Mason said, “Look, Muriell, I don’t like to be brought into a situation where I’m groping in the dark. I’m a lawyer. If your father wants me to represent him in a business transaction, that’s fine. If he wants me to try and head off blackmail, that’s fine. If he wants me to protect your interests, that’s fine.
“But I want to know what it is I’m supposed to do, and I want to work out my own plan of campaign. I don’t want to be a legal messenger-boy who tries to do the things that your father thinks should be done. If he’ll come to me with the problem I’ll work out a solution of the problem with him. But I don’t want to be sent around doing this and doing that in accordance with some plan he’s worked out. Do you understand that?”
“I can appreciate your position,” she said, her eyes clouding and seemingly close to tears, “but, Mr. Mason, my father would never want you to do anything that was the least bit wrong; and he’s in some sort of serious trouble.”
“Will you get hold of him and tell him that I want to have some cards put on the table before I go running around here doing a lot of things that—?”
“Mr. Mason, please she said. “There won’t be time. Daddy told Tillie to make an appointment with Mr. Calhoun. He’s going to wait for you. We’ll just about have time to run out and get those papers in the brief case and then deliver them to Mr. Calhoun and take his receipt — and there’s a lot that I’m to tell you about Mr. Calhoun. Daddy said I was to tell you everything. I’ll have to do that while we’re driving out to the house.”
Mason glanced at Della Street, frowned thoughtfully for a minute.
Muriell impatiently looked at her wristwatch.
“Where’s your father’s office?” Mason asked.
“In the Piedmont Building.”
“That’s only a couple of blocks from here,” Mason said.
She nodded.
“Where’s your car?”
“I parked it in the parking lot next to this building.”
“All right,” Mason said abruptly. “I’ll go this far with you. I’ll go down and get my car. I’ll drive you out to the house and then you can ride back with me and pick up your car. You can tell me what it’s all about while we’re going out to the house. I’m going to ask you lots of questions, Muriell. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Daddy said I was to tell you everything.”
Mason glanced at Della Street and said, “You stay on the job until I get back, Della. I’ll probably go directly to the Piedmont Building and see Mr. Calhoun before I get back to the office.”
Mason opened the exit door of his private office. “Come on,” he said to Muriell, “let’s go.”
Chapter Five
Perry Mason, driving his car through traffic, said, “Muriell, I’m going to have to keep my eyes pretty much on the road — do you understand?”
“Why, yes, of course, Mr. Mason.”
“But,” the lawyer said, “my ears are going to be concentrated on you, listening to your words, your tone of voice and waiting to detect any false note.”
“Why should there be a false note, Mr. Mason?”
“I don’t know,” the lawyer said. “I just want to tell you that I’ve cross-examined a lot of witnesses. My ears are trained to detect false notes. Now then, I want to know, are you acting in good faith in this thing?”
“What do you mean, Mr. Mason?”
“Were you lying to me this morning?”
“Not at all. I was telling you the absolute truth.”
“You didn’t have anything fixed up with your father that you were to call me or...?”
“Of course not, Mr. Mason. I was terribly concerned when I couldn’t find Daddy — I know that things have been bothering him the last few days and my father told me that no matter what happened he didn’t want to have anything to do with the police. I told you all that and it’s the truth.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“No, he just said that.”
“Wasn’t that rather unusual? In other words, wasn’t that an unusual thing for him to say?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And did you ask him why he said it?”
“Yes.”
“And what did he say?”
“That’s all tied in with some of the things I’m supposed to tell you. My father told me over the phone that I was to tell you everything while we were going out to get his brief case.”
“All right,” Mason said, “tell me everything.”
“Well, Daddy makes investments of his own and he also acts as an investment counsel for other people and there are some pools of money that Daddy is empowered to invest — that is, Daddy’s company. It’s a corporation. He had it incorporated so that in case he should die suddenly in an accident of some sort or anything like that, the trust funds wouldn’t be all mixed up with his estate.”
“It’s a corporation?”
“Yes. Gilman Associates Investment Pool.”
“All right. What else?”
“Roger C. Calhoun is the business manager. My father is president.”
“So what?” Mason asked.
“Well, of late Daddy has felt that Roger Calhoun is secretly trying to undermine him with some of the big investors, some of the people who put up money in the pools. You see, the corporation gets a percentage of the profits it makes. It’s rather a small percentage but where the investments are big it amounts to quite a sum of money.”
“Is your father in danger of losing control of the corporation?”
“No, no, nothing like that. He wouldn’t lose control of the corporation. He has that all tied up. But he might lose the investors. That is, some of the big ones.”
“And just who are the big ones?”
“Oh, heavens, I don’t know all the names, but there are lots of big ones. There’s a big lumberman up in the northern part of the state who lets Daddy handle nearly all of his investments and there’s a widow down in the Imperial Valley who has more than half a million dollars Daddy is managing, and... well, there are just lots of people.”
“Tell me a little more about Calhoun,” Mason said.
“Well, he’s young — that is, Daddy always calls him young. I think he’s old — that is, he’s much older than I am.”
“How old is he?”
“Thirty-four, I think. But he’s a very bright man. He makes a study of the market and... well, he’s really bright.”
Mason said abruptly, “Is your father counting calories?”
“In a way, yes, but what in the world—?”
Mason interrupted. “After a breakfast that was loaded with calories, he sent you back to the kitchen to cook up still another egg and some more sausage... He did, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t that rather a peculiar thing for him to do?”
“When you think about the calories, I guess it was.”
“I’m just trying to get the picture straight,” Mason said. “Now go on and tell me some more about Calhoun.”
“Well, there were some agreements that had to be signed this morning. They were to be signed by the corporation. They were in Daddy’s brief case and Mr. Calhoun is naturally very much upset because they weren’t in the office and he didn’t know where Daddy was.”
“You went up to the office?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you call on the telephone?”
“Oh, but I did call on the telephone and asked to have Daddy call me as soon as he came in. And Mr. Calhoun’s secretary got on the line and said that I was to have Daddy call them just as soon as I got in touch with him. She wanted to know where he was and I told them... well, I played innocent, you know. I told them that, why, I had no idea if he wasn’t at the office, that I had expected he would be there.”
“You think they suspected anything?” Mason asked.