I had not planned on updating this story so quickly but one of my readers got in contact with me and kept pleading for Chapter 4. I did not have the heart to disappoint her so here it is :)

"How is it going, Perry?" Paul Drake asked as he walked into his best friend's office.

"To tell the truth, not so well."

"You have a difficult case?"

"No, I am having difficulties with Della."

The blond detective stared at him.

"Now that is one thing that I never thought you would say. What on earth is going on?"

"I wish I knew. She has not been herself for a while. Last week she seemed so distracted – twice I caught her staring at me absentmindedly rather than taking shorthand when I was dictating, and three times I noticed mistakes in the briefs she had typed and had to ask her to fix them. This week, she is no longer distracted, but she seems…determined? It is difficult to find a word for her attitude. She walks and acts as if she were a woman on a mission. Every lunch hour and exactly at five o'clock each day she leaves the office as if she had a million errands to run. She has not called me 'Perry' for days – she either does not address me by name or says 'Mr. Mason', even when we are alone. And I offered to buy her dinner twice this week, and each time she turned me down, saying that she had to get back home to tend to some matters."

Paul shook his head in disbelief.

"Now if Della is refusing free meals, then something is very wrong. I presume that you have asked her what the matter is, and have gotten an unsatisfactory answer?"

"Only about a thousand times. I've tried guessing the truth out of her, but all I learned was that, allegedly, I have not done anything to upset her, that her family and friends are all well and that she herself is perfectly healthy."

Paul paused and looked down.

"You…you don't suppose that she could be in trouble of some sort?"

"Well, if she is, I would hope that by this point she would trust me enough to come to me for help. Della, of all people, should know what happens when people try to deal with blackmail or the like on their own."

"Don't you think it would be more prudent to put a tail on her?"

"No, she knows all your operatives by sight. Even if you could find one that she is unfamiliar with, she knows the principles of tracking well enough to immediately figure out what they were up to, and that would put both of us in an awkward position. No, let me try it my way first. I will give her the weekend to rest, and if she is still like this on Monday I am cancelling all my appointments and taking her for a long walk. I will find a place with no one in earshot and I will cross-examine her for hours, if necessary, to get the truth from her."

"Alright Perry, I wish you luck."

…

Unbeknownst to him, Perry would not have to wait till Monday. At that very moment, Della was pausing outside his office door and taking a deep breath.

The time had come. The announcement had to be made.

In a way, it was a bittersweet personal victory for her. After all these years of foolishly pining and worrying that she would betray her feelings to Perry, she would be able to walk away from his office and his life with her head held high. He would never guess her secret now!

She clutched the stack of documents she held a bit tighter, and knocked on his door.

"Come in."

She opened the door and saw Perry sitting at his desk, and Paul Drake lounging in his favorite leather chair. This was perfect. She could tell them both together, and only have to answer the thousands of questions they would put to her once.

Walking up to Perry's desk, she handed him the thickest stack of papers.

"This is the final copy of the Jenkinson brief."

"Thank you."

She gave him a few more sheets.

"And this is Mrs. Helper's Last Will and Testament, all ready for her signature."

"You managed to type it already? Excellent, Della!"

The lady steeled herself, held out the last document, and then, in the businesslike tone she had been practicing all day, said,

"And this is my letter of resignation."

Perry had already started to reach for the sheet of paper when he registered her words. His hand froze for the slightest second, and then he relaxed into a smile and plucked it out of her hand.

"You're joking," he said, as he cast his gaze over the paper to see what it was, in actuality.

"No, I'm not," his secretary returned in a serious tone. Perry scanned the document, realizing that it was a resignation letter. His eyes began to burn as if acid had been splashed in them.

Before he could formulate a single question, Della spoke again.

"I am getting married in three weeks' time, and my husband and I will be moving out of Los Angeles."

Now, Perry Mason had a longstanding habit. Every time that he was shocked, he immediately put on a perfect poker face. This habit had served him well in court; when a witness volunteered information he had not expected or the real murderer burst out with a confession, he was invariably able to appear unperturbed and completely in control of the situation. Upon hearing Della's words, therefore, his countenance immediately became expressionless. He gazed at her with icy blue eyes, and as his tongue suddenly felt like lead, he uttered not one syllable. It was Paul who cried out,

"Married!"

Della was only too grateful to look away from Perry's impassive stare and to fix her eyes upon the private detective instead.

"Yes, married," she rejoined. Forcing herself to use a playful tone, she continued, "Perhaps you have heard of it? It is when a man and woman decide to spend the rest of their lives together. It is also a very common reason for girls to leave the workforce."

"Yes…but…but who is the man?" Paul sputtered, casting a quick, worried glance at Perry.

Della seated herself in the chair stationed in front of the lawyer's desk, careful to emanate a nonchalant air.

"Gerald Tortine. I have known him for several years, as he lives in the same apartment building as me. He is an honest, hardworking man, and he has two children from his first marriage who are absolutely adorable."

