“I get so bored with the playboy type with whom I am forced to spend so much of my time that a letter like yours is like a breath of fresh country air in a stuffy room.
“I gather that you are big and strong and young and are from the country, that you haven’t been in the city long, and that you have but few friends. Am I right?
“Perhaps if you would go to the Union Depot and stand at the desk marked ‘Information’ between six o’clock and six-fifteen tonight, I might be able to get away and meet you. Don’t be too disappointed if I can’t make it, because I’m going to have to try to break a date, but I can promise you that I will try to be there.
“You might wear a white carnation in your right lapel so I can recognize you.
“And if I can possibly make it, I’ll come up and speak to you. Don’t be too surprised to see just an ordinary looking girl. After all, heiresses are no different from other people except that they have money.
“Until tonight, then.
“Yours, MM.”
“What the heck is this all about?” Paul Drake asked.
Mason grinned. “It’s a job for you, Paul. I want a detective about twenty-four or twenty-five, a great big raw-boned hunk of manhood who can appear awkward and self-conscious and all that goes with it. I want him to dress up in one of his older suits, one that’s perhaps a little tight or a little short in the arms and legs. He won’t have any model to go by because we want him to make up as something that no longer exists, a terribly green country kid.”
“What makes you think they don’t exist any more, Perry?”
“Three things,” Mason said, grinning. “The radio, the automobile and the movies.”
Drake thought that over and then said, “Yes, I guess so.”
“It always comes as a surprise to the city dweller,” Mason said, “to tell him that people who live in the country may not be quite as blasé and cynical as he is, but that they know the answers about as well. I think our mysterious MM is a confirmed city dweller who doesn’t know too much about life in the country.”
“And she wants a hick?” Drake asked.
“Quite definitely she wants a hick. Can you get a man to take the part, Paul?”
Drake made a mental canvass of the operatives who were available for work of that type and finally said, “Yes, I guess I can. I have a chap who answers the description. He came from the country. He’s done quite a bit of farm Work.”
“That’s fine,” Mason said. “She may try to trap him by asking questions about the farm, but I don’t think the answers will mean much to her. Now I’ll want three or four more operatives, Paul.”
“What for?”
Mason said, “She may never go near this man at the information desk, but she’ll be sizing him up. She’ll think that he’s too green to know what her game is or to spot her, but I want men sprinkled around who can spot her and who will follow her in case she doesn’t make contact with our plant.”
“Just what do you want?”
Mason said, “For the present, I want to find out who MM is. I want her name, her address, and I want to find out something about her background.”
“Okay,” Drake said, “it should be easy. If she doesn’t go up and speak to my man, it’s a cinch she’ll be wandering around where she can size him up and my boys can pick her up.”
“Okay,” Mason said. He turned to Della Street and said, “Ring up Robert Caddo and tell him I think we’ll have an answer to his question some time tomorrow. Make an appointment with him for tomorrow at ten o’clock, Della.”
She nodded, jotting down the time in her appointment book.
Paul Drake weighed the letter thoughtfully. “Perry, do you suppose there’s any chance this is on the up-and-up?”
“Of course there’s a chance,” Mason said indulgently.
“How much of a chance?”
Mason grinned. “Offhand, I’d say just exactly one in a million, Paul.”
Buy The Case of the Lonely Heiress Now!
About the Author
Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) was the top selling American author of the twentieth century, primarily due to the enormous success of his Perry Mason Mysteries, which numbered more than eighty and inspired a half-dozen motion pictures and radio programs, as well as a long-running television series starring Raymond Burr. Having begun his career as a pulp writer, Gardner brought a hard-boiled style and sensibility to his early Mason books, but he gradually developed into a more classic detective novelist, providing clues to allow astute readers to solve his many mysteries. For over a quarter of a century, he wrote more than a million words a year under his own name as well as numerous pseudonyms, the most famous being A. A. Fair.
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Copyright © 1947 by Erle Stanley Gardner
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-6124-7
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The Case of the Lazy Lover Page 24
