“Am I supposed to be an embezzler or something?” she asked.
Mason shook his head. “You’re just supposed to be a woman who is trying to avoid her past.”
She smiled. “I must have quite a purple past,” she said, “if I haven’t been guilty of any crime.”
Mason nodded gravely. “That,” he said, “is something that I am also keeping in mind.”
She finished her coffee, handed the cup to Della Street, and said, “Could I have just another half cup, please?”
While Della poured the coffee, the operative sized up Mason. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve ever worked directly on one of your cases. I think I’m going to enjoy it.”
“I certainly hope so,” Mason said. “Unless things come to a head rather promptly, it’s going to be rather tedious for you, sitting there in an apartment and...”
“Oh, there’s a television and a radio,” she said. “I’ll pick up a couple of books that I’ve been trying to read and I’ll get along fine. This is a vacation with pay as far as I’m concerned. You should see some of the jobs I get mixed up with.”
“I guess it’s an adventurous life,” Mason said.
“You can say that again,” she observed.
She placed the cup and saucer on the edge of the filing case. “Ready for me to go?” she asked.
“O.K.,” Mason said. “I’ll get the number of the telephone from Paul Drake. You have my number. You can call me if anything turns up, but remember that both lines may be tapped after you have been there for a day or so. It will take them a day to concentrate on getting some electronic device in operation. Just be careful — and, above all, be just Ellen. Don’t use your last name when you call me. Say, ‘This is Ellen speaking’.”
“I’ve got it,” she said.
Mason moved over to the exit door. “Remember now,” he cautioned, “be naive. Stand tall, be dignified. Act natural, but be entirely unsuspecting.”
“Will do,” she said, flashing him a smile, and moved out of the office, holding her chin high.
Mason returned and held out his coffee cup to Della Street.
“Well?” she asked.
Mason grinned. “To hell with all the routine stuff, Della. This is the sort of thing which makes a lawyer’s life worthwhile.”
“To whom are you going to charge all these expenses?” she asked.
Mason grinned. “So far, to me. This is as good as a vacation.”
“Some holiday!” she said.
Mason put a powdered cream substitute and sugar in his coffee, stirred the liquid thoughtfully. “We will take the utmost precautions to see that we’re not followed tonight, Della,” he announced, “but I think that our decoy will be working. I think we’ll have sent the hounds baying off on a false scent.”
“You,” Della Street charged, “are as happy as a kid with a new toy.”
“I am for a fact,” Mason agreed.
Chapter Three
Mason and Della Street entered The Blue Ox promptly at seven-thirty. The headwaiter came forward deferentially. “Your booth is ready, Mr. Mason, and you have someone waiting.”
“Has that someone been here long?” Mason asked.
“About five minutes.”
“Description?”
“Rather tall woman with a commanding presence, somewhere in her early thirties or perhaps her late twenties...”
Della Street winked at Perry Mason.
“Ever the diplomat,” Mason said. “I’ll be sure to tell her. All right, lead the way, Pierre.”
The headwaiter ushered them to Mason’s booth. As he pulled aside the curtain, Ellen Adair looked up apprehensively, and her face showed relief as she saw Mason and Della Street.
“You’re a little early,” Mason said.
She nodded.
“Cocktail?” Mason asked.
“A dry Martini, please.”
“Two Bacardis and a dry Martini,” Mason said to Pierre. “Will you see that we get them Pierre?”
“Right away.”
“Hungry?” Mason asked.
“Not particularly.”
“Now then,” Mason said, “keep your voice low and tell me what this is all about.”
“Mr. Mason,” she said, “I have some money. I am not wealthy. I have the money which came to me from my mother’s estate, and I have some savings. I am the head buyer at French, Coleman and Swazey, and for reasons which I can’t go into I simply can’t afford to have my identity disclosed. That is, I can’t afford to be discovered as Ellen Calvert.”
“Can you tell me why?”
She hesitated a moment, then slowly shook her head.
“These people from Cloverville, or this one person, at least,” Mason said, “do you know him? Do you have any ideas? Pudgy, forty-five, partially bald, with...”
She shook her head before Mason had finished the description.
A waitress brought their cocktails.
“Give us ten minutes,” Mason said, “and then bring us another round and the menu, please.”
The waitress nodded and withdrew.
“You won a beauty contest and you were pregnant,” Mason said.
“Yes.”
“Pregnancy requires two people. Who was the other person?”
“Do you have to know?”
“If I’m going to help you, I do.”
She sipped her cocktail thoughtfully, then said, “I was eighteen. I was good-looking. People said I was beautiful. I thought the world was my oyster. The man in the case was about five years older. He was the son of a very wealthy man, a... a social big shot. I was flattered by his attention. I was also in love.”
“Was he in love?” Mason asked.
She hesitated, then looked Mason in the eyes and said, “I don’t know. At the time I thought not.”
“Why do you say that?” Mason asked.
She said, “I was looking forward to a career. I had everything. Then, all of a sudden, the whole structure collapsed. I found I was pregnant.
“Remember this was twenty years ago, Mr. Mason. When I realized the situation, I went into a complete panic.”
“You got in touch with your boyfriend?”
“At once.”
“And what did he do?”
“He was just as frightened as I was, but his father was president of a big company. My boyfriend told me not to worry, that they had a man whose duty it was to build public relations to give the company a good image. He said that person would know how I could get fixed up.”
“And you?”
“I told him I didn’t want that — that I couldn’t go to an abortionist. He asked me if I was old-fashioned or something, and we left each other with a feeling of mutual irritation. He couldn’t see my position; I couldn’t see his.”
“And what happened?”
“This expert in the field of public relations knew what to do all right,” she said. “The next day I received an envelope by special messenger. There was no return address on the envelope. I opened it, and there were ten hundred-dollar bills in it. The next day I read in the paper that my boyfriend had left that afternoon on an extensive European trip. I never saw him again.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
Mason toyed with the stem of his cocktail glass. “I think you do,” he said.
“Well,” she admitted after a few moments, “I know this much: about a year after he returned from Europe he married a young woman whom he had met on the trip. The marriage was not particularly happy from all I can learn, but they stayed together.”
“What happened to her?” Mason asked.
“She died about a year and a half ago.”
“Any children?”
“No.”
“What about the boy’s father?”