The Case of the Grinning Gorilla

“No thanks. I’m doing fine this way. I want to be where I can look right down on the page.”

She held her cheek close to Mason’s, and, after a moment, Mason reached out and circled her waist with his right arm, drawing her closer.

“Well, there it is,” the lawyer said, indicating a passage in the book. “Now that we have the code, it’s easy. Listen to this. ‘I still don’t want to force the issue but now it has to be faced.’ ”

“That was her code,” Della Street said.

Mason pushed back his chair, rose, turned Della so that she was facing him, said, “We’ve got work to do.”

“What?”

“We’ve got to find her.”

“You don’t think she jumped overboard?”

Mason shook his head.

“She could have.”

“I know she could have,” Mason said, “but I don’t think she did.”

“Suppose that Addicks had told her that he’d marry her if... well, if it became necessary, and she went to him and told him that — good Lord, Chief, people murder women under circumstances like that.”

“I know,” Mason said, “that’s a chance we’ve got to take, but somehow — I don’t know. I don’t know what Benjamin Addicks’ reason was for not marrying the girl in the first place.”

“Perhaps he didn’t want to.”

“That could be,” Mason said.

“And he had the perfect opportunity for a crime,” Della Street said. “It was a wild night out in the channel. There was a high wind blowing, screaming through the rigging of the ship, waves were crashing against the bow, a scream would hardly have been noticed. Benjamin Addicks enticed her out to the deck in the rear of the yacht. He perhaps pointed out something to her. Perhaps he said, ‘Is that a light over there, Helen?’ She braced herself against the rail to look. He suddenly stooped down, grabbed her feet and gave a big heave.”

“That’s swell,” Mason said. “You sound as though you’d planned it all yourself, Della.”

“Well, I don’t know what’s so absurd about it,” she said. “It seems the logical development as far as I’m concerned.”

“It would be a logical development if it weren’t for one fact.”

“What’s that?”

“Your premise is wrong.”

“I don’t get it.”

He said, “You surmised that Addicks was playing around.”

“Well, what’s to indicate that he wasn’t?”

“The fact that he’s a millionaire,” Mason said, “the fact that he went to those motels and registered under his own name, and registered the girl as his wife.

“You can see what that did. It put him absolutely in her power. She could have cracked the whip over him at any time she wanted to.”

“Perhaps she did, and that’s why he grabbed her ankles and hoisted her overboard.”

Mason shook his head and said, “Come on, Della, we’ve found one of the answers we want. We’re going to have a real meal. Then we’re going to get in touch with Drake’s office, comb through the diaries and try to find some clue.

“Don’t forget one significant fact. Whenever Benjamin Addicks wanted to have some free time he’d pretend to be on the yacht when he wasn’t. What more natural than for him to plan a disappearance for Helen Cadmus the same way?”

“But why, Chief? Why go to all that trouble? She could simply have announced she was quitting her job, gone away and had her baby and that’s all there’d have been to it.”

“I know,” Mason said. “There was a reason. There had to be a reason. There’s a reason for everything. I think Addicks was afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“Yes, afraid something might happen to a woman he loved, and a child he wanted to love. Let’s go eat.”

Chapter number 15

Perry Mason and Della Street finished the last of their Chinese dinner.

“Want an almond cake?” Mason asked.

She shook her head and said, “I like the more delicate flavor of those rice flour cookies, those fortune cakes.”

“That’s fine,” Mason told her. “We’ll finish up with tea and fortune cakes. Bring us a bowl of them,” he instructed the waiter.

The Chinese shuffled off, letting the green curtain fall back in the doorway of the booth.

“You know,” Della Street said, “I’m getting the most peculiar hunch. I have a feeling that we’re running on a hot scent. I feel tingly.”

Mason nodded. “We’re going to have to work fast,” he said. “There isn’t a lot of time.”

The Chinese waiter brought back a big pot of tea. “Best kind,” he said. “Ooh loong cha.”

He gave them fresh teacups and a bowl of rice cakes.

Mason extended the bowl to Della Street. She took one, broke it open, read the fortune, smiled, folded the little printed slip of paper and started to put it in her purse.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Mason said.

She shook her head.

“Why, Della,” Perry Mason said, “you don’t ordinarily keep things from me.”

“This one I have to.”

“Why?”

“I’m sorry, Chief.” She colored furiously. “It wouldn’t have been so bad it I’d passed it over to you right at the time, but now it would be — out of the question.”

She opened her purse, took out a coin purse and placed the folded slip of paper with its printed message inside.

Mason broke open a cake while Della Street poured tea.

“What’s yours?” Della asked.

Mason abruptly folded the fortune and started to put it into his side pocket.