The telephone connection was severed at the other end.
Mason looked quizzically at Della Street.
“Well?” she asked, as she hung up the telephone.
Mason said, “This could be a beautifully engineered trap. A man comes in and tells me he’s a friend of the family, he wants a routine investigation made. Prior to that time his daughter has been in touch with me and has me go out to the house, where I pick up ten thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. Then, having inveigled me into that situation up to my neck, so to speak, they suddenly change the instructions and tell me what else to do.”
“And what are you going to do?” Della Street asked.
“I don’t know,” Mason said. “It depends on what Muriell has in mind when she shows up. Somehow I don’t think Muriell can carry out very much of a deception. If this is some elaborate scheme that she and her father have entered into, I think I can break Muriell down. But I certainly hate to pick on her. I’d much rather have had Carter Gilman come in here and give me a chance to probe his mind.”
“Which is undoubtedly why Carter Gilman has no intention of coming in,” Della Street said.
“I guess there’s no doubt about that being Gilman,” Mason said.
“No doubt on earth,” Della Street assured him. “I listened carefully to the voice. That’s the voice of the man who was in here this morning.”
Mason regarded her thoughtfully. “And just how do we know that man is Carter Gilman?” he asked.
“You have his photograph,” Della Street said. “You had his photograph before he came in.”
“That’s right,” Mason said, “I have his photograph. And where did I get his photograph?”
“From his daughter.”
“That’s right,” Mason said. “Out at his house. Muriell opens a drawer in the darkroom. Very conveniently there is a photograph of her father there. She tells me that this is a photograph of her father, that her father has mysteriously disappeared. She ushers me into a room where there is ten thousand dollars on the floor. I pick up the ten thousand dollars and come back here to the office. The man whose photograph I have seen comes walking in and tells me he is a friend of the family. I walk right into the trap and pull the cat-and-mouse act with him and he’s probably getting quite a kick out of it. The whole thing has probably been rehearsed with him and his daughter.
“Now he lets me locate him on the phone after having a telephone conversation with a woman who says she is Vera Martel... How the devil do I know that was Vera Martel I was talking with? How do I know that I’m not being swept along in a stream of events where Muriell gives me a picture and says that’s her father, where her father rings me up and tells me to do exactly what Muriell says, and where some other person rings me up and says she is Vera Martel and gives me one of these mysterious, thoroughly cockeyed messages to pass on to Carter Gilman? So far, about all I have are voices over the telephone and a photograph handed me by Muriell.”
“I would say a great deal depends on Muriell,” Della Street said thoughtfully.
Mason said, “All right, Della. Vera Martel is a private detective who has offices here and in Las Vegas. Get her on the phone.”
“What will we do when we get her, Chief?”
“I’ll ask her what the hell she meant by ringing up my office and telling me something about fingerprints.”
“And suppose she denies the conversation?”
“We’ll have a chance to listen to her voice,” Mason said. “You have a good ear for voices. You can identify them quite accurately over the telephone.”
“I’m quite certain I can identify Vera Martel’s voice,” Della Street said. “At least the woman who said she was Vera Martel.”
“All right,” Mason said, “get busy. Call Vera Martel. If she isn’t in her office find out where she can be reached. If she can be reached anywhere in the country by telephone I want her.”
Mason started pacing the floor while Della Street went out to the outer office to put the calls through the office switchboard.
Fifteen minutes later Della Street returned. “Vera Martel’s office doesn’t know where she is. Apparently they would like very much to find out. They gave me the number of her Las Vegas office. I called there. There was no answer.”
“No secretary there?” Mason asked.
“Apparently not. From what Vera Martel’s oflice here told me, the office in Las Vegas is one that is kept for the convenience of Miss Martel and her clients. Miss Martel remains there when she’s in Las Vegas. The secretary here seems very much disturbed. Vera Martel was working on an important case and she seems to have disappeared.”
“Makes it quite a day for disappearances, doesn’t it?” Mason said.
“It does indeed.”
The phone on Della Street’s desk rang and Della Street picked up the instrument, said, “Yes, Gertie, what is it?” Della turned to Perry Mason and said, “Muriell Gilman is in the office.”
“Tell her to come right in,” Mason said grimly.
Muriell entered the office and said, almost as soon as Della Street had ushered her through the door, “Oh, Mr. Mason, I’m so relieved. I’ve heard from Daddy and he had to leave this morning on a very delicate, difficult matter. He’s in some sort of trouble and he needs my help and he wants me to work with you.”
“Did you tell him you’d called me earlier in the day?” Mason asked.
“No,” she said. “You told me not to, and I... I didn’t, although I probably would have if he’d have talked longer, but Daddy reached me on the telephone and said he only had time to give me a few very brief instructions.”
“All right,” Mason said. “First let’s have the instructions.”
“I was at Daddy’s office trying to locate him or, failing in that, to talk with Tillie Norman, his secretary.”
“Describe her,” Mason said. “Young, attractive, curvaceous or...?”
“Heavens no! She’s very young-looking for her age and very competent, but I know she’s well past fifty and she’s not at all curvaceous. She’s rather the beanpole type.”
“All right,” Mason said, “pardon me if I interrupt you with questions from time to time, but you’re talking to a lawyer and I have to have a clear picture in my mind. Go on and tell me the rest of it.”
“Daddy called in almost as soon as Tillie came in... she’d been out on a shopping trip. He learned I was there and told Tillie to have me put on the phone without letting anyone in the office know he had called in.
“Something had happened which upset Daddy very much indeed, something in connection with a telephone message which he told me you would know all about. He said that he’s in a very precarious position. He said I was to come here just as fast as I could and that you were to accompany me out to the house, that I was to give you his brief case — he had left it home — that there were documents in that brief case, that you were to go directly to his office and surrender those documents to Roger C. Calhoun, his business associate, and accept Mr. Calhoun’s receipt for the documents.”
“Did he describe the documents?”
“Simply the agreements that were in the green Bristol-board folder in his brief case. He said that you were also to tell Mr. Calhoun that you were acting as Daddy’s attorney and that Mr. Calhoun was to go ahead and complete negotiations on the agreements and execute them.”
“Was I supposed to read the agreements?” Mason asked.
“Daddy didn’t say anything about that.”