“Now then, with that in mind I want you to know that I am afraid I gave a client advice which fell short of the advice I should have given.”
“Male or female?” Drake asked.
“That also is confidential,” Mason said.
“Well, how did you fail this client?”
“I didn’t tell the client the things the client should have known for the client’s own good,” Mason said. “I let the client diagnose the case and accepted that diagnosis.”
“How come?”
Mason said, “Every once in a while a client wants to diagnose the case, just as a patient will come to a doctor and say, ‘Doctor, I have indigestion. I want you to give me something for indigestion.’
“If the doctor simply gives the patient something for indigestion he is untrue to his profession.
“What the doctor should do is ask about symptoms connected with the indigestion. He finds out that the patient has been having pains in the chest and occasionally down the left arm, so he suspects something entirely different from indigestion. He has a cardiograph made and finds out that the patient is suffering from a high cholesterol count. He doesn’t give the patient medicine for indigestion, but puts the patient on a diet consisting of no fats, no dairy foods, but high in proteins.
“The patient gets better.
“If, on the other hand, the doctor had accepted the patient’s self-diagnosis, the patient would probably have been dead inside of twelve months.”
“That,” Drake said, “is rather elementary, isn’t it, Perry?”
“I’m making it elementary,” Mason explained, “because I want to show you the situation.
“This client came here and diagnosed the case and prescribed the remedy. Unfortunately, I accepted the statements at face value. I shouldn’t have done that. Now then, in order to appease my own conscience, I want information.”
“About the client?” Drake asked.
“About various and sundry things,” Mason said. “They do not necessarily have any direct bearing on the situation. They may not even directly concern the client. But they are sufficiently significant so they concern me.”
“All right,” Drake said, “you’ve now reached your thumb by going all the way around your elbow. You want me to do a job. It’s a job in which you are the client. You’ll get the best service I can give and you’ll get a discount on the bill. What do I do?”
Mason took the folded newspaper and handed it to Drake.
“That ad,” he said.
Drake read the ad aloud:
“AM HERE READY TO CONCLUDE NEGOTIATIONS ON STRAIGHT CASH BASIS. NO CHECKS. SPOT CASH. CONTACT ME AT WILLATSON HOTEL. 36-24-36.”
Drake looked up from the newspaper. “That’s the ad that interests you?”
Mason nodded.
“Your party evidently has three rooms,” Drake said... “No, wait a minute, thirty-six is mentioned twice. It may be two rooms, thirty-six and twenty-four, and then the person putting in the ad signs it thirty-six to show that that’s the room where contact is to be made.”
“Could be,” Mason said.
Drake regarded him shrewdly. “And it could be some sort of a code,” he said.
Mason was silent.
“Exactly what is it you want me to do?” the detective inquired.
“Find out everything you can about who put that ad in the paper and the person for whom the message was intended.”
Drake said, “That may be a big job, or it may be rather simple. The Willatson Hotel is a commerical-type hotel. When there are conventions in town it’s probably about ninety-five percent occupied. At other times the percentage of occupancy may be sixty to seventy percent. In any event there will be too many people just to go at it blind. I can find out who’s in room thirty-six and who’s in room twenty-four. That may not mean anything.
“The best bet is to try to get a line on whoever put the ad in the paper by making a dummy reply in the press, saying something like:
“MESSAGE NOT CLEAR. YOU CAN REACH ME TELEPHONE NUMBER 676-2211 TO CLARIFY. AM NOT WALKING INTO ANY TRAP REGARDLESS OF TYPE OF BAIT USED.”
Drake made a little gesture and said, “Of course, that’s just off the top of my head, Perry. I’d have to word it a little more carefully than that. I’d have to be subtle, but even so the chances are that there’d be some false note in the reply which would alarm the quarry and let your client know that some outsider was checking.”
“Well,” Mason said thoughtfully, “I don’t know as there’s any reason why a situation of that sort should be fatal... It might send the client back to me and then I could...” His voice trailed away into silence.
“What’s the matter?” Drake asked. “Can’t you phone your client at the Willatson Hotel and—”
“I didn’t say I thought the person who put this ad in was my client,” Mason said. “The client may well be the one to whom the ad is addressed.”
“In other words, you don’t know where to reach your client?”
“Come, come,” Mason said, “you haven’t been reading your decisions of the Supreme Court lately. Before I can be questioned I have to be advised of my constitutional rights and given an opportunity to consult a lawyer... I’ve given you a job to do. Get busy and do it.”
Drake thought for a moment and said, “This situation has overtones which intrigue the hell out of me, Perry, but, after all, you said it, you’ve given me a job to do. It’s up to me to get busy.”
Drake heaved himself up out of the chair. “When do you want reports?” he asked.
“As soon as you have something definite to report. No matter how trivial it seems to you, give me a line on it.”
“Day and night?” Drake asked.
“It’s not exactly that urgent,” Mason said. “Let’s say day and evening.”
“Okay,” Drake said, “day and evening it is. Any limit as to the number of people I can put on it?”
“Don’t go over five hundred dollars until you have asked me,” Mason said.
“With your discount,” Drake told him, “you can get quite a bit of investigative work done for five hundred bucks... I’ll be in touch, Perry.”
Mason and Della Street watched the detective out the door. Then Mason heaved a sigh, picked up the pile of papers on his desk, and said, “Well, Della, we’ve done all we can do. I guess now we’ll get to work.”
“How are we going to enter this on the books?” Della asked. “You take in three hundred dollars, you pay out five hundred, and we don’t even have a name for the client in the case.”
“Call her Miss Deficit then,” Mason said. “That will serve until we have a better name.”
“Perhaps,” Della mused, “it could be Miss Deceit.”
“She hasn’t deceived us,” Mason said. “At least we don’t know that she has. What we need is information. She has diagnosed her own case, prescribed her own remedy, and she may be wrong on both counts.”
Della Street picked up her shorthand notebook and pencil. “Well,” she observed, “we’re only starting the day two hundred dollars worse off than when you sat down at the desk.”
3
The next day Perry Mason was in court all day defending a young Negro lad who had been accused of robbing a pawnshop.
The identification by three eyewitnesses who had seen the robber running madly down the street, jumping into a parked car, and making off at high speed was absolutely positive.
In vain Mason tried to shake the identification of the witnesses.
At three o’clock the Deputy District Attorney concluded his opening argument and Mason had an opportunity to address the jury.
“Contrary to popular belief, gentlemen, circumstantial evidence is about the strongest we have, and eyewitness evidence is about the weakest.