The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  “There are some things which I do not care to say here in the presence of witnesses but which I would tell the police if I were required to do so, things that would not put your client, Mr. Mason, in the most favorable light.

  “And now I think that concludes any statement I care to make and terminates the necessity of prolonging the interview.”

  “Very interesting,” Mason said. “You will appreciate the importance of telling us the absolute truth?”

  “I am not accustomed to deviating from the truth.”

  “You are absolutely certain that Ethel Garvin did not come here at an early hour this morning, that perhaps she didn’t fill the gasoline tank without your knowing she was on the premises?”

  “Absurd, gentlemen. In the first place, the gasoline pump is locked up. In the second place, she had absolutely no idea that I was in California. I took elaborate precautions to see that she didn’t know where I was.”

  “Had you,” Drake asked, “made any attempt to find out when she left Nevada?”

  “What makes you ask that question, Mr. Drake?”

  “You were attached to your Nevada ranch. It is hardly conceivable that you intended simply to walk away and leave it. One would gather that when the embarrassment caused by the presence of Mrs. Garvin had passed you would return.”

  Hackley acknowledged the point with a slight bow. “I see that you have a certain ability, Mr. Drake. I am quite certain that Mr. Mason finds you a valuable assistant. The question is well taken.”

  “And the answer?”

  “The answer,” Hackley said, “is that I couldn’t have secured the information without having someone on the ground who would give it to me. That someone must necessarily have known where I was in order to communicate the information. I didn’t care to let anyone know where I was. Therefore, while I would have liked very much to have had some source of information such as you have suggested, Mr. Drake, I did not. I came here, and no one, absolutely no one, knew where I was.”

  “How did you keep your ranch running?”

  “My foreman and manager is a very close-mouthed individual. I appreciate both his loyalty and his integrity. I also appreciate the shrewd business acumen with which he safeguards my interests. He has a checking account in an amount sufficiently ample to enable the ranch to be run during periods of my absence.

  “And now if you will excuse me, Miss Street, and you, gentlemen, I have other matters to attend to. I have given you all of the information which is available and I do not care to discuss the matter further.”

  “You were here last night?” Mason asked.

  “I said that I didn’t care to discuss the matter further,” Hackley said firmly. “I’ve given you all of the information and now I am going to wish you a good night.”

  He strode past them, walked with calm deliberation through the door of the living room out into the hall, and opened the outside door.

  Della Street caught Mason’s eye and nodded. “Go ahead, chief,” she said.

  Della Street walked along the edge of the room inspecting the books in the bookcases, waited for Mason and Drake to leave the room first. Then she followed after a moment.

  “Good night,” Hackley said with some formality.

  “Good night,” Mason said.

  Drake said nothing.

  Della Street, looking very demure, caught Hackley’s eye, gave him a very personal smile, and said, “Good night, Mr. Hackley, and thank you so much.”

  “It was a pleasure,” he told her.

  “Rex,” Hackley said, “stay there. These people are leaving.”

  The dog, now much more obedient and less hostile, promptly settled down on his haunches, and looked to Hackley for instructions.

  Mason led the way to the automobile, climbed in the driver’s seat. Drake held the door open for Della Street, and she jumped into the car. Drake followed her with an apprehensive glance over his shoulder in the direction of the dog. He slammed the door shut with a quick motion of his arm.

  Della laughed, “Still thinking about the dog, Paul?” she asked.

  “You’re damned right I am,” Drake said.

  Mason started the car. Hackley, standing motionless in the doorway, watched the car glide into motion.

  Della Street caught his eye, waved her hand almost surreptitiously.

  Hackley’s grim mouth softened into a smile. The car swept along the graveled driveway.

  “Well,” Drake said, “I told you he was tough.”

  “He’s tough,” Mason said, “but we still have a few clues to run down which are going to be very interesting.”

  “Such as what?” Drake said.

  Mason said, “You can see that dog is very well trained. He certainly didn’t get the dog with the place, and he didn’t pick up the dog in California. The dog was one that he must have had on his Nevada ranch and of which he must be very fond, otherwise he wouldn’t have taken the animal with him while he was trying to make a getaway.”

  “All right, what does that add up to?” Drake asked.

  “Hackley is afraid of something. He leaves the dog outside guarding the place. The dog is trained so that no one can come to the place at night.”

  “Well, what about that?”

  Mason said, “We are now going to stop at the home of Rolando C. Lomax and find out if he heard the dog staging a particularly violent demonstration of barking at approximately one o’clock this morning.”

  Drake chuckled, “I’ll hand it to you for that one, Perry. It’s an idea.”

  Mason drove down the graveled driveway to the pavement, then turned the car to the right, stopped in front of the house of Rolando Lomax.

  Lomax, answering their ring of the bell, seemed cordial enough.

  He was a husky man nearing sixty, his heavy shoulders stooped from hard work, his skin tanned and wrinkled by exposure. His hair was turning gray, matted on his forehead and still bearing evidences of perspiration resulting from physical effort. The sleeves of his woolen shirt were rolled up, disclosing hairy arms and huge powerful hands.

