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“Mr. Johnson,” he said. “Has Mr. Mason come in yet?”
“No,” said Della Street, “he hasn’t. I’m afraid he’s going to be awfully busy when he does come in, Mr. Johnson. Something happened last night. I don’t know exactly what it was, but it was a murder case of some kind, and Mr. Mason is representing one of the main witnesses. There have been some newspaper reporters trying to see him, and there’s some one who insists on staying in the outer office. I think he’s a police detective. So I’m very much afraid that if you were counting on seeing Mr. Mason at the office this morning, you’re going to be disappointed.”
“Gee, that’s too bad,” Mason said. “I have some papers to dictate that I know Mr. Mason would want to see, and probably he’d have to sign them. I wonder if you could tell me some one who could take them down in shorthand?”
“I think I could,” said Della Street.
“I was just wondering,” said Mason, “whether you could get away with all of the people that are around there.”
“Leave it to me,” she said.
“I’m at the Hotel Ripley,” he told her.
“Okay,” she said, and hung up.
Mason stared at Eva Beltermoodily.
“All right,” he said, “since you’re here, and you’ve risked this much, you’re going to stay here for a while.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“I’m going to file a petition for letters of administration,” he said. “That will force them to come out and offer the will for probate, and then we’re going to file a contest to the probate of the will, and make an application to have you appointed a special administratrix.”
“What does all that mean?”
“That means,” he told her, “that you’re going to be in the saddle from now on, and we’re going to keep you there no matter what they do.”
“What good will that do?” she asked. “If I’m virtually disinherited under the will, we’ve got to prove it’s a forgery, and I can’t get anything until after there’s been a trial and a judgment. Can I?”
“I’m thinking about the management of the properties of the estate,” said Mason, “Spicy Bits for instance.”
“Oh,” she said, “I see.”
Mason went on, “We’re going to dictate these papers all at once, and leave them with my secretary so that she can file them, one at a time. You’ve got to take that will and put it back. They’ll probably have a guard in the room so you can’t return it where you found it, but you can plant it some place in the house.”
She tittered once more. “I can do that, too,” she said.
Mason said: “You do take the damnedest chances. Why you fished that will out of there is more than I know. If you’re caught with it, it might be serious.”
“Cheer up,” she told him, “I won’t be caught with it. You don’t ever take a chance, do you?”
“My God!” he said. “I took a chance when I started in mixing in your business. You’re plain dynamite.”
She smiled seductively at him. “Do you think so?” she said. “I know some men who like women that way.”
He stared moodily at her.
“You’re getting drunk,” he told her. “Lay off that whiskey.”
“My,” she said, “you talk just like a husband.”
He walked over, picked up the whiskey bottle, jammed the cork in, put the bottle in the drawer of the bureau, locked the drawer and put the key in his pocket.
“Was that nice?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
The telephone rang. Mason answered it. The clerk advised him that a messenger had just arrived with a package for him.
Mason said to have a boy bring the package up, and hung up.
When the bellboy knocked at the door, Mason was standing at the knob. He opened the door, handed the boy a tip, and took the envelope. It was the report from the Detective Agency concerning the activities of Frank Locke on the preceding evening.
“What is it?” asked Eva Belter.
He shook his head, walked over to the window, opened the envelope, and started reading the typewritten report.
It was rather simple. Locke had gone to a speakeasy, stayed there half an hour, gone to a barber shop, had a shave and massage, gone to the Wheelright Hotel, gone to room 946, remained there five or ten minutes, and then had gone to di
They had dined and danced until eleven o’clock, and then had gone back to the room in the Wheelright. Bellboys had brought up ginger ale and ice, and Locke had stayed in the room until one-thirty in the morning, when he had left.
Mason thrust the reports into his pocket and started drumming with the tips of his fingers on the sash of the window.
“You make me nervous,” said Eva Belter. “I wish you’d tell me what’s going on.”
“I’ve told you what we’re going to do.”
“What were those papers?”
“A business matter.”
“What business?”
He laughed at her. “Do I have to tell you the business of all of my clients just because I happen to be working for you?”
She frowned at him. “I think you’re horrid.”
He shrugged his shoulders and continued drumming upon the sash of the window.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” he called.
The door opened and Della Street walked in. She stiffened as she saw Eva Belter on the bed.
“Okay, Della,” said Mason. “We’ve got to have some papers ready for an emergency that may arise. We’ve got to figure on a petition for letters of administration, on a contest for the probate of a will, and on an application for special letters of administration, an order appointing Mrs. Belter as special administratrix, and a bond all ready to submit for approval and filing. Then we’ve got to have special letters of administration, with copies to be certified and served on interested parties.”
Della Street asked coolly, “Do you wish to dictate them now?”
“Yes, and I want some breakfast.”
He went to the telephone, rang room service, and ordered breakfast sent up.
Della Street stared at Eva Belter. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’ll have to have that table.”
Eva Belter arched her eyebrows and picked up her glass from the table, much with the gesture of a woman gathering her skirts about her when encountering a beggar on the street.
Mason lifted off the ginger ale bottle and the bowl of ice, polished the top of the table with the moist cover which had been on it, and set it down in front of a chair for Della Street.
She pulled up the straight-back chair, crossed her knees, put the notebook on the table, and poised her pencil.
Perry Mason dictated rapidly for twenty minutes. At the end of that time breakfast arrived. The three ate heartily and almost in silence. Eva Belter managed to give the impression that she was eating with the servants.
When the breakfast was finished, Mason had the things taken away, and proceeded with his dictation. By nine-thirty he had finished.
“Go back to the office and write those up,” he told Della, “and have them all ready for signature. But don’t let anybody see what you’re doing. You’d better keep the outer office door locked. You can use the printed forms for the petitions.”