"Why did we never hear about him before?" the private detective pressed on.

"Until he proposed, I did not think there was any reason to mention our friendship at work," she replied honestly.

"You are a sly one, Della! Congratulations! But I am sorry to hear about this – it won't be the same around here without you – will it, Perry?" Paul gave the silent lawyer another look. Despite his friend's prodding, the defense attorney still said nothing.

"Thank you, Paul. I know you are probably expecting an invitation to the wedding, but Gerald and I have decided to have a very simple ceremony. It will only be the priest, the two witnesses, his two children, and ourselves. We desire to spend our energy and our money on our move to Mayhaven instead." Della unwillingly refocused her attention on the stone-faced attorney. It was extraordinary difficult to tell the man she secretly loved that she was marrying another, and his lack of reaction was hardly helping matters. She had expected that he would ask questions, like Paul was doing, but his muteness discomforted her more than a cross-examination would have done. "I understand that this will be an inconvenience to you, and that my contract requires two weeks' notice. I have adjusted the date of my resignation in the letter accordingly, and will continue working for the next fortnight. It will give me a chance to train my replacement -"

"No," Perry cut in brusquely. He knew that he would go mad if he had to see her, speak with her, day in and day out, and know all the while that her heart belonged to another! "No, that won't be necessary. You have had some vacation days coming to you. Take them now. You must be busy, under the circumstances."

"Yes, but what will you do for a secretary?"

"I will get someone from the temp agency, and I am sure she will do perfectly well. Gertie and I will teach her." he said in even, matter-of-fact tone.

Della found that she needed to redouble her efforts to keep her composure. She had never dreamt that he would be so cold, so unfeeling, and would treat the news of her departure with such indifference!

"Very well," she heard herself saying.

"Shall we settle accounts?" Perry stated, rather than asked. He reached into his coat pocket and produced his checkbook. He wrote out the check, tore it off, and passed it to her. She glanced at it, and saw the amount of three hundred dollars written on it.

"I am afraid that you have made a mistake, you only owe me a hundred and twenty dollars."

"You have been with me for a long time, have done decent work, and thus deserve a bonus upon the termination of your contract." He nodded at her as if they had just completed a perfectly ordinary business transaction. "Good luck, Ms. Street."

She stood up.

"Thank you. I will just clean out my desk. Goodbye, Mr. Mason," she replied, in an equally formal tone.

She looked at Paul to say her farewells. But he said,

"I will drive you home. It will be difficult for you to carry all the things from your desk on the bus."

"Why, thank you, I would appreciate that." She glanced at Perry, and saw that he had already reached for the Jenkinson brief and appeared absorbed in reading it. Without saying anything further to him, she walked to her own office, Mr. Drake upon her heels. She quickly put a few plastic plants into a box, allowed Paul to help her into her coat, took one look around the office in which she had spent so many years, and by sheer willpower, walked out the door for the last time.

To complete the illusion of her being a happy bride-to-be, Della made sure to keep up a steady stream of chatter on the twenty-minute ride. She talked about Gerald Tortine's success at his company, laughed about the hilarious things his children said, and gushed about the lovely suburb of Mayhaven. At its conclusion, she shook Paul's hand, accepted his renewed congratulations, and went into the building.

No sooner had the door of her apartment closed behind her than hot tears began to pour down her cheeks. Perry Mason was not the man she had thought him. If he were the kind employer and friend that he had pretended to be during her employment, he would have at least congratulated her, asked whom she was marrying, and expressed sorrow at her leaving. Instead, he had callously written out a check, and dissolved everything between them by handing over a few hundred dollars. Not only that, he had strongly implied that she was perfectly replaceable – a random girl from the temp agency would do just as well as her! He hadn't even the decency to offer her a ride home – it had been Paul, the less-polished gentleman of the two, who had recognized how difficult it would be to carry a large box aboard a city bus and offered to be of service. So ended a career for which she had sacrificed countless nights' sleep, typed until her fingertips were numb, and carried out her boss's instructions to the letter. All this time, she had deluded herself thinking that Perry Mason saw her as an appreciated coworker! After tonight, however, it was all too clear that to him, she had just been another building block in his glorious career. All the dinners he had taken her to, all those moments of levity in the office – they had just been well-calculated ways of making her think that she was a valued secretary, thus spurring her to work harder. Now that she was no longer going to be of use to him, she had been unceremoniously swept aside. Come Monday, all traces of her would be removed from the office, and some other poor, unsuspecting girl would be taken in by his false charm and working her heart out to please him.

Della found that she was beyond grateful for Gerald Tortine. If he had not come along when he did, she may have wasted the rest of her life in Perry Mason's office. Any lingering doubts about whether she had made the right decision had suddenly evaporated.

Uh, oh. Perry and Della are in a classic unacknowledged lover's bind – both misunderstanding the other and both too proud to show their feelings. Perry probably did the worst thing he could under the circumstances.

Please review! More reviews usually equal faster updates!