The Case of the Borrowed Brunette

by The Case of the Borrowed Brunette (retail) (epub)

  “Oh, would I? You can’t imagine how you flatter me! And what do you want now?”

  “The time is past for fooling around,” Mason told her. “We want the low-down now.”

  “You’ve had everything out of me you’re going to get.”

  “Let me present Paul Drake, head of the Drake Detective Agency. He’s in my employ.”

  “Why, how do you do, Mr. Drake? I’m so glad to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you. Do make yourself at home. I suppose you want my diary? And a list of all my friends? And how about some photographs?”

  Paying no attention to her elaborately sarcastic tone, Mason said, “Of course, we could go about this in another way, if we had to.”

  “Is that blackmail?”

  “You might consider it such.”

  “I hate blackmail.”

  “You hate me anyway,” Mason said cheerfully, “so you may as well make a thorough job of it. Now suppose you tell me just what the score is?”

  She studied him for a moment with thoughtful eyes, then suddenly smiled. “I like a fighter,” she said.

  Mason said nothing.

  “I know,” she said, “you think it’s a stall. Another one of those things you were talking about. Trying a new angle when you were blocked off on something you were trying to do. But it isn’t that. I’ve just decided to play ball.”

  “Wind up and pitch,” Mason said.

  “Well, you’ve met my husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a pretty good judge of character?”

  “I make a stab at it.”

  “All right then, you know him—restless, seething internally, insanely jealous in a possessive way, arrogant, proud, dynamic, forceful, and successful.”

  “A rather complex array of adjectives,” Mason commented.

  “A complex man, Mr. Mason. He’s successful in business because few men can stand up against the initial impact, or against the steady pressure that follows. Orville has no peace within himself, and therefore people with whom he comes in contact don’t have any peace either.”

  “I can well imagine that it might be difficult to be his wife.”

  “Not so difficult to be his wife,” she said slowly, “as it is to break away from being that.”

  “Go on.”

  “The man fascinated me—his drive, his ceaseless desire to dominate. I’d never known anyone before quite like him. That in itself was bad for me, because I thought I had met all the types and could catalogue almost any man within the first fifteen minutes.”

  “Orville didn’t catalogue?” Mason asked.

  “Not within the first fifteen minutes.”

  “You’ve catalogued him now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then got tired of him?”

  “I don’t think so. I doubt if I was ever in love with him. I was just fascinated by his sheer drive. As every other person must be, I was jarred by that first smashing impact with his personality. He wanted me from the moment he saw me, and when he wants something he starts beating down obstacles.”

  “The answer, of course,” Mason said, “is that you married him. All this analysis is just a post-mortem.”

  “No, it isn’t—it’s the explanation of what followed.”

  “What did follow?”

  “Some six months ago, I really and truly fell in love—for the first time in my life, I think.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I made the greatest mistake a woman ever made.”

  “But a common one,” Mason said.

  She shook her head impatiently. “You don’t get me at all. I’m not referring to that. I went to Orville and put the cards on the table. I told him I had met someone whom I cared for, that I wanted to divorce him, and that I wanted to do it on a friendly basis.”

  “That was a mistake?”

  “Definitely. I should have gone to him and told him that when I married him I hadn’t been sure I meant to make it permanent; that now I had decided I really cared for him and was going to stay with him the rest of his life. I knew, of course, that he had other interests; you can’t expect a man of his type to be a one-woman man. It’s not that he didn’t care for me—it was simply the challenge that other women would naturally fling at him. If I had used my head and my knowledge of his character, I could have been free.”

  “So you went and told him the real truth? And what happened?”

  “If you knew him you could guess what would inevitably happen. I was his wife, I was his personal possession, and he didn’t intend to lose me. He was the great Orville Reedley. I must love him. I could not love anyone else. It was a crime to think that, with the privilege of his affection, I would even consider anyone else. Well, as I said, the inevitable resulted. He suddenly showed fierce hostility against me and against the man who was threatening to deprive him of his property.”

  “He knew who the man was?”

  Her lips came together tightly. She shook her head. “He will never know,” she said. “He must never know.”

  “Yet, if you were asking for a divorce,” Mason said, “and if you went to him and told him frankly you loved this man, it would certainly seem that he must have known who it was.”

  “I am not entirely stupid, Mr. Mason. I made that one mistake in dealing with him, but I didn’t make the greater mistake of telling him the name of the man with whom I had fallen in love. I tried to play square with Orville, and I learned that that was just the one way you could not play with him. But I knew him well enough to realize the danger of divulging the other man’s identity.”

  “The danger?” Mason asked. “Physical, you mean?”

  “I don’t know . . . probably not. I have no idea what sort of weapon my husband would choose, whether physical or—well, some other kind. For the man I love is vulnerable on many sides. He’s no Samson physically, while financially he’s none too well off.”

  “But you do love him?”

