The Case of the Curious Bride пм-4

by Эрл Стенли Гарднер

  Della Street, swiftly efficient, vanished from the office. Perry Mason whirled toward the detective. "Another thing Paul," he said. "The district attorney is going to sew up the husband."

  "As a material witness?" Drake asked.

  "Either as a material witness or as an accomplice. Anyway, he'll sew him up so we can't get at him. We've got to figure some way of getting at him. I've got to reach that man." He paced the floor in savage silence.

  The detective volunteered a suggestion. "We could," he said, "fake a message that his father was ill in Chicago. They'd let him go to see his father if they thought you didn't know about it. It's a cinch he'd go by plane. We could watch the plane and stick one of my men on as a passenger. The operative could contact Carl and pump him dry en route."

  Perry Mason paused in his restless pacing to frown thoughtfully. The door from the outer office opened, and Della Street returned to her seat at the desk. Slowly, the lawyer shook his head. "No," he said, "that won't do. It's too risky. We'd have to forge a signature to a telegram. They'd raise hell. It won't work."

  "Why won't it work?" Drake demanded. "It's a good scheme. He'll…"

  "The father," Mason said, "is the type that will come out here to have a hand in things. In fact, I'm sort of planning on bringing him here if he doesn't come of his own accord."

  "Why?"

  "Because I want to get some money out of him."

  "You mean you want him to pay for defending Rhoda?"

  "Yes."

  "He won't do it."

  "He will when I get done with him," Mason said, resuming once more the savage pounding of his heels as he strode up and down the office. Abruptly he whirled. "Here's one more thing. They've got to use the testimony of Carl Montaine to build up the case against Rhoda. Now, Carl Montaine is her husband. As such, he can't be called as a witness in a criminal case, to testify against his wife, unless the wife consents."

  "That's the law in this state?" asked Paul Drake.

  "That's the law."

  "Well," asked Drake, "isn't that a break for you?"

  "No," Perry Mason said, "because that means they'll start an action to annul the marriage between Rhoda and Carl Montaine."

  "Not a divorce?" Drake asked.

  "No, a divorce wouldn't do any good. They'd still have been husband and wife when the murder took place. What they'll do is start an action for annulment, on the ground that the marriage was void from the beginning."

  "Can they do that?"

  "Sure. If they can prove Rhoda Montaine had another husband living at the time she married Carl that second marriage would be void from its inception."

  "Then the husband can testify?" Drake asked.

  "Yes. Now, I want you to start digging out a lot of stuff about Gregory Moxley. I want to know all about his past life. It's a cinch the district attorney will have some of this. I want to get a lot more. I want to get everything about him, from soup to nuts. Dig into his past and find out, if you can, every one that he's victimized."

  "You mean women?"

  "Yes, particularly those that he went through a marriage ceremony with. This wasn't a first time with him. It was his mode of operation. Crooks don't usually change their modes of operation." Paul Drake scribbled in his notebook. "Now, there was a telephone call," Mason went on. "That's the telephone call that woke Moxley up. It must have come in some time before two o'clock. He had an appointment with Rhoda at two o'clock, and he mentioned over the telephone that he was going to meet Rhoda at two o'clock and that she was going to give him money. See if you can find out anything about that telephone call. It may be you can trace it."

  "You think it came before two o'clock?" Drake asked.

  "Yes, I think so. I think you'll find it was the telephone call that woke Moxley up. He was waiting for this two o'clock appointment. He lay down to get a few hours' sleep. Then the telephone rang and woke him up. He got up out of bed and answered it."

  Drake's pencil traveled over the page of his notebook. "All right," he said, "what else?"

  "There's the business of that shadow—the one who was tailing Rhoda Montaine when she came to this office. We haven't found out about him yet. He may have been a professional detective. If he was, some one hired him. You've got to find out who was willing to pay out good money to find out what Rhoda was doing."

