The Case of the Troubled Trustee Read Free Page A

with the outer office and held it open.
    Hedley came in first-a broad-shouldered young man with a spade beard, calmly contemptuous eyes, a sport shirt open at the neck disclosing a hairy chest, a pair of rather wrinkled slacks, and sandals over bare feet. He was carrying a coat over his arm.
    Behind him was his mother, a woman of around fifty, not as tall as her son. She was rather dumpy and had a sharp pointed nose on each side of which alert brown eyes glittered as she made a quick appraisal of Mason; the eyes darted to Della Street, then around the office.
    Behind Mrs. Hedley, Desere Ellis-slightly taller than average, her skin deeply tanned, honey-blonde hair, steady blue eyes and a figure a little on the spare side-seemed paled into insignificance.
    "How do you do?" Mason said. "I'm Perry Mason."
    The man, stalking forward and pushing out a hand, said, "I'm Fred Hedley. This is my mother, Rosanna, and my fiancйe, Miss Ellis."
    Mason nodded. "Won't you be seated?"
    They found chairs. Desere looked at Della Street.
    "My confidential secretary," Mason explained. "She takes notes on interviews, keeps things straight, and is my right hand."
    Fred Hedley cleared his throat, but it was his mother who hurriedly interposed to assume the conversational initiative.
    "Desere was told to come and see you," she said. "We gathered it was about her trust."
    "I see," Mason said, noncommittally.
    "We'd like to know about it," Mrs. Hedley said.
    "Just what was it you wanted to know?" Mason asked.
    Fred Hedley said, "The reason why Desere should be told to come and see you."
    "Who told her?" Mason asked.
    "The trustee, Kerry Dutton."
    Mason's eyes locked with Hedley's. "Do you know him?" he asked.
    "I've met him," Hedley said in a lukewarm voice. And then added as though disposing of Kerry Dutton for all time, "A square, a moneygrabber. He's an outsider."
    "He's a very dear friend," Desere Ellis interposed, "and my father had the greatest confidence in him."
    "Perhaps too much confidence," Mrs. Hedley snapped.
    "You see," Desere explained, "my father thought I was not to be trusted with money. There was rather a fair sum of money, and Father left it to Kerry as trustee so that I could have enough each year to keep me going for four years, but not enough to go out and splurge and wake up broke. I think Daddy was more afraid of my gambling than anything else."
    "I see," Mason observed noncommittally, and then asked, "Do you have any predilection for gambling, Miss Ellis?"
    She laughed nervously. "I guess Daddy thought so. I guess he thought I had a predilection for just about everything."
    Mrs. Hedley said, "The reason we're here is that we understand the trustee has finally come around to the idea for an endowment."
    "An endowment?" Mason asked.
    "Fred's idea," she said. "He wants to have it so that-"
    Fred Hedley held up his hand. "Never mind telling him the details, Mom."
    "I think Mr. Mason should know them."
    "Then I'll tell him," Hedley said.
    He turned to face the lawyer. "Get one thing straight, Mr. Mason. I'm not a visionary; I'm not a goof. I play around with a bunch of poets and artists but I'm essentially an executive type."
    Warming to his subject, he got up from the chair, leaned forward and placed his hands on Mason's desk.
    "The trouble with our civilization," he said, "is that it can't develop itself. It tends to wash itself out.
    "I think we are beginning to realize that every country needs to develop geniuses; but here in this country we can't do it because the genius can't develop; he starves to death.
    "Look at the artists, the poets, the writers I know who could be developed into geniuses. I don't mean, Mr. Mason, that anybody has to develop them. All they need is to be left alone-just be free to develop their own talents."
    "And they can't do it?" Mason asked.
    "They can't do it," Hedley said, "because they can't make a living while they're doing it. They're starving to death. You can't develop anything on an empty