  Mason said, “We’re investigators checking up on something that happened in the neighborhood. Perhaps you’ve heard about it.”

  “You mean the woman who was killed down the highway?” Mason nodded.

  “What did you want to know?”

  “You were here last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you,” Mason asked, “hear anything unusual taking place up at the house back there?”

  “You mean the one that’s been bought by that tall dude?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I heard the dog bark like hell last night,” Lomax said. “I told my wife something must be wrong. The dog was really making a commotion.”

  “Do you know what time it was?” Mason asked.

  “I know exactly what time it was. That is, I don’t know exactly what time it started, but after the dog kept on barking for a while I thought there must be something wrong and got up and looked out of the window. My bedroom window looks right over towards the Hackley house.”

  “Yes, yes,” Mason said eagerly, “and what happened?”

  “Well, I looked at my watch. I thought something might be wrong over there. When I got up it was exactly twenty-four minutes past twelve.”

  “And your clock is right?” Mason asked.

  “Just about right. I set it by a radio program every day. It isn’t over a second or two off.”

  “And it was just about twelve-twenty-five?”

  “Exactly twelve-twenty-four,” Lomax said. “I made a note of the time.”

  “And how long did the dog keep barking?”

  “Just about as soon as I got to the window, I saw lights come on over there in that house this Hackley had bought—and then all of a sudden the dog quit barking as though someone had told him to shut up. I waited for a while. The lights stayed on and the dog quit barking so I figured everything was all right and went back to bed. The dog must
have been barking three or four minutes before I got up.

  “If you ask me, that dog’s a mean one, but I’m not saying anything—not yet, I’m trying to be neighborly. However, I’ve got chickens here and if he ever starts killing chickens I’m going to march right over there and tell Hackley that a dog like that is a city dog. He’s got no business being out here in the country. Never saw one of them yet that wasn’t a killer when you get ’em out in the country. Damned shame too. The people who had that house used to be nice people. They were rich but neighborly. They’d do anything. I guess they were city people all right but they sort of fitted into a country background.

  “Now you take this here Hackley, he’s different. He’s city from the word ‘go’ and he’s one of these fellows that doesn’t want to have any neighbors. He treats me as though I wasn’t here. Just goes on by. Sometimes he’ll nod, sometimes he won’t. Never has stopped to pass the time of day.

  “Out here in the country a man gets to depend on his neighbors and when you find a man who’s unsociable like that it bothers you.”

  “It certainly would,” Mason said.

  “So I’m not under any obligations to put up with any monkeyshines from that dog. Don’t like’im. Had trouble with a dog like that once before.”

  “And the dog only barked once that night?”

  “Just that one time,” Lomax said.

  “You didn’t happen to notice a car going in or out of the driveway?”

  “I didn’t happen to notice any car,” Lomax said doggedly. “When I go to bed, I go to bed to sleep. I’ve got a thirty-acre ranch here and it’s a job working it. I’m pretty tired and ready for bed when it gets that time of day. I listen to the news broadcast at nine o’clock, and then I’m ready to roll in. I don’t usually wake up until daylight. I’m up just about daylight and starting work. What’s more, I’m not the sort that pries into the affairs of my neighbors and I don’t want my neighbors prying into my affairs. I want to live and let live. That’s the way we are down here.”

  “And you didn’t see or hear any automobile?”

  “I didn’t see or hear anything until I heard that dog barking and I got up then to see what it was all about. The way the dog sounded—well, it’s the way a dog sounds when he’s a little worked up over something. Pretty hysterical, if you ask me.”

  “You think somebody was over there?”

  “I think the dog was pretty much worked up over something.”

  “You didn’t see anyone over there?”

  “It’s just like I told you. I saw the lights were on in the house and after a while the dog quit barking. Then I went back to bed.”

  “And how long before you went to sleep?” Mason asked.

  “How long before what?”

  “Before you went back to sleep.”

  “I don’t know,” Lomax said. “I didn’t have any stop watch. It might have been—I don’t know. Hell, it might have been thirty seconds, maybe almost a minute.”

  “Thank you,” Mason said, smiling. “Please don’t mention anything about our having been here. I don’t want Hackley to know we stopped in and I think that you and Hackley would get along better if he didn’t know you’ve given us this information.”

  “I don’t care what he knows,” Lomax said. “I hew to the line and the chips can fall where they want to.”

  Mason wished him good night. The three trooped back to Mason’s car.

  Della Street said, “I committed a little petit larceny out there at Hackley’s place.”

  “How come?” Mason asked.

  She laughed and said, “Just my woman’s eye. I don’t suppose either of you noticed the woman’s scarf that had been thrown in the corner back on top of the bookcase, did you?”

  “A scarf?” Mason said. “Lord, no!”