  “I certainly do! Maybe it’s because I know he needs me—the mother instinct perhaps. A part of my love for him is a fierce longing to help him because he is weak and I am strong. For, as I just said, he isn’t strong physically, and it’s conceivable that he might—somehow—be goaded into a nervous breakdown. He is very sensitive, to things big and little. Not only to small details but to important things like injustice. Conflict makes him shrink. Because he’s a thinker—even a dreamer. But he has a wonderful imagination, which gives him a vision that impels him to build for the future. Right now his finances are shaky, but I am confident that he’ll eventually be a rich man—and just as confident that some day he’ll be a really great man!”

  “In short,” Mason said with a smile, “and to put it in three words, you love him. And it is this man whose identity your husband has been trying to discover?”

  “Trying to discover with every means in his power. Lately, as a final resource, he decided to employ detectives. When he did that, I was desperate. I doubted whether I could keep the secret very long after private detectives got started on a systematic investigation. I decided there was only one avenue of escape.”

  “To hire somebody to take your place?”

  “More than that. I would have to establish a completely synthetic background for myself. I knew my husband was too proud to approach me directly—it was part of his plan that I should come cringing home to him. He thought I’d eventually have to do just that, through lack of money—as though I valued money enough to prostitute my self-respect! I would have starved before I’d go back to him!”

  “You don’t look starved,” said Mason with another smile.

  Paying no attention to the interruption, she went on. “When I left my husband I didn’t have much money of my own. He knew it—and I knew he knew it. But I decided not to be conservative, not to dole out what little I had, spending just so much a month and watching the money dwindle gradually. So I started to . . .”

  “You started to gamble.”

  “
Yes—I gambled.”

  “Speculative investments, or just plain gambling?”

  “Gambling—plain and fancy gambling. And I won. And then I quit. That is, I didn’t leave off gambling entirely, but I quit gambling for big money. I had won a big enough stake to provide me with something to invest. I saw that there was a good market in real estate, and I started— Well, I’m not going to tell you too much about that, because I’m somewhat vulnerable myself, you see. If my husband found out what I’d been doing . . .”

  “I’m not interested in your financial affairs, but I am interested in how you happened to know that your husband intended to put detectives on your trail.”

  She smiled. “After all, that’s simple. I told you I won my money gambling—the initial stake; and then I quit playing for big money. When I did that, I earned the friendship and the respect of the very men I had gambled with. Because they see lots of people try to beat the game, but only a few of them do. Most people who make big money throw it all back before they’re done.”

  “Does your husband gamble?” Mason asked.

  “Yes, but not in the places I go to. He is an inveterate poker player, and he likes to play for high stakes with a select crowd—some of them professional gamblers, the sort who are honest but shrewd. Well, at a poker session he asked one of them the name of a good detective agency that he could count on to give him service and not sell out his interests to the other side. The man recommended the Interstate Investigators. And that’s all there was to it—just that one question. But a friend of mine happened to be sitting in that game, and he overheard my husband. So he came to me and said he suspected that my husband intended to put detectives on my trail.”

  “And Hines?” Mason asked. “How did he come into it?”

  “Hines,” she said, “is, or rather was, a small-time gambler. He wasn’t a bookie but he would place bets for you and things of that sort. I got acquainted with him through a girl friend of his in the building where I had my apartment. He would do anything for money and was fairly competent within limits.”

  “And you approached him with your proposition?”

  “That’s right. He had no idea what was behind it, knew only that I wanted to disappear for a while and to leave someone in my place while I was gone. Because Hines had an entree to the apartment house, yet wasn’t actually registered there, he was ideal for my purpose. He assured me he’d have no trouble getting a brunette who could double for me so far as an ordinary physical description was concerned. If any of my friends should come to the apartment to see me—which was unlikely because I had told all my friends never to come without telephoning first—the report would be that I was out, and whoever telephoned would be told that I’d call back inside of half an hour. Then the call was reported to Hines, and he in turn called me here and told me who had called up. I would call back direct from the hotel, and the person at the other end had no way of knowing that I wasn’t calling from my apartment, of course.”

  “How long did you intend to keep this up?” Mason asked.

  “Until my husband was presented with the picture of a very discreet young woman living with a chaperone in perfect propriety, occasionally going to dinner with Bob Hines, but being very discreet about it. He would get a picture of Caesar’s wife!”

  “You thought your husband would fall for that?”

  “I was sure he would.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s the way detective agencies work. I told you I had made a mistake in judging my husband’s character, and I didn’t mean to repeat it. What I planned to do was—after he had that picture of his wife living a rather lonely, well-chaperoned life—was to tell him I had grown tired of the separation and wanted to return to him. This would have led him to start a suit for divorce within twenty-four hours.”

  “Hines impressed me as being something of a small-time opportunist.”

  “He was.”

  “Perhaps not too ethical,” Mason suggested.

  “Well?”

  “There was the chance that he would not be as simple as he seemed.”

