The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  “Because he thinks he has something to gain by doing it,” Drake said.

  “That,” Mason told him, “is obvious. Now then, the question is, what did he have to gain?”

  Drake shrugged his shoulders.

  Mason said to Della, “Sylvia Atwood is going to be here within five minutes. I’m going out to call on her father and do what I can to reassure him.

  “In the meantime, Paul, you keep your men covering Brogan. Brogan and Fritch have been in communication, probably by telephone since Brogan hasn’t left his apartment. Of course, Fritch could have come to Brogan there at the apartment.”

  “You don’t know Fritch?”

  Mason shook his head.

  “Have we got a description?”

  “We could probably get one,” Mason said, “but I don’t know that it would do any good now. I was thinking that Brogan would go to Fritch and that Fritch must have the master recording. Apparently it’s the other way around. Fritch must have gone to Brogan. Brogan must have the master recording.”

  “That checks,” Drake said. “Brogan is the brains behind the blackmail.”

  “All right,” Mason told him, “we’ll play it on that basis for a while.”

  Chapter 5

  Mason, sitting on Sylvia Atwood’s right, noticed approvingly the deft manner with which she handled the car in traffic.

  The lawyer sat with arms folded, his keen eyes missing nothing, his face granite hard with expressionless impassivity.

  From time to time Sylvia stole a quick sidelong glance at Mason’s profile, then devoted her attention to driving.

  After they had negotiated the heaviest part of the traffic and were rolling along on a boulevard, she said bitterly, “J.J. has thrown off the mask now and shown himself for what he is—a blackmailer, a dirty, vicious blackmailer.”

  Mason nodded.

  “But,” she went on, “how can he do anything to hurt Dad without at the same time hurting himself? He’s going to have to admit that he was the one who robbed the bank.”

  “Was one of the persons who robbed the bank,” Mason corrected.

  “Well,” she said, “it doesn’t make any difference as far as we’re concerned.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s simply a question of whether Dad knew that he was using stolen money, but it would seem to me that J.J. has completely reversed his position. Before this he was trying to protect himself and his good name. Now he’s engaged in blackmail, pure and simple.”

  “Blackmail,” Mason said, “is never pure and it’s seldom simple.”

  “No, I suppose not, but why shouldn’t he try to protect himself?”

  “Because,” Mason said, “they’ve had some very clever attorneys looking up the statute of limitations, and they’ve decided that the lapse of time has made Fritch immune from prosecution on any charge. That’s probably why the police haven’t swooped down on Fritch and arrested him for that bank job. It’s up to the bank in a civil suit to try to recover its property—”

  “But doesn’t a statute of limitations run against a bank?”

  “There,” Mason said, “you’re up against a peculiar, tricky legal situation. In certain types of involuntary trust, where the custodian of the property is presumed to have knowledge of the illegal means by which the property was acquired, and the other person has no knowledge and is prevented from having knowledge by the secretive acts of the involuntary trustee, the statute of limitations may run from the discovery of the facts rather than the facts themselves.”

  “Oh, you lawyers!” she said. “You’re so technical.”

  “You have to have technicalities if you’re going to have law,” Mason said. “The minute you lay down a line of demarcation between right and wrong you are necessarily going to have borderline cases. Go down to the border between Mexico and the United States. Stand two inches on this side of the border and you’re in the United States. Stand two inches on the other side and you’re in Mexico and subject to the laws of Mexico. That means that moving four inches puts you under an entirely different set of laws.”

  “Well, that’s understandable.”

  “It’s understandable to you,” Mason said, “because you can clearly see the boundary line between the United States and Mexico and can understand it. The lawyer sees legal boundary lines just as clearly and can readily comprehend the distinction between being barely on one side of the line and barely on the other.

  “Tell me something about your family that we’re going to see.”

  “My father is magnificent. He’s been a wonderful, wonderful man. But he’s a sick man now.”

  “And there’s a sister?”

  “Hattie.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s wonderful, Mr. Mason. Just wait until you meet her. As I told you she’s a stay-at-home, but she has the most wonderful disposition.

  “When the man who was to be my husband showed up and started courting me, Hattie insisted I should go ahead and marry and she’d stay home and take care of the family.”

  “Your mother was living then?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you did that?”

  “Yes, I did. I suppose I was selfish, but I was in love and—well, I did it, and Hattie stayed on, taking care of the folks, running the house.

  “She’s wonderful—and now she’s having her own chance for happiness.”

  “Tell me about that,” Mason said.

  “His name is Edison Levering Doyle. You’ll meet him. He’s clever. I think he’s going places. I feel so happy for Hattie—and yet I’m afraid for her.”

  “Why are you afraid?” Mason asked.

  “It’s difficult to describe.”

  “Can you try?”

  “Yes, I can try, but I don’t want to.”

  “Go ahead,” Mason said. “What is it?”

  “Well, I’m afraid Hattie isn’t going to be happy with Edison, and I’m afraid it’s going to break her heart, but I don’t know what I can do about it.”

  “That isn’t what you started to say,” Mason told her.

