The Case of the Queenly Contestant

“If you’re running for office in Cloverville, you hunt up Garland and make him a lot of campaign promises about what you’ll do if you’re elected. If you don’t do that, you don’t get elected.

“If something happens and someone does something the Spring Company doesn’t approve of. Garland pussy-foots around to the city trustees, and the first thing you know there’s an ordinance covering the situation. They have a nickname for him: they call him Slick Garland.”

Mason grinned. “Looks like we’ve got the big guns trained on us, Paul.”

“One other thing: my contact says the whole place is buzzing over the news that the head of the Cloverville Spring and Suspension Company has been lost at sea.

“His name’s Harmon Haslett, and about two weeks ago he went off for a yachting trip in Europe. Somewhere in the Bay of Biscay they picked up distress signals from the yacht during a storm. The signals abruptly ceased. Several vessels went to the location given in the signals and found no trace of the yacht except a life preserver with the name of the yacht on it. The assumption is that the yacht went down with all on board.

“How strong do you want to go on this, Perry?”

“I’m damned if I know, Paul. I’ve been fired with two hundred dollars for expense money.”

“Oh, oh,” Drake said. “Even if I trimmed costs to the bone, you couldn’t go very much farther on two hundred expenses. I didn’t know you were working on such a tight margin.”

“I didn’t either,” Mason said, “and I wasn’t until I spoke out of turn. My client gave me a couple of hundred, and I’ll just toss a couple of hundred into the kitty, Paul, because I’m curious.”

“What do you want done?”

“For one thing, Paul, I’d like to find out if Harmon Haslett is the sole owner of the Cloverville Spring and Suspension Company. I think he’s the son of the founder. The father has probably died or retired. I’d like a little background on this guy.

“And, of course, I’d like to find out a little more about these people who are shadowing our decoy. I’d like to find out where they are staying and whether they have any local connections. I figured this man Garland as a local detective.”

“Why?”

“He seemed to know his way around,” Mason said.

“I think he knows his way around every big city in the United States,” Drake said. “The guy has fellows working for him, and evidently he has a pretty big job. He’s a combined lobbyist, private detective, gumshoe artist, fixer and troubleshooter.”

Mason grinned. “Let me know when your bill totals four hundred dollars, Paul.”

“We stop there?” Drake asked.

Mason grinned. “How do I know?” he said. “This is interesting the hell out of me. Let’s call it a vacation.”

Drake nodded, said, “I’ll keep you posted, Perry,” and left the office.

“Get those names?” Mason asked Della Street.

Della, who had been taking notes of the conversation, nodded. “Want me to type them up?”

“No,” Mason said, “I’ll remember them. Jarmen Dayton, whom we already know, and Stephen Lockley Garland. This man Garland must be a character.”

“You,” she charged, “are going to put me in an impossible situation.”

“How come?”

“How can I explain this added two hundred dollars to the Internal Revenue Service? They’ll want to know what case it was on and where the money came from.”

Mason grinned at her. “Tell them it’s a lawyer’s vacation,” he said.

Della Street sighed. “At times you can show a great lack of sympathy for a person with secretarial responsibilities.”

Chapter Five

It was midafternoon when Paul Drake again gave his code knock on Mason’s door and Della Street let him in.

“Well, Perry,” Drake said, “I’ve had more reports from Cloverville and I can give you the picture. I don’t know what it’s all about, but the information I have can be used by you to fill in the missing parts.”

“Shoot,” Mason said.

“The Cloverville Spring and Suspension Company is virtually a one-man concern. It was operated by Harmon Haslett until his death a few days ago. His father, Ezekiel Haslett, was the founder of the company, and the company, as I told you, is virtually all there is to Cloverville.

“Haslett was unmarried at the time of his death, but he left two half brothers, Bruce Jasper and Norman Jasper.

“Rumor has it that there’s a will leaving everything to the Jaspers unless Haslett left issue.

“That is a peculiar provision in the will, because although Haslett was once married, so far as is known he never had any children.

“Now, then, I give you rank gossip, but this is a story that my operative ferreted out.

“Many years ago, during his flaming youth, Harmon Haslett got a girl in ‘trouble,’ as they said in the parlance of the times.

“The girl was all right as far as that end of it was concerned, but she wasn’t society and Haslett was the crème de la crème of Cloverville. He was supposed to make a marriage with some wealthy society queen and all that sort of stuff.