66 The Case of the Reluctant Model by Erle Stanley Gardner

Author:Erle Stanley Gardner [Gardner, Erle Stanley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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chapter 10

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It was after eleven o’clock when Mason fitted his latchkey to the exit door of his private office, swung open the door and found the lights on.

“Hi, Della,” Mason said. “What are you doing around here this time of night?”

“Waiting for you,” she said smiling. “How was the trip?”

“Well, I guess you know just about everything I know. We caught up with Maxine, the police caught up with her, I got Rankin’s permission to represent her, and I’m stuck with her.”

“Why did you decide to represent her, Chief?”

“I’m darned if I know,” Mason said, “except that I think the kid was telling the truth and if she is, she has made quite a sacrifice for someone she loves. And if she’s that kind of a girl I thought she was entitled to the breaks.”

“Well,” she said, “Paul Drake has been having kittens for the last half hour. He wants you to get in touch with him the minute you come in. You didn’t stop by his office?”

“No,” Mason said, grinning. “I had an idea you might be here and I thought I’d come on down and see you first. Give Paul a ring and tell him I’m home.”

Della Street whirled the dial of the telephone and in a moment she said, “Hi, Paul. He’s home… Okay, we’ll be waiting.”

Della Street hung up and said, “He’s on his way down here. He’s struck pay dirt somewhere along the line.”

Della Street walked over to stand by the corridor door so that the minute Drake’s code knock sounded on the panel she could open the door.

Drake, his face gray with fatigue, tired pouches under his eyes, said, “Hi, folks… Gosh, I’m glad you’re back, Perry… If I don’t get some sleep tonight I’m going to fall on my face. But I’ve got something I thought you should know about.”

“What?”

“Durant was in the business of making and selling phoney pictures. He had a very gifted copyist who could copy just about any painting that you’d put in front of him. The guy had no particular originality but he was a demon as a copyist.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I know the guy,” Drake said.

“How did you get in touch with him, Paul?”

“It’s a long story,” Drake said. “I started running down everything I could get on Durant, and I found that there’s an art store here that gave Durant quite a charge account and had been holding the bag for a large part of the balance due.

“So naturally I started wondering why Durant would be buying canvases and paints and brushes and painters’ supplies and so forth, and so I went down and had a talk with the art store. I intimated that I might be able to dig up some information that would help him get the bill paid up, and learned that the supplies had all been delivered to one address—a sort of a beatnik studio—a chap by the name of Goring Gilbert, who signed receipts for the material—and all of a sudden Durant’s credit was good as gold again.

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