She unfolded a sheet of paper filled with fine printing. Mason paused in his stride, whipped a fountain pen from his pocket, bent over the desk, and affixed his signature with a flourish.
“If a client did that you’d jump all over him,” she said.
“Did what?”
“Sign a printed form without reading it.”
He grinned. “After they get in trouble,” he said, “and bring a printed document in to me, bearing their signature, I always tell them they shouldn’t have signed it without reading it. And they shouldn’t. Not that one. But if a business man stopped to read over the nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand fine print regulations they put on the backs of tickets, bills of lading, telegraph blanks, and things of that sort, he’d be blind before he was fifty.”
“Perry Mason, you’re avoiding the question. Are you or are you not going to start getting your trunks packed?”
He frowned and said, “You know as well as I do, Della, we can’t leave on that ship until we have Rita Swaine out of her difficulties.”
“Suppose she’s guilty?”
“Do you think she’s guilty?”
“To tell you the truth, Chief, I don’t know. I don’t think I pay as much attention to the sob-sister stories women hand out as you do. But, just the same, it’s hard to figure how she could have gone in the house, killed Walter Prescott, and then tried to plan things so it would look as though her sister had done the job.”