  “All right,” she said, “I’ll put it right on the line with you, Mr. Mason. Perhaps I never saw it clearly before. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been out traveling and meeting people. Perhaps it’s something that a sheltered, circumscribed existence has done to Hattie. I don’t know.

  “However—oh, I don’t know how to tell you—life has a way of doing things to you. You don’t realize that the minutes that pass by are shaping your character. You can’t—you can’t wait things out. Now I’m just making a mess of it. I knew I would.”

  Mason said, “You mean that Hattie has become somewhat drab, colorless, mousy?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “That’s what you mean?”

  “It sounds horrible when you say it that way, Mr. Mason, but—and yet I don’t know how to tell you exactly what I mean. Let’s take two girls. Let’s suppose that they’re absolutely equal and identical, if you could suppose such a thing. One of them makes herself attractive to men. She likes masculine company. She’s on the go. Men make passes at her and she likes it. She wears good clothes, goes to beauty parlors, travels, sees glamorous women, and naturally she has a tendency to become—well, a little glamorous.”

  “Go on,” Mason said.

  “Then we’ll suppose that the other woman stays home. She doesn’t have time to go to a beauty parlor. She doesn’t care because no one is going to see her anyway. She does her hair herself. She doesn’t go out much to parties. She’s constantly waiting on older people. She’s constantly associating with them. She—well, after a year or two of that what’s going to happen?”

  “You mean the stay-at-home girl is going to lose her charm?”

  “She isn’t going to develop any.”

  “But you have just told me that Hattie is now going to have her chance with Edison Doyle.”

  “I hope she’s going to have her chance, but—well, a man
wants a lot of things in a woman. He wants a mate. He wants someone to keep his home. He wants someone to raise his children. He wants a companion. He also wants fun.”

  “Are you trying to tell me,” Mason asked, “that Edison Doyle was happy with Hattie until he began to see more of you, and then lately you felt he was comparing you and Hattie and perhaps becoming a little interested in you?”

  “Good heavens, am I that obvious?”

  “Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “Well, not exactly, but—Damn it, that’s what I was trying not to tell you. I don’t even know. I can’t eve.…”

  “It worries you?” Mason asked as her voice trailed away into silence.

  “In a way.”

  “Tell me a little more about yourself. You married, and then what? Were you happy?”

  “I married Sam Atwood. We were happy. It was a wonderful life. Then Sam died. It was quite a shock. However, I’m a person who adjusts readily to a new environment.

  “Sam left me insurance, stocks, bonds, real estate—some good investments. I have made a few good investments of my own. I’ve been lucky.”

  “How long ago did your husband die?”

  “About eighteen months.”

  “And what have you been doing since?”

  “I’ve been traveling. I had always wanted to travel. After Sam’s death there was no reason why I shouldn’t.”

  “You didn’t travel before?”

  “Not too much. My husband had business interests that kept him pretty well occupied. He couldn’t get too far away from those business interests.

  “His death was a shock to me. I wanted to get into a new environment, to meet new people, to see new things. I traveled.”

  “And you learned something from your travels?”

  “I suppose so. I think one does. I’ve been trying to tell you that I think every day of one’s life places a stamp on the individual. You select the sort of life you want to live, and living that life in turn leaves its mark, so that you’re changing all the time, one way or the other.”

  “How long have you been back home?”

  “About thirty days.”

  “You came back and found Edison Doyle and Hattie engaged?”

  “Not exactly engaged but going together, and I think there’s sort of an understanding. Dad’s heart is very bad. I suppose he can’t last too long. I think Hattie wants to be with him. Dad has grown to a point where he depends on her.”

  “And when you came back from your travels you saw Hattie through new eyes?”

  “Mr. Mason, I was shocked. I didn’t realize—it’s so hard to explain, so hard to describe, that I’m not even going to try.”

  “And Edison Doyle, on the other hand, saw in you a glamorous potential sister-in-law. He started out to be nice to you and now you find him perhaps contrasting you and Hattie?”

  “I don’t know what’s happening, Mr. Mason. I like Edison. He’s a wonderful guy. I think he’s taken life a little too seriously. I think he needs to be jolted out of it. He could marry, settle down and become quite a stick-in-the-mud. On the other hand, he could be jarred out of his shell of seriousness and get a broader outlook.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s an architect.”

  “You’re around home a good deal?”

  “I try to be with Dad some. I’d like to take some of the load off Hattie. I’d like to stay with Dad and have her get out. I think she and Edison should go out more. I think she should pay more attention to her clothes, more attention to her personal appearance.”

  “How does she feel?”

  “It’s hard to tell how Hattie feels. Of course, Dad’s heart is in such shape that he may pass away at any time. It may be rather sudden. I think Hattie wants to be sure that she’s with him, that if he ever should call for her she’d be there.”

  “And you?”

  “I don’t see things that way, Mr. Mason. Dad may go tomorrow. He may live for years. I’ve talked with the doctor about it. No one knows. I have my own problems. I have my own apartment. I have my own friends. I have my own life. I try to keep myself well dressed and attractive. I try to be with Dad some. I’ve repeatedly put pressure on Hattie to hire nurses so that she could get out.”

