “What do you want it on for?”

  “The better to see you with, my dear,” he said, but there was no humor in his voice. His manner was grim.

  She sighed wearily. “I don’t know what happened. I think it was somebody that he’d been blackmailing. I could hear their voices from the upper floor. They were very angry. I went to the stairs to listen.”

  “Could you hear what was being said?”

  “No,” she said, “just words and the tone. I could hear that they were cursing. Every once in a while there would be a word. My husband was using that cold, sarcastic tone that he gets when he’s fighting mad. The other man had his voice raised, but he wasn’t shouting. He was interrupting my husband every once in a while.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Then I crept up the stairs because I wanted to hear what was being said.” She paused, catching her breath.

  “All right,” pressed Mason, “go on. What happened then?”

  “And then,” she said, “I heard the shot and the sound of a falling body.”

  “Just the one shot?”

  “Just the one shot, and the sound of the body falling. Oh, it was terrible! It jarred the house.”

  “All right,” said Mason. “Go on from there. Then what did you do?”

  “Then,” she said, “I turned and ran. I was afraid.”

  “Where did you run?”

  “To my room.”

  “Did anybody see you?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I waited there a minute.”

  “Did you hear anything?”

  “Yes, I heard the man who had fired the shot run down the stairs and out of the house.”

  “All right,” Mason said insistently, “then what happened?”

  “Then,” she said, “I decided that I must go and see George and see what could be done for him. I went up to his study. He was in there. He’d been taking a bath, and had thrown a bathrobe around himself. He was lying there—dead.”

  “Lying where?” pressed Mason, remorselessly.

  “Oh, don’t make me be so specific,” she snapped. “I can’t tell you. It was some place near the bathroom. He’d just come out of his bath. He must have been standing in the bathroom door when this argument took place.”

  “How do you know he was dead?”

  “I could tell by looking at him. That is, I think he was dead. Oh, I’m not sure. Please come out and help me. If he isn’t dead, it’s all right. There won’t be any trouble. If he is, we’re all of us in a hell of a mess.”

  “Why?”

  “Because everything’s going to come out. Don’t you see? Frank Locke knows all about Harrison Burke, and he’ll naturally think that Harrison Burke killed him. That will make Burke mention my name, and then anything may happen. Suspicion may even shift to me.”

  Mason said, “Oh, forget it. Locke knows about Burke all right. But Locke is nothing but a lightweight and a figurehead. As soon as he loses your husband as a prop, he won’t be able to stand up. Don’t think for a minute that Harrison Burke was the only man who had it in for your husband.”

  “No,” she insisted, “but Harrison Burke had the motive, more so than any of the others. The others didn’t know who ran the paper. Harrison Burke knew. You told him.”

  “So he told you that, eh?” said Mason.

  “Yes, he told me that. What did you have to go to him for?”

  “Because,” said Mason, grimly, “I wasn’t going to take h
im for a free ride. He was getting a lot of service, and I intended to make him pay for it. I wasn’t going to have you put up all the money.”

  “Don’t you think,” she said, “that that was something for me to decide?”

  “No.”

  She bit her lip, started to say something, then changed her mind.

  “All right,” he said. “Now listen and get this straight. If he’s dead there’s going to be a lot of investigation. You’ve got to keep your nerve. Have you any idea who it was that was in that house?”

  “No,” she said, “not to be sure; just what I could gather from the tone of the man’s voice.”

  “All right,” he told her. “That’s something. You said you couldn’t hear what was being said?”

  “I couldn’t,” she said, slowly, “but I could hear the sound of their voices. I could recognize the tones. I heard my husband’s voice, and then this other man’s voice.”

  “Had you ever heard that other voice before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, don’t be so damned mysterious,” he said. “Who was it? I’m your lawyer. You’ve got to tell me.”

  She turned and faced him. “You know who it was,” she said.

  “I know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look here, one of us is crazy. How would I know who it was?”

  “Because,” she said, slowly, “it was you!”

  His eyes became cold, hard and steady.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you! Oh, I didn’t want to tell! I wasn’t going to let you think I knew. I was going to protect your secret! But you wormed it out of me. But I won’t tell any one else, never, never, never! It’s just a secret that you and I share.”

  He stared at her with his lips tightening. “So that’s the kind of a playmate you are, eh?”

  She met his eyes and nodded, slowly.

  “Yes, Mr. Mason, I’m the sort you can trust. I’m never going to betray you.”

  He sucked in a deep breath, then sighed.

  “Oh, hell,” he said, “what’s the use!”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Perry Mason asked, in a voice that was entirely without expression: “Did you hear a car drive away—afterwards?”