“I am investigating a fraud. I know of your reputation. I know of your outstanding ability, and I also know that you are too ethical to want to be mixed up in a fraud. I am glad indeed that this woman telephoned for you to come.
“I know the two gentlemen with you. I am glad to meet you. Miss Street. And may I introduce this lady with me? She is Maxine Edfield. She resides in Cloverville. She is — and has been for some time — a client of mine. I have represented her in several matters.
“You will note that I am giving you all of the facts.
“Now, then, if we can all sit down, I would like to have Miss Edfield tell you a story. I think when she finishes her recital we will have the atmosphere cleared and will perhaps be in a position to talk business and perhaps to become good friends.”
Maxine Edfield, a woman of about forty — with sharp gray eyes; an alert, aggressive manner; a spare frame; and a long, thin mouth which even copious lipstick couldn’t quite turn into a rosebud — said in a harsh, metallic voice, “Hello, everybody.”
“Tell them your story, Maxine,” Lovett said.
“All of it?” she asked.
“All of it.”
Maxine Edfield said somewhat defiantly, “I’m a working girl.”
Mason smiled encouragingly.
“So am I,” Della Street said with a friendly smile.
Maxine said, “I never had enough money to put me through a secretarial school or to get any kind of a decent education. I’ve waited tables. I’ve worked up to being a cashier at the Cloverville Café. It’s a pretty good job.”
“And how do you happen to be here?” Mason asked.
“I came on a plane with Mr. Lovett. Mr. Lovett is attorney for the people who operate the Cloverville Café, and he arranged for me to get away.”
“Never mind any more preliminaries,” Lovett said; “just go ahead and tell them your story, Maxine. When did you first meet this woman who now tells us that her name is Ellen Smith?”
“I met her way back — let’s see, it was twenty years ago, before the kid was even thinking of beauty contests.”
“How well did you know her?”
“I knew her quite well.”
“You are now talking about this woman sitting next to me, the one on whose shoulder I am placing my hand?” Mason asked.
“That’s right.”
“What’s her name?” Lovett asked.
“Ellen Calvert.”
“How well did you know her?”
“I knew her very well. We exchanged confidences from time to time. She used to eat in the café where I was slinging hash, and after I got to know her I saw that she got a little more on the plate than was customary. I kept her coffee cup filled with hot coffee, and sometimes when business was slack I’d sit down at the table and talk with her for a while.”
“Did you know her other than in the restaurant?” Lovett asked.
“I’ll say I did. After a while we got friendly and she invited me up to her room and I invited her to mine. She was a beautiful kid, only a little bit too tall, and I’m the one that told her how to handle herself. I said, ‘Dearie, hold your chin up. Try to be even taller than you are.’ Most tall girls try to wear flat heels and squeeze themselves down into their clothes so they can look an inch or so shorter, and all they do is manage to look stooped.
“A tall girl who is proud of being tall and stands perfectly straight gets a queenly carriage that helps a lot. Lots of people like tall girls.
“She told me she didn’t like to be tall because it embarrassed her to dance with a man who was shorter than she was, and I told her to get over it, and I kept counseling her on how to stand.”
“Go ahead,” Lovett said. “Tell us the rest of it. Get to the emotional part.”
“Well,” Maxine said, “we went out a couple of times on dates together. Ellen was a good scout. She was fun to be with on a foursome and she was — well, she wasn’t too prudish.”
“Never mind, never mind that,” Lovett interrupted hurriedly. “You can skip that. Tell us the part about her confiding in you about her love affair.”
“Which one?”
“You know the one.”
“You mean the Haslett affair?”
“Go ahead,” Lovett said.
“Well, she got a job in the Cloverville Spring and Suspension Company and young Haslett noticed her. That is, he was young at that time. He was about twenty-two, I guess, and I think Ellen was eighteen.
“Of course, Harmon Haslett was the catch of the town. He’d just returned from college, where he’d graduated, and he was settling down to follow in his father’s footsteps in the Spring and Suspension Company.
“Well, Ellen went out with Harmon Haslett a couple of times. They had to be awfully cautious about it, because old Ezekiel Haslett, Harmon’s father, would have raised merry hell if he’d had any inkling that Harmon was going out with one of the girls in the office.
“Old Ezekiel was one of those self-righteous individuals who seldom crack a smile. I doubt if he’d ever done any necking in his life before he got married, and he — well, he was a pill.”
“Go on,” Lovett said.
“Well, things got pretty torrid between Ellen here and Harmon Haslett, and then I guess Harmon realized what he was getting into and he began to pull back.
“That was when Ellen came to me for advice. She said that maybe she’d been a little too easy and gone a little too far a little too soon and that she was now certain Harmon Haslett was very definitely not contemplating matrimony but — well, he was still interested and crazy about her when he was with her, but when he wasn’t with her he was very definitely — well, you can get the picture. I don’t have to spell it out for you.”
“Go ahead,” Lovett said.
“So Ellen confided in me that she thought she’d try and force a marriage by telling him she was pregnant. I told her that that would probably shipwreck the whole affair. But she said it was not going the way she wanted it and—”
“All this is a dirty lie!” Drake’s operative exclaimed.
“Keep quiet,” Mason said. “Don’t say a word, Ellen. Let’s just hear this thing out.”
“Go on,” Lovett said. “You can express things as delicately as possible; but, after all, this is a legal matter and we can’t have any ambiguities.”
“Well,” Maxine said, “the long and short of it is she told him she was pregnant.”
“Was she?”
“Hell, no!”
“Do you know?”
“I know.”
“And what happened?”
“She wanted him to marry her. She pulled the sweet-young-thing line on him and pointed out that her life had been ruined and it was up to him to take care of her and do the right thing.”
“And then?”
“Harmon Haslett went into a tailspin. He was afraid of the responsibility. He was afraid his father would find out. He was in a spot. So he turned to the troubleshooter. I think that’s you, Mr. Garland.”
Garland sat perfectly impassive, saying nothing.
“So young Haslett suggested that it might be possible for the troubleshooter to arrange for Ellen to see a doctor who would fix her up; and the troubleshooter told Harmon that that would be the last thing he’d want to see happen, that the minute Harmon mixed into anything like that he was laying himself wide open for trouble, that if things didn’t go just right he’d be in hot water and if things did turn out all right he’d be in a spot where he could be blackmailed.
“So this troubleshooter told Harmon Haslett to let him handle the whole thing.
“The troubleshooter went to Ezekiel and told the old man that he thought it would be a good plan if Harmon went to Europe for an indefinite stay to look over some of the European markets and broaden out his perspective a little bit.