Lovett became thoughtfully silent.
Jarmen Dayton said, “How about you. Garland?”
Garland grinned. “As far as I am concerned, I am sitting on the sidelines. But I’m the one that is responsible for this debacle. I made the fatal mistake of underestimating my adversary.
“Of course, the only identification I had was an old photograph taken twenty years ago and a description that she was unusually tall and had a rather dignified, regal air about her. When I baited Perry Mason into sending for his client and this woman came to his office and left and I tailed her here — well, I admit that, now I think back on it, it was just too darned easy. You don’t tangle with Perry Mason and come off that easy.”
Dayton said, “You don’t think she’s Ellen Calvert?”
Garland laughed and said, “If she’s Ellen Calvert, I’m Napoleon Bonaparte.”
Maxine Edfield screamed, “You can’t gyp me out of my money that easy! Of course she’s Ellen Calvert!”
Mason glanced significantly at Della Street, who had been taking notes.
“What do you mean ‘gyp you out of your money,’ Maxine?”
“That guy Lovett was going to pay me—”
“Shut up!” Lovett shouted. “You damn fool, keep your trap shut!”
Maxine Edfield suddenly became silent.
“You got that down, Della?” Mason asked.
“Every word of it,” Della said.
Mason grinned. “I think we can all go home now.”
“Now just a minute, just a minute,” Lovett said. “I don’t want those last statements misinterpreted. I agreed to pay Maxine Edfield her expenses out here and a hundred dollars a day for the time she was here. I did not agree to pay her for any testimony.”
Mason smiled politely. “I think,” he said, “my prior remarks still stand and we can adjourn the meeting.
“As far as you’re concerned, Miss Alva, you can report to Paul Drake that you’ve done everything you were hired to do, that you’re vacating the apartment. And thank you very much for your cooperation.”
Mason arose, walked to the corridor door, held it open, smiled and said, “This way out.”
Chapter Eight
Mason and Della Street left the elevator and walked down the long corridor toward Mason’s offices.
“Do we stop in and say hello to Paul Drake?” Della Street asked.
Mason shook his head. “No. Drake will have received a report from his operative, Jessie Alva. He’ll know that the case is terminated as-far as he’s concerned.”
“And as far as we’re concerned?”
Mason grinned. “Well, we had a dramatic conclusion anyway.”
Della Street laughed. “I’ll never forget the expression on that lawyer’s face when he had so patronizingly stated that he had expected more from you in the line of cross-examination and then suddenly realized that you had trapped his witness and his whole case had blown up in his face.”
Mason said thoughtfully, “Of course, Della, the fact that Maxine Edfield made a mistake in the identity of Ellen Calvert actually doesn’t discredit her whole testimony.”
“But the way you trapped her into the admission it does,” Della Street said.
“That,” Mason told her, fitting his key to the lock on the door to his private office, “is only one thing. Her admission of receiving payment for her testimony is going to hurt that side of the case more than anything.”
The lawyer opened the door, held it for Della, then entered behind her, removed his key, and closed the door.
“Of course, Maxine Edfield could have been telling the truth. She was too eager to be of service to Duncan Lovett. And when Lovett assured her that they had run Ellen Calvert to earth and they went to the apartment and the door was opened by a tall woman with a queenly bearing who matched the general description of Ellen Calvert, Maxine naturally jumped to an erroneous conclusion.
“After all, she had the word of Duncan Lovett, of Stephen Garland, and of Jarmen Dayton that this was the person they were looking for.”
Della Street said, “Gertie’s still working. I’d better report to her that we’re here.”
She picked up the telephone to the outer office, said, “We’re back, Gertie. If there’s anyone... what?... WHAT!”
“Good heavens!” Della said. “Hang on!”
She turned to Perry Mason and said, “The real Ellen Calvert is in the office impatiently waiting to see you.”
“Good lord!” Mason said. “Now we will have a field day!”
“Do you suppose Garland and Dayton are still watching the office?” Della Street asked.
“They’d hardly expect me to be so foolish as to send for my client now,” Mason said thoughtfully. “And they’d hardly expect Ellen to be so foolish as to come in, but — well, we’re in for it now, Della. Tell Gertie to have her come in.”
Della Street passed the message over the telephone to the receptionist, and a few seconds later Ellen Adair opened the door to the private office.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mason,” she said, “but I simply had to see you. I’ve changed my mind.”
“You’ve chosen a mighty poor time to change your mind,” Mason said. “Sit down.”
“Why?” she asked. “What’s so bad about the time?”
Mason said, “As I suppose you are aware, Harmon Haslett has been lost at sea in the wreck of a private yacht. Stephen Garland, the troubleshooter for the company, and Jarmen Dayton, a detective, came out here to try and locate you. They knew that you had been in my office. They assumed you would come again.
“I anticipated their moves and hired a female detective of about your age and build, gave her instructions in the mannerisms she was to assume, and staked her out in an apartment.
“We have just come from that apartment, where we had a dramatic scene. An attorney named Duncan Z. Lovett brought a witness — a Maxine Edfield — who identified the female detective as you and stated that you and she had double-dated and that you had confided in her after your love affair with Harmon Haslett, that you were worried because you thought Harmon was cooling off and you decided, after conferring with Maxine Edfield, to pretend that you were pregnant and see if you couldn’t force Haslett into marriage.
“In place of that scheme’s working, she said, Haslett left abruptly for Europe, acting on the advice of Garland, the troubleshooter. She said that Garland sent you a thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills and you decided to go away and begin life all over again, that you never were pregnant and the whole thing had been a scheme to try and force Harmon Haslett into matrimony.”
“Why, the lying little...”
“Take it easy,” Mason said. “It’s necessary that you have this information quickly. Then we can discuss it after you know the facts.
“Maxine Edfield identified the detective as being you. She was about your height and complexion, and I had given her instructions as to how to walk and how to comport herself.
“The result was rather ludicrous. Maxine Edfield insisted that she was telling the truth. She also insisted that the detective was the woman she had known as Ellen Calvert, the woman who had confided in her.
“Everything blew sky high after Lovett’s witness got herself in that trap.
“Now, then, you’ve walked into my office. If Garland and Dayton are still shadowing the office in the forlorn hope that you’ll show up, they’ll know from the description that they’ve hit pay dirt.”
“Let them hit pay dirt,” she said. “I’m going to come out in the open and fight.”
“Fight for what?” Mason asked.
“Two million dollars for my son.”
“Whoa, back up,” Mason said. “That’s an entirely different attitude from the one you had when you were here before.”