  Drake nodded. Mason swung to Della Street. "Della," he said, "I want to set the stage for some publicity. We've got a delicate job on our hands. If the first newspaper accounts sketch this woman as a nurse who drugged her husband, it's going to be bad for us. We've got to center the attention on the wrong that was done her by her husband, rather than the wrong that she did to her husband. One of the morning papers has a readers' column in which they publish letters from readers. Take a letter to that newspaper, to the attention of the editor of the readers' column. Be sure that it isn't on stationery that can be traced to this office."

  Della Street nodded, poised her pencil. Perry Mason started to dictate quick, explosive words:

  "I'm just an oldfashioned husband. Perhaps I have lived past my time. I don't know what the world is coming to, with those new ideas that make it seem that a person who has lived frugally and saved a part of his income is an economic leper, that motion picture actors can't be popular unless they punch women in the nose, but I do know that I swore to love, honor and cherish my wife, and I certainly shall try to do so to the best of my ability. The current press contains the account of a «lawabiding» husband who read in the papers some stuff that made it appear his wife had been in contact with a man who was murdered, shortly before his death. In place of trying to shield his wife, in place of going to her for an explanation, this 'lawabiding' husband rushes to the police and gets them to arrest his wife, and pledges his cooperation to help the police make out a case. Perhaps this is just the trend of modern times. Perhaps I have lived too long. Personally, I don't think so. Personally, I think the world is going through another one of those periods of hysteria.

  "We look back on our spending orgy that culminated in 1929, and shake our heads sadly that we could have been swept off our feet by such contagious financial fallacies.

  "Isn't it equally possible that some sweet spring morning we will wake up with a terrific headache and wonder if we weren't just as hysterical in our anxiety to sweep aside all of our old standards, to embark upon an orgy of governmental spending, when we should have tried governmental economy, to have penalized those who had weathered the economic storm with savings in the bank, and, last but not least, to have given the sanction of our prosecuting officers to a husband who would rush frantically to the nearest police station to snitch on his wife.

  "Personally I think so, but then, I am just an "oldfashioned husband."

  Paul Drake looked up at Perry Mason and said in his drawling voice, "What good's that going to do, Perry?"

  "A lot of good," Mason said. "It's going to start a discussion."

  "You mean about the husband?"

  "Sure."

  "Then why put all the political stuff in it?"

  "Because I want to be sure that it starts a discussion. Lots of people wouldn't care enough one way or the other to write in and take sides with Rhoda or with her husband, but, by putting in this other stuff, there will be enough sentiment, pro and con, to bring in a flood of correspondence that will make the newspaper sit up and take notice, and it will assign a sob sister to play up the angle of the betraying husband."

  Drake nodded slowly. "I guess," he said, "you're right at that."

  "How about that photograph?" asked Perry Mason. "Did you get photographs of the room where the murder was committed?"

  Paul Drake picked up a brief case which he had propped against the foot of his chair, pulled out a manila envelope and extracted four photographs printed on glossy paper. Mason took the photographs, spread them on his desk, studied them carefully for several minutes. Then he opened the drawer of his desk, took out a magnifying glass and studied one of the photo
graphs through it. "Take a look at this, Paul," he said.

  The detective pushed over to the desk. Perry Mason indicated a portion of the photograph. "Yes," Drake said, "that's the alarm clock. It was on a stand by the bed."

  "And, as I understand it, Paul, the bed had been slept in but Moxley was fully dressed at the time he was killed."

  "Yes."

  "Then," Mason went on, "the importance of that alarm clock becomes doubly significant."

  "Why?"

  "Take a glass and look at it."

  The detective nodded. "Yes," he said, "the alarm clock is pictured plainly enough to show the hands distinctly. The hands point to three seventeen. The figures in the righthand corner of the photograph, where the police photographer made a note of the location of the camera, the time of exposure, and so forth, shows the picture was taken at three eighteen. That puts the alarm clock only a minute off, as compared with police time."

  "That's only part of it," Perry Mason told him. "Take another look."

  "What are you getting at?"

  "By looking closely," Mason said, "you can see the dial in the upper part of the alarm clock, the dial that regulates the alarm."

