The Case of the Velvet Claws pm-1

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  “Go on,” she said, “if it interests you. I reckon I can’t get to sleep until after you leave.”

  “You’re not going to sleep any more today.”

  “No?”

  “No. There’s a morning paper outside the door. Would you like to see it?”

  “Why?”

  “It tells all about the murder of George C. Belter.”

  “I hate murders before breakfast.”

  “You might like to read about this one anyway.”

  “All right,” she said, “go get me the paper.”

  He shook his head at her.

  “No,” he said, “you get the paper. Otherwise, when I open the door something might happen, and I’d get pushed out.”

  She got up, puffing placidly at the cigarette, crossed to the door, opened it, reached out and picked up the paper.

  The headlines screamed the news of the Belter murder. She walked back to the bed, sat down with her feet tucked in under her, legs crossed, and read through the paper, smoking as she read.

  “Well,” she said. “I still don’t see that it’s anything in my young life. Some guy got bumped. It’s too bad, but he probably had it coming to him.”

  “He did,” said Mason.

  “Well, why should that make me lose my beauty sleep?”

  “If you’ll use your noodle,” he explained patiently, “you’ll find out that Mrs. Belter has come into a position where she controls all of the property in the estate and I happen to represent Mrs. Belter.”

  “Well?”

  “You’ve been blackmailing Frank Locke,” he said, “and Locke has been embezzling trust funds in order to pay the blackmail. That special account of Spicy Bits was an account that was given him to use in purchasing information. He’s been handing it over to you.”

  “I’m in the clear,” she said, tossing the paper to the floor, “I didn’t know anything at all about it.”

  He laughed at her.

  “How about the blackmail?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, yes, you do, Esther. You are shaking him down on account of this Georgia business.”

  That remark registered with her. Her face changed color, and, for the first time, there was a startled look in her eyes.

  Mason went on to press his advantage.

  “That,” he said, “wouldn’t look pretty. You may have heard of compounding a felony. It’s a crime in this state, you know.”

  She appraised him watchfully. “You’re not a dick, just a lawyer?”

  “Just a lawyer.”

  “Okay,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “Now you’re commencing to talk turkey.”

  “I’m not talking; I’m listening.”

  “You were with Frank Locke last night,” he said.

  “Who says I was?”

  “I do. You went out with him, then came back here, and he stayed until long in the morning.”

  “I’m free, white, and twenty-one,” she said, “and this is my home. I guess I’ve got a right to entertain men friends if I want to.”

  “Sure you have,” he said. “The next question is, have you got sense enough to know which side of your bread has got the butter?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “What did you do last night after you got back to the room?”

  “Talked about the weather, of course.”

  “That’s fine,” he told her. “You had some drinks sent up, and sat and chatted, and then you got sleepy and went to sleep.”

  “Who says that?” she asked.

  “That’s what I say,” he explained, “and that’s what you’re going to say. You got sleepy and passed out.”

  Her eyes were thoughtful. “How do you mean?”

  Mason spoke as though he had been a teacher coaching a pupil. “You were tired and you’d been drinking. You got into your pajamas and went to sleep about eleven-forty, and you don’t know anything that happened after that. You don’t know when Frank Locke left.”

  “What good does it do me if I say I went to sleep?” she inquired.

  Mason’s tone was casual. “I think Mrs. Belter would be very much inclined to overlook the matter of the embezzled account if you went to sleep as I mentioned.”

  “Well, I didn’t go to sleep.”

  “You’d better think it over.”

  She stared at him with her big, appraising eyes and said nothing.

  Mason crossed to the telephone and gave the number of Paul Drake’s Detective Agency.

  “You know who this is, Paul,” he said, when he heard Drake’s voice. “What have you got, anything?”

  “Yes,” said Drake, “I’ve got something on the broad.”

  “Spill it,” said Mason.

