The Case of the Caretaker's Cat Read Free Page A

the waist, leaning out to catch the breeze, filling her lungs with the fresh air.
    "Probably he's just peculiar," Mason said. "He certainly is a shriveled-up specimen… Don't lean too far out there, Della… You must remember he likes animals, and he's not a young man any more. Regardless of what age he claims, he must be more than seventy-five…"
    Della Street straightened. With a quick twist of her lithe body, she turned to face Perry Mason. She was frowning. "It might interest you to know," she said, "that someone is shadowing your cat-loving client."
    Perry Mason shoved back his chair as he got to his feet, strode across the office. He braced himself with one arm on the window ledge, the other around Della Street's waist. Together, they stared down at the street.
    "See?" he said. "That man with the light felt hat. He darted out of a doorway… See, he's getting into that car."
    "One of the new Pontiacs," Mason said speculatively. "What makes you think he was following Ashton?"
    "The way he acted. I'm certain of it. He jumped out of the doorway… See, the car's barely crawling along – just to keep Ashton in sight."
    Ashton hobbled around the corner, to the left. The car followed him, apparently crawling in low gear.
    Mason, watching the car in frowning speculation, said, "A million dollars in cash is a whale of a lot of money."

2.
    MORNING SUN, STREAMING IN THROUGH THE WINDOWS OF Perry Mason's private office, struck the calf-skin bindings on the shelved law books and made them seem less grimly foreboding.
    Della Street, opening the door from her office, brought in a file of mail and some papers. Perry Mason folded the newspaper he had been reading, as Della Street seated herself, pulled out the sliding leaf of the desk, and held her fountain pen poised over an open notebook.
    "Lord, but you're chockful of business," Perry Mason complained. "I don't want to work. I want to let down and play hookey. I want to do something I shouldn't. My Lord, you'd think I was a corporation lawyer, sitting at a desk, advising banks and probating estates! The reason I specialized in trial law was because I didn't like the routine, and you're making this business more and more of a job and less and less of an adventure.
    "That's what I like about the practice of law – it's an adventure. You're looking behind the scenes at human nature. The audience out front sees only the carefully rehearsed poses assumed by the actors. The lawyer sees human nature with the shutters open."
    "If you will insist on mixing into minor cases," she said acidly, with that degree of familiarity which comes from long and privileged association in an office where conventional discipline is subordinated to efficiency, "you'll have to organize your time so you can handle your work. Mr. Nathaniel Shuster is in the outer office waiting to see you."
    Perry Mason frowned. "Shuster?" he said. "Why, he's a damned jury-briber – a pettifogger. He poses as a big trial lawyer, but he's a bigger crook than the people he defends. Any damn fool can win a case if he has the jury bribed. What the devil does he want?"
    "He wishes to see you in regard to a letter you wrote. His clients are with him – Mr. Samuel C. Laxter and Mr. Frank Oafley."
    Abruptly Perry Mason laughed. "The caretaker's cat, eh?" he asked.
    She nodded.
    Mason pulled the file of mail over toward him.
    "Well," he said, "as a matter of professional courtesy, we won't keep Mr. Shuster waiting. We'll take a quick run through this important stuff and see if there are any telegrams to be sent out."
    He looked at a folder, and frowned. "What's this?" he asked.
    "Quotations from the N.Y.K. Line on a deluxe single stateroom on the Asamu Maru – stops at Honolulu, Yokohama, Kobe, Shanghai and Hong Kong."
    "Who made the inquiry?"
    "I did."
    He pulled a letter from the pile of mail, stared at it, and said, "The Dollar Steamship Company – quotations on a deluxe single stateroom on the President Coolidge –