  "What about it?"

  "It shows that the hand was set just a little before two o'clock."

  "Sure," Drake said. "He had an appointment for two o'clock with Rhoda Montaine. He wanted to be awake when she called."

  "Didn't leave him much time to dress," Mason remarked. "That hand looks to me as though it was set for perhaps five or ten minutes before two o'clock."

  "Remember, he'd been her husband once. She probably had seen him in pajamas before."

  "You still don't get my point," Mason said, drumming with his fingers on the edge of the photograph. "That telephone call woke Moxley up. Therefore, he didn't need the alarm. He was all dressed by the time the alarm went off."

  Paul Drake's glassy eyes surveyed Perry Mason steadily.

  "There's lots of your points I don't get," he said. "Why the devil don't you go in and plead selfdefense? I'm not asking you to violate any of your client's confidences, but if she told you the truth, she's undoubtedly told you there was a struggle and she struck Moxley with the poker. It doesn't seem to me it would be a hard job to make the jury believe that was what happened. That's selfdefense."

  Perry Mason shook his head slowly. "That," he said, "is the danger of formulating a defense before you know all the facts."

  "What's wrong with that as a defense?" asked the detective.

  "In the first place," the lawyer replied, "there's that business of drugging her husband. You've got to understand something of the psychology of jurors in order to figure what they'll do in any given case, and it's not always easy to look at the thing just the way they're going to figure it. But one of the bad things in this case is that Ipral bottle. The fact that Carl Montaine's wife was a nurse, and that she placed a drugged drink in his hand, is going to do more to prejudice an American jury against her than anything that could possibly be uncovered in connection with the murder. Moreover, if she's going to plead selfdefense, she's got to admit that she did the killing. I'm not certain that the prosecution can show she did the killing."

  "They can show she was in the room at the time of death," Drake said. "The killing certainly must have taken place right around two o'clock, between two and two twenty, when the neighbors decided to notify the police. It's a foregone conclusion that Rhoda Montaine had left her house in the dead of night to go to Moxley's apartment. The fact that she was there is shown by the fact that her garage keys were there. She had to have the garage keys in order to open the garage doors when she started. She left them there. If she didn't kill him herself, the jury certainly is going to believe that she was there when the killing took place, and must know who did it."

  "That's just the point," Perry Mason said slowly. "I'm not certain but what she may be trying to shield somebody."

  "What makes you think that?"

  "The fact that there are no fingerprints on the doorknob," Mason said.

  "Rhoda wore gloves," the detective reminded him.

  "Well, what if she did? If she had worn gloves, she wouldn't have left fingerprints on anything, would she?"

  "That's right. And the police didn't find any of her fingerprints."

  "Then," Mason insisted, "if she hadn't left fingerprints because she wore gloves, she wouldn't need to worry about fingerprints."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that a woman wearing gloves wouldn't leave any of her fingerprints, but when there were no fingerprints on the knob of the door or on the murder weapon it means that some one took a rag and carefully obliterated all of the fingerprints. The only reason a person would do that would be to obliterate certain telltale fingerprints. A person who was wearing gloves wouldn't have left behind any fingerprints to worry about—nothing she would need to obliterate."

  Drake's frown was thoughtful. "So that's what you were getting at when you phoned me," he said.

  Perry Mason resumed his pacing of the office. Abruptly, he jerked open the door of a coat closet, pulled out a hat, clapped it firmly into position on his head, glanced meaningly at Della Street. "Take a look at that habeas corpus petition," he said. "It should be ready for my signature."

  She nodded, moved with the swiftly silent efficiency of a nurse making things ready for a major operation. A few moments, and she returned, bearing a piece of paper in her hand. "This is the last page," she said, "ready for your signature."

  Perry Mason scrawled his signature. "Send it up," he said. "Get a judge to issue the writ. See that it's served. I'm going out."

  "Going to be long?" asked Paul Drake.

  Perry Mason's smile was ominous. "Just long enough," he said, "to give Doctor Claude Millsap the works."

