The Case of the Queenly Contestant

“I feel that you will be shadowed as far as the apartment, then the detective who shadows you will leave to make a report to his agency. Having run you to earth, so to speak, they will do nothing more for an hour or two, or perhaps a day or two, while they await instructions.

“Now then, as soon as you have entered the apartment with a latchkey, go right through the apartment. Slip out the back door. That opens on an alley?”

“Yes.”

“Drake will have an operative waiting with a car to pick you up. You can go to your own apartment, pack up suitcases with whatever you will need for a stay of several days.

“Since I can’t get you bona fide employment which would stand up under scrutiny, you are going to have to take the part of a young woman who is temporarily out of a job. You will live economically. You will go to the cheaper family restaurants and you will buy provisions at the supermarket.”

“There’s one within a block and a half of the place,” she said.

Mason nodded. “You will use taxicabs when you have to, but as sparingly as possible. I don’t dare have you use one of Drake’s automobiles because they could and would trace the license number.

“I think that sooner or later someone will come to the door and start talking with you. No matter what the approach is, no matter how plausible it may seem, you are to slam the door in his face.

“He may be offering you an opportunity to enroll in a contest where there will be prizes. He may be selling lottery tickets. He may come right out and accuse you of being Ellen Calvert and tell you that there’s no use trying to keep up the pretense, that your story is known to him. He may simply offer you money for your story. He may come right out and tell you he is a private detective, that he wants certain facts and that it will be easier for you to give him those facts for him to have to get them the hard way.”

“No matter what the approach is, I’m to slam the door in his face?”

“Yes.”

“Do I deny that I am Ellen Calvert?”

“You are tight-lipped,” Mason said. “You simply slam the door. The apartment has a telephone?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know the number?”

“Paul Drake has it.”

“I’ll get it from Paul,” Mason said.

“Anything else?”

“When you leave here,” Mason said, “you are to be very much disturbed, yet with it all you have a queenly dignity. Keep your head up, but show that you are emotionally upset. You wipe an imaginary tear from your eye. You twist your handkerchief. Halfway to the elevator, you pause as though you had thought of something important. You turn around and take two or three steps back toward the office, then shrug your shoulders, apparently change your mind, go back to the elevator... Now, of course, you’re familiar with this apartment?”

“I’ve used it several times. I had a female witness to keep under cover.”

“It would be better,” Mason said, “if you know the exact route, to go there by bus rather than by taxicab.”

“That’s easy,” she said, smiling. “Not all of our clients are sufficiently affluent to afford cab bills for operatives and I’ve gone there half-a-dozen times by bus.”

“It’s highly-important that you don’t make any mistakes on that,” Mason said. “If you get on the wrong bus, it would be a dead giveaway. You’ll probably be followed from the minute you leave the office, and it will make it much easier if you give your shadow an opportunity to get aboard the same bus with you.”

She nodded. “I think I’ve got the picture.”

“Under no circumstances,” Mason said, “at any time are you to use the name of Ellen Calvert or to admit that you are Ellen Calvert. If anybody presses you for a name, you say that you are Ellen Smith. The main thing is to keep the door closed whenever anyone tries to interrogate you, but you will do it under circumstances which indicate you definitely have something to conceal.”

“Am I supposed to be an embezzler or something?” she asked.

Mason shook his head. “You’re just supposed to be a woman who is trying to avoid her past.”

She smiled. “I must have quite a purple past,” she said, “if I haven’t been guilty of any crime.”

Mason nodded gravely. “That,” he said, “is something that I am also keeping in mind.”

She finished her coffee, handed the cup to Della Street, and said, “Could I have just another half cup, please?”

While Della poured the coffee, the operative sized up Mason. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve ever worked directly on one of your cases. I think I’m going to enjoy it.”

“I certainly hope so,” Mason said. “Unless things come to a head rather promptly, it’s going to be rather tedious for you, sitting there in an apartment and...”

“Oh, there’s a television and a radio,” she said. “I’ll pick up a couple of books that I’ve been trying to read and I’ll get along fine. This is a vacation with pay as far as I’m concerned. You should see some of the jobs I get mixed up with.”

“I guess it’s an adventurous life,” Mason said.

“You can say that again,” she observed.