  “She won a beauty contest in Savannah,” said Drake. “She was under age at the time. There was another kid living with her in an apartment. A man got the kid in a jam, and then killed her. He tried to cover up the crime and made a bum job of it. He was arrested and tried. This girl switched her testimony at the last minute and gave him a break. He got a hung jury on the first trial, and managed to escape before they tried him again. He’s still a fugitive from justice. His name is Cecil Dawson. I’m looking him up for description and fingerprints, and any more dope I can get. I have an idea that he may be the man you want.”

  “Okay,” Mason said, as though he had expected just that. “That comes in pretty handy right now. Stay with it, and I’ll get in touch with you a little later.”

  He hung up the telephone and turned back to the girl.

  “Well,” he asked, “what is it, yes or no?”

  “No,” she said. “I told you that before, and I don’t change my mind.”

  He stared at her, steadily. “You know, the funny part of it is,” he said, slowly, “that it goes farther back than just the blackmail. It goes back to the time that you changed your testimony, and gave Dawson an opportunity to get a hung jury. When he’s brought back and tried on that murder charge, the fact that you have been here with him and taking these checks from him will put you in kind of a tough spot on a perjury prosecution.”

  Her face lost its color. Her eyes were big, dark and staring. Her mouth sagged open and she breathed heavily through it.

  “My God!” she said.

  “Exactly,” said Mason. “You were asleep last night.”

  She kept her eyes on him and asked, “Would that square it?”

  “I don’t know,” Mason told her. “It would square things at this end. I don’t know whether anybody’s going to make a squawk about the Georgia business or not.”

  “All right. I was asleep.”

  Mason got up and moved toward the door.

  “You want to remember that,” he said. “Nobody knows about this except me. If you tell Locke that I was here, or the proposition I made you, I’ll see that you get the works everywhere along the line.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “I know when I’ve had enough.”

  He walked out and closed the door behind him.

  He got in his car and drove to Sol Steinburg’s Pawnshop.

  Steinburg was fat, with shrewd, twinkling eyes, a skull cap, and thick, curling lips, which were twisted in a perpetual smile.

  He beamed on Perry Mason, and said, “Well, well, well. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, my friend.”

  Mason shook hands. “It certainly has, Sol. And now I’m in trouble.”

  The pawnbroker nodded and rubbed his hands together.

  “Whenever they get in trouble,” he said, “they come to Sol Steinburg’s place. What is your trouble, my friend?”

  “Listen,” said Mason, “I want you to do something for me.”

  The skull cap nodded in vigorous assent.

  “I’d do anything I could for you, y’understand. Of course, business is business. And if it’s a business matter, you’ve got to come to me on a business basis, and take business treatment. But if it ain�
�t business y’understand, I’d do anything I could.”

  Mason’s eyes twinkled. “It’s business for you, Sol,” he said, “because you’re going to make fifty dollars out of it. But you don’t have to invest anything.”

  The fat man broke out in laughter.

  “That,” he proclaimed, “is the kind of business I like to talk—when I don’t have to invest anything, and make a fifty dollar profit already, I know it’s a good business. What do I do?”

  “Let me see the register of revolvers you’ve sold,” Mason told him.

  The man fished under a counter and produced a well-thumbed booklet, in which had been registered the style and make of the weapon, the number, the person to whom it was sold, and the signature of the purchaser.

  Mason thumbed the pages until he found a 32-Colt automatic.

  “That’s the one,” he said.

  Steinburg leaned over the book, and stared at the registration.

  “What about it?”

  “I’m coming in here with a man sometime today, or tomorrow,” said Mason, “and, as soon as you look at him, you nod your head vigorously, and say, ‘That’s the man, that’s the man, that’s the man, all right.’ I’ll ask you if you’re sure it’s the man and you get more and more certain. He’ll deny it, and the more he denies it, the more certain you get.”

  Sol Steinburg pursed his thick lips. “That might be serious.”

  Mason shook his head.

