The Case of the Baited Hook

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  Mason pinched out his cigarette, tilted back in the chair, crossed his ankles on the corner of the desk, and waited.

  They were back in less than three minutes. “Your proposition is accepted,” Peltham said. “I only ask that you use the highest good faith.”

  “I’ll do the best I can,” Mason said, “and that’s all I can promise.”

  For a moment, it seemed that Peltham was about to put more cards on the table. His face twisted with expression as he leaned forward across Mason’s desk. “Look here,” he said, in a voice harsh with emotion—and then caught himself.

  Mason waited.

  Peltham took a deep breath. “Mr. Mason,” he said, “I wouldn’t do this if it weren’t absolutely necessary. For two hours now, I’ve been racking my brain trying to find some method of accomplishing what I want to accomplish without undoing everything in the process. If it were ever surmised by anyone that this woman and I had any connection, it would . . . it would . . . it would be absolutely ruinous to all concerned. I must keep her out of that at any cost—no matter what it costs. Do you understand?”

  “I can’t understand the necessity for all this hodgepodge,” Mason said. “After all, you could afford to be frank with me. I don’t betray the secrets of my clients. I respect them. If this young woman wants to take off her mask and . . .”

  “That’s impossible,” Peltham snapped. “I’ve worked out the only scheme which will give us all protection.”

  “You don’t trust me?” Mason asked.

  “Suppose,” Peltham countered, “that you happened to have information which the police considered vital evidence. Would you be justified in withholding it?”

  “I’d protect the interests of a client,” Mason said. “I’m a lawyer. A client’s communications are confidential.”

  Peltham’s voice was determined. “No,” he said shortly. “This is the only way.”

  Mason looked at him curiously. “You evidently have made elaborate preparations for this interview.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The elevator for instance.”

  Peltham dismissed the matter with a gesture. “Whenever I do anything,” he said, “I lay my plans carefully and well in advance. I have watched your career with interest. Months ago I decided that if I ever needed a lawyer, I’d call on you. It may interest you to know, Mr. Mason, that I drew the plans for this building when it was constructed—and that at the present time, I own a controlling stock interest in it. Come, dear.”

  She arose and silently started for the exit door.

  Mason, thinking perhaps he could surprise her into letting him hear her voice, called banteringly, “Good night, Miss Mysterious.”

  She turned. He saw her lips tremble in a nervous smile. She made him a slight curtsy, and wordlessly left the office.

  Mason pocketed the two one-thousand-dollar bills. He looked at the fragment of the ten-thousand-dollar bill, and chuckled. Walking over to the safe, he spun the combination, opened the door, unlocked the drawer, opened it, held his hand over it for a moment, and then noisily closed the drawer and clanged the door of the safe shut. He snapped the bolt home, and twisted the combination.

  But the fragment of the ten-thousand-dollar bill had not been dropped into the drawer of the safe. Instead he had unobtrusively slipped it into his trousers pocket.

  He walked over to the hat tree, put on his wet hat, got into his raincoat, looked out into the outer office, and made certain that the bottle of whiskey he had placed on the desk was no longer there. He locked the door of the reception room and switched out the lights. He returned to his private office and went to the exit door. As he had surmised, Peltham had left this door unlocked, the spring lock being held back with a catch.

  Mason dropped the catch, releasing the lock, switched out the lights, and went out into the echoing corridor.

  He noticed that the locked, dark elevator was still on the seventh floor. He rang the elevator bell, and after a few moments, the janitor came shooting upward in the cage.

  Mason indicated the dark elevator. “One of your elevators stalled on this floor?” he asked.

  The janitor stepped out of the cage to stare at the elevator. “Ay be a son of a gun,” he said in an astounded voice which seemed to Mason to be thoroughly genuine.

  Mason entered the lighted elevator. “Okay, Ole,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  2.

  DELLA STREET was opening the morning mail when Mason came sauntering into the office.

