The Case of the Fenced-In Woman (12 page)

"Look, Mr. Mason, let's be frank. You're grown – up and I'm grown – up. You're a big boy and I'm a big girl. The management doesn't make much profit on the sale of drinks. The management puts out food, entertainment and lodging as cheap as possible.

"On the other hand, the State of Nevada is largely supported by taxes levied on the profits of gambling establishments. All this glitter and luxury is supported by one thing: the gamblers who don't know how to gamble, the gamblers who lose."

"There are gamblers who win?" Mason asked.

"There are gamblers who win."

"Consistently?"

"Consistently."

"And, I take it, what you're leading up to is that when a gambler is active and patronizes the tables, the management has no objection if you take a little time out to be with him."

"Under those circumstances," she said, "the management loves it. Now then, Mr. Mason, you're too smart a man to go back and start plunging and lose very much money. You and I will go back. If you're cold, you and I are going to part company. If you're hot, I'll be with you for a while. Something seems to tell me you're not going to be hot. I think you've made your pass at Lady Luck."

"And you think Lady Luck is going to turn a cold shoulder on me?"

"Lady Luck is a woman," she said. "Lady Luck is intensely feminine. You gave Lady Luck an opportunity to smile at you and she did more than smile. She jumped in your lap. You indicated that you were gambling with only half of your mind on what you were doing. You were thinking of me. You were more interested in me than you were in Lady Luck.

"All right, you've had your tete – a – tete with me. When you go back to the table, something seems to tell me Lady Luck is going to be cold as ice."

"And if that happens?"

"If that happens, I'll drift to the perimeter and vanish. You'll find yourself with another hostess, provided you're gambling enough to be important enough to attract a hostess. If you're not, if you show signs of quitting when you're cold, you'll probably find yourself wandering around with no one taking very much interest in you."

"Interesting, isn't it?" Mason said.

"Business," she said. "Now what do you want?"

"I want to know if Nadine Palmer gets in touch with you," Mason said. "Nadine is a very personable young woman, well put together. I have every reason to believe she flew over here this afternoon from Los Angeles and I think she's looking for you. If she gets in touch with you, I'd like to know what it is she wants."

The waiter brought their drinks. Mason clicked glasses with Genevieve. "Here's how," he said.

"I know some cute answers to that," she said, "but somehow I think they'd be wasted and… Look, Perry, I am going to be frank with you. That news about Loring Carson was quite a jolt to me."

"Were you fond of him?"

She hesitated a moment, then raised her eyes deliberately to Mason.

"Yes."

"Intimately so?"

"Yes."

"Let me ask you this: Would you have become the second Mrs. Carson?"

"No."

"May I ask why?"

"I have my work, he has his. I'm a wonderful playmate. I'd probably make a damn poor wife. He was a showman. He could treat a girl swell. I think he'd be lousy to a wife.

"Some men are like that. They're essentially salesmen. They like to sell their stuff and feel that they're getting an order on the dotted line, but when they've bought the merchandise, when it's in the house with them all the time, when it's eating with them, sleeping with them, traveling with them, they don't have any incentive to sell. And when they can't strut their stuff selling, they get bored. After they get bored, they get unresponsive. A man who's unresponsive is a net loss to himself and to the world."

"You don't seem to have a very high idea of marriage," Mason said.

"It's all right," she said, "for some people."

"Carson wasn't the type?"

"I don't think Carson would ever have been happy with any one woman until after he passed.. oh, probably fifty, and by that time it would have been too late."

"For marriage?"

"For me. He'd have married some younger woman, someone in her twenties or someone in her early thirties who persuaded him she was in her late twenties."

"And then?"

"Then Carson would have wanted to settle down. He'd have felt that he'd hit the jackpot. The woman would have seen Loring getting old and slowing down. She wouldn't want to get old and slow down."

"And so?" Mason asked.

She shrugged her shoulders, finished her drink.

Mason tilted his glass, said, "Let's go back to the tables. Will you let me know if Nadine Palmer gets in touch with you?"

"For how much?"

"For two hundred dollars," Mason said.

"I'll think it over. It depends on what she wants. Is it something I could make money out of?"

"I don't know."

"I'm not going to lie to you, Mr. Mason," she said. "I hate liars. I've given up a lot of things coming over here to Las Vegas and being a hostess, but I've gained certain things. One of them is the right to be free, and the right to be free gives me the right to be frank. Thank God, I don't have to lie anymore and I'm not going to do it."

"You used to lie?" Mason asked.

"Any girl who tries to be respectable, and isn't, has to put up a front."

"You weren't?" Mason asked.

She laughed. "You want lots of information for your hundred – dollar tip, Perry Mason. I told you I don't have to lie anymore. Come on, let's go back to the table. Let's see how hot you are."

She led the way back to the same table. "Give the man a hundred dollars for chips," she said to Mason.

