The Case of the Velvet Claws   ::   Гарднер Эрл Стенли

“You don’t find loyalty in wives,” he said, “who pay five hundred dollarretainers. She’s a client.”

Della Street shook her head, and said: “That isn’t what I meant. I meant that there’s something false about her. She’s concealing something from you right now; something that you should know. She’s sending you up against something as a blind proposition when she could make it easy for you if she’d only be frank.”

Perry Mason made a gesture with his shoulders.

“Why should I care if she makes it easy for me?” he asked. “She’s the one that’s paying for my time. Time is all I’m investing.”

Della Street said, slowly: “Are you sure that time is all you’re investing?”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “the woman’s dangerous. She is just the kind of a little minx who would get you into some sort of a jam and leave you to take it, right on the button.”

His face didn’t change expression, but his eyes glinted. “That’s one of the chances I have to take,” he told her. “I can’t expect my clients to be loyal to me. They pay me money. That’s all.”

She stared at him with a speculative look that held something of a wistful tenderness. “But you insist on being loyal to your clients, no matter how rotten they are.”

“Of course,” he told her. “That’s my duty.”

“To your profession?”

“No,” he said slowly, “to myself. I’m a paid gladiator. I fight for my clients. Most clients aren’t square shooters. That’s why they’re clients. They’ve got themselves into trouble. It’s up to me to get them out. I have to shoot square with them. I can’t always expect them to shoot square with me.”

“It isn’t fair!” she blazed.

“Of course not,” he smiled. “It’s business.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I told the detective that you wanted her shadowed as soon as she left the office,” she said, abruptly getting back to her duties. “He said he’d be there to pick her up.”

“You talked with Paul Drake himself?”

“Of course, otherwise I wouldn’t have told you everything was all right.”

“Okay,” he said, “you can bank three hundred out of that retainer, and give me two hundred to put in my pocket. We’ll find out who she really is, and then we’ll have an ace in the hole.”

Della Street went back to the outer office, returned with two hundred dollars in currency, which she handed to Perry Mason.

He smiled at her.

“You’re a good girl, Della,” he said. “Even if you do get funny ideas about women.