  “You’re early,” she said. “Didn’t you remember that the Case of People vs. Smithers was dismissed by the district attorney?”

  “Uh huh. I came down to study the newspaper.”

  She stared at him with her brows arched, laughter trembling at the corners of her lips, but her eyes grew puzzled as she saw the expression on his face. “Going in for contemporary history?” she asked.

  He scaled his hat to the hat tree, pushed the mail on his blotter aside without so much as glancing through it, and spread out the newspaper on the desk. “Quite a rain we had last night.”

  “I’ll say. What about the newspaper, Chief?”

  “Shortly after midnight,” Mason said, “I received a two-thousand-dollar retainer and a piece out of a ten-thousand-dollar bill. I had an interesting session with a masked woman and a man who seemed very much worried about something, who intimated that some startling news would be found in the morning newspaper.”

  “And you can’t find it?” she asked.

  “I haven’t looked as yet,” he said with a grin. “Sufficient for the day are the business hours thereof.”

  “Who were the parties?”

  “The man,” he said, “was Robert Peltham, an architect. He didn’t seem particularly pleased when I discovered his real identity. He wanted me to believe that he was John L. Cragmore of 5619 Union Drive. That was the one slip he made. There isn’t any Cragmore listed at that address in the telephone book. It was a slip which I can’t understand. He had so thoroughly prepared all the other steps in his campaign that I can’t imagine him falling down on such a simple matter. If he’d only given me a name that appeared in the telephone book, I’d have fallen for it—at least temporarily.”

  “Go on,” she said.

  Mason told her briefly of the mysterious caller and what had taken place at the interview.

  “How did he get your unlisted telephone number, Chief?”

  “That is simply another indication of the care with which he’d prepared his campaign.”

  “It wasn’t something on the spur of the moment?”

  “I think the thing that caused him to call on me was something that happened rather unexpectedly, and apparently he’d decided some time ago that if he ever needed a lawyer he’d call on me, and he blueprinted his plans for reaching me and filed them away in the back of his mind. It’s indicative of the man’s character.”

  “But how about that elevator business?” Della Street asked.

  “That,” Mason said, “was a case where luck played into his hands. He owns a controlling stock interest in this building. He probably has duplicate keys to everything. Just as a matter of precaution, I didn’t leave that fragment of the ten-thousand-dollar bill in the office overnight. I figured a man who had a key to the elevator would very probably have a passkey to my office.”

  “How about the woman? Do you think he’d planned to consult you in connection with her?”

  “No. I think that was something that developed rather unexpectedly,” Mason said musingly. “Take that mask for instance. I’m virtually certain it had been part of a costume at a masquerade ball. It was a black mask with tinsel trimming. Evidently, it had been made to go with a masquerade costume—one of the things a woman would file away in a drawer of keepsakes.”

  “Couldn’t you tell anything about her, Chief?”

  “I’d say she was not over thirty,” Mason said, “and that she had a good figure. Her hands were small, but she was wearing gl
oves much too large. There were a couple of rings on the right hand, and one on the left. You could see the outlines through the gloves. She’d turned them so that the stones were on the inside.”

  “Wedding ring?” she asked.

  “I don’t think there was a wedding ring. And she was afraid to let me hear her voice.”

  “Then you must know her,” Della Street said. “That is, you must have already met her, and she was afraid her voice would give her away.”

  “Either that, or I’m going to meet her in the near future. Somehow I’m more inclined to the future theory than the past.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, just a hunch.”

  “How do we handle it on the books?”

  Mason handed her the portion of the ten-thousand-dollar bill. “That’s up to you—but that piece of ten grand you’ve got there is powerful bait.”

  Della sniffed. “You know perfectly well you’re more intrigued by the Mysterious Madame X than you are by the money. Why not ‘The Case of the Masked Mistress’?”

  “Well, that’s a thought,” he said, “although you may wrong the girl’s morals.”

