The Case of the Golddigger’s Purse

Mason gave the waiter their orders. “What do you make of the girl?” he asked Della Street as the waiter withdrew.

“You mean the one with Faulkner?”

“Yes.”

Della Street laughed. “If he keeps playing around with her he’ll have another summons served on him.”

Drake leaned forward so that he could look past the corner of the booth. “I’ll take a look at that myself,” he announced, and then after a moment said, “Oh, oh. That’s a dish!”

Mason’s eyes thoughtfully studied the pair. “Incongruous enough,” he said.

“Notice the get-up,” Drake went on. “The skin-fitting dress, the long, long eyelashes, the burgundy fingernails. Looking in those eyes, he’s already forgotten about the summons in his side pocket. Bet he doesn’t read it until... Looks as though he’s coming back, Perry.”

Abruptly the man pushed back his chair, arose with no word to his companion, marched determinedly back to Mason’s table. “Mr. Mason,” he said, speaking with the crisp, deliberate articulation of a man determined to make his point, “it has just occurred to me that you may have received an entirely erroneous impression of the nature of the case about which I was trying to consult you. I think perhaps when I mentioned that it concerned a goldfish, you naturally considered the case one of minor importance. It isn’t. The goldfish in question is a very fine specimen of the Veiltail Moor Telescope. The case also concerns a crooked partner, a secret formula for controlling gill disease, and a golddigger.”

Mason regarded the anxious face of the man who was standing beside the table and tried not to grin. “A goldfish and a golddigger,” he said. “After all, perhaps we’d better hear about it. Suppose you draw up a chair and tell me about it.”

The man’s face showed sudden satisfaction. “Then you’ll take my case and...”

“I mean I’m willing to listen and that’s all,” Mason said. “This is Della Street, my secretary, and Paul Drake, head of the Drake Detective Agency, who quite frequently assists me in gathering facts. Won’t you invite your companion to come over and join us, and we may as well...”

“Oh, she’s all right. Let her sit there.”

“She won’t mind?” Mason asked.

Faulkner shook his head.

“Who is she?” Mason asked.

Without changing his tone in the least, Faulkner said, “She’s the golddigger.”

Drake said warningly, “You leave that baby alone at that table and you won’t find her alone when you get back.”

Faulkner said fervently, “I’d give a thousand dollars to the man who would take her off my hands.”

Drake said laughingly, “Done for five hundred. It’s cheap at half the price.”

Faulkner regarded him with unhumorous appraisal, drew up a chair. The young woman he had left sitting at the table merely glanced over at him, then opened her purse, held up a mirror and started checking her make-up with the careful appraisal of a good merchant inspecting his stock-in-trade.

2

Mason said to Faulkner, “You haven’t even read the papers that process server handed you.”

Faulkner made a gesture of dismissal. “I don’t have to. It’s just part of a campaign to annoy me.”

“What’s he suing for?”

“A hundred thousand dollars, the man who served the papers said.”

Mason said, “You’re not interested enough to read them?”

“I’m not interested in anything Elmer Carson does to annoy me.”

“Tell me about the goldfish,” Mason said.

Faulkner said, “The Veiltail Moor Telescope is a prized goldfish. The uninitiated would hardly consider him a goldfish. He isn’t gold. He’s black.”

“All over?” Mason asked.

“Even the eyes.”

“What’s a Telescope fish?” Drake asked.

“A species of goldfish that has been developed by breeding. They’re called Telescopes because the eyes protrude from the sockets, sometimes as much as a quarter of an inch.”

“Isn’t that rather — unprepossessing?” Della Street asked.

“It might be to the uninitiated. Some people have called the Veiltail Moor Telescope the Fish of Death. Pure superstition. Just the way people react to the black color.”

“I don’t think I’d like them,” Della Street said.

“Some people don’t,” Faulkner agreed, as though the subject held no particular interest. “Waiter, will you please bring my order over to this table?”

“Yes, sir. And the lady’s order?”

“Serve it to her over there.”

Mason said, “After all, Faulkner, I’m not certain I like that method of handling the situation. Regardless of what the girl is, you’re dining with her, and...”

“That’s all right. She won’t mind. She isn’t the least bit interested in what I’m going to talk about.”

“What is she interested in?” Mason asked.

“Cash.”

“What’s her name?”

“Sally Madison.”

“And she is putting the bite on you?” Mason asked.

“I’ll say she is.”

“Yet you take her out to dinner?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“And walk away and leave her?” Della Street asked.

“I want to discuss business. She wouldn’t be interested. She understands the situation thoroughly. There’s no need of any concern about her.”

Drake glanced at Perry Mason. The waiter brought him his mince pie and coffee, shrimp cocktails to Della Street and Mason and consommé to Harrington Faulkner.