Mason said, “I told you it wasn’t a question of money, Mr. Callender.”
Callender got up out of the chair. “I suppose you’ve sold me out somewhere along the line. I don’t think you can get away with this. Damn it, Mason, I know some law. I’ll have you arrested for extortion.”
“Just what have I tried to extort?”
“You’re trying to hold me up.”
“I told you,” Mason said, “it wasn’t a question of money.”
“The devil it isn’t! You’re just sitting back there, waiting for me to boost my offer. I won’t do it. I’m staying at the Richmell Hotel. I’ll give you until five o’clock this evening to surrender that horse. At the end of that time I’ll take steps. And five hundred dollars is my limit. Good day.”
Callender turned back toward the door through which he had entered, then, seeing the exit door, veered sharply to the left. Only the door check prevented him from slamming the door shut.
Suddenly he caught himself, turned and pushed his way back through the closing door. He was all affability once more. “Of course,” he said, returning to bend over Mason’s desk, “I know what’s wrong now. I didn’t describe the property accurately.”
“Go ahead,” Mason invited.
Callender lowered his head to a level with Mason’s ear and said in a whisper, “The bullet wound.”
“Where?” Mason whispered.
“On the horse,” Callender said, smiling.
Mason shook his head.
Callender straightened, frowned, started to say something else, changed his mind and stalked out of the office.
Mason cocked a quizzical eyebrow at Della Street.
She said, “That seems to be a horse on Mr. Callender.”
“Or a horse on us,” Mason observed thoughtfully. “I’m afraid we’re going to investigate, Della. That crack about the bullet...”
The telephone on Della Street’s desk rang sharply. Della Street picked it up, said, “All right, Gertie, what is it...? Just a moment.”
She turned to Perry Mason. “Another man out there,” she said, “wanting to see you about a horse.”
“What’s his name?”
“Arthur Sheldon.”
“Let’s see what Mr. Sheldon has to say, Della. Tell Gertie to send him right in. One would think we were running a livery stable.”
Arthur Sheldon was in the late twenties, a brown-eyed, light-haired man with quick, nervous mannerisms and a rapid-fire manner of speaking.
“Good morning, Mr. Mason. It was nice of you to see me. My name’s Sheldon, Arthur Sheldon. I can tell you what I want in a very few words. John Callender has just been in here. What did he want? What did he say?”
Mason smiled. “Even if I knew your interest in the matter and it proved to be legitimate, I could hardly divulge the information you have requested.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sheldon blurted, flushing. “I hadn’t realized just exactly how that was going to sound. Look here, Mr. Mason, you aren’t going to give him the horse, are you?”
“No,” Mason said, and then added, “not as yet.”
“Don’t do it. Please don’t do it. He doesn’t own that horse. He gave it to Lois. Look here, Mr. Mason, you’re not his lawyer, are you?”
“No.”
Sheldon’s face showed relief. “That’s fine. I want you to represent us.”
“Us?”
“Well, Lois.”
“In what?”
“Well — in case he starts anything.”
Mason said, “Now let’s get this straight. If you expect to try and bribe me to deliver any certain property to any particular person under the guise of retaining me...”
“No, no, it’s not that at all. Just so you didn’t give him the horse.”
“And what do you want?”
“I want you to represent Lois.”
“In what?”
“I’ve explained to you generally. I want you to see that... Look here, Mr. Mason, would you talk with Lois?”
“Why certainly. Can she come here?”
“Not before tomorrow. She’s working in a night spot up in Palomino. That’s a little town up in the Walker Basin country up back of Bakersfieid. She has to be on there tonight, and she wouldn’t have time to drive in and get back, but she could come down tomorrow, if you could give her an appointment.”
“At what time?” Mason asked.
“Any time after... well, let us say after ten o’clock. Any time between ten and two.”
“Ten-thirty?” Mason asked.
“I’ll have her here,” Sheldon promised. “Mr. Mason, I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate this. You want some money now? I...”
“No,” Mason said, “not until after I talk with Miss Fenton. How did you happen to get my address?”
“I followed Callender here. I’ve been following him ever since he got that address from the newspaper. My room in the Richmell Hotel is directly across the corridor from his. I have 510. He’s in 511.”
Mason regarded him with a frown. “I’ll know more about your case when I’ve talked with Lois Fenton. Please see that she keeps her appointment promptly. Ten-thirty on the dot.”
When he had gone, Mason said to Della Street, “The horse with all these claimants, the bullet wound, the fan-dancer. How’d you like to take a drive, Della?”
“Where?”
“To Palomino.”
“I’d love it.”
“Let’s go,” Mason said.
Chapter number 4
Palomino had originally been a rough western crossroads town. Then overnight, with the advent of heavy construction work on the big dam, the place had mushroomed into a ready-made city.
The old time buildings, dilapidated and unpainted, had furnished the nucleus for a hastily constructed business district composed of tents, tent-houses, old refrigerator freight cars converted into little storerooms, and occasionally trailers parked broadside to the street, with boards bearing appropriate names tacked along the side.
The Grand Millinery Company did business in a trailer.
The Elite Ready-to-Wear was housed in a reconstructed freight car and The Ritz Hotel consisted of an elaborate front behind which were some four or five dozen tent-houses, arranged in rows like army barracks.
The sprawling unpainted building which had been known as Myer’s Hall in the days when an occasional mountain dance had been held at the crossroads, now housed a tumultuous night club known as “The Shamrock.”
Electricity had become one of the cheapest commodities available and over the strange assortment of human habitations, lights blazed in white brilliance. Reconditioned box cars sported glaring red neon signs and on the sides of “The Shamrock” an artist had painted a trifoliate in vivid green, the color being further enhanced by green lights. These lights invested the place with a weird and bizarre unreality. Men and women moving in and out of the night club assumed for the moment the ghastly appearance of animated corpses.
Inside the place, the floor had been crowded with tables until only a small square remained at one side of the barnlike room, and here a five-piece “orchestra” manufactured music which made up in volume anything it lacked in harmony.
Perry Mason and Della Street, having by virtue of an out-of-town mien secured a table near the orchestra, exchanged snatches of conversation in between numbers of the floor show and the blaring of the music.
“There is,” Della Street observed over her coffee, “a rough and ready air about the place that’s... well, it’s like waiting for dynamite to be set off.”
“It’s rough and it’s ready for trouble,” Mason said.
A broad-shouldered, ham-fisted man in a coarse suit which hung loosely from the belt, but which was stretched taut across the powerful shoulders, stood over the table grinning.