“Then you must know her,” Della Street said. “That is, you must have already met her, and she was afraid her voice would give her away.”
“Either that, or I’m going to meet her in the near future. Somehow I’m more inclined to the future theory than the past.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, just a hunch.”
“How do we handle it on the books?”
Mason handed her the portion of the ten-thousand-dollar bill. “That’s up to you — but that piece of ten grand you’ve got there is powerful bait.”
Della sniffed. “You know perfectly well you’re more intrigued by the Mysterious Madame X than you are by the money. Why not ‘The Case of the Masked Mistress’?”
“Well, that’s a thought,” he said, “although you may wrong the girl’s morals.”
“Did she look like a moral young woman?”
Mason grinned. “As to that,” he said, “it’s hard to tell even when you see them in complete regalia, watch the gestures of their hands, and listen to their voices. This woman kept her hands on the arm of the chair, her feet on the floor, and her mouth shut. Open up a file on ‘The Case of the Baited Hook’ and you’ll be right whoever or whatever she is.”