The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  The detective raised his long arms, clasped his fingers back of his head, crossed his ankles.

  “Go ahead,” Mason said. “Give us the low-down, Paul.”

  “J.J. Fritch was killed by repeated stabs with an ice pick,” Drake said. “There was very little external bleeding. Quite an intensive internal hemorrhage because two of the stabs penetrated the heart.”

  “How many wounds in all?”

  “Eight.”

  “Someone wanted to make a good job of it.”

  “Apparently. Of course, with a small weapon like an ice pick—”

  “Did they recover the ice pick?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Was there an old-fashioned icebox in Brogan’s apartment?”

  “No, there wasn’t. Brogan used an electric icebox and had ice cubes for his drinks. So did Fritch. Police aren’t absolutely certain the weapon was an ice pick, but they think it was.”

  Mason’s eyes narrowed.

  “I’ll tell you something else that hasn’t occurred to the police—as yet,” Drake went on.

  “What?”

  “The Bain household has an electric icebox, but it also has an old-fashioned ice chest on the back porch. Ned Bain sometimes has to have ice packs. They use about fifty pounds a day.”

  “Holcomb hasn’t been out to the Bains’ yet?”

  “No.”

  “Della’s out there now,” Mason said.

  “Perhaps she’d better look for the ice pick,” Paul said.

  Mason was silent for a few minutes.

  “When was the murder committed, Paul?”

  “Apparently between midnight and three o’clock in the morning, some time in there. The autopsy surgeon says he’s positive it wasn’t before midnight and he’s positive it wasn’t after three in the morning. That’s the best he can do.”

  Mason’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

  “Where were you last night between midnight and three o’clock this morning, Perry?”

  “In bed.”

  “That’s what comes of being a bachelor. You should get married. As it is, you haven’t any alibi. You only have your unsupported word.”

  Mason said, “The apartment house has a man on duty at the desk twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Would he have seen you if you went out?”

  “I assume so.”

  “And when you came back?”

  Mason nodded.

  “He’s probably being interrogated.”

  “You mean they’re serious in thinking that I killed the man?” Mason asked incredulously.

  “Well,” Drake said, “here’s the dope. Brogan has a perfect alibi.”

  “How perfect? It’s going to have to be completely ironclad before I’ll believe it. The whole thing looks too much like a setup to suit me. That poker game was too opportune. I think Brogan killed him.”

  Drake shook his head. “I tell you he has an alibi. He started playing poker at ten o’clock at night. He didn’t leave until five o’clock in the morning. He had been losing heavily. At five o’clock he had to go out and raise some money. He was gone about half or three-quarters of an hour, came back, got in the game, and about eight o’clock kept trying to make a breakaway, claiming that he had an appointment on a very important business matter at nine o’clock, that he had to get shaved and had to change his shirt.

  “When did he leave?”

  “No one knows exactly, but it was somewhere around eight-thirty. He went and had breakfast and got up to the apartment just as Della Street and Sylvia Atwood were standing there. What did Della tell them, Perry?”

  “Nothing,” Mason said. “She adopted the position that she was my secretary, that under the law any information she might have affecting the rights of a client was confidential, that because she didn’t know all of the details of the business I was transacting there, she might inadvertently disclose something that would be inimical to the best interests of the client I was representing, and which would in the nature of things be confidential. Therefore, she refused to make any statements whatever.”

  “Good girl,” Drake said. “I understand Holcomb really gave her a going-over.”

  “Apparently he did. He tried everything under the sun. Della simply sat and smiled at him and told him that if she could first talk with me she’d be very glad to then disclose any information she had which was not confidential, but until she could talk with me she didn’t know what information was confidential, and therefore she would tell him nothing except that she got up in the morning, dressed and waited for me to pick her up, that I picked her up at the appointed time. She won’t even tell them what time that was.”

  Drake nodded. “What about Sylvia Atwood?”

