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there won't be any charge."
    Mason turned to Della Street. "Let's see what we can find listed under the Hollywood Talent Scout Modeling Agency, Della."
    A few moments later Della Street said, "Here they are. Hollywood three, one, five hundred."
    "Give them a ring," Mason said.
    Della Street put through the connection to an outside line, her nimble fingers whirled the dial of the telephone, and a moment later she nodded to Mason.
    Mason picked up his telephone and heard a feminine voice say, "Hollywood three, one, five hundred."
    "Mr. Boring, please," Mason said.
    "Who did you wish to speak with?"
    "Mr. Boring."
    "Boring?" she said. "Boring?… What number were you calling?"
    "Hollywood three, one, five hundred."
    "What?… Oh, yes, Mr. Boring, yes, yes. The Hollywood Talent Scout Modeling Agency. Just a moment, please. I think Mr. Boring is out of the office at the moment. Would you care to leave a message?"
    "This is Perry Mason," the lawyer said. "I want him to call me on a matter of considerable importance. I'm an attorney at law and I wish to get in touch with him as soon as possible."
    "I'll try and see that he gets the message just as soon as possible," the feminine voice said.
    "Thank you," Mason said, and hung up.
    He sat for a few moments looking speculatively at Dianne.
    "Do you think there's any chance of getting something for me, Mr. Mason?"
    "I don't know," Mason said. "A great deal depends on the setup of the Hollywood Talent Scout Modeling Agency. A great deal depends on whether I can find something on which to predicate a charge of fraud; or perhaps of obtaining money under false pretenses."
    "False pretenses?" she asked.
    Mason said, "I don't think Boring ever had the faintest idea of promoting you as a model legitimately. Whatever he had in mind for you was along entirely different lines. He didn't intend to use you to start any new styles, and my best guess is that all of this talk about finding a firm-fleshed young woman who could put on twelve pounds and still keep her curves in the right places was simply so much double-talk.
    "I think the real object of the contract was to tie you up so that you would be forced to give Boring a fifty per cent share of your gross income."
    "But I don't have any gross income other than the hundred dollars a week-unless, of course, I could make some because of modeling contracts and television and things of that sort."
    "Exactly," Mason said. "There were outside sources of income which Boring felt would materialize. Now then, something happened between Friday night and Saturday noon to make him feel those sources of income were not going to materialize. The question is, what was it?"
    "But he must have had something in mind, Mr. Mason. There must have been some tentative television contract or some modeling assignment or something of that sort."
    "That's right," Mason said. "There was something that he had found out about; something he wanted to share in; something he was willing to put up money on so he could hold you in line. And then the idea didn't pan out."
    "Well?" she asked.
    Mason said, "There are two things we can do. The obvious, of course, is to get some money out of Boring by way of a settlement. The next thing is to try and find out what it was he had in mind and promote it ourselves.
    "Now, I want you to listen very carefully, Dianne. When a person is a party to a contract and the other party breaks that contract, the innocent person has a choice of several remedies.
    "He can either repudiate the contract or rescind it under certain circumstances, or he can continue to treat the contract as in force and ask that the other party be bound by the obligations, or he can accept the fact the other party has broken the contract and sue him for damages resulting from the breach.
    "All that is in case the element of fraud does not enter into the contract. If fraud has been used, there are additional remedies.
    "Now, I want you to be very careful to remember that as far