“Only that it’s heavy and it feels like there is a lot of money in it. I want you to tell me what’s legal and to vouch for the fact that I’ve tried to act within the law in case anything should come up afterwards.”
Mason’s eyes narrowed. “What assurance would we have that you haven’t already opened the suitcase, or that if we should open it and find it’s full of money that you won’t open it again as soon as you leave here and take out part of the money?”
“Why, Mr. Mason, I... I... Why, I wouldn’t do anything like that. Can’t you understand, the fact that I wouldn’t even open it in the first place just to peek at the contents until I had consulted you should be all the guarantee you need of my honesty.”
Her big brown eyes grew wide with an expression of naive innocence as she looked at the lawyer.
“Mr. Theilman didn’t authorize you to look in the suitcase?”
“No. He gave me just the instructions that I’ve told you.”
“Then why do you want to pry into his private affairs?”
“Because he’s being blackmailed and I want to help him. The victim of blackmail is always helpless. He doesn’t have courage to go to the police and—”
“You don’t know this is blackmail,” Mason said. “It may be a business deal.”
“It may be a business deal, in which event I’m his confidential secretary and no word of it will ever leak out. I’m only trying to help the man and I... I did so hope you’d understand, Mr. Mason.”
Mason said, “How much money do you have in your purse?”
“About thirty dollars.”
“Give me a dollar,” Mason said.
She handed him a dollar.
“Make out a receipt,” Mason said to Della Street. “Make it to Janice Wainwright for consultation.”
Della Street went to her secretarial desk, opened a receipt book, made out a receipt and handed it to Janice Wainwright.
“All right,” Mason said, “give me the key.”
Janice Wainwright again reached in her purse and took out a key.
Mason gave the suitcase a heave, brought it up to his desk, fitted the key and snapped the lock, then opened the suitcase. The interior was filled with twenty-dollar bills fastened together in packages with rubber bands.
“Get me a dictating machine,” Mason said to Della Street, “and then move over that tape recorder, Della.”
When he had the tape recording machine and the dictating machine set up, Mason said to Della Street, “Unfasten those rubber bands, read as many numbers as you can within the next ten minutes into that tape recorder. I’ll do the same thing with the dictating machine here.”
Mason snapped off the rubber bands, picked up the microphone and dictated, “L68519985B, L65810983B, L77582344B, G78342831A, I14877664A.”
By the time he had finished with this last number, Della Street had the tape recording machine set up and started reading numbers from twenty-dollar bills.
For ten minutes they dictated a steady stream of numbers. Then Mason said, “We can’t hope to get through with this whole bunch of bills in any reasonable time, Miss Wainwright. After all, Mr. Theilman will be expecting you to get back and—”
“I was thinking of that,” she interrupted impatiently. “You have enough to establish the identity of quite a few of the bills and — I think — well, I’d like to close up the suitcase and go now if I may — that is, if you think it’s all right.”
Mason nodded, snapped the rubber bands back into place on the last package of bills he had been holding in his hand, waited until Della Street had done the same with the bills she was holding, then fitted them back into the suitcase, closed the suitcase, snapped the lock into position and turned the key.
“You say you have a cab waiting downstairs, Miss Wainwright?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” Mason said, “on your way.”
As Janice Wainwright got to her feet, Mason said, “Now, there’s one precaution I’m going to take in the interests of safety for both of us.”
“What’s that?”
“My secretary, Della Street, is going with you,” Mason said. “She’ll see that you go down to the Union Depot and follow instructions exactly. She’ll be in a position to swear that from the time we closed the suitcase here in the office you didn’t reopen the suitcase, that you would have had no opportunity to have taken any of the money. And to make doubly certain you won’t have opened the suitcase, I’ll keep the key.”
For a moment Janice hesitated, as though the idea didn’t appeal to her in the least. Then she said demurely, “Very well, Mr. Mason. Anything you say. If that’s the way you think it should be done, that’s the way I want to do it.”
“That,” Mason said, “is the way I think it should be done.” He nodded to Della Street.
Chapter Two
It was quarter past twelve when Della Street returned to the office.
“Everything okay?” Mason asked.
She circled her thumb and forefinger, indicating that everything was all right.
“You got the suitcase in the box?” Mason asked.
“And mailed the key.”
“The suitcase went in there and was locked up?”
“That’s right,” she said. “And I took occasion to do a little snooping, just to be sure. I told her I wanted to see the envelope so that in case I had to report to you I could report everything was all right. So then she suggested that I be the one to mail the envelope and I took her up on it.”
“The envelope was sealed?”
“Sealed, stamped, and addressed to A. B. Vidal, General Delivery. Why, Chief? Why are you so suspicious of her?”
“I’m not exactly suspicious of her,” Mason said, “I’m distrustful of the whole set of circumstances.”
“Why?”
“To begin with,” Mason said, “why should this mysterious blackmailer go to all the trouble of cutting these words out of newspapers? That must have taken quite some time and quite a bit of newspaper reading.”
“But,” Della Street said, “in that way they can’t trace him through his handwriting or typewriting.”
“Exactly,” Mason said. “So then he goes ahead and addresses an envelope to Morley Theilman on a type-writer and puts his return address on it, A. B. Vidal, General Delivery. Typewriting is as distinctive as handwriting. If our blackmailer was going to take chances with a typewriter on the envelope, why didn’t he go all the way and type the message?”
Della Street said, “I’ll bet he went into a typewriter store and asked to look at a used machine and then, while apparently testing it, addressed the envelope.”
“Then why didn’t he go all the way and type the message on that machine as well?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Neither do I,” Mason said.
Della Street frowned, then said, “Isn’t it axiomatic that crooks always manage to do something that traps them?”
“Statistics seem to so indicate,” Mason said dryly, “but it’s unusual for a man to go out of his way to trap himself. You know, he could have cut Theilman’s name and address out of a telephone directory and pasted it on the envelope. Let’s see if Paul Drake’s in his office, Della. I just want to check on a couple of aspects of this problem.”
Della Street regarded him curiously for a moment, then placed the call to the Drake Detective Agency, which was on the same floor of the building where Mason had his offices.
“He’s just leaving for lunch,” Della Street said.
“Ask” him to come down, will you, Della?”
Della Street relayed the request and a moment later walked over to open the corridor door in response to Drake’s code knock.
Paul Drake, tall, slow-moving, with long arms and legs, grinned at Mason, turned to Della Street, said, “Hi, Beautiful,” then turned back to the lawyer. “Whatever it is, Perry, I hope it doesn’t interfere with my lunch.”