"Five," Dutton corrected. "I felt that as Desere grew more mature the difference in our ages would become insignificant. I want her to stop thinking of me as an older brother-a much older brother."

Mason said, "All right, I'm glad you've come clean. Now, I want you to do three things. First, make me a check for a thousand dollars as a retainer. Second, sign an undated declaration of trust, listing all the securities that are in your name but which you are holding as trustee for Desere Ellis. You don't necessarily need to tell her about it, but get a record that these properties are being held only as a trustee under the will, then if you die she is protected."

"Third?" Dutton asked.

"Try to get Miss Ellis to come in to see me," Mason said. "I want to talk with her."

"Why?"

"Someone has to tell her that there is more money coming to her at the termination of the trust than she had anticipated, and someone has to tell her why. If you try to tell her, you have to sketch yourself its a heel. If I tell her, I may be able to put you in the position of a hero."

"Look here," Dutton said, "you can't tell her how 1 feel toward her. You can't-"

"Don't be foolish," Mason interrupted. "I'm riot running a matrimonial agency; I'm running a law office. You're going to pay me to keep you out of trouble. I want to keep you out of trouble.

"Your love life is none of my business except as it affects the job I have to do."

Dutton took a checkbook from his pocket and started writing a check.

Mason entered his private office the next morning to find Della Street opening the morning mail. He stood for a few moments watching her with appreciative eyes.

"Thanks," he said abruptly.

She looked up in surprise. "For what?"

"For just being," Mason said. "For being so much a part of things, so completely efficient and… and all the rest of it."

"Thank you," she said, her eyes suddenly soft.

"Any progress?"

"On what?" she asked.

"Come, come," Mason said, smiling. "Don't try to pull the wool over my eyes. On the romance, of course."

"The Dutton case?"

"Exactly."

"Nothing so far," she said. "Give the man a little time."

"He may not have as much time as he thinks," Mason said, seating himself in the client's overstuffed chair and watching Della Street's smoothly graceful figure as she stood at the desk opening letters, putting them in three pilesthe urgent on the left-hand corner of the desk, the personal-answer-required in the middle, and the general run-of-the-mill for secretarial attention on the right.

"Want some advice?" she asked.

Mason grinned. "That's why I brought the subject up."

She said, "You can't play Dan Cupid."

"Why not?"

"You don't have the build. You wear too many clothes, and you lack a bow and arrow."

Mason grinned. "Keep talking."

"Sometimes," Della Street said, choosing her words carefully as though she had rehearsed them, "a woman will be close to a man for a long time, seeing him in the part in which he has cast himself and, unless he makes some direct approach, not regarding him as a romantic possibility."

"And under those circumstances?" Mason asked.

"Under those circumstances," Della Street said, "nature gave the male the prerogative of taking the initiative; and if he isn't man enough to take it, it is quite possible the girl will never see him as a romantic possibility."

"Go on," Mason told her.

"But the one thing that would definitely wreck everything would be for someone else to try and take the intiative on behalf of this individual."

"Longfellow, I believe, commented on that in the poem dealing with John Alden and Priscilla," Mason said.

Della Street nodded.

"All right," Mason told her, "I've been forewarned. You want me to keep my bungling masculine touch under cover, is that it?"

The phone on Della Street 's desk rang.

She flashed him a quick smile, picked up the receiver and said, "Yes, Gertie," to the receptionist.

She said, "Wait a moment. Hold on, Gertie, I'll see." Della Street turned to Perry Mason. "Desere Ellis is in the office," she said.

Mason grinned. "Let's take a look, Della."

"Just a moment," Della Street said. "She is accompanied by a Mr. and Mrs. Heclley, apparently a mother and son."

"They are all three of them together?" Mason asked.

Della Street nodded. "As Gertie whispered confidentially, the mother is a determined creature with a rattrap mouth and monkey eyes; and the son is pure beatnik with a beard and a cool-cat manner which makes her flesh crawl. You know how Gertie is and how she loves to make snap appraisals of clients."

"And generally she's right," Mason said. "Have Gertie send the three of them in."

Della Street relayed the message, then went to the door communicating 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 fiancee, 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-"