  “Sylvia Atwood,” Mason said, “was the first one questioned. She told her story and Holcomb let her go. I got her on the phone and told her I wanted to see her, but she hasn’t come in as yet.”

  “Did you interview her over the telephone?”

  “Only generally. Della’s checking exactly what was said.”

  “I assume you asked Sylvia what she told Holcomb?”

  Mason nodded.

  “What did she tell you?”

  Mason said, “She gave me the story she’d given Brogan, that she came up to the apartment, that she found Della Street at the door reading a note, that the note said Brogan might be detained, that the door was open and we were to go in. Della Street didn’t want to go in but Sylvia Atwood said, ‘Why not.’”

  “You weren’t there at the time?”

  “She said that I was parking the car,” Mason went on, “and was coming up later. Brogan arrived while she and Della were talking things over, and that I was following right on Brogan’s heels. She didn’t notice the time in particular.”

  Drake said, “The officers found someone who has an apartment on the same floor that swears a woman screamed in one of the apartments a little before nine o’clock. The witness thinks the scream came from the Brogan apartment. The tenants in the apartment below heard a heavy thud in Brogan’s apartment and the sound of a woman screaming. That was shortly before nine o’clock. They fix the time because they were waiting for a nine o’clock radio program.

  “A witness in a ground floor apartment saw Mrs. Atwood trying to park her car and having the devil of a time getting it backed into a small parking space between two cars. Then the owner of the car that was parked behind the place she was trying to get in came out, saw her predicament, spoke to her, telling her he was pulling out.

  “He pulled out and Mrs. Atwood backed in. The witness says the time was eight-thirty.”

  “Eight-thirty!” Mason exclaimed.

  “That’s right, eight-thirty.”

  “What about the man who drove out and gave her a chance to park?”

  “He thinks it was about eight-forty. He drove uptown and reached his office at five of nine. It’s a good fifteen minute drive at that hour.”

  Mason thought that over.

  “Now then,” Drake went on, “it looks as though your friend Brogan really came clean with the police.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He told them the exact nature of your business with him.”

  “The hell he did,” Mason said.

  “That’s right. They asked him and he had no alternative but to tell them. At least that’s the line he handed them.”

  “What did he tell them?”

  “Told them that Fritch had a tape recording that contained evidence in a case that might be filed against Ned Bain, that you were negotiating to buy that evidence.”

  Mason’s face darkened.

  “Brogan said that something went wrong with the dictating machine when he was playing the record for you yesterday, that you had insisted on a replay of the tape in order to be certain that Brogan could deliver the merchandise if your client could pay the price, that Brogan told you it was only something wrong with the machine, that actually you had managed to slip one over on him, that y
ou had gummed up the works in some way.

  “Brogan told Holcomb that he’s satisfied you managed in some way to polarize the recording tape so that anything that was on it completely disappeared. He thinks that you listened to the tape once in order to find out what was on it, then worked your hocus-pocus so that the tape went blank.

  “He told Holcomb that he reported all this to Fritch, that Fritch at first seemed very much concerned and then said that it would be all right, that Brogan should make an appointment for nine o’clock in the morning, that some time during the night Fritch would dig up a duplicate original of the tape recording.”

  “How?” Mason asked.

  “Brogan claimed he didn’t know.”

  “Innocent, isn’t he?”

  “Of course, Brogan is trying to claim that it wasn’t blackmail. He also says that this is the first he knew that the tape recording he had wasn’t the original tape recording, that he now realizes, of course, that it must have been a dubbed copy and Fritch was holding some sort of an original spool of tape.”

  “Have they found that spool?”

  “They’ve torn Fritch’s apartment to pieces. They can’t find a damn thing. They can find lots of blank tape and quite a few machines for playing and recording, but that’s all.”

  Mason frowned. “Then if Fritch had a master spool some place, it’s disappeared.”

  “It’s disappeared. Is your nose clean in this thing, Perry?”

  Mason grinned.

  “I’m simply telling you,” Drake said, “not because I want to pry into your business, but because I think they’ve got something on you.”

