The Case of the Velvet Claws   ::   Гарднер Эрл Стенли

“Now maybe that information will cut down the amount of time you’re going to take to look me up,” went on Mason. “If you call up Eva Belter, she’ll probably be sore because I came to you. She wants to handle it all by herself. Or else she’s never thought of you. I don’t know which. If you call her up, ask for her maid and leave some message with the maid about a dress or something. Then she’ll call you back.”

Harrison Burke looked surprised.

“How did you know that?” he asked.

“That’s the way she gets her messages,” said Mason. “Mine’s to tell about a dress. What’s yours?”

“About the delivery of shoes,” Harrison Burke blurted.

“It’s a good system,” Mason said, “providing she doesn’t get her wearing apparel mixed. And I’m not so sure about her maid.”

Burke’s reserve seemed to have melted.

“The maid,” he said, “doesn’t know anything. She simply delivers the message. Eva keeps the code. I didn’t know that she had any one else who used that sort of a code.”

Perry Mason laughed.

“Be your age,” he said.

“As a matter of fact,” said Harrison Burke, with dignity, “Mrs. Belter called me on the telephone not over an hour ago. She said that she was in serious difficulties and had to raise a thousand dollars at once. She wanted me to help her. She didn’t say what the money was for.”

Mason whistled.

“Well,” he said, “that makes it different. I was afraid she wasn’t going to make you kick in. I don’t care how you come through, but I think you should help carry the load. I’m working for you just as much as I am for her, and it’s a fight that’s running into money.”

Burke nodded. “Come back in half an hour,” he said, “and I’ll let you know.”

Mason moved toward the door. “All right,” he remarked, “make it half an hour then. And you’d better get the money in cash. Because you won’t want to have any checks going through your bank account, in case there should be any publicity about what I’m doing or whom I’m representing.”

Burke pushed back his chair, and made a politician’s tentative motion of extending his hand. Perry Mason did not see the hand, or, if he did, he did not bother to acknowledge it, but strode toward the door.

“Half an hour,” he said, on the threshold, and slammed the door behind him.

As he put his hand on the door catch of his automobile, a man tapped him on the shoulder.

Mason turned.

The man was a heavyset individual with impudent eyes.