“Indeed!” she said, looking at him over the top of her glasses. “You’re an employee of this store, young man?”
“I am. I’m a detective. I’m a duly authorized deputy...”
“Then, if you’re an employee,” she said, “I’m going to ask you to kindly get me a waitress. After all, I want lunch, not dinner.”
His hand tightened on her shoulder. “You’re under arrest!” he repeated. “Are you going to come down to the office quietly, or will I have to carry you?”
“Aunty! Please go,” the girl pleaded. “We can straighten this up somehow. We...”
“I haven’t the slightest intention of going.”
The detective braced himself. Mason’s chair scraped back, as the lawyer got to his feet, to tower above the chunky detective. His hand clapped down on the man’s shoulder with explosive force. “Just... a... minute,” he said. The detective whirled, his face dark with rage.
“You may be a detective,” Mason told him, “but you know very little about law. In the first place, that’s not the proper way to make an arrest. In the second place, you evidently haven’t a warrant, nor has any crime been committed in your presence. In the third place, if you knew any law, you’d realize that you can’t make a charge of shoplifting stick until a person attempts to remove the goods from the premises. Anyone can pick up goods in a department store and carry ‘em all over the place, and you can’t do a thing about it until that person walks out to the sidewalk.”
“Who the hell are you?” the detective asked. “An accomplice?”
“I’m a lawyer. The name’s Perry Mason,” the lawyer told him, “in case that means anything to you.”