  “Meaning precisely what, Mr. Mason?”

  “Meaning that perhaps Hines may have gone through the motions of being very docile and working with you, but that all the time he was quietly making investigations of his own to find out exactly why you wanted to have someone impersonate you.”

  Her face showed a quick flash of some emotion that might have been fear. But her tone was casual as she said, “I don’t think there was any cause for worry on that score. Hines was rather docile so long as he was getting money.”

  Mason grinned. “You didn’t do that very well, Mrs. Reedley.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That shot about Hines hit you right where you lived.”

  “Not at all—I had considered that possibility before I hired him!”

  “Then, of course,” Mason went on musingly, “having found the answer, the man certainly would not be above blackmail. That was a pretty big sum of cash money he had in his wallet, when you consider his rather small-time activities.”

  “How much was it?” she asked.

  “A little over three thousand dollars.”

  “Bosh! I told you the man was a gambler, and gamblers keep their money where it is instantly available. I know several who habitually carry ten times that amount with them.”

  Mason seemed to ignore her protest. “It’s an interesting thought,” he was saying. “Hines would start snooping around on this investigation of his own. And, knowing exactly where you were, he would be in a position to get information that the detectives wouldn’t readily uncover. Then he could either sell out to your husband or threaten you with a sellout and see how much it was worth to you to buy his silence.”

  “Mr. Mason, I wouldn’t have paid a dime to a blackmailer!”

  “What would you do?”

  “I’d . . . why, I’d . . .”

  “Exactly,” Mason said; “you’d kill him first.”

  “Mr. Mason, are you insinuating that I shot Robert Hines?” she exclaimed indignantly.

  “I’m verbally exploring certain very definite possibilities,” he replied. “You might say I’m prospecting.”

  “That’s hardly the way to reciprocate my frankness.”

  “I’m wondering just what prompted that frankness.”

  “Surely, Mr. Mason, you can gauge character well enough to realize what prompted it. It was a tribute to your intelligence, the mental and moral pressure you exert on people, your ability to wear down resistance. You’ve already noticed that I’ll fight for a while, and then, when I yield, I yield suddenly and with good grace, and then come all the way, as though I had thought of some other scheme I intended to try.”

  Mason nodded.

  “But perhaps it’s a little more than that. I am intensely feminine, and there’s something about you—though it is subtler—that resembles the appeal my husband had for me. There is the same initial impact of a strong personality, the same steady insistent pressure to overcome obstacles and resistance. I admire that in a man. With my husband I held out for a while, then suddenly yielded. With you I have put all my cards on the table. I have been frank.”

  “Disconcertingly so,” Mason said. “Did you have a gun in your purse when you called at my office yesterday?”

  “Don’t be silly, Mr. Mason!”

  “Did you?”

  She started to say something, then looked him in the eyes. “Yes.”

  “What caliber?”

  She hesitated. “A .38.”

  Mason laughed.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “I think it was a .32,” Mason said. “What did you do with it?”

  “I threw it away.”

  “Where?”

  “Where it will never be found.”

  “Why?”

  “For obvious reasons. A man was killed in my apartment. There was every possibility I would be questioned by the polic
e. Surely, Mr. Mason, for a man of your intelligence I don’t need to fill in the details.”

  Mason pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Thanks,” he said, “for telling me what you did. I’m sorry I can’t give you something in return. However, I might offer you a tip.”

  “What?”

  “Ever been in your husband’s apartment?”

  “No.”

  “You know where it is?”

  “Yes.”

  Mason said, “It’s furnished in excellent taste. Only a person with very great artistic sense or a trained interior decorator could have done the job.”

  “Well?”

  “The windows have Venetian blinds. When Paul Drake and I called on your husband we gave him a rather difficult few minutes. He wanted, perhaps, some suggestions from a friend. I noticed he walked over to one of the windows that opened on the court, and under the pretense of looking out he adjusted the blinds so that it would be possible for anyone in an apartment on the other side of the court to see in. A few minutes later the telephone rang, and your husband had an enigmatical conversation.”

  Her eyes were alert with interest now.

  “I mentioned at the time to Paul Drake that your husband had a turbulent temperament—was constantly at war with himself. It would be strange if the decorations he had chosen for an apartment created the effect they did—of harmony, of colors perfectly combined.”

  “Well?” she asked.

  Mason made a little gesture with his shoulders. “As you yourself must know, a gambler doesn’t have to do much to give you a tip—sometimes merely the flicker of an eyelash.”

  Mason nodded to Paul Drake, started for the door.

  She rose and walked across the room to give him her hand. “Mr. Mason,” she said impulsively, “you are a very clever man and, I am afraid, a very dangerous adversary.”

  “Why look on me as an adversary?”

  She started to say something but caught herself in time and merely smiled as she said, “I don’t intend to. I was merely commenting on your potentialities. Thank you for calling, Mr. Mason. Good morning. And your friend Mr.—”