He's a young dentist—rather impecunious. I don't like him."
"And what's he doing in the city?"
"He's here because Margy is here."
"A friend of hers?" asked Mason.
"He would like to be."
"And you think he'll offer me employment?"
"Hardly," said Bradbury. "I happen to know that he borrowed two hundred and fifty dollars at his bank just before he came to the city. He had some trouble getting the money."
"But you said," Mason pointed out, "that you didn't want me to accept any employment from him."
"I mean," Bradbury said, "that I want you to under stand the situation. That if he should approach you, I want you to remember that you are employed by me. He might offer you a note, or something."
"I see," Perry Mason said. "In other words, I'm to remember that you're the one who arranged that Miss Clune should have the benefit of my services, and that the credit goes to you exclusively. Is that it?"
A frown of annoyance came to Bradbury's face, which was speedily dissipated by a smile.
"Well," he said, "that's putting it rather directly, but I guess you have the idea."
Mason nodded.
"Anything else?" he asked.
"That's all. I've given Mr. Drake all of the details, a complete mass of details."
Paul Drake nodded to Perry Mason.
"Let's go," he said.
"You can reach me at any time," Bradbury said, "at the Mapleton Hotel. I'm in room 693. Your secretary has a note of the address and the telephone number, Mr. Mason; and Drake also has the information."
Drake nodded.
"Come on, Perry," he said.
The two men turned toward the elevator. Bradbury watched them for a moment, half turned toward the cigar counter, ran his eye over the file of magazines on display; then strode briskly out to the sidewalk.
"I owe you one on that," said Paul Drake to Perry Mason in the elevator.
"Got a good fee?" asked Mason as the cage stopped at his floor.
"Pretty fair. He's rather tight on money matters, but I've worked out a good arrangement with him. The case is a cinch."
"You think so?" Mason asked.
"I know it," said Drake as Mason pushed open the door of his office.
"This man Patton has put on the same kind of a racket other places. It's too well thought out and too smooth to have been tried out just once. I won't bother about the Cloverdale angle. I'll pick out some of the other places… Hello, Miss Street. How are you today?"
Della Street smiled at him.
"I presume," she said, "you came in to look at the photograph."
"What photograph?" asked Paul Drake, trying to look innocent.
She laughed.
"Oh, well," Drake said, "I may as well look at it while I'm here."
"It's in on Mr. Mason's desk," she told him.
Perry Mason led the way to his private office, dropped into the swivel chair and picked up the legal jacket which was on the desk. He passed it over to the detective. The detective looked at the photograph and whistled.
"Plenty of class," he said.
"Yes," Mason said, "that's one thing about Patton, he's a good picker. What was it you wanted to see me about, Paul?"
"I want to know what's going to happen in this case," the detective said.
"Nothing in particular," Mason remarked. "You're going to find Patton; you're going to find Marjorie Clune. We're going to interview them. We're going to get a confession out of him, and the district attorney here is going to prosecute, and the district attorney in Cloverdale is going to prosecute."
"When you say it fast," Paul Drake said, blinking his expressionless eyes, "it sounds easy."
"I believe in working fast," Mason told him.
"I think I can find Frank Patton," Drake said. "I've got a good description of him. He's tall, heavy set, dignified, fiftytwo years of age, has gray hair and a closeclipped gray mustache. There's a mole on his right cheek. Bradbury has a file of the Cloverdale Independent in his rooms at the hotel. There are ads in there that will be evidence, and a photograph we can use.
"My theory is that this racket is too well thought out to have been used in one town. I can find where it's been used in other towns and through some of those other towns I can get a line on Patton."
"All right," Perry Mason said, lighting a cigarette, "go ahead."
"But," the detective inquired, "then what's going to happen?
"How do you mean?"
"Just how far can we go?"
Mason grinned and said, "That's what I've been down to the district attorney's office for. The sky's the limit."
"Should we tell Bradbury that?" asked Paul Drake.
"We should not," Mason told him, speaking with swift emphasis. "We'll tell him nothing of the sort. When we locate Patton, we keep that location to ourselves. We interview him. After we've interviewed him, we tell Bradbury what we have done; we don't tell him what we are going to do, at any stage of the game."
"I'm supposed to make reports to my client," Drake said uneasily.
"That's easy," Mason said. "I'm your client's attorney. You make the reports to me, and I'll take the responsibility."
The detective watched Perry Mason with meditative speculation.
"Can we get away with that?" he asked.
"I can," Mason said.
"And the district attorney doesn't care how we get a confession?"
"Not a bit," Mason said. "You understand, the district attorney's office can't use improper methods; we can use almost any method."
"You mean violence?"
"Not necessarily; there are better ways. We can put him in a spot where he'll have to start talking. Then we'll crowd him into a position where he'll think we're working on a charge of using the mails to defraud in connection with the picture show contract, and get him to make some admissions about the picture business."
"Why didn't the district attorney of Cloverdale go ahead with this?" Drake asked.
"In the first place," Mason said, "he didn't have a case. In the second place, all the big business men in Cloverdale were the suckers. The more moves the district attorney made to clear up the situation, the more he showed the credulity of the small town business man. Naturally, he passed the buck."
"And you're not going to let Bradbury know what we're doing?"
"Not until after it's done."
"In other words," Drake said, "you intend to get rough with him?"
Mason's tone was quietly emphatic.
"You're damn right I intend to get rough with him," he said.
Chapter 3
Afternoon sun was slanting in through the windows of Perry Mason's office and casting reflections on the glass doors of the sectional bookcases as Perry Mason pushed through the office door and tossed a brief case to a table.
"I got a plea in that knife case," he said.