The Case of the Mischievous Doll

“Well,” Drake said, “next time you have a client who wants to do a strip tease, be sure to call on me.”

Della Street entered the office.

“She’s gone?” Mason asked.

Della Street nodded.

“What about the gun?”

“I didn’t have time to do more than just give it a quick look, but there aren’t any bullets in it.”

“You mean it’s empty?” Mason asked.

“No. The shells are in the gun. You can see them by looking down the cylinder, but there aren’t any bullets in the shells, just caps of blue paper at the end of the cartridge.”

“Blank cartridges!” Mason exclaimed.

“I guess that’s what they are,” Della Street said. “It’s a small pistol. It looks like a twenty-two calibre.”

Drake gave a low whistle.

“She gave you ten dollars and you gave her a receipt?” Mason asked Della Street.

“For services rendered,” Della Street said. “Then she wanted to give me a hundred dollars as a retainer on future services. I told her I wasn’t authorized to accept that, that she’d have to talk with you; so she said never mind, she’d let it go, and hurried out of the office saying she had a time schedule that she had to meet.”

“Well,” Mason said thoughtfully, “let’s hope that schedule doesn’t include a murder.”

“We’re having her shadowed,” Paul Drake said. “She won’t lose my men. They’ll know where she goes and what she does.”

“Of course,” Mason said thoughtfully, “she can’t commit a murder with blank cartridges, but something tells me your report from Jerry Nelson and his assistant is going to be somewhat out of the ordinary. Let me know as soon as you hear from your men, Paul.”

Chapter Two

It was shortly after one-thirty that afternoon when Paul Drake gave his code knock on the door of Mason’s private office.

Mason nodded to Della Street. “Let Paul in, Della. He’ll have some news.”

Della Street opened the door.

Paul Drake said, “Hi, Beautiful,” and ushered a chunky, competent-looking man into the office.

“This is Jerry Nelson, one of my operatives,” he said. “Jerry, this is Della Street, Mr. Mason’s confidential secretary, and Perry Mason. Now I want you to tell these people what happened just as you told it to me.”

Drake turned to Mason and said apologetically, “I got this over the telephone. It sounded so cockeyed I told Jerry to dash in and report personally. Now then, I’m turning him over to you all. Go ahead, Jerry.”

Mason smiled and said, “Sit down, Nelson, and let’s have the story.”

Nelson said, “I know you people are going to think I’m a little screwy but I’m going to tell you exactly what happened.

“Paul Drake told me there was a woman in your office that you wanted shadowed; that I was to pick her up in the elevator; that another operative would be waiting with a car in front of the entrance; that there would be a vacant taxicab waiting just in case anything went wrong. I gathered it was an important job of tailing so I wanted to be on my toes. Drake said we weren’t to let her out of our sight no matter what happened.”

Mason nodded.

“Okay,” Nelson said. “This young woman left the office. She was above five feet three, somewhere in her early twenties, had chestnut hair, hazel eyes. She wore a green and brown plaid suit and a green blouse—”

“Now, wait a minute,” Mason said, “we know all about her appearance.”

“I know, I know,” Drake interrupted, “but get this thing straight, Perry. We want to be sure of our facts.”

“All right, go ahead,” Mason said.

“Well, anyway,” Nelson said, “I got aboard the elevator with this young woman. My partner was waiting out in front.

“She wanted a cab. The cab that we were holding at the curb had its flag down and she tried to get that. The driver pointed to his flag and she started to argue with him but just then another Yellow came along and she flagged it down.

“I was still playing it cautious because we didn’t know what was going to happen. The only orders we had were to see that she didn’t get out of our sight, and to spare no expense — so I jumped in the cab that we had waiting at the curb, and my buddy pulled out in his car and both of us followed the cab which had been taken by the girl.

“What’s more, we had the number on the cab ahead and a twenty-dollar bill got my cab driver to radio in to the dispatcher and ask him where this cab was going as soon as he got a report.

“The report came in in about two minutes. The cab driver said he was headed for the airport.

“So both of us tagged along behind and sure enough she went right to the airport without any attempt to shake off any shadows or even paying the slightest attention to what was happening behind her.

“Those cab drivers get pretty sharp in watching traffic and I felt the cab driver might be keeping an eye out behind, so I had my cab drop back and the other operative moved in close behind. Then after a while the other operative dropped back and my cab moved up. Between us we kept her in sight all the way.”

“All the way where?” Mason asked.

“To the airport.”

“Then what?”

“Then she just stuck around.”

“How long?”