"Gardner, Erle Stanley - Perry Mason 075 - The Case of the Troubled Trustee" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner Earle Stanley)

"You see," Desere explained, "my father thought I was not to be trusted with money. There was rather a fair sum of money, and Father left it to Kerry as trustee so that I could have enough each year to keep me going for four years, but not enough to go out and splurge and wake up broke. I think Daddy was more afraid of my gambling than anything else."
"I see," Mason observed noncommittally, and then asked, "Do you have any predilection for gambling, Miss Ellis?"
She laughed nervously. "I guess Daddy thought so. I guess he thought I had a predilection for just about everything."
Mrs. Hedley said, "The reason we're here is that we understand the trustee has finally come around to the idea for an endowment."
"An endowment?" Mason asked.
"Fred's idea," she said. "He wants to have it so that--"
Fred Hedley held up his hand. "Never mind telling him the details, Mom."
"I think Mr. Mason should know them."
"Then _I'll_ tell him," Hedley said.
He turned to face the lawyer. "Get one thing straight, Mr. Mason. I'm not a visionary; I'm not a goof. I play around with a bunch of poets and artists but I'm essentially an executive type."
Warming to his subject, he got up from the chair, leaned forward and placed his hands on Mason's desk.
"The trouble with our civilization," he said, "is that it can't develop itself. It tends to wash itself out.
"I think we are beginning to realize that every country needs to develop geniuses; but here in this country we can't do it because the genius can't develop; he starves to death.
"Look at the artists, the poets, the writers I know who could be developed into geniuses. I don't mean, Mr. Mason, that anybody has to develop them. All they need is to be left alone--just be free to develop their own talents."
"And they can't do it?" Mason asked.
"They can't do it," Hedley said, "because they can't make a living while they're doing it. They're starving to death. You can't develop anything on an empty stomach except an appetite."
"And you have some idea?" Mason asked.
"I want to endow up-and-coming poets, writers, artists, thinkers--principally, thinkers."
"What kind of thinkers?"
"Political thinkers."
"What kind of politics?" Mason asked.
"Now, there you go, Mr. Mason. You're trying to pin me down. Probably because of the beard. You think I'm a goof. I'm not. I go with a beat crowd, but I don't just want to drift along with the stream. I stay cool, but I want to _do_ something."
"Such as what?"
"I want to _think_."
"You called Dutton a square," Mason said. "Why?"
"Because he _is_ a square."
"What's a square?"
"He doesn't belong; he's narrow-minded; he's all wrapped up in a conventional concept of moneygrubbing.
"Times are changing. The whole world has changed. You can't get anywhere any more with the conventional type of thinking--not in art, not in writing, not in poetry, not in political thinking."
Mason glanced at Desere Ellis. "You are planning to finance this idea he has?"
"I wish I could," she said, "but I don't see how I can. As I told the Hedleys, Dad's money is just about used up. I wish now I hadn't been quite so extravagant. Sometimes I even wish Kerry Dutton had been more firm with me and had done more of what Dad wanted him to."
"In what way?" Mason asked.
"Not giving me money to throw away."
"You threw it away?"
She made a little gesture. "Oh, I was always taking off for Europe, or someplace, and buying new cars, new clothes, living it up. Once you start in, you can go through money pretty fast, Mr. Mason."
"And Dutton gave you the money?"
"I think his idea was that he'd take the money Dad left and pay it out in installments so that I would have a steady income until the time came when the trust was terminated."
"And then you'd have nothing?" Mason asked.
"Then I'd have nothing," she said. "Then I'd have to consider seriously how I was going to make a living."
"Did you remonstrate at all with Dutton?" Mason asked.
"Remonstrate with him?" she said, and laughed. "I remonstrated with him all the time."
"About giving you so much money?"
"About not giving me enough. I asked him how did he or anyone else know if I would live until the trust terminated. Why not go through life seeing what there was to see, living what there was to live, and then cross the bridge of the trust termination when I came to it."
Fred Hedley said, "If you ask my opinion, Mr. Mason, it was one hell of a way to handle a trust. Particularly, a spendthrift trust of that sort. Her father recognized that tendency in his daughter and wanted to guard against it. If Dutton had been on the job, we'd have a lot more money now for our foundation."
Mason smiled affably, the smile taking some of the sting from his words, and said, "But I didn't."
"Didn't what?" Hedley asked.
"Ask your opinion," Mason said.
Hedley flushed.
"Well," Mrs. Hedley said, "we're here. What do you have to tell us, Mr. Mason?"
"Nothing," Mason said.