  “She doesn’t want that?”

  “She doesn’t want it, and lately she’s been just a little—oh, I don’t know, sometimes I think she’s—well, we don’t see things the same way.”

  “You think perhaps she feels that her boy-friend is becoming attracted by your glamour and is perhaps a little jealous?”

  “Good heavens, Mr. Mason, Hattie wouldn’t get jealous. She might get hurt but she wouldn’t get jealous.”

  “Well?” Mason asked.

  “Well, Mr. Mason, when I’m with Edison I’m not going to sit around with my hands on my lap and look down at my feet. I accepted Edison as a future brother-in-law. I joked with him and laughed. I like life and laughter and—I think you’re prying into things that don’t necessarily enter into the case, Mr. Mason, or perhaps I’m telling you things that I shouldn’t. This discussion is—well, perhaps you’re jumping at conclusions. I think you’d better wait until you’ve seen things for yourself.”

  “And what about the rest of the family?” Mason asked. “Tell me about the others.”

  “Jarrett is an archaeologist. He’s always around sticking his nose into ruins somewhere. Right at present he’s down in Yucatan.”

  “And his wife?”

  “His wife is filthy rich and terribly snooty.”

  “In other words, she doesn’t like you.”

  “And I don’t like her. However, it’s been a good match for Jarrett. Because of her money he’s been able to go around digging up ruins, looking at old carvings with a magnifying glass.”

  “I take it he’s more like Hattie than like you?”

  “He isn’t like anyone except Jarrett Bain. He’s a character. He’ll sit while you’re talking and look at you steadily with gray eyes regarding you through spectacles so thick they distort the whole perspective of his face. He won’t say a word. He’ll sit and listen. Sometimes he’s listening to what you say, and when he does he has an uncanny ability to remember everything. Sometimes his mind is two or three thousand miles away and he isn’t paying the slightest attention to what you’re saying. It’s disconcerting because you never know.”

  “He doesn’t contribute to the conversation?”

  “He sits and looks.”

  “Are he and his wife happy?”

  “I suppose so. She dominates him but he doesn’t realize it. She has the money. She likes to be the wife of an archaeologist. They travel around in various places where they can poke through ruins.”

  “She likes that?”

  “Oh, she goes and pokes and learns a line of patter so she can get the reputation of being very highbrow with people who know nothing about the subject. But she always manages to spend plenty of time in Paris, London, Rome, Cairo, Rio, and places like that. While Jarrett is out exploring she’ll go some place where she can wait while he’s ‘establishing headquarters.’

  “There, now you know the whole setup, Mr. Mason.”

  Mason studied her. “If it should transpire that the bank should recover a judgment against your father and be able to show that this oil property is held in trust for the bank, it wouldn’t affect Jarrett because he’s married money. It wouldn’t affect you because you have money. But it would seriously affect Hattie?”

  “Well, I suppose so, if you want to put it that way, but there’s also the family good name. Phoebe can support an archaeologist and loves doing it, but being married to the son of a bank thief is something else. I also have my own reputation to consider.”

  “And Hattie?”

  “It would, of course, mean a great deal to Hattie.”

  “And Edison?” Mason asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Edison certainly has human intelligence. He m
ust have realized that some day your father is going to die and that Hattie will inherit a very sizable amount of property.”

  “He isn’t that kind.”

  “I’m not trying to say that he’s marrying her because of that, but he must have realized that.”

  “Oh, I suppose he does.”

  “And that might make quite a difference to him.”

  She slowed the car, turned to regard the lawyer. “You do have the damnedest way of expressing things,” she said.

  “I take it,” Mason said, abruptly changing the subject, “your brother Jarrett doesn’t know anything about this?”

  “He does now. I talked with Jarrett last night on the long-distance telephone.”

  “And told him about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why the urgency?”

  “Because,” she said, “if I’m going to put up money to safeguard the estate, I expect the estate to pay me back. I wanted to be sure that anything I did had the approval of all the family.”

  “He gave his approval?”

  “In a limited way,” she said, and laughed bitterly.

  “What’s the limitation?”

  “Oh, I guess I’m supposed to be selfish or something. Anyway, he told me to talk it over with Hattie, and that anything Hattie agreed to would be all right with him, but that before any money was actually paid over he wanted to know how much it was and how much of a contribution I was going to expect from him.”

  “And you told him?”

  “Of course,” she said caustically. “What he was angling for was for me to tell him to forget it, that I’d advance whatever was required and the estate could reimburse me after Dad died.

  “But he was so damned obvious about it that I got mad and told him that I’d expect him to put up a third of whatever we had to pay.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He didn’t say much. That’s not his way, but you could almost hear him thinking. Of course, he’d have to go to Phoebe to get the money and in order to do that he’d have to tell her what it was for.

  “In a way I can see the thing from his angle. I’m supposed to be the selfish one in the family, but he’s just as bad as I am. He didn’t do anything to help care for the family. He married money and went off photographing ruins and digging into musty old graves.