Mason shook hands with the sheriff. “I may give you a ring later on, Sheriff,” he said. “In the meantime, thanks a lot.”
He took Helen Monteith’s arm, and, with Della Street on the other side, piloted her out into the fresh air of the warm night.
Twice while they were riding up the long stretch of moonlit road to Santa Delbarra, Helen Monteith tried to find out from Perry Mason what he expected to find at the end of their journey. In both instances Mason avoided the inquiry.
Finally, in response to a direct question, Mason said frankly, “I don’t know. I do know that on one side of this case there’s an inconsistency, a place where the loose threads fail to tie up. I want to investigate that and make certain. I’m going to need you to help me. I realize it’s a strain on you, but I see no way of avoiding it.”
Thereafter he drove in silence until the highway swung up over a hill to dip down into the outskirts of Santa Delbarra.
“Now,” Mason said to Helen Monteith, “if you’ll tell me how to get to the hotel where you stayed...”
“It’s not particularly inviting,” she said. “It’s inexpensive and...”
“I understand all that,” Mason told her. “Just tell me how to get there.”
“Straight down this street until I tell you to turn,” she said.
Mason piloted the car down an avenue lined with palm trees silhouetted against the moonlit sky, until Helen Monteith said, “Here’s the place. Turn to the right.”
He swung the car to the right.
“Go two blocks, and the hotel is on the left-hand corner,” she said.
Mason found the hotel, slid the car to a stop, and asked Helen Monteith, “Do you remember the room number?”
“It was room 29,” she said.
Mason nodded to Della Street. “I want to go up to that room, Della,” he said. “Go to the room clerk, ask him if the room is occupied. If it is, find out who’s in it.”
As Della Street vanished through the door to the lobby, Mason locked his car, and took Helen Monteith’s arm. They entered the hotel. “An elevator?” Mason asked.
“No,” she said. “You walk up.”
Della Street turned away from the desk and walked toward Mason. Her eyes were wide with startled astonishment. “Chief,” she said, “I...”
“Let’s wait,” Mason warned her.
They climbed the creaky stairs to the third floor, walked down the long corridor, its thin carpet barely muffling the echoing sound of their footfalls.
“This is the door,” Helen Monteith said.
“I know,” Mason told her. “The room’s rented... isn’t it, Della?”
She nodded wordless assent, and Mason needed only to study the tense lines of her face to know all that she could have told him.
Mason knocked on the door.
Someone on the inside stirred to life. Steps sounded coming toward the door.
Mason turned to Helen Monteith. “I think,” he said, “you’re going to have to prepare yourself for a shock. I didn’t want to tell you before, because I was afraid I might be wrong, but...”
The door opened. A tall man, standing very erect on the threshold, looked at them with keen gray eyes which had the unflinching steadiness of one who is accustomed to look, unafraid, on the vicissitudes of life.
Helen Monteith gave a startled scream, jumped back to collide with Mason who was standing just behind her. Mason put his arm around her waist and said, “Steady.”
“George,” she said, in a voice which was almost a whisper. “George!”
She reached forward then with a tentative hand to touch him, as though he had been vague and unreal and might vanish like a soap bubble into thin air at her touch.
“Why, Helen, sweetheart,” he said. “Good Lord, what’s the matter, you look as though you were seeing a ghost... why, dearest...”
She was in his arms, sobbing incoherently, while the older man held her tightly against him, comforting her with soothing words in her ears, tender hands patting her shoulders. “It’s all right, my dearest,” he said. “I wrote you a letter this afternoon. I’ve found just the location I want.”
Chapter fourteen
George Wallman sat in the creaking rocking chair in the hotel bedroom. Seated on the floor by his side, her cheeks glistening with tears of happiness, Helen Monteith clasped her arms around his knees. Perry Mason was seated astride a straight-backed, cane-bottomed chair, his elbows resting on the back; Della Street was perched on the foot of the bed.
George Wallman said in a slow drawl, “Yes, I changed my name after Fremont made such a pile of money. People were always getting us mixed up because I looked like him, and word got around that I had a brother who was a multimillionaire. I didn’t like it. You see we aren’t twins, but, as we got older, there was a striking family resemblance. People were always getting us mixed up.
“Wallman was my mother’s maiden name. Fremont’s son was named Charles Wallman Sabin, and my middle name was George, so I took the name of George Wallman.
“For quite a while Fremont thought I was crazy, and then, after he’d visited me back in Kansas, we had an opportunity for a real good talk. I guess then was when Fremont first commenced to see the light. Anyway, he suddenly realized that it was foolish to set up money as the goal of achievement in life. He’d had all he wanted years ago. If he’d lived to be a thousand he could still have eaten three meals a day.
“Well,” Wallman went on, after a moment, “I guess I was a little bit foolish the other way, too, because I never paid enough attention to putting aside something that would carry me through a rainy day... Anyway, after Fremont had that first visit with me, we became rather close, and when I came out here to the West, Fremont used to come and see me once in a while. Sometimes we’d go live together in a trailer; sometimes we’d stay up in his cabin. Fremont told me that he was keeping the association secret from his business associates, however, because they’d think perhaps he was a little bit cracked, if they found out about me and my philosophy of life.
“Well, that suited me all right. And then, shortly after I was married, Fremont came down to San Molinas to talk with me.”
“He knew about your marriage?” Mason interrupted.
“Of course. He gave me the keys to the cabin and told me to go up there for my honeymoon. He said I could use it whenever I wanted to.”
“I see,” Mason said, “pardon the interruption. Go ahead.”
“Well, Fremont showed up with this parrot. He’d been up to the house and picked him up, and the parrot kept saying, ‘Drop that gun, Helen... don’t shoot... My God, you’ve shot me.’ Well, that didn’t sound good to me. I’m something of an expert on parrots. I gave Casanova to Fremont and I knew Casanova wouldn’t say anything unless someone had been to some trouble to repeat it many times in his presence — parrots vary, you know, and I knew Casanova. So I suggested to Fremont that he was in danger. Fremont didn’t feel that way about it, but after a while I convinced him. I wanted to study the parrot, trying to get a clue to the person who had been teaching him. So I got Fremont to buy another parrot and...”
“Then it was Fremont who bought the parrot?” Mason asked.
“Sure, that was Fremont.”
“Go ahead,” Mason said.
“Well, Fremont bought the parrot, so that no one would suspect I was studying Casanova, and I wanted a gun to give him, so I got Helen to get me a gun and some shells, and I gave that to Fremont. Then, he went on up to the cabin, and I came here to Santa Delbarra to look things over and find out about getting a place for a grocery store. I didn’t read the papers, because I never bother with ’em. I read some of the monthly magazines, and quite a few biographies, and scientific books, and spend a good deal of time around the libraries.”