Mason again jabbed his thumb against the elevator button, held it there for several seconds. “You,” he announced, “are going to have a cocktail, some hot soup and a steak.”
“A little hot soup would taste good,” she admitted. “Where do we go?”
“Down to that chummy little restaurant on Ninth Street. We can get a booth there and talk. Where’s Drake’s report?”
“In my purse.”
“Okay. We’ll stroll over and get a table.”
The janitor brought up the elevator, gave Mason the benefit of a frowning rebuke for that long second ring.
Mason and Della rode down in silence, then out on the street, smiled at each other in silent comment on the janitor’s grouch, walked up Ninth Street arm in arm, turned into a little unpretentious restaurant where they knew the proprietor, and found seats in a curtained booth near the entrance.
The proprietor, a huge florid figure of a lusty man, attired in a chef’s cap and apron, came in to give them a welcome.
“Ah — ze great Perry MASON! And zat so charming Della Strit! Welcome! Pierre weeth hees own hands cooks you ze food an’ serves you ze dreenks!”
“That’s fine,” Mason said. “We are honored. A dry Martini for Della, a Scotch and soda for me. Then a nice filet mignon for Della with some au gratin potatoes and coffee for two. Do you happen to have a nice filet mignon, Pierre?”
“For Miss Strit, yes! Anything she wants. Right away queek I get you these drinks.”
He backed through the curtained doorway. Della opened her purse, handed Mason Paul Drake’s report of what he had been able to find out about the murder. “There are some three-and-a-quarter by four-and-a-quarter photographs attached to it,” she said. “Paul says he can get some blown-up enlargements by tomorrow or Monday.”
The proprietor brought them their drinks, stood beaming over them with a certain paternal solicitude. “You come here and talk business! With so pretty a girl was Pierre twenty years younger — Poof! Business!”
Mason touched glasses across the table with Della Street, sipped his drink, then abruptly reached across the table to put his hand over hers. “Okay, Della, we’re going to take it easy from now on. You’ve always said it would be a lot better if I sat in the office the way other lawyers do and let people come to me. Pierre is right. We talk too damn much business.”
Della said demurely, “You’d better glance through Paul’s report.”
Mason started to say something and then changed his mind, unfolded Drake’s report and glanced at it casually.
It was a neatly typewritten report, and the first page read:
Perry: This is a recapitulation of the detailed information and photographs you will find on the following pages. Roger Burbank is a financier. Ordinarily he doesn’t go in for speculative investments. Fred Milfield and Harry Van Nuys got Burbank to finance the Skinner Hills sheep project — whatever that may be. Probably your hunch on the oil is the right one. I don’t think the police have stumbled onto Van Nuys yet. My men have now located him at the Cornish Hotel and are keeping an eye on him.
The murder was committed aboard Burbank’s yacht sometimes early Friday evening. It’s a sailing yacht about thirty-five feet in length, and Burbank uses it as a means of escape, not to cruise in. He usually goes out Friday nights, and at high tide goes in on the mud flats and amuses himself spearing sharks. When the tide begins to go out he anchors in the channel, reads books, studies, and loafs. Occasionally a chap named Beltin, who is his right-hand man, comes out to relay some message of importance. Once or twice Milfield has gone out to the yacht, apparently by pre-arrangement. Once he brought Van Nuys with him. Burbank is a crank about sails. There isn’t even an auxiliary motor on the boat. An outboard motor for the dinghy with about five gallons of gasoline is as far as he’ll go. Even the cooking and heating are done on a wood stove. Lighting is by candle. The body was found rolled over against the starboard side of the cabin, but there is evidence to indicate the murder took place on the port side of the cabin and when the boat went aground at low tide, the body rolled over. Death was caused by a single crushing blow on the back of the head, and so far I haven’t been able to get too many details about the police theory. One outstanding clue is the print of a woman’s shoe outlined in blood on the lower tread of the companionway right in the middle of the step. The police consider it a major clue. I’ve got the names, addresses, location of the yacht club, a sketch plan of the yacht, and the reports of my operatives attached hereto. This is just a summary. I’ll be waiting for a call from you in case you want me. Della says she doesn’t know when you’ll be back.
Mason ran through the papers that were attached to Drake’s report, studied the photographs. Della Street watched him silently, finishing her cocktail, smoking a cigarette.
Pierre brought food, frowned at Mason’s abstraction, said gallantly to Della Street. “To be twenty years younger, I give my right arm. No,” he amended abruptly, “weeth twenty years younger Pierre need hees right arm.”
Mason looked up and grinned. “It’s a good line, Pierre. Look, you’ve got a long extension, on your desk telephone. Hand it over here, will you? I want to make a call.”
Pierre sighed. “Always business,” he remonstrated. “So it was when I was young, too — but a different kind, you bet!”
He left the booth, handed a desk telephone on a long extension cord across the top of the partition. Mason dialed Paul Drake’s number and held his lips close to the telephone so that his voice would be inaudible beyond the confines of the booth.
When Drake came on the line Mason said, “Hello, Paul. Got a pencil handy?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, make a note of this. J. C. Lassing, L-a-s-s-i-n-g. Got that, Paul?”
“Uh huh.”
“Okay,” Mason said. “Now make a note of the Surf and Sun Motel on the highway between Ventura and Santa Barbara, got that?”
“Uh huh.”
“All right. J. C. Lassing is supposed to have registered at cabin fourteen at the Surf and Sun Motel yesterday. I’d like to know a lot more about Mr. Lassing.”
“All right, I’ll get busy.”
“I’m just reading your report,” Mason said. “Who discovered the body, Paul?”
“A sheep man by the name of Palermo. Wanted to see Milfield and knew he was aboard Burbank’s yacht.”
“How’d he get aboard?” Mason asked.
“Palermo’s a tight-fisted son of the soil,” Drake answered. “He was damned if he was going to pay fifty cents to rent a rowboat when he had a folding boat he could use. There’s a lake up in that Skinner Hills district where they do a lot of duck shooting and Palermo guides dudes around at ten bucks a day, furnishing boat and decoys. So he loaded his folding boat into a trailer and carried it along.”
“Just to save fifty cents?” Mason asked.
“That’s his story. I haven’t talked with him. The newspaper boys say it sounds convincing once you’ve seen the guy. Here’s something else, Perry Van Nuys told the clerk at the hotel where he’s staying that if he hadn’t stopped Mrs. Milfield from taking a plane to San Francisco yesterday afternoon, she’d have been in a sweet mess by this time. My man was hanging around the lobby and managed to overhear enough of the conversation to get the general drift.”
“Nice going, Paul. I’ll see what he has to say about it.”
“Keep my man out of it if you can.”
“Okay,” Mason said. “You get in touch with Lassing. I think I’ll have a talk with Van Nuys right away — if I can beat the police to it. He’s at the Cornish Hotel?”