The Case of the Velvet Claws   ::   Гарднер Эрл Стенли

After afew minutes, his telephone rang.

He picked up the receiver.

“Paul Drake,” saidDella Street’s voice.

Paul Drake’s voice said, “Hello, Perry.”

“Have you got anything?” Mason asked.

“Yes, I got a lucky break on that gun business, and I can give you the dope on it.”

“Your line’s all clear? There’s nobody listening?”

“No,” said Drake, “it’s okay.”

“All right,” Mason said, “hand it to me.”

“I don’t suppose you care anything about where the gun was jobbed or who the dealer was?” asked Drake. “What you want is the name of the purchaser.”

“That’s right.”

“All right, your gun was finally purchased by a man named Pete Mitchell, who gave his address asthirteen twentytwo West Sixtyninth Street.”

“All right,” said Mason, “have you got any dope on the other angle of the case? About Frank Locke?”

“No, I haven’t been able to get a report from our southern agency yet. I’ve traced him back to a southern state,Georgia it was, and the trail seems to go haywire there. It looks as though that’s where he changed his name.”

“That’s fine,” Mason said. “That’s where he had his trouble. How about the rest of it? Do you get anything on him?”

“I’ve got a line on the jane at the Wheelright Hotel,” Drake said. “It’s a girl named Esther Linten. She lives there at the Wheelright, has room ninefortysix, by the month.”

“What does she do?” asked Mason. “Did you find that out?”

“Anybody she can, I guess,” Drake told him. “We can’t get very much of a line on her as yet, but give us a little time, and let me get some sleep. A guy can’t be every place at once, and work without sleep.”

“You’ll get used to it after a while,” Mason told him, grinning, “particularly if you keep working on this case. You stay there in the office for five minutes. I’ll call you back.”

“Okay,” sighed Drake, and hung up.

Perry Mason went out to the outer office.

“Della,” he said, “do you remember when all of the political stuff was going around a couple of years ago? We made a file for some of the letters?”

“Yes,” she said, “there’s a file ‘Political Letters.’ I didn’t know what you saved them for.”

“Connections,” he said. “You’ll find a ‘BurkeforCongressClub’ letter some place in there. Get it for me, and make it snappy.