Whether the books feature Perry Mason, D.A. Doug Selby, Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, or non-series characters, Erle Stanley Gardner’s writing always entertains. You don’t sell more than 300,000,000 books by failing to deliver.

—OTTO PENZLER

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

PUSHING MY way into the office, I stood just inside the door, my hat in my hand.

There were six men ahead of me. The ad had said between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. If appearances were any indication, some of them were optimistic liars. For the most part, we were a seedy-looking outfit.

A straw-haired secretary behind a typewriting desk banged away at a typewriter. She looked up at me. Her face was as cold as a clean bedsheet.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want to see Mr. Cool.”

“What about?”

I moved my head in a comprehensive gesture to include the half-dozen men who were looking up at me in casually hostile appraisal. “I’m answering the ad.”

“I thought so. Sit down,” she said.

“There seems,” I observed, “to be no chair available.”

“There will be in a minute. You may stand and wait, or come back.”

“I’ll stand.”

She turned back to her typewriter. A buzzer sounded. She picked up a telephone, listened a moment, said, “Very well,” and looked expectantly at the door which said “B. L. Cool, Private.” The door opened. A man, who looked as though he was trying to get to the open air in a hurry, streaked through the office. The blonde said, “You may go in, Mr. Smith.”

A young chap with stooped shoulders and slim waist got to his feet, jerked down his vest, adjusted his tie, pinned a smirk on his face, opened the door to the private office, and went in.

The blonde said to me, “What’s your name?”

“Donald Lam.”

“L-a-m-b?” she asked.

“L-a-m,” I said.

She jotted it down, and then, with her eyes on me, started making shorthand notes under the name. I could see she was cataloguing my personal appearance.

“That all?” I asked when she’d covered me from head to foot with her eyes and finished making pothooks with her fingers.

“Yes. Sit down in that chair and wait.”

I sat and waited. Smith didn’t last long. He was out in less than two minutes. The second man made the round trip so fast it looked as though he’d come out on the bounce. The third man lasted ten minutes and came out looking dazed. The door of the outer office opened. Three more applicants came in. The blonde took their names, sized them up and made notes. After they were seated, she picked up the telephone and said laconically, “Four more,” listened for a moment, and hung up.