The Case of the Troubled Trustee (Perry Mason Series Book 75) by Erle Stanley Gardner

Author:Erle Stanley Gardner [Gardner, Erle Stanley]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Della Street Press
Published: 2014-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Paul Drake sat in Mason’s office with a notebook balanced on his knee and said, “Our men have uncovered a lot of stuff. None of it is going to help.”

“Go on,” Mason said, “give me the facts.”

“Well, Rodger Palmer was a great believer in the Steer Ridge Oil stock, but he hated Jarvis Reader, the head of the company.

“I don’t know whether you noticed it or not, Perry, but there’s a lot of similarity in the appearance of the two men. Reader is perhaps a few years younger, but both men were two-fisted oil men who had worked as roughnecks, who believed in direct action but who had ideas that were diametrically opposed.

“Palmer believed in developing a company working along proven structures, taking a chance on wildcatting after scientific exploration of the structures indicated there was a reasonable chance.

“Jarvis Reader is a plunger. He wants to be a big shot, the bigger the better. He made his money, not by operating oil wells but by selling stock, paying himself a fancy salary and making his reports to the stockholders look good by tying up huge blocks of acreage.

“Now, of course, you can’t tie up acreage like that in really good oil country, and the Steer Ridge Oil Company was going steadily downhill until it had that lucky strike.

“Reader is a flashy dresser, a big spender, regards himself as the big executive type, has a twin-motored airplane at his beck and call and is always the big shot.

“After Rodger Palmer got out of the company, he had periods of pretty lean living. He hung around cheap hotels. Sometimes he would be in rooming houses where shady characters lived. Once he was even questioned by the police in connection with the nylon stocking strangling of a prostitute. He had been in the rooming house at the time, but fortunately had an alibi. He had been talking with the clerk at the time the actual murder must have been committed.

“But that gives you a general idea of the guy’s background. His clothes were seedy, he was pretty much discredited in the oil game.

“Then he started calling on stockholders in the Steer Ridge Company, telling them that they were being bilked, and he put up a pretty convincing argument. I understand a group of stockholders, who controlled a large block of the stock, gave him money to try and get proxies so that Reader could be ousted.

“Now then, you asked about Fred Hedley the night of the murder and whether he could possibly have been out there at the country club at the time the murder was committed.

“There’s not a chance. At the time the murder must have been committed, Hedley was in a drugstore having his face patched. After that fight he was out of circulation and pretty badly messed up.

“He found an all-night drugstore, and the clerk helped him put on disinfectants and patched him up.”

“All right,” Mason said, with a sigh. “We go to trial tomorrow and, so far, every

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