  Chapter 9

  Doctor Millsap's nurse bristled with indignation. "You can't go in there," she said; "that's Doctor Millsap's private office. He doesn't see people without an appointment. You'll have to make an appointment at his convenience."

  Perry Mason stared steadily at her. "I don't like to fight with women," he said. "I've told you that I was an attorney and that I was going to see Doctor Millsap on a matter of great importance to him. Now you get through that door and tell Doctor Millsap that Perry Mason wants to see him about a.32 caliber Colt automatic that was registered in his name. You tell him that I'm going to wait just exactly thirty seconds, then I'm coming in."

  A hint of panic showed in the nurse's eyes. She hesitated, turned, opened the door of Doctor Millsap's private office and slammed it shut behind her with emphasis. Perry Mason consulted his wristwatch. Precisely at the end of thirty seconds he strode to the door, twisted the knob and pushed it open.

  Doctor Millsap wore a white robe. A concave mirror was fastened about his forehead with a leather strap, giving him a decidedly professional appearance. The office smelled of antiseptics. Surgical instruments glittered in glass cases. A row of bookcases was visible through an open doorway. On the other side could be glimpsed a tiled operating room.

  The nurse had one hand on Doctor Millsap's shoulder. Her eyes were wide. She had been leaning toward the physician. At the sound of the opening door she whirled, with panic in her eyes. Doctor Millsap's face was a sickly gray. Perry Mason shut the door behind him with silent finality. "It happens," he said slowly, "that time's valuable. I didn't have any to waste in preliminaries, and I didn't want you to take time to think up a bunch of lies and make me waste more time proving that they were lies."

  Doctor Millsap squared his shoulders. "I don't know who you are," he said, "and I certainly don't understand the meaning of this unwarranted intrusion. You can either get out, or I'll call the police and have you put out."

  Perry Mason's feet were planted wide apart, his chin belligerent, his eyes cold and steady. He was like a solid block of granite—foursquare, cold, unyielding. "When you get the police on the telephone, Doctor," he said, "explain to them just how it happened that
you made a false burial certificate for Gregory Lorton in February, 1929. You can also explain to them how it happened that you gave Rhoda Montaine a.32 caliber automatic, with instructions to shoot Gregory Moxley."

  Doctor Millsap ran his tongue along the line of his dry lips, looked over to the nurse with desperate eyes. "Get out, Mabel," he said.

  She hesitated a moment, stared venomously at Perry Mason, then walked past him through the door. "See that we're not disturbed," Mason told her. The slamming of the door of the outer office constituted his answer.

  Mason held Doctor Millsap's eyes. "Who are you?" asked Doctor Millsap.

  "I'm Rhoda Montaine's attorney."

  Momentary relief became apparent in Doctor Millsap's expression. "She sent you here?"

  "No."

  "Where is she?"

  "Under arrest," Perry Mason said slowly, "for murder."

  "How did you happen to come here?"

  "Because I wanted to find out about that death certificate and the gun."

  "Sit down," said Doctor Millsap, and dropped into a chair as he spoke, as though his knees had lost their strength. "Let's see," he said, "a man by the name of Lorton… Of course, I have a great number of cases and I can't remember, offhand, the facts connected with each one. I could, perhaps, look it up in my records. You say it was in 1929?… If you could recall some of the particular circumstances…"

  Mason's face flushed with anger. "To hell with that line of stuff!" he said. "You're friendly with Rhoda Montaine, I don't know how friendly. You knew she'd married Gregory Lorton and that Lorton had skipped out. For some reason she didn't want to get a divorce. On February twentieth, 1929, a patient was admitted to the Sunnyside Hospital with pneumonia. The name under which he was booked was that of Gregory Lorton. You were the attending physician. The patient died on February twentythird. You signed the death certificate."

  Doctor Millsap licked his lips once more. His eyes were sick with panic. Perry Mason shot out his left arm doubled it smartly at the elbow so he could consult the dial of his wristwatch. "You've got ten seconds," he said, "to start talking."