The Case of the Queenly Contestant

“Nobody noticed the discrepancy in ages except this one nurse, who happened to be checking the records and saw that my age was given as twenty-nine. Actually, Melinda Baird was thirty-one at the time, but we thought we could get by with a few years off on the official documents on the grounds that a woman always likes to make herself younger than she is.

“Anyway, this nurse thought there had been a mistake, and she came in to talk with me about it.”

“What’s her name?” Mason asked.

“Agnes Burlington.”

“All right, she came in to see you before the child was born?”

“That’s right.”

“And asked you if you hadn’t made a mistake in giving your age?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“I told her no — that I’d actually been born on the date I’d put in the records, that I was really older than I looked.”

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Bosh and nonsense,’ and she asked me who I thought I was fooling, and finally I told her to give me a break and to just quit worrying about it.

“She was on her first assignment there at the hospital and so she remembered the thing rather distinctly.”

“That’s no sign she could remember you personally,” Mason said.

“Oh, but she does. I have talked with her.”

“You’ve talked with her?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she?”

“Here in Los Angeles. She has a nursing job here now.”

“When did you talk with her?”

“Just a short time ago. That Agnes Burlington is diabolically clever. She had an idea of what was happening there in the hospital, so she just made a note of all of the records. Remember that I went there under the name of Melinda Baird and, of course, I gave the correct address at which Melinda Baird was living at the time. We had to do that in order to have the birth certificate and everything regular on its face.

“Well, Agnes Burlington bided her time, and then a couple of years ago she came to me and told me who she was, that she remembered me, and that she knew I had been posing as Melinda Baird and that the baby who was born and who was baptized Wight Baird was not the son of Melinda Baird and August Leroy Baird but was my illegitimate son.”

“What did she want?” Mason asked.

“What do you think she wanted? Money. She was a shrewd, professional blackmailer. A nurse has lots and lots of opportunities for blackmail if she wants to use them, and this girl certainly wanted to use them.”

“She’s living here in Los Angeles now?”

“Yes.”

“What’s she doing?”

“She lives in a nice duplex house. She works when she feels like it. She drives a good car. She knows several places where she can go to get money when she needs it and...”

“How much has she hooked you for?” Mason asked.

“Not too much so far. She’s reasonably modest in her demands and she’s very, very plausible. She tells about how she needs a loan and things of that sort just to tide her over, a couple of hundred dollars now, and then a year later she’ll be back for three hundred dollars, and always so nice about it.”

“She said she remembered you?” Mason asked.

“Oh, yes — and actually I think she does — but she had one of those thirty-five-Millimeter cameras and she got several pictures of me in the hospital — pictures I knew nothing about until she casually mentioned that she had them.”

“Did she show them to you?”

“No.”

“You don’t think she’s bluffing?”

“No, I think she has them.”

Mason said thoughtfully. “So you’ve been paying blackmail to keep from having your past exposed and now, suddenly, you want to reverse the whole procedure?”

“Why not?” she asked. “The Bairds were killed in an automobile accident. Harmon Haslett is now dead. Wight is sole heir to a two-million-dollar estate and a big business.

“I have been wondering what I was going to do about Wight. Frankly, Mr. Mason, he’s been just a little bit wild since the Bairds were killed in that automobile accident. They left a will giving him some money, and he’s showing signs of — well, of being just a little bit wild.

“If he suddenly found himself the head of a great big business, if he found himself with plenty of money, he would steady down and assume the responsibility.”

“You hope he would steady down and assume responsibility,” Mason said. “He might go just the other way.”

“No, not Wight,” she said. “He’s restless now because he doesn’t have an assured position in life. Believe me, things were different when the Bairds were alive; but they died and he inherited just enough money — no, Mr. Mason, I’ve thought it all over. I’ve come to the conclusion that I reached a wrong decision when I first came to you and I want to change my entire position now.”

“I see,” Mason said; “and what do you want me to do now?”

“I want you to have Agnes sign an affidavit and — isn’t there some proceeding by which you can get an affidavit or some sort of a legal document from a person who knows very important facts but who might die or turn up missing or something?”