The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom

by Erle Stanley Gardner

“Do you know how many miles an hour a man covers at an ordinary walk?”

  “Well, if you want to put it in miles an hour,” Scanlon said, “while he was going that fifteen feet I’d say he was walking—oh probably three miles an hour.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “let’s do a little mathematical computation.”

  He whipped a small slide rule from his pocket, manipulated it quickly, said, “For your information, Mr. Scanlon, a person walking one mile an hour covers about 1.46 feet per second, so at the rate of three miles an hour that man would cover approximately 4.4 feet per second.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Scanlon said, smiling.

  Mason said, “So in walking fifteen feet at the rate of speed you mention, the man would have covered the distance in something less than three and one-half seconds. Therefore, unless you are mistaken, you saw this individual for approximately three and one-half seconds with one eye under conditions of dim light.”

  “Well, I guess that’s right if you say so.”

  “I’m simply making the necessary mathematical computations from what you yourself have told me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you now think that’s right, do you, Mr. Scanlon, that you saw this man for about three and a half seconds?”

  “Well, I thought it was longer than that but if that’s the way it figures out why I guess that’s right.”

  “Saw him three and a half seconds under conditions of very poor visibility with one eye, looking at his back,” Mason said, “but when you wanted to identify him for the police, when you wanted to be sure, it took you three minutes under conditions of broad daylight looking at him where you could see his face, his figure and everything about him?”

  “Well, I wanted to be sure.”

  “So in order to be sure of the man’s identity you had to look at him for three minutes with both eyes and in full daylight?”

  “Well, to be absolutely certain.”

  “Then,” Mason said, with a friendly disarming smile, “when you saw him under conditions of poor visibility for only three and a half seconds looking at him with only one eye, you naturally weren’t absolutely certain of his identity, were you? Not at that time, at the end of the three-and-a-half-second interval?”

  “No, I wasn’t certain of it then,” Scanlon conceded, “not absolutely. But I was after I saw him there in the jail.”

  “I thought so,” Mason said, with a smile. “Thank you, Mr. Scanlon, that’s all.”

  “That’s all,” Covington snapped angrily.

  Judge Minden looked at the clock. He said, “It appears to be approximately the hour for the noon adjournment. We’ll take our usual adjournment until two o’clock this afternoon. The jury will remember the admonition of the Court and refrain from discussing the case or permitting it to be discussed in their presence, nor will they form or express any opinion concerning the guilt or innocence of the defendant until the case is finally submitted.

  “Court will take a recess until two o’clock.”

  Edward Garvin reached out and caught Mason’s arm. His fingers pressed into the flesh of the lawyer’s arm. “Mason,” he said, “for God’s sake I …”

  Mason turned to smile reassuringly at his client, but the smile was only on the lawyer’s Lips. His eyes were cold and hard.

  “Smile,” Mason said.

  “I …”

  “Smile, damn it,” Mason said in a low half-whisper, “smile.”

  A travesty of a grin twisted Garvin’s features.

  “Do better than that,” Mason said, “smile and keep that smile on your face until the jury have filed out.”

  Mason watched expression struggling on Garvin’s face, laughed good-naturedly, patted Garvin on the shoulder, said, “Well, let’s get some eats,” and turned casually away.

  “Mason, I’ve got to see you,” Garvin whispered.

  Mason said over his shoulder in a low voice, “Try to see me now and with the jury looking at you, with that expression on your face, and you’ll be buying a one-way ticket to the death cell in San Quentin.”

  And with that the lawyer walked casually out of the courtroom, his brief case tucked under his arm, an expression of smiling unconcern on his countenance.

  Della Street joined Perry Mason in the corridor. “Good Lord, chief,” she said in a whisper, “could he be telling the truth?”

  “I don’t know,” Mason said. “I’m going to find out later, but I don’t dare to let the spectators or the jurors see me holding any hurried conference with my client at this moment.”

