The Case of the Queenly Contestant

“Hello, Perry. Hello, Della,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “Nice morning this morning. How are you folks feeling?”

“Fine,” Mason said. “Is there any reason you can’t let Gertie announce you? Must you always come busting into my private office, Lieutenant?”

“Always,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “The taxpayers take a dim view of a police officer waiting in a lawyer’s outer office while the lawyer composes his thoughts or perhaps gets rid of a client out of the side door — so we just come busting on in, as you call it.”

Tragg’s grin was friendly and affable.

“Well,” Mason said, “I don’t have any clients to be spirited out of the side door.”

“That’s right, you don’t,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “We’re going to pick up your client, Ellen Adair, and I’m afraid, Perry, we’re going to have to charge her with murder.

“Now she’ll want to have her lawyer present, and I thought it might be nice if you just came along with me... make it all cozy like a little family party... and it might save us time.”

“Where are you going to pick her up?” Mason asked.

“At the department store,” Tragg said. “That’s where she works. We hate to humiliate her, but, after all, Perry, you know the law is the law.”

“I hope you have evidence,” Mason said.

“Evidence?” Tragg said. “Why, of course, we have evidence. We wouldn’t pick her up without evidence — you know that, Perry — particularly a woman with a responsible position of this sort.”

Mason said to Della Street, “You run this store while I’m gone, Della. I might just as well accommodate the lieutenant.”

“Well, that’s mighty nice of you, Perry,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “It’s always so inconvenient to have to pick up someone, then have to call a busy lawyer and have him say he can’t get there for an hour or an hour and a half or two hours or whatever time limit he fixes so that his client can have an opportunity to think up a good story.”

“This time,” Mason said, “I’m going to be frank with you. Lieutenant.”

“Please do,” Tragg said.

“I’m going to advise Ellen Adair to say absolutely nothing. She’ll tell her story for the first time on the witness stand, if she is prosecuted.”

“Tut, tut, tut,” Lieutenant Tragg said; “now that’s not a smart thing to do, Perry.”

“It may not be smart, but I think it’s fair to handle it that way.”

“Well, of course, you do what you see fit,” Tragg said, “but we’re going to ask questions, and some of them she’d better have the answers for.”

“She may have the answers, but that’s no sign she’s going to give them,” Mason said. “I’m taking the sole responsibility of telling her not to answer questions.”

“Well, it’s your funeral,” Tragg said. Then he added with a chuckle, “Or is it?”

“Let’s hope it’s no one’s funeral,” Mason said. “Let’s go.”

Tragg said, “I have a squad car downstairs. We’ll be taking your client right to Headquarters. You’d like to ride with us?”

“I’ll ride with you,” Mason said.

The lawyer looked significantly at Della Street and nodded.

“Oh, that’s all right,” Tragg said, beaming; “go right ahead, Della, and pick up the telephone, call French, Coleman and Swazey, and tell her that we’re on our way out there. After all. Perry Mason, as an attorney, has to give some service to his clients. We’ll give her that much preparation.

“Come on, Perry.”

The two men left the office building. Tragg, in a rare good humor, seated himself in the front seat beside the driver, put Mason in the back seat, and said, “We’ll put your client in there, too, when we pick her up, Perry. We won’t try to do any talking until we get to Headquarters.”

Tragg turned to the driver. “French, Coleman and Swazey,” he said; “the executive offices.”

The police car threaded its way through the traffic with skillful handling, then, after a short run, parked in front of a fireplug at the big department store.

“Just wait here,” Lieutenant Tragg instructed the driver. “Want to come along, Mason?”

“Certainly,” Mason said; “that’s why I’m here.”

“It is for a fact,” Tragg said.

They went to the executive offices.

Tragg marched into the buyer’s office, pushed his way past a startled secretary, entered the private office, and said to Ellen Adair, “I guess you know why we’re here, Miss Adair.”

Mason said, “Ellen, you are going to be arrested for murder. I instruct you as your attorney to say nothing, to answer no questions.”

“Well, now, just a minute, just a minute,” Lieutenant Tragg said; “there’s a formality first. You don’t realize how our activities are all being subjected to formula these days.