  “I’m playing them close to my chest,” Mason admitted.

  “Well, keep playing them close to your chest, Perry. Don’t for heaven’s sake, make any statement that is contrary to fact because I think Holcomb has laid a trap and I’m afraid you’ve already walked into it.”

  “Then I’ll have to walk right out again.”

  “It may not be that simple. Is Della in the clear?”

  “I think so. I told her to go out to the Bain place. I want to find out about things out there before Sergeant Holcomb starts sweating the family.”

  “Well,” Drake said, “you may have something there. Holcomb isn’t working on that angle at the moment. He seems to be getting some dope on you. Right at the moment he’s giving Brogan the works.”

  “He should,” Mason said dryly.

  “He’s doing that all right, and Brogan is sweating blood. And, of course, they’re going through the Fritch apartment, the one he rented under the name of Reedy. Did you know that the guy was all prepared for a regular siege? He could hole up in that apartment and just never go out.”

  Mason raised his eyebrows.

  “He had enough food in there to last him for a year,” Drake went on. “Frozen food that would keep him living like a king. He had everything for a balanced diet. Meat, potatoes, fruits, vegetables, ice cream, frozen biscuits, flour, bacon, eggs, butter. In short, everything a guy could possibly want. Now here’s something, Perry. I can’t get the low-down on it, but the police have been finding fingerprints out there in Brogan’s apartment. They’re not Fritch’s fingerprints. They’re not Brogan’s fingerprints. Someone has been in there and has been going through things.”

  “The deuce,” Mason said.

  Drake looked at him sharply. “You wouldn’t have been dumb enough to have left any fingerprints, would you, Perry?”

  “I tell you I didn’t go in there,” Mason said. “I was in there yesterday, however.”

  “Of course, the prints may have been made yesterday,” Drake said. “But they could have been made when the murder was committed.”

  Mason frowned thoughtfully.

  Abruptly his telephone shrilled, breaking the silence.

  Mason grabbed for the phone. “Excuse me, Paul. That’s the unlisted number. Only you and Della Street have that. Hello.”

  Mason heard Della Street’s voice, sharp-edged with excitement.

  “Chief, you’d better jump in your car and get out here just as fast as you can.”

  “Where?”

  “The Bains’.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Ned Bain.”

  “What about him?”

  “Dead,” she said, “and there are some things I think you should know about before Sergeant Holcomb gets here.”

  “Good Lord,” Mason said, “it isn’t a case for Holcomb, is it?”

  “No. It’s a natural death—in a way,” Della Street told him, “but his death could have been tied in—in a way.”

  Mason said, “I’ll be right out. Wait for me.”

  He slammed down the telephone, said to Drake, “Don’t get more than two feet away from a phone, Paul. I may need something in a hurry. I’m on my way.”

  “Where?”

  “Bains’.”

  “Is there another corpse out there?”

  Mason nodded. “This one is a natural death.”

  “Try telling that to Holcomb.”

  “I’m going to try telling nothing to Holcomb. Find out everything you can about Fritch and Brogan. Put as many men on the job as you have to. Get busy. I’m on my way.”

  Mason grabbed his hat, dashed out through the exit door of his private office, sprinted for the elevator, jabbed at the down button, and when he had entered the cage said to the operator, “Can you shoot it all the way down? This is an emergency.”

  “Yes, Mr. Mason,” the girl said, and threw the control over, dropping the cage to the ground floor. Two or three other passengers looked at Mason curiously as the lawyer dashed into the lobby and made a run for the parking lot where he kept his car.

  Fifteen minutes later Mason was running up the cement walk to the old-fashioned, gingerbread-studded porch of the Bain house.

  Della Street, who had been waiting for him, opened the door and said, “Come on in, Chief. The doctor’s here.”

  “What doctor is it, Della?”

  “Dr. Flasher. He’s the one who had been treating Mr. Bain. Here he is now.”