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  “Get Paul Drake and eat,” Mason said. “It’s all we can do.”

  Drake came pushing his way out of the crowd milling around the door of the courtroom, a crowd that looked curiously at Mason.

  Drake grabbed Mason’s arm and squeezed it. “Boy,” he said, “you did a great job of cross-examination there, Perry. You made the guy admit that it took him three minutes to identify a man under good light and yet he only saw him three seconds when he was looking at his back in the dark.”

  “Just the same,” Mason said, “there’s something about that witness that bothers me. He’s prejudiced, he’s testifying to a composite of what he thinks he saw, what he thinks he remembered, and what he thinks must have happened, and he’s now testifying positively; but somehow there’s a certain underlying sincerity, a rugged sense of fairness the guy has that bothers me.”

  “You don’t suppose your client did go out and do any nocturnal wandering around, do you?”

  “How the devil would I know?” Mason said. “Every so often a client lies to you. But in this case we have an ace up our sleeve.”

  “You mean his wife’s testimony?”

  “That’s right. Of course the jury will probably figure she’d back her husband regardless, but they’re not going to send a newlywed to San Quentin and leave a beautiful bride languishing for her lover if they can avoid it. I’m hoping that Mrs. Garvin’s alibi will overcome Scanlon’s testimony.”

  “She’s certain of the time?” Drake asked.

  “Sure she is,” Mason said. “That’s the advantage of having a clock that chimes.”

  “Loud chimes?”

  “Sure, I heard it. I heard it chime ten o’clock that night when I went to bed. I …”

  He broke off as he saw Señora Miguerinio emerge from an elevator and come rolling down the corridor with an enormous clock under her arm. She flashed a good-natured smile at Perry Mason, and said, “How do you theenk, Meester Mason? Does the husband come back to his wife and again make the honeymoon in my little hacienda, no?”

  “Oh sure,” Mason said, with an air of great confidence. “What are you doing with the clock, Señora?”

  “The deestrict attorney he wants thees clock.”

  “Why?” Mason asked.

  “Because he ees to show heem to the jury.”

  “What clock is it?” Mason asked, keeping his manner exceedingly casual.

  “Thees ees the clock from my hotel, the clock that I have to tell the time.”

  “The one that strikes the chimes?” Mason asked.

  “Sure, strikes the chimes,” she said, and then added, “during the day it strike the chimes.”

  “During the day? Mason inquired.

  She nodded. “Sure, during day, yes. During the night, no. He wake the guests up. People like to hear the chime of the clock in Mexico during the daytime but at night the chimes go off, no?”

  “And what happens to the chimes during the night?” Mason asked.

  “Thees ees electric clock,” she said, “weeth chimes. Here ees a sweech on the side of the clock. When you don’t want the chimes you pool thees sweech like thees and the chimes go off, no?”

  “You mean when you pull this switch the chimes don’t sound any more?”

  “That’s right. You pool the sweech and the chimes he don’t go until you pool the sweech back up. Every night when I g
o to bed, just before I go into my bed, I pool the sweech down and the chimes he don’t sound no more. Then in the morning when ees time for people to get up and ees nice and sunny and warm, why then I pool the sweech up and the chimes start once more.”

  “So the district attorney wants to see the clock?”

  “Sure, the clock ees to be sold to the government. He shows heem to the jury and then have to put heem in court and the law ees going to buy me a new clock to take the place of thees one. I tell them I am a poor widow woman and I cannot afford to buy a new clock, I cannot bring thees clock in unless I have one for my hotel. You cannot run a hotel without a clock. No?”

  “Certainly not,” Mason said.

  “Well,” she said, “I have to go see the deestrict attorney. He tole me to come just as soon as court ees out because he wants to talk weeth me about my testimony. I have to go back on the weetness stand weeth the clock.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “we’ll go on to lunch.”

  “You enjoy your lunch, Señor,” she said.

  “Oh sure,” Mason told her, “we will. Thank you.”

