Erle Stanley Gardner: The Case Of The Dangerous Dowager

Perry Mason's new client was a handsome white haired dawager who confessed to being a great grandmother. But shi was the strangest great grandmother Mason had ever run into. Matilda Benson smoked big, black cigars, she liked dancing, and she got a great kick out of a fast life. She ordered Mason in no uncertain terms to get hold of her granddaughter's gambling I.O.U.'s before they could be used in a divorce action.
Mason met the dowager's granddaughter on a notorious gambling-ship, twelve miles off shore.
One minute after he said "hello," he opened the door to the ship's inner office... and discovered a corpse. The case was really hot!.
The pay-off to this terrific tale is one fo those swift, exciting, last-minute turnabouts that have mada Erle Stanley Gardner's mysteries the most widely-read murder stories in the world.