  “It would be if you said it in court,” he admitted, “but you’re not going to say it in court. You’re not going to say it to anybody except this man. And you’re not going to say what it was he did. Simply identify him as being the man. Then you go in the back part of the store, and leave me with the firearm register here. Do you understand?”

  “Sure, sure,” said Steinburg. “I understand it fine. All except one thing.”

  “What’s that?” asked Mason.

  “Where the fifty dollars is coming from.”

  Mason slapped his pants pocket. “Right here, Sol.” He pulled out a roll of bills from which he took fifty dollars, and handed it to the pawnbroker.

  “Anybody you come in with?” he asked. “Is that it?”

  “Anybody I come in with,” Mason said. “I won’t come in here unless I’ve got the right man. I may have to dress the act up a little bit, but you follow my lead. Is that okay?”

  The pawnbroker’s caressing fingers folded the fifty dollars.

  “My friend,” he said, “whatever you do is all right with me. I say whatever I am supposed to say, and I say it loud, y’understand.”

  “That’s fine,” said Mason. “Don’t get shaken in your identification.”

  The skull cap twisted, as Sol Steinburg shook his head in vigorous negation.

  Perry Mason walked out, whistling.

  Chapter 14

  Frank Locke sat in the editorial office and shred at Perry Mason.

  “I understood that they were looking for you,” he said.

  “Who was?” asked Perry Mason carelessly.

  “Reporters, police, detectives. Lots of people,” said Locke.

  “I saw them all.”

  “This afternoon?”

  “No, last night. Why?”

  “Nothing,” Locke replied, “except that they may be looking for you in a different way now. What is it you want?”

  “I just dropped in to tell you that Eva Belter had filed a petition for letters of administration on her husband’s estate.”

  “What’s that to me?” asked Locke, his milk-chocolate eyes on Perry Mason.

  “It means that Eva Belter is running things from now on. You’re going to take your orders from her,” said Mason. “And it means that, inasmuch as I’m representing Eva Belter, you’re going to take some orders from me. One of the first things you’re going to do is to kill anything about that Beechwood Inn affair.”

  “Is that so?” said Locke, sarcastically.

  “That,” said Mason, with emphasis, “is so.”

  “You’re what they call an optimist.”

  “Maybe I am. Again, maybe I’m not. Just take down the telephone and ring up Eva Belter.”

  “I don’t have to ring up Eva Belter, or anybody else. I’m running this newspaper.”

  “You’re going to be like that, are you?”

  “Just like that,” Locke snapped.

  “I might talk with you again if we went some place where I was certain that I could talk without too many people listening,” Mason remarked.

  “You’d have to make better talk than you did the last time,” said Locke, “or I wouldn’t be interested in leaving.”

  “Well, we might take a stroll, Locke, and see if we could come to some terms.”

  “Why not talk here?”

  “You know the way I feel about this place,” Mason told him. “It makes me uneasy, and I don’t talk well when I’m uneasy.”

  Locke hesitated for a minute, finally said, “Well, I won’t give you over fifteen minutes. You’ve got to talk turkey this time.”

  “I can talk turkey,” Mason remarked.

  “Well, I’m always willing to take a chance,” Locke said.

  He got his hat and went down to the street with Mason.

  “Suppose we get a cab and ride around until we find some place that looks good, where we can talk,” said Locke.

  “Well, let’s walk down the block here, and around the corner. I want to be sure that we get a taxi that isn’t planted,” Mason said.

  Locke made a grimace. “Oh, cut out that kid stuff, Mason! Be your age! I’ve got the office wired so that I can tune a witness in on the conversation when I want to, but don’t think that I’ve gone to all the trouble of arranging a bunch of stuff on the outside, so I can hear what you say. You could have yelled anything you said before from the tops of the skyscrapers, and it wouldn’t have made a damned bit of difference.”

  Mason shook his head.

  “No,” he said, “when I do business, I do it in just one way.”

