“She doesn’t, but I have.”
“Well, I don’t want to run up a bill on you that—”
“Forget it,” Dr. Denair told him. “I’m in the high brackets this year. Whatever amount I have to pay for legal services will be a business deduction. I have my own peace of mind, my own professional reputation at stake. I want you to go to work and spare no effort.”
“I will,” Mason said, “try to keep the charges as low as possible.”
“I said I wanted you to spare no effort.”
“I will,” Mason repeated, “try to keep the charges as low as possible.”
Dr. Denair started to say something.
“Of course,” Mason said, “that will perhaps retard the speed at which the investigation is made, but, after all, as a private citizen, as a doctor consulting me in connection with the case of a penniless patient, we have to—”
Dr. Denair suddenly grinned. “I get you, Perry. Go ahead. Use your own judgment. Handle it as you see fit.”
“That tape recording,” Mason said, “what are you going to do with that?”
Dr. Denair headed for the door, carrying the tape recorder. “As far as I’m concerned only five people in the world will ever hear this tape — you, Della Street, my office nurse, Nadine Fan and myself.”
Mason looked thoughtful. “Five people,” he said, “are a lot o£ people.”
“Can you suggest how the number could be lessened?” Dr. Denair asked.
Mason shook his head. “Not now. I wish your nurse hadn’t been present.”
“So do I, now; but not only do you need a nurse in order to hold the patient at just the right level of narcosis, but you definitely don’t put an emotionally disturbed young woman under the influence of drugs unless you have a nurse in the room.”
Mason nodded.
Dr. Denair said, “I’ll see you at nine-thirty, then.” He waved good-by from the door.
Della Street looked at the lawyer. “Paul Drake?”
Mason nodded. “Give him a ring. Ask him if he can step in here right away.”
Since Paul Drake, head of the Drake Detective Agency, had his offices on the same floor as those occupied by Mason, it was only a few minutes after Della Street’s call had been completed that the detective tapped his code knock on the door of Mason’s private office.
Della Street let him in.
Despite his height, Paul Drake had so mastered the art of self-effacement that he was always unobtrusive.
He glided into the office, slid into the client’s big, overstuffed chair, and hitched himself around so that one rounded arm of the chair was against the small of his back. His legs were draped casually over the other arm.
“Okay,” he said. “Shoot.”
Mason said, “I have a rather peculiar case, Paul. You’re going to have to get information. You must proceed slowly and cautiously. I don’t want anyone to know that an investigation is being made. In this case you’re not working against time. You can go about things in a more leisurely way—”
Drake rubbed his eyes, tugged at his ears.
“What’s the matter?” Mason asked.
“I think I’m dreaming,” Drake said. “Usually you call me in, tell me that I have a matter of hours or minutes to produce re-suits, to engage any number of men that I need, to make complicated investigations, and have the results ready by morning. And now you come along with something like this.”
“Exactly,” Mason said, grinning. “You’ve always told me that you could do a much better job if you had time and didn’t have to employ so many operatives.”
“Now wait a minute,” Drake said. “I said we could do a more economically efficient job. When you have a lot of operatives working at high speed there’s a certain duplication of effort and a terrific nerve strain and resulting expense. You—”
“I know,” Mason said. “I want you to work in the most economically efficient manner possible in this case. I want to find out about the background of a man named Mosher Higley. He lived in this city. He died about three months ago. The cause of his death was given as coronary thrombosis. I don’t know whether anyone has filed papers in the estate, the nature or extent of the estate, or anything about it. I want to know all those facts. I want to know the names of his heirs. I want to know who was with him when he died. I want to know when his will was made if he left a will. I’d like to know whether there was any insurance. You’re going to have to talk with the attending physician who signed the death certificate. I’d like to find out specific symptoms. It may be necessary for you to pretend you’re representing an insurance company.”
“Shucks,” Drake said, “we do that kind of stuff all the time. Quite frequently we are representing an insurance company.”
“I thought they had their own investigators,” Mason said.
“They do, but sometimes the investigators call us in.”
“Okay,” Mason said. “Launch an investigation. Do it quietly. There’s no great rush. Handle the matter with what you are pleased to describe as economic efficiency.”
“Can do,” Drake said and walked out.
Chapter Three
Promptly at nine-thirty the next morning, Della Street said to Perry Mason, “Dr. Denair is here for his appointment.”
“The girl with him?” Mason asked.
She nodded.
“How does she look, Della?”
Della Street hesitated for a moment, then said, “Good-looking.”
“Anything else?”
“Demure.”
“A negative personality?”
“Definitely not, but... oh, you know, she has good-looking legs but doesn’t show them; nice curves but doesn’t push them out or wiggle; beautiful eyes but she keeps her eyelids lowered; nice hands and they’re crossed on her lap. Her eyes are definitely interesting; they’re eloquent but soft-spoken, if you get what I mean. You probably won’t until you’ve seen her.”
Mason nodded, said, “I’ll go out and do the honors, Della.”
He walked out to the outer office, shook hands with Dr. Denair, said, “How are you this morning, Bert,” and was introduced to Nadine Farr.
The lawyer ushered them into his private office, saw that they were comfortably seated and said, “I suppose you wonder why you’re here, Miss Farr.”
She raised her lashes. For a moment eyes which Della Street had described as eloquent but soft-spoken, looked into Mason’s, then she lowered her eyelashes and said, “Dr. Denair told me I should come. It’s a part of his treatment, I guess.”
Dr. Denair cleared his throat. “It’s this way, Miss Farr, as your doctor I feel that you have something troubling you. As a doctor I can perhaps diagnose the nature of the trouble but I might not be able to cope with whatever the difficulty might be.
“Now Mr. Mason is a lawyer. He’s one of the best lawyers in this part of the country. I’ve ascertained that something is bothering you. If you’ll tell Mr. Mason what it is, perhaps he can help you.”
She looked up at him and shook her head in a perplexed manner. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m losing my appetite. I’m not sleeping well and... well, if Dr. Denair says something is bothering me I assume he must be right, but for the life of me I can’t tell you what it is.”
Mason regarded her in thoughtful appraisal.