  They turned and resumed their walk down the corridor.

  Drake muttered an exclamation under his breath.

  “Good heavens, chief,” Della said in a hushed whisper.

  “Enjoy your lunch,” Mason repeated sarcastically.

  Chapter 17

  Mason, Paul Drake, and Della Street settled back on the cushions of the booth in the restaurant.

  “I don’t think I can eat a thing,” Della Street said. “It’s ghastly.”

  Mason, a confident smile on his face, said, “Don’t do that, Della. People are sitting all around us, watching us, wondering what we’re talking about, how we’re feeling. Keep smiling, keep confident, keep happy, make an occasional joke, and discuss what’s happening in low tones.”

  “Exactly what is happening, Perry?” Paul Drake asked.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Mason told him. “I’m afraid that the testimony of this man, Scanlon, is going to stampede that jury. I personally think Scanlon …”

  “You surely don’t think Garvin actually did place that call, then get in his car and drive to Oceanside?”

  Mason said, “I think Garvin was fool enough to get in his car and go somewhere. When you’ve cross-examined a lot of people on the stand over a period of years, you form an impression as to whether a man is telling the truth or lying just by the way he answers questions. Now, I’ll admit that while I managed to put Scanlon in a somewhat disadvantageous position, and while the police didn’t play fair in not having a line-up, the fact remains Scanlon is trying to tell the truth, and he gives me that impression.

  “Now let’s suppose that he did have some difficulty in recognizing the man who was in that telephone booth putting through the call. Nevertheless, he isn’t at all dubious about the conversation which took place, and I know from experience the walls between those two booths are paper-thin. And the police must now have the record of that telephone call and it must have been to Ethel Garvin.

  “Now let’s suppose for the moment Scanlon didn’t recognize Garvin when Garvin left the booth. Who else in that hotel could possibly have put through such a call to Mrs. Garvin?”

  “When you look at it that way,” Drake admitted, “it’s pretty tough.”

  Mason said, “I recognized at once that the weak point in Scanlon’s testimony was the statement he made concerning his recognition of the party he had seen leaving the telephone booth. Therefore, I concentrated on that. But you’ll note that I was particularly careful not to cross-examine him about the conversation itself. Naturally, I picked on the weakest link in the chain.”

  “Well, for my part,” Drake said, “when Mrs. Garvin gets on the stand and swears absolutely that her husband was with her all night, I’d say the jury would be pretty apt to believe her.”

  “Of course,” Mason pointed out, “you get into more trouble there. She’s fixing her time by the chimes on the clock and …”

  “Didn’t she say she looked at her watch once?”

  “Yes, but she definitely stated that she heard the chimes. Now suppose the chimes weren’t sounding. That, of course, brands her testimony as false right there.”

  They gave that matter thoughtful consideration for a moment.

  Mason threw back his head and laughed.

  They looked at him in surprise.

  “Come on,” Mason said, “a smile at least! Let’s pretend there’s been a joke about something.”

  The others tardily joined him in half-hearted merriment.

  “On the other hand,” Mason went on after a moment, smiling as though amused at some funny story he was telling, “the deadly part of the thing is that the question of whether there were chimes, or whether there were not chimes, depends entirely upon the testimony of the Señora Miguerinio. It all depends on what she thinks she did. Just as a person will quite frequently forget to wind the clock when he goes to bed, just as he will forget to put the cat out, so Señora Miguerinio may have forgotten to shut off the chimes on that particular night. If only I hadn’t gone to sleep at ten o’clock—if I had only stayed awake another half hour even, I could have told whether her testimony about shutting off the chimes was true.”

  “That’s what comes of having a clean conscience,” Drake said. “You … wait a minute, Perry, here comes one of my men.”

  One of Drake’s operatives stood in the doorway looking over the diners.

