The Case of the Lucky Legs by Erle Stanley Gardner Page A

hurdles."
    "On what kind of a charge?" Riker asked.
    "Any kind of a charge we could put against him," Mason said. "That was where I came in. I was supposed to get some sort of a charge framed up that would stick. Carl Manchester wasn't certain that he could put one against him."
    "Never mind the legal end of it," Johnson said. "Give us the low-down."
    "This fellow was in a racket that victimized girls with pretty legs," Mason said. "He would pick out a girl with pretty legs, and work a racket that would leave her holding the sack. It was something he worked in the small towns, picking on the Chamber of Commerce as the big sucker, and incidentally victimizing the girl."
    "You mean to say he'd out-slick the Chamber of Commerce boys?" asked Johnson.
    Perry Mason nodded.
    "Sure," he said. "Why not?"
    "Aren't they supposed to be pretty wise babies?"
    "They think they are," Mason said. "As a matter of fact, there are a whole bunch of rackets that are worked on them. If you ask me, they're pretty easy."
    Riker's eyes were shrewd in their appraisal.
    "You're pretty high-powered," he said.
    "What do you mean?" Mason asked.
    "I mean that it costs money to get your services."
    "Fortunately," said Perry Mason, grinning, "it does."
    "All right. Somebody was interested enough to put up the money to have you prosecute this fellow."
    Mason nodded.
    "Sure," he said, "that goes without saying."
    "All right," Riker said, "who was it?"
    Mason shook his head, smiled, and said, "Naughty, naughty."
    "What do you mean?" Riker demanded.
    "I mean," Mason said, "that you boys are all right. You're working for your living, just the same as I am. You've asked me something that perhaps you'd like to know. If I thought it had anything to do with the murder, I might tell you. But it hasn't got anything to do with the murder, and, therefore, it becomes none of your damned business."
    He smiled cheerfully at them.
    "It goes to establish a motive," Riker said. "Anybody who would pay you money to put that man in jail would have a good motive for murder."
    Mason grinned.
    "Not after he'd given me a five thousand dollar retainer to prosecute him," he said. "If he had intended to murder the man, he'd have hung onto his five thousand dollars; he wouldn't have decorated the mahogany with me, and then gone out and killed the man so that I didn't have to do any work in order to earn my fee."
    Johnson nodded slowly.
    "That's so," he said.
    "Just the same," Riker said, "I'd a whole lot rather know who it was that employed you."
    "Perhaps you would," Mason said, "but I'd a whole lot rather not tell, and it happens that under the law, this is one of those little things that is known as a professional confidence. You can't make me testify, and therefore you can't make me answer any question. But there are no hard feelings about it."
    Riker stared moodily at the toe of his boot.
    "I'm not so sure that there ain't," he said.
    "Ain't what?" Mason asked.
    "Hard feelings about it."
    "Don't get off on the wrong foot," Mason told him. "I'm giving you boys a break. I've told you as much as I can without betraying a confidence."
    "So he was getting girls on the spot, was he?" Johnson demanded belligerently.
    Perry Mason laughed.
    "Go ask Manchester about it," he said.
    Riker stared moodily at Mason.
    "And you're not going to give us a break?"
    Mason said slowly: "Riker, I'd like to help you boys out, but I can't tell you the name of the man who employed me. I don't think it would be fair. But I can tell you this much…"
    He stopped and drummed with his fingers on the edge of his desk.
    "Go on and tell us," Riker said.
    Perry Mason heaved a deep sigh.
    "There's a girl," he said, "from Cloverdale – his last victim – a girl named Marjorie Clune. She's here in the city somewhere."
    "Where?" asked Riker.
    "I'm sure I couldn't tell you," Mason said.
    "All right, go on," Johnson told him. "What about her?"
    "I don't know so much about her," Perry Mason said. "But she's got a