  Sylvia Atwood showed up with a tall, tired-looking man in his middle fifties, who peered at Mason from under bushy eyebrows. Suddenly his face lit up. “Well, well,” he said, “Mr. Mason. They told me they’d sent for you.”

  “This is Dr. Flasher, Mr. Mason,” Sylvia said.

  Mason and the doctor shook hands.

  “And this is my brother, Jarrett Bain.”

  A tall, heavy, slow-moving man peered at Mason through thick-lensed spectacles, took the lawyer’s hand and squeezed it with powerful fingers. “Glad to know you, Mr. Mason.”

  Mason said, “This is a surprise. I thought you were prowling around in the ruins at Yucatan.”

  “I was. I got Sis’s telephone call and decided I’d better be here. Luckily I managed to pick up a cancellation and came right through.”

  Mason said, “You made a quick trip. When did you get here?”

  “This morning,” Sylvia Atwood interposed quickly.

  “I haven’t had a chance to talk with you, Sylvia,” Jarrett said. “I guess you’re still relying on my wire. I got here—”

  Mason looked at his watch. “Tell me about Mr. Bain,” he said to Dr. Flasher, trying to appear unhurried, yet conscious of every passing second.

  “There’s not much to tell, Mr. Mason. The heart muscle was seriously impaired. The only thing that I could do was to prescribe absolute, complete rest, hoping that the heart muscle might pick up again, but the muscle had pretty much lost its tone. Excitement would have proven fatal, and—well, after all, Mr. Mason, the man has gone, so there’s no use second-guessing.”

  Sylvia Atwood interposed quickly, “Dr. Flasher is trying to tell you that death was quite normal and was rather to have been expected. Dr. Flasher is going to sign a death certificate so there won’t be any necessity for a lot of red tape.”

  “You’ve established the cause of death?” Mason asked.


  “Yes, yes, certainly,” Dr. Flasher said. “It was simply that a tired heart muscle couldn’t carry the load any longer. We all have to go some time. Mr. Bain had had a focal infection which didn’t do his condition any good. If I could have caught that a few years earlier things might have been a lot better, but—well, that’s the way it is, particularly with these men who have had an outdoor background. They think they’re rugged, tough and indestructible. Perhaps they might be if they’d only continue living outdoors. But experience teaches us that an outdoor man seriously jeopardizes his health when he decides to alter his mode of living and remain within four walls.”

  Mason turned to Sylvia Atwood. “I hope this discussion isn’t hurting you too much,” he said. “I’m not asking questions simply because of idle curiosity.”

  “I understand,” she said. “I shall miss Dad terribly. I’m shocked, of course, and I have a great sense of loss, but it hadn’t been unexpected. I understand your interest, Mr. Mason.”

  “Apparently he died quietly and without pain,” Dr. Flasher interposed. “There was a telephone by the side of his bed. There’s no indication that he even made any motion toward it. He died quietly, probably in his sleep.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Sylvia Atwood said.

  Dr. Flasher, keeping his eyes on Perry Mason, went on, “I’ve been very much interested in following your career, Mr. Mason. I hardly expected to meet you here, although Mrs. Atwood told me that she had consulted you. You will, I suppose, have charge of the legal details in connection with the estate.”

  “I think,” Mason said, “it’s a little early to discuss that as yet, but I came out here as soon as I learned what had happened. I have met Mr. Bain and I am handling some business for the family.”

  “Yes, yes. Well, I must be getting on. I’m terribly sorry about what happened, but it couldn’t have been avoided. If I had been here right at the moment, I might—I just might have prolonged life for a little while, but I think frankly it’s better this way. I don’t think your father knew what happened, Mrs. Atwood. I think he simply slipped off in his sleep. It’s rather a surprise too, because when I saw him yesterday I felt that there had been some definite improvement. Of course, at his age and with his history you can’t expect a heart muscle to be completely rejuvenated, but there had been very satisfactory progress. As a matter of fact, I was very much surprised at the news when you telephoned.”