  “Did she look like a moral young woman?”

  Mason grinned. “As to that,” he said, “it’s hard to tell even when you see them in complete regalia, watch the gestures of their hands, and listen to their voices. This woman kept her hands on the arm of the chair, her feet on the floor, and her mouth shut. Open up a file on ‘The Case of the Baited Hook’ and you’ll be right whoever or whatever she is.”

  “And the answer’s supposed to be in the newspaper?”

  “Not the answer,” he said, “but a clue.”

  “Do you want me to look through it?”

  “You take the first section,” he said. “I’ll take the second. Let’s not overlook anything: notices of death, or intentions to wed, birth notices, and divorces—particularly divorces.”

  And Mason promptly turned to the sporting page.

  Fifteen minutes later, Della Street looked up from the section of the newspaper she had been studying. “Find anything?” she asked.

  “Nuh uh.”

  She said, “I thought perhaps you’d find that One-punch Peltham had been signed up with Joe Louis for a fifteen-round bout.”

  He grinned. “No harm killing two birds with one stone, Della.”

  “We’ve thrown all our rocks, and haven’t even got a feather. I can’t find a thing. Did he act as though he expected it would be something obscure?”

  “No, he didn’t,” Mason said. “I gathered that it would be spread on page one of the newspaper—something one couldn’t miss.”

  “Well, it hasn’t broken then, that’s all.”

  “That,” Mason said, “complicates matters. I don’t have any idea what it was he really wanted me to do. I might take a divorce case against Mrs. Jones and have Mrs. Jones walk in and shove the other half of this ten-thousand-dollar bill across the desk, and say, ‘Is this any way to treat a client?’ ”

  “Or,” Della Street said demurely, “you might fire me for inefficiency and suddenly have me push the rest of that ten-thousand-dollar bill in front of you, and say, ‘Is this any way to run a law office?’ ”

  Mason looked at her with sudden suspicion. “By George,” he said, “—now you have given me something to think about.”

  She laughed.

  Gertie, the big, good-natured blonde, who presided over the information desk and switchboard in Mason’s outer office, tapped on the door, then opened it, and slipped into the room. “Can you,” she asked, “see A. E. Tump?”

  “What does he want?” Mason asked.

  She shook her head. “It isn’t a he. It’s a she.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “Just A. E. Tump, but she’s a woman.”

  “What does she want?”

  “She wants to see you, and she looks like a woman who has a habit of getting what she wants.”

  “Young?” Mason asked.

  “Nope. She’s around sixty-five, and she still has sex appeal, if you know what I mean.”

  Mason said, “Good Lord, Gertie. You don’t mean she’s kittenish.”

  “No, not kittenish, and she isn’t one of those women who tries to have the figure of a young woman of twenty. But . . . well, she has personality and uses it. She puts her stuff across.”

  Mason said to Della Street, “Go find out what she wants, Della. Give her the once-over.”

  Mason returned to the newspaper, turning idly through the pages, reading the headlines, and waiting.

  Della Street returned in a few moments and said to Perry Mason, “She’s white-haired, smooth-skinned, broad of beam, matronly in a seductive way. She seems to have money and poise and she has character and personality. Maybe you ought to see her.”

  “What does she want?”

  “It’s over a trust fund and an illegal adoption proceedings.”

  Mason said, “Bring her in,” and Della returned to escort the new client into the office.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Tump,” Mason said.

  She smiled at him and walked across to seat herself in the big leather chair.

  Mason, sizing her up, said laughingly, “You were announced as A. E. Tump. I thought you were a man.”

  The woman beamed across at him. “Well, I’m not,” she said. “A is for Abigail, and E is for Esther. I hate both names. They reek with respectability and Biblical associations.”

  “Why didn’t you change your name?” Mason asked, watching her with the shrewd, lawyer-wise eyes.

  “Too much trouble in connection with property. My holdings are in the name of Abigail E. Tump. Well, I gave my daughter a break anyway.”