  Drake held up his hand with his index finger extended, saying, as he did so, to Mason, “I told him I’d be here. He’s got a pipe fine into one of file court attachés, who doesn’t have any idea this man is one of my operatives. He wouldn’t be coming here to look for me unless it was important.”

  The man caught Drake’s signal, nodded, then walked casually back toward the men’s room.

  Drake excused himself, and followed.

  As Drake left the table, Della Street said to Mason, “Let’s hope this is a lucky break.”

  “Let’s hope it is,” Mason said. “We can use a little luck.”

  They waited tensely until they saw Drake returning.

  Mason took one look at Drake’s approaching face and shook his head.

  “What is it?” Della Street asked.

  “Paul Drake has a mask of gloom an inch and a half deep all over his countenance,” Mason said.

  Drake approached the table, and as he started to slide in on the bench Mason said, “Smile, Paul.”

  Drake’s lips twisted in a mirthless smile.

  “What is it?” Mason asked.

  “You’re licked,” Drake said.

  “How come?”

  “The D.A. has a surprise witness he’s going to throw at you. A service station attendant in Oceanside who put gas and oil in Garvin’s car.”

  “What time?” Mason asked.

  “Around eleven-thirty. Garvin was nervous and tense, pacing up and down, and while the car was being serviced, Garvin walked over toward the curb and watched the cars that were coming along the road headed south. He seemed to be looking for someone, and seemed to be as taut as a violin string. The service station attendant noticed him particularly.”

  “How good is the identification?” Mason asked.

  “One hundred per cent,” Drake said. “The man identifies the car, and he identifies Garvin. He noticed him particularly.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “that’s certainly piling it on.”

  “Why didn’t you ask Garvin about this?” Drake asked.

  “I didn’t dare to.”

  “Why not?”

  “The prisoners are given lunch in the jail by the sheriff. The deputy sheriff is supposed to whisk Garvin out of court immediately after the noon adjournment. He brings him back about five minutes before two.

  “I didn’t dare to risk a conference with Garvin while the jury were there in the room, or while the spectators could see us. To have conferred with Garvin immediately followi
ng that testimony from Scanlon would have emphasized the disastrous nature of that surprise testimony. And having Garvin brought back to court early is about as bad. I can have a casual, whispered conference with him at about five minutes to two, and that’s all I dare to do.”

  “Can’t you get an adjournment? Some sort of …”

  “To try that would be considered as a confession of panic,” Mason said. “I’ve simply got to go into court, sit there with a smile on my face, and take it.”

  “You’re going to have to take a lot,” Drake said.

  “Well,” Mason told him, “I’ve dished out a lot in my time, so I guess I can sit there and take it if I have to. The grievance committee of the Bar Association wants to talk with me tomorrow night about my tactics in getting Mortimer Irving to identify my car as the one he saw parked by the side of the road. All in all, it’s a great life.”

  “Can they do anything to you about that identification business?”

  “I don’t think so. I contend I was absolutely within my rights. I had a right to talk with that witness, and I had just as much right to park one single car there by the side of the road and ask him whether that was the same car he had seen, as the police did to take Howard B. Scanlon to some position of vantage, and ask him whether or not the single man he saw walking back and forth in the jail yard was the man he had seen emerging from the telephone booth there at the hotel the night of the murder … Well, I guess there’s nothing much we can do here except put on an act of being carefree and happy. Then we’ll go up to court early. I’ll have a chance to ask Garvin a couple of apparently casual questions in the five minutes I’ll see him before court opens.

  “All right, Paul, do you know any funny stories? People are watching us.”

  Chapter 18

  Mason strolled into the crowded courtroom at seven minutes before two o’clock. He lit a cigarette, settled down in his chair at the counsel table, smiled confidently at some half dozen members of the jury who had arrived early and were occupying their seats in the jury box. He seemed completely relaxed, a man who had just finished a good lunch and was mentally and physically contented.

  At four minutes before two o’clock the deputy sheriff brought Edward Garvin into the courtroom.