“She was on her first assignment there at the hospital and so she remembered the thing rather distinctly.”
“That’s no sign she could remember you personally,” Mason said.
“Oh, but she does. I have talked with her.”
“You’ve talked with her?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“Here in Los Angeles. She has a nursing job here now.”
“When did you talk with her?”
“Just a short time ago. That Agnes Burlington is diabolically clever. She had an idea of what was happening there in the hospital, so she just made a note of all of the records. Remember that I went there under the name of Melinda Baird and, of course, I gave the correct address at which Melinda Baird was living at the time. We had to do that in order to have the birth certificate and everything regular on its face.
“Well, Agnes Burlington bided her time, and then a couple of years ago she came to me and told me who she was, that she remembered me, and that she knew I had been posing as Melinda Baird and that the baby who was born and who was baptized Wight Baird was not the son of Melinda Baird and August Leroy Baird but was my illegitimate son.”
“What did she want?” Mason asked.
“What do you think she wanted? Money. She was a shrewd, professional blackmailer. A nurse has lots and lots of opportunities for blackmail if she wants to use them, and this girl certainly wanted to use them.”
“She’s living here in Los Angeles now?”
“Yes.”
“What’s she doing?”
“She lives in a nice duplex house. She works when she feels like it. She drives a good car. She knows several places where she can go to get money when she needs it and...”
“How much has she hooked you for?” Mason asked.
“Not too much so far. She’s reasonably modest in her demands and she’s very, very plausible. She tells about how she needs a loan and things of that sort just to tide her over, a couple of hundred dollars now, and then a year later she’ll be back for three hundred dollars, and always so nice about it.”
“She said she remembered you?” Mason asked.
“Oh, yes — and actually I think she does — but she had one of those thirty-five-Millimeter cameras and she got several pictures of me in the hospital — pictures I knew nothing about until she casually mentioned that she had them.”
“Did she show them to you?”
“No.”
“You don’t think she’s bluffing?”
“No, I think she has them.”
Mason said thoughtfully. “So you’ve been paying blackmail to keep from having your past exposed and now, suddenly, you want to reverse the whole procedure?”
“Why not?” she asked. “The Bairds were killed in an automobile accident. Harmon Haslett is now dead. Wight is sole heir to a two-million-dollar estate and a big business.
“I have been wondering what I was going to do about Wight. Frankly, Mr. Mason, he’s been just a little bit wild since the Bairds were killed in that automobile accident. They left a will giving him some money, and he’s showing signs of — well, of being just a little bit wild.
“If he suddenly found himself the head of a great big business, if he found himself with plenty of money, he would steady down and assume the responsibility.”
“You hope he would steady down and assume responsibility,” Mason said. “He might go just the other way.”
“No, not Wight,” she said. “He’s restless now because he doesn’t have an assured position in life. Believe me, things were different when the Bairds were alive; but they died and he inherited just enough money — no, Mr. Mason, I’ve thought it all over. I’ve come to the conclusion that I reached a wrong decision when I first came to you and I want to change my entire position now.”
“I see,” Mason said; “and what do you want me to do now?”
“I want you to have Agnes sign an affidavit and — isn’t there some proceeding by which you can get an affidavit or some sort of a legal document from a person who knows very important facts but who might die or turn up missing or something?”
“Where there is reason to believe a person is the only one who knows certain facts and the facts are vital to property interests, there is a procedure by which the testimony can be perpetuated.”
“That’s what I want done in this case.”
“Your son is going under the name of Baird?”
“Yes. Wight Baird. One day when Melinda and August were both away and Wight was there in the house alone this woman came to call on him. She was very nice. She told him that she was one of the nurses in the hospital in San Francisco when he was born and that she attended his mother and that she wanted to see his mother. Evidently she was planning to blackmail the Bairds.”
“This was the same nurse?”
“Oh, yes; she gave her name — Agnes Burlington.”
“And then what happened?”
“She asked Wight about his mother — if his mother was a tall woman with what she called a commanding presence. And Wight laughed and said, ‘No, she’s medium height and inclined to be a little plump.’ And one thing led to another and then this nurse went away.”
Mason said, “You’re not telling me the whole story. Let’s have it all.”
“All right,” she said; “the nurse started blackmailing the Bairds. She hunted up Mr. Baird and told him who she was and told him that she had been one of the nurses when his son was born, and she made such thinly veiled statements about the mother’s being a tall woman and how she’d talked with the mother and would remember her anywhere that when she wanted to borrow two hundred and fifty dollars Baird loaned it to her.”
“Then what?”
“Then after a while she came back and borrowed two hundred and fifty more.”
“How much altogether?”
“She put the bite on the Bairds for twelve hundred and fifty dollars in all.”
“And where did that money come from? Did they pass it out willingly?”
“They paid it,” Ellen said. “They were reluctant to pay it, but they had no choice.”
“And during all of that time you were paying this nurse?”
“Yes, I was loaning her money.”
“So now you want her to talk,” Mason said musingly.
“Yes, I paid money to keep her from talking. Now it’s just the other way. I want her to talk now. I’m going to want her to testify.”
Mason said, “This could be one most ingenious and gigantic fraud.”
“What do you mean?”
“You could have hatched this whole thing up after finding out there was a potential two-million-dollar estate to be had if a claimant... Look, Ellen, I’ll talk with this nurse, but I’m going to be very, very skeptical — and I’ll want to see proof — lots of proof.”
“She can give you proof,” Ellen Adair said.
Mason said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. We’ll go call on this Agnes Burlington. If I think she’s telling the truth, I’ll get an affidavit from her.”
“And there’s some way you can start proceedings so that you can perpetuate her testimony in case something should happen to her?” Ellen Adair asked.
“She’s been around for twenty years,” Mason said. “She’ll probably be here a few years longer. But there is a procedure by which the testimony of a witness can be perpetuated.”
“And we’ll do that?”
Mason said, “The last time I talked with you, you dismissed me; you didn’t want me as an attorney.”
“The situation has changed since then. I have changed my mind about a lot of things.”
“I’ll say you have,” Mason said. Then he asked abruptly. “What about Maxine Edfield?”