The Case of the Velvet Claws

Drumm’s fingers closed over the money.

“Baby,” he said, “these look good after that poker game I was in last night. Come around again some time when you’ve got another client like this one.”

“I may have this client for some time,” Mason observed.

“That’ll be fine,” Drumm said.

Mason got in his car. His face was grim as he stepped on the starter and sent the machine speeding out toward Elmwood Drive.

Elmwood Drive was in the more exclusive residential district of the city. Houses, set well back from the street, were fronted with bits of lawn, and the grounds were ornamented with well-kept hedges and trees. Mason slid his car to a stop before five hundred and fifty-six. It was a pretentious house, occupying the top of a small knoll. There were no other houses within some two hundred feet on either side, and the knoll had been landscaped to set off the magnificence of the house.

Mason didn’t drive his car into the driveway, but parked it in the street, and went on foot to the front door. A light was burning on the porch. The evening was hot, and myriad insects clustered about the light, beating their wings against the big globe of frosted glass which surrounded the incandescent.

When he had rung the second time, the door was opened by a butler in livery. Perry Mason took one of his cards from his pocket, and handed it to the butler.

“Mr. Belter,” he said, “wasn’t expecting me, but he’ll see me.”

The butler glanced at the card, and stood to one side.

“Very good, sir. Will you come in, sir?”

Perry Mason walked into a reception room, and the butler indicated a chair. Mason could hear him climbing stairs. Then he heard voices from an upper floor, and the sound of the butler’s feet coming down the stairs again.

The butler stepped into the room, and said: “I beg your pardon, but Mr. Belter doesn’t seem to know you. Could you tell me what it was you wanted to see him about?”

Mason looked at the man’s eyes, and said, shortly, “No.”

The butler waited a moment, thinking that Mason might add to the comment, then, as nothing was said, turned and went back up the stairs. This time he was gone three or four minutes. When he returned, his face was wooden.

“Please step this way,” he said. “Mr. Belter will see you.”

Mason followed the man up the stairs and into a sitting room which was evidently one of a suite which opened from the hallway, taking up an entire wing of the house. The room was furnished with an eye to comfort and none for style. The chairs were massive and comfortable. No attempt had been made to follow any particular scheme of decoration, and the room radiated a masculinity which was untempered by feminine taste.

A door to an i

Perry Mason had a chance to look past this man, into the room from which he had emerged. It was a room fitted up as a study with book cases lining the walls, a massive desk and swivel chair in one corner, and, beyond that, a glimpse of a tiled bathroom.

The man stepped into the room and pulled the door closed behind him.

He was a huge bulk of a man with a face that was fat and pasty. There were puffs under his eyes. His chest was deep and his shoulders very broad. His hips were narrow, and Mason had the impression that the legs were probably thin. It was the eyes that commanded attention. They were hard as diamonds and utterly cold.

For a second or two the man stood near the door, staring at Mason. Then he walked forward, and his gait strengthened the impression that his legs were taxed to capacity to carry about the great weight of his torso.

Mason surmised that the man was somewhere in the late forties, and there was that in his ma

Standing, Mason was a good four inches shorter than this man, although his shoulders were as broad.

“Mr. Belter?” he asked.

The man nodded, planted his feet wide apart, and stared at Mason.

“What do you want?” he snapped.

Mason said, “I’m sorry to come to your house, but I wanted to talk over a matter of business.”

“What about?”

“About a certain story that Spicy Bits threatens to publish. I don’t want it published.”

The diamond-hard eyes never so much as changed expression. They stared fixedly at Perry Mason.

“Why come here about it?” asked Belter.

“Because I think you’re the one that I want to see.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“I think you are.”

“I’m not. Don’t know anything at all about Spicy Bits. I’ve read the sheet once in a while. It’s a dirty, blackmailing rag, if you ask me.”

Mason’s eyes became hard. His body seemed to lean forward slightly from the hips.

“All right,” he said. “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.”

“Telling me what?” Belter asked.

“Telling you that I’m an attorney, and I’m representing a client that Spicy Bits is trying to blackmail, and I don’t like the set-up. I’m telling you that I don’t intend to pay the price that’s demanded, and I’m telling you further that I don’t intend to pay a damned cent. I’m not going to buy any advertising in your sheet, and your sheet isn’t going to publish the story about my client. Get that, and get it straight!”

Belter sneered. “It serves me right,” he said, “for seeing the first shyster ambulance chaser that comes pounding at the door. I should have had the butler kick you out. You’re either drunk or crazy. Or both. Personally, I have an idea it’s both. Now are you going to get out, or shall I call the police?”

“I’ll get out,” Mason said, “when I finish what I was saying. You’ve kept in the background in this thing, and had Locke for your goat to stand out in front and take it. You’ve sat back and raked in the cash. You’ve received dividends out of blackmail. All right. Here’s where you get an assessment.”

Belter stood staring at Mason, saying nothing.

“I don’t know whether you know who I am, or whether you know what I want,” Mason went on, “but you can find out pretty quick by getting in touch with Locke. I’m telling you that if Spicy Bits publishes anything about my client, I’ll rip off the mask of the man who owns the damned rag! Do you get that?”

“All right,” Belter remarked. “You’ve made your threat. Now I’ll make mine. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t give a damn. Maybe your reputation is sufficiently spotless so that you can afford to go around and make threats. Then again, maybe it isn’t. Perhaps you’d better watch some of your own fences before you start throwing mud over other people’s.”

Mason nodded curtly. “Of course, I expected that,” he said.

“Well,” Belter said, “you won’t be disappointed then. But don’t think that’s an admission that I’m mixed up with Spicy Bits. I don’t know a damned thing about it. And I don’t want to. Now get out!”

Mason turned and walked through the door.

The butler was on the threshold. He spoke to Belter.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but your wife wants very much to see you before she goes out, and she’s just leaving.”