The Case of the Curious Bride пм-4

by Эрл Стенли Гарднер

  Perry Mason's laugh was scornful. He flung his arm out in rigidly pointing accusation. An extended forefinger was leveled at her face as though it had been a loaded revolver. "Why do you tell us that," he said, "when you know his name was Gregory?"

  She wilted, as though the life force had oozed from her pores. "Who… who are you?"

  "If you really want to know," Perry Mason said, "the telephone company is investigating a charge that your phone has been used for blackmail."

  She straightened slightly and said, "Not for blackmail. You can't call that blackmail."

  "You were trying to collect money."

  "Of course I was trying to collect money. I was trying to collect money that was due me."

  "Who was helping you?" asked Perry Mason.

  "That's none of your business."

  "Don't you know that you can't use the telephone for that purpose?"

  "I don't know why not."

  "Haven't you ever heard that it's against the law to demand money on a postal card?"

  "Yes, I've heard of that."

  "And yet you have the nerve to sit there and claim that you don't know it's against the law to ring up a man and demand that he pay you money?"

  "We didn't do that," she said.

  "Didn't do what?"

  "Didn't ring him up and demand that he give us money—not in so many words."

  "Who's the 'we'?" asked Paul Drake.

  Mason frowned at him, but the detective caught the significance of the signal too late to check the question.

  "Just me," said Doris Freeman.

  Perry Mason's voice showed exasperation. "And you didn't know that it was against the law to ask for money over the telephone?"

  "I tell you we… I didn't ask for money."

  "It was a man's voice," Perry Mason chanced, staring steadily at the young woman. "Our operator says it was a man's voice that did the talking." Doris Freeman was silent. "What have you to say to that?"

  "Nothing… that is, it may have been a mistake. I had a cold. I talked rather gruffly."

  Mason strode abruptly across the room, jerked the telephone receiver from its hook, placed it to his ear. At the same time, his right hand, resting carelessly across the top of the telephone, surreptitiously pushed down the telephone hook so there was no connection over the line. "Give me the investigations department, official sixtwo," he demanded.

  He waited a few moments, then said, "This is Number Thirteen talking. We're out at this place where the threatening telephone call came through on the morning of June sixteenth. The apartment is in the name of Doris Freeman, but she's shielding some male accomplice. She claims she didn't know it was against the law to make a demand like that over the telephone."

  He waited for a few more moments, then laughed sarcastically. "Well," he said, "that's what she claims. You can believe it or not. She came here from Centerville. Maybe they haven't got a city ordinance against that in Centerville. You never can tell… Well, what do you want me to do with her, bring her in?… What?" screamed Perry Mason. "You mean that call that went through was to Moxley, the man that was murdered!.. Gee, chief, that puts a different aspect on the situation. This is out of our hands. You'd better notify the district attorney. And watch the calls that come in over this line… Well, you know how I feel about it… Okay, G'by."

  Mason hung up the telephone, turned to Paul Drake. His eyes were wide with wellsimulated, startled surprise. He lowered his voice, as though awed by the grim portent of that which he had discovered. "Do you know who that call was to?" he asked.

  Paul Drake also lowered his own voice. "I heard what you said to the chief," he remarked. "Was that right?"

  "That's right. That call went through to Gregory Moxley, the man that was murdered, and the call went through just about half an hour before his death."

  "What's the chief going to do?"

  "There's only one thing he can do—turn it over to the district attorney. Gosh, I thought it was just a routine investigation, and here it has run into a murder rap."

  Doris Freeman spoke with hysterical rapidity.

  "Look here," she said, "I didn't know anything about any law that we couldn't use the telephone to collect money. That was money that was due to me. It was money that man had stolen from me. It was money he'd swindled me out of. He was a devil. He deserved to die. I'm glad he's dead! But the telephone call didn't have anything to do with his murder. It was Rhoda Montaine that killed him! Don't you fellows ever read the papers?"

  Mason stared at her with scornful appraisal. "The woman that was in the room when he was killed may have been Rhoda Montaine," Mason said, "but it wasn't a woman that struck that blow, and the district attorney's office knows it. That blow was struck by a powerful man. And you folks certainly had a motive for murder. It's a perfect case. You rang up less than half an hour before the death and told him he had to kick through…" Mason abruptly shrugged his shoulders, lapsed into silence.