  Locke scowled. “I don’t like that way.”

  “Lots of people don’t,” Mason admitted.

  Locke stood still. “That’s not getting you anywhere, Mason. I might as well go back to the office.”

  “You’ll regret it if you do,” Mason warned him.

  Locke hesitated, and then finally shrugged his shoulders.

  “All right,” he said, “let’s go. I’ve come this far. I may as well see it through.”

  Mason walked him down the street until they came to Sol Steinburg’s place.

  “We’ll go in here,” said Mason.

  Locke flashed him a glance of instant suspicion. “I won’t talk in there,” he said.

  “You don’t have to,” Mason told him, “we’re just going in here, and you can come right out.”

  “What kind of a frame-up is this?” Locke demanded.

  “Oh, come on in,” Mason said, impatiently. “Who’s getting suspicious now?”

  Locke walked on in, looking cautiously about him.

  Sol Steinburg came out from the back room with his face wreathed in smiles, rubbing his hands. He looked at Mason, and said, “Hello, hello, hello. What do you want? You back again?” Then his eyes rested on Frank Locke.

  Seldom is there a Hebrew who hasn’t an instinct of the dramatic and an ability to portray emotions.

  Sol Steinburg’s face ran through a gamut of expressions. The smile gave place to an expression of startled recognition. The expression of startled recognition gave way to one of fierce determination. He raised a quivering forefinger, pointed it directly at Locke, and said, “That’s the man.”

  Mason’s voice was incisive. “Now, wait a minute, Sol. We’ve got to be sure about this.”

  The pawnbroker became voluble. “Ain’t I sure? Can’t I tell a man when I see him? You asked me if I could tell him when I saw him, and I told you, ‘yes.’ Now I see him, and I tell you yes again. That’s him! That’s the man! What do you want
to be sure about more than that? That’s him. That’s the man. You can’t be mistaken about that. I know that face anywhere. I know that nose, and I know those colored eyes!”

  Frank Locke swung back toward the door. His lips were snarling. “Say,” he said, “what kind of a double-cross am I getting here, anyway? What sort of a frame-up is this? This won’t buy you anything. You’ll get the works for this!”

  “Keep your shirt on,” Mason told him, then turned to the pawnbroker.

  “Sol,” he said, “you’ve got to be so absolutely certain about this that you can go on the witness stand and no amount of cross-examination can shake your testimony.”

  Sol waved expressive palms under his chin. “How could I be more certain?” he said. “Put me on the witness stand. Bring me on a dozen lawyers. Bring me on a hundred lawyers! I’ll tell the same story.”

  Frank Locke said, “I never saw this man in my life.”

  Sol Steinburg’s laugh was a masterpiece of sarcastic merriment.

  Little beads of perspiration were showing on Locke’s forehead. He turned to Mason.

  “What’s the idea?” he said. “What sort of a flim-flam is this?”

  Mason shook his head gravely.

  “It’s just a part of my case,” he said. “It checks up, that’s all.”

  “What checks up?”

  “The fact that you bought the gun,” Mason said, in a low voice.

  “You’re crazy as hell!” Locke yelled. “I never bought a gun here in my life. I never was inside the place. I never saw the store. I don’t carry a gun!”

  Mason said to Steinburg, “Give me your gun register, will you, Sol? Then beat it. I want to talk.”

  Steinburg passed over the booklet, waddled to the back of the store.

  Mason opened the book to the place where the 32-automatic Colt had been noted. He held the palm of his hand casually, so that the number of the gun was partially covered. With his forefinger, he indicated the words “32-Colt automatic.” Then he moved over toward the name which was on the margin.

  “I presume you’ll deny that you wrote that?” he asked.

  Locke seemed trying to tear himself away, yet to be held by some impelling curiosity. He leaned forward. “Certainly I deny that I wrote it. I never was in the joint. I never saw this man. I never bought a gun here, and that isn’t my signature.”