Mason passed out a hundred dollars. The lawyer started putting bets around on the various numbers. This time Genevieve didn't help him, but simply stood there watching.

Time after time the wheel rolled and Mason collected nothing. He won a small bet on red and one on the second twelve, but the numbers eluded him and his pile of chips started shrinking.

Genevieve looked at him and smiled. A young woman in a skin – tight dress abruptly reached a bare arm across the table, leaned forward to place a bet on a number at the extreme far corner. She stumbled slightly and her soft, pliant form pressed against Mason's arm.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," she said, and looked up and smiled.

"Quite all right," Mason said.

"Clumsy of me," she said, "but I just had a hunch on that number… Oh, oh, I didn't make it after all."

"Better luck next time," Mason said. Her eyes met his. "There's always a next time," she said. "Always something new, always tomorrow-and today-tonight," she said softly.

She placed another bet at the corner of the board so that she pressed against Mason. This time she held the lawyer's arm. "Pull for me," she said. "Wish me luck."

"You might give me some luck," Mason said.

"All right, we'll give each other luck."

The young woman's bet paid off.

"Goody, goody, goody," she said in an ecstasy of excitement, squeezing the lawyer's arm to her breast and jumping up and down. "Oh, goody, goody, goody, I made it!"

Mason's smile was enigmatic.

The lawyer made three more bets, which finished his pile of chips.

He backed away from the table.

"Oh, you're not quitting," the young woman said in a tone of incredulity.

"Just for a while," Mason said. "I'm taking a breather. I'll be back."

"Do," she said, and then added, "please." Then by way of explanation as though to apologize for any seeming attempt at being forward, "I had good luck with you here. You're so… Well, you brought me luck."

She looked wistfully after him as Mason drifted away from the table.

Genevieve Honcutt Hyde was nowhere in sight.

The lawyer went back to the bar, ordered another gin and tonic, sat there sipping and watching.

Fifteen minutes later, he saw Nadine Palmer moving through the crowd.

Mason pushed his glass away, followed Nadine to one of the tables.

Nadine was carrying a purse which was literally bulging with chips. She had evidently been drinking.

She pushed up to a roulette table and started making bets. Her luck was phenomenal. Within a few minutes she had a crowd of people watching her play, trying to ride along on her bets.

Mason felt eyes on his and looked up to see Genevieve Hyde appraising him from the line of spectators.

He looked pointedly at Nadine, then back at Genevieve.

Genevieve's face had no expression whatever.

Mason stayed in the background watching Nadine until finally Nadine had such a pile of chips in front of her, she seemed to be behind a barricade.

Then Mason leaned forward to put a lone dollar bill on number eleven.

"Cash in and check out," he said in a low voice to Nadine.

She whirled indignantly, then gasped with surprise.

"Cash in and check out," Mason said again.

The lawyer made two more bets, then stepped back from the table.

"You heard me," he said to Nadine. Five minutes later Nadine, with two bellboys carrying chips, went to the cashier's window.

People watched her with awed curiosity as she cashed in something over ten thousand dollars.

Perry Mason took her arm as she left the window.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"And what are you doing here?" Mason asked.

"I'm gambling."

"You were gambling," Mason said. "You're quitting."

"What do you mean I'm quitting? I come over here every so often. I'm perfectly able to run my own life, Mr. Perry Mason, without any advice from you."

"The advice you're getting from me is purely gratuitous," Mason said. "I'm talking to you not as a lawyer but as a friend."

"You've become an intimate friend on rather short notice, it seems."

"I want to ask you some questions," Mason said. "Would you like a drink?"

"No, I've had enough to drink. I'm going out to my room. You want to come?"

"Is it all right?" Mason asked.

"What do you want me to do, hire a chaperon?" she asked. "Or a baby – sitter?"

"Neither," Mason said, "I just wondered if it was all right."

She moved out of the side entrance, down the long line of bungalows, the lawyer at her side.

She fitted a key to a door, let Mason open it and then usher her inside. It was a sumptuous room with a bed, television, several deep easy chairs, wall – to – wall carpeting and an atmosphere of quiet luxury. When Mason had closed the door, Nadine Palmer seated herself, crossed her knees, showing a generous display of nylon, surveyed Mason appraisingly and said, "This had better be good."

"It is good," Mason said.

"For your information," she went on, "I was hotter than a firecracker when you stopped me."

"How much had you won?"

"Plenty."

"I gathered you cashed in for around ten or twelve thousand."

"That was the second time I'd cashed in," she said.

"As much as that the first time?"

"More."

"What time did you get here?"

"I took a taxi to the airport," she said, "and took the first plane."

"You didn't buy a ticket under your own name."

"Is that a crime?"

"It might be taken into consideration in connection with a crime," Mason told her, "unless, of course, you had a good reason."