  Paul Drake took up the conversation. "Well," he said, "you'd better come clean and…"

  "Let's just forget it, Paul," Perry Mason said. "The chief is going to turn it over to the district attorney. The D.A. won't like the idea of having us mixed in on it. It's entirely outside of our province. Let's quit talking about it."

  Drake nodded. The two men started for the door. Doris Freeman jumped to her feet. "But let me explain!" she said. "It isn't what you think it is at all. We didn't…"

  "Save it for the D.A.," Perry Mason told her, and pulled the door open, motioning to Paul Drake to precede him into the corridor.

  "But you don't understand," she said. "It's just a question of…"

  Mason literally pushed the detective into the corridor, jumped out after him and slammed the door shut. Before they had gone five steps, Doris Freeman had the door open. "But won't you let me explain?" she said. "Can't I tell you…"

  "We're not mixing in that kind of a mess," the lawyer declared. "That's outside of our jurisdiction. The chief has taken it up with the D.A. It's up to him."

  The men almost ran to the elevator, as though the woman who stood in the doorway might be afflicted with some sort of plague. When the elevator door had closed on them and the cage was rattling downward, Paul Drake glanced inquiringly at Perry Mason. "She was ready to spill her story," he said ruefully.

  "No, she wasn't. She was going to pull a line to get our sympathy, a long tale of woe about how Moxley tricked her. She'd never have told us about the man. He's the one we want. She'll go to him now. There's nothing that gets a person's goat like not letting them talk when they are trying to make a play for sympathy."

  "Do you suppose it's some one living there with her?" Drake asked.

  "It's hard to tell who it is. The thing that I'm figuring on is that it may be a detective or a lawyer."

  The detective gave an exclamation. "Boy, some lawyer is going to be plenty mad when she comes to him with a story about a couple of dicks who were going to arrest her for using the telephone to demand money. Do you suppose she'll call him on the telephone to tell him?"

  "Not after the line we handed her about the calls being watched. She'll be afraid to use the telephone. She'll get in touch with him personally, whoever he is."

  "You think she smelled a rat?" asked Drake.

  "I doubt it," Mason answered. "Remember, she's awed by the city—and, if she does smell a rat, she'll think we're police detectives laying a trap for him."

  The men piled out of the elevator, strode across the lobby and were careful not to even glance in the direction of the car, where Danny Spear sat slumped behind the wheel. They turned to the right, crossed the street, so that they would be in full view of the apartment house, and signaled a cruising cab.

  Chapter 15

  Back in his office, Perry Mason paced the floor, his thumbs thrust in the armholes of his vest. Della Street, seated at the corner of the big desk, the sliding leaf pulled out to hold her notebook, took down the words which Perry Mason flung over his shoulde
r as he paced up and down the room.

  "… wherefore, plaintiff prays that the bonds of matrimony existing between her, the said Rhoda Montaine, and the defendant, the said Carl W. Montaine, be dissolved by an order of this court; that the said plaintiff do have and recover of and from the said defendant, and that the said defendant pay to the said plaintiff by way of alimony, and as a fair and equitable division of the property rights of the said parties herein, the sum of fifty thousand dollars, twenty thousand of which to be paid in cash, the remaining thirty thousand to be paid in monthly installments of five hundred dollars each, until the whole of the same is paid, such deferred payments to bear interest at the rate of seven percent per annum; that the said plaintiff prays for such other and further relief as to this court may seem meet and equitable…"

  "That's all, Della. Put a blank on there for the signature of the attorney for the plaintiff and an affidavit of verification for Rhoda Montaine to sign."

  Della Street finished making pothooks across the page of the notebook, raised her eyes to Perry Mason and asked, "Is she really going to file this suit for divorce, chief?"

  "She is when I get done with her."

  "That puts you in a position of fighting the annulment action, yet filing an action for divorce?" Della Street asked.

  "Yes. If they got the annulment there wouldn't be any alimony. That's one of the things that C. Phillip Montaine is figuring. He wants to save his pocketbook. The district attorney wants Carl to testify in the murder trial."

  "And if you can beat the annulment action, he can't testify?"

  "That's right."

  "Will he be able to testify if he gets a divorce, chief?"

  "No. If