  Mason raised his eyebrows.

  Mrs. Tump needed no prompting. She went on smoothly in the effortless voice of one who is an easy, fluent talker. “I christened her Cleopatra Circe Tump. I guess it embarrassed her to death, but at least she wasn’t chained to a life of mediocrity by having names that were a millstone of conventional respectability around her neck.”

  Mason flashed a swift glance of amusement at Della Street. “Do you then associate respectability with mediocrity?”

  “Not always,” she said. “I haven’t any quarrel with respectability. I just hate the labels, that’s all.”

  “Did you want to consult me about your daughter?”

  “No. She married a banker in Des Moines—a stuffed shirt, if you ask me. She’s a pillar of respectability, and hates her names as badly as I hated mine. None of her friends even know about the Circe part of her name.”

  Mason smiled. “What was the matter you wanted to discuss?”

  She said, “It goes back to 1918 shortly before the Armistice.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was a passenger on a British boat sailing for South Africa. On the ship were two Russian refugees—traveling incognito, of course. They had been high officials under the old regime—that is, he had. It had taken them years to escape from that awful nightmare of Bolshevism, and their little daughter had been left behind.”

  Mason nodded and offered Mrs. Tump a cigarette. “Not right now,” she said. “Later on, I’ll join you. Now I want to get this off my chest.”

  Mason lit a cigarette and glanced across to where Della Street was holding a pencil poised over her notebook ready to take skeleton notes on the conversation.

  “The boat was torpedoed by a submarine without warning,” Mrs. Tump said. “It was a horrible experience. I can see it yet whenever I close my eyes. It was night, and a heavy sea was running. The boat had a bad list almost as soon as she was struck. A lot of the lifeboats capsized. There were people in the water, only you couldn’t see them—just arms and clawing hands coming up out of the dark waves to clutch at the slippery steel sides of the boat. Then the waves swept them away. You could hear screams—so many of them, it sounded just like one big scream.”

  Mason’s eyes were sympathetic.

 
; “This couple I was telling you about,” Mrs. Tump went on, “—I’m just going to hit the high spots, Mr. Mason—they told me their history. The woman was psychic if you want to call it that, or just plain frightened and worried if you want to figure it that way. She felt certain the boat would be torpedoed. The man kept trying to kid her out of it . . . laughing at her, making a joke of it. The night before the ship sank the woman came to my cabin. She’d had a horrible dream. A vision, she called it. She wanted me to promise that if anything happened to her and I lived through it, that I’d go to Russia, find the daughter, and work out some way of getting her out of the country.”

  Mason’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

  “She gave me some jewels. She didn’t have much money, but lots of jewelry. She said that if the boat reached port safely, I could give the jewelry back to her. Her husband wasn’t to know anything about it.”

  “And she was drowned?” Mason asked.

  “Yes. They were both in the first boat which went over. I saw it capsize with my own eyes. Then a big wave came up and smashed the second lifeboat against the side of the ship. However, Mr. Mason, all this is just preliminary. I’ll only sketch what happened. I was saved. I went to Russia, located the child, and brought her out. It doesn’t matter how. She was a wonderful girl with the blood of royalty in her veins. I wanted my own daughter to adopt her. My daughter was just getting married at the time. Her husband wouldn’t listen to it. So I . . . I’m afraid I did something which was unpardonable, Mr. Mason.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t where I could keep her myself—that is, I thought I wasn’t. I put her in a home.”

  “What home?” Mason asked.

  “The Hidden Home Welfare Society.”

  “Where was that?” Mason inquired.

  “In a little town in Louisiana. They made a specialty of caring for children whose parents couldn’t keep them.”

  She paused for a moment as though trying to get the facts straight in her mind.

  “Go ahead,” Mason said.

  She said, “I have to tell you a little something about that home, Mr. Mason, things I didn’t know at the time but found out afterwards. It was a baby brokerage home.”