  Della Street reached inside of her blouse and pulled out a colored silken scarf, a scarf which was a blending of pastel shades starting with a strip of green and merging gradually into a strip of deep violet.

  “Do you,” she asked Perry Mason, “smell anything?”

  Mason raised the scarf to his nose, then gave a low whistle.

  “Della! Is that the scent I think it is?”

  “What is it?” Drake asked.

  Mason said, “Unless I’m greatly mistaken, that is the perfume used by my friend Virginia Bynum.”

  Della Street said, “It’s rather faint, probably nothing you could make stand up in court, but—well, it’s a thought, chief.”

  “It’s more than a thought,” Mason said frowning. “It’s a problem.”

  “And here,” said Della Street, “is something else.”

  She pulled a flattened small woman’s hat out from under her coat. “The scarf and the hat were together on the bookshelf in the corner. You’ll remember Drake’s man said he remembered Ethel Garvin was wearing a hat when she left her apartment.”

  Mason took the hat.

  Drake emitted a low whistle. “Damn it, Perry, suppose both of those women were in love with Hackley!”

  “And both here last night,” Mason said significantly.

  Chapter 13

  Mason, the morning mail stacked unopened on his desk, paced the floor, from time to time tossing comments to Della Street.

  “The thing doesn’t tie in,” Mason said. And then after a moment, “The gas tank on that car of Ethel Garvin’s was full … The windshield was dirty … She didn’t get that tank filled at a service station unless she was in too big a hurry to wait to have the windshield cleaned. That doesn’t sound reasonable.”

  Again Mason paced the floor, then tossed out a few more comments.

  “We know that someone was at Hackley’s at twelve-twenty-four in the morning. We think that Virginia Bynum may have been there but she couldn’t have been there at that time because she was out on the fire escape watching Denby.”

  Della Street said, “Well, as far as I’m concerned, the one I would like to know about is Frank C. Livesey. I’ve known men just like him before. He’s conceited, vain and, if you ask me, he’s cruel.”

  “What makes you think he’s cruel?”

  “I know he’s cruel. It’s his way with women. He’s a man who’s been a playboy. He finds himself getting past the age of playing, but he’s in a job where a certain class of girl is absolutely dependent upon him. Not for her bread and butter perhaps, but for her gingerbread and cake, and with that type of girl gingerbread and cake is really more important than the bread and butter.”

  Mason said, “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “The heck it doesn’t,” Della Street said. “A man of that type becomes arrogant. He …”

  Knuckles sounded on the exit door of Mason’s private office, one rap then a pause, three raps then a pause, then two raps.

  “That’s Paul Drake’s code knock,” Mason said. “Let him in.”

  Della Street opened the door. Paul Drake entered the office, grinned a greeting, said to Mason, “What are you doing, wearing holes in the carpet again?”

  “That’s right,” Mason said. “I’m trying to get the thing straightened out.”

  “Well,” Drake told him, “I have some news for you.”

  “What?”

  “Police have located a man down in Oceanside by the name of Irving, Mortimer C. Irving … Now, get the time element of this thing, Perry, because it’s important.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “Irving had been down visiting some friends at La Jolla. He was driving back to Oceanside and was a little worried about the time. As a matter of fact he’d evidently been in a poker game down in La Jolla and he didn’t want his wife to find out about it. He had lost some money and was feeling pretty glum about it. He made a point of noticing the time because he was getting a story ready for his better half.”

  “Go on,” Mason said.

  “When he got to within about two miles of Oceanside he saw a car parked off to the side of the road. The lights were on. What’s more they were on
the bright beam so that even coming up the road the way he was, the glare bothered him.”

  “What time?” Mason asked.

  “Well,” Drake said, “the guy got home at exactly twelve-fifty. He looked at his watch and his wife also verifies that. Ten minutes to one in the morning.”

  “Go ahead,” Mason said.

  “Now the important point,” Drake said, “is that this thing ties in with the testimony of a rancher who remembers that a car was parked for a while so that the lights shone into his bed-room. He didn’t pay too much attention to it but he remembered that there was a car there somewhere around the middle of the night. He didn’t look at his watch or a clock and therefore his testimony doesn’t amount to much for practical purposes, but in any event we know that a car was parked there.”

  Mason nodded.

  “Now this man Irving enters the picture and he could be a damned dangerous witness. He says that he wondered why a car was parked there with the lights on the bright beam and thought perhaps someone might be in trouble.”

  “Go on,” Mason said. “What did he do?”

  “Well, he brought his car to a stop but kept in the road. He has a spotlight on his machine and he swung that spotlight around and looked the car over. He said it was a big light or tan-colored convertible and that no one was in it. It was standing there with the lights on—and he looked it over pretty carefully. He couldn’t see any sign of anyone anywhere around the automobile, just the car standing there. He didn’t take the license number but he did give it a pretty good once-over. Now, then, get this, Perry, the description of the car is one that could match Garvin’s automobile.”

  “Or any other convertible, for that matter,” Mason said. “All the guy knows is that he saw a big convertible.”