F. Lee Bailey stepped into his lawyer's pinstriped suit, took the controls of his own turboprop and began hop-scotching the country on business. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Indiana, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois. Perhaps the most important stop on his week-long, buckshot journey was California. There, in a Redwood City jail, Bailey met for one hour with Patty Hearst ("She appeared to be neither militant nor maudlin") and announced he was joining her defense team. "I've never seen a kidnapping case like it," the celebrated lawyer said later at his rambling, weathered-shingle home in Marshfield, Mass. "There are 590 days of mystery in this case that I have to get caught up on. Right now, all I know is the beginning and the ending."

For the past two years Bailey has been entangled with the law as a defendant himself, accused of mail fraud involving the sale of distributorships in a conglomerate he represented. The charges were finally dismissed by an Orlando judge who ruled in August that Bailey had been denied his right to a speedy trial. For 26 months Bailey was unable to accept any big cases. "It's very difficult to make money when you're sitting in Florida on trial," he said. "One of the things you learn quickly is that if the client has any doubt you're going to show up at a trial, he'll go next door. My practice was trimmed by 80 percent."

If his income has diminished, Bailey's lifestyle has not. His three-acre estate includes a private landing pad with a red and white Enstrom helicopter (which he manufactures) in the hangar. He uses it to commute to his Boston office, 35 miles away. He drives a silver Mercedes and recently acquired a large power boat. "We always had sailboats, but I'm kind of tired of pulling the strings," he said. With telephones and a two-way radio connecting his house, office and vehicles, he remains in instant communication with the most anxious client—even when he is swimming in the covered pool. His schedule, however, keeps Bailey and his third wife, Lynda, a New Zealand-born former airline stewardess, away from home for all but about four days a month. "Coming back here is like going to a vacation spot," Bailey says.

The son of a Waltham, Mass., advertising man, Bailey dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year to join the Navy during the Korean war. Later, in the Marine Corps, he participated in over 200 courts-martial before returning to civilian life and Boston University law school. His well-publicized defense of Dr. Sam Sheppard, Capt. Ernest Medina, Albert DeSalvo (the Boston Strangler) and others earned him headlines and attracted millions of dollars in more prosaic legal work.

How does he view the Hearst case? "It has all sorts of bizarre problems," says Bailey. "There's a very substantial likelihood of some fairly sophisticated brainwashing, such as caused our people to go out and make broadcasts in North Vietnam. I have had a few of those cases. It's a fact beyond question that kidnap victims ordinarily acquiesce to a point where it looks like cooperation because they believe that's the only way to stay alive. I think the government ought to have the burden of proving otherwise." He is concerned about the Hearst name interfering with his client's rights. "Everyone is going out of their way to show she is not receiving any special treatment. I think that if Patty Hearst were a cocktail waitress, she might not be on trial." And Bailey's fee? He is coy. "I can't even estimate. The fact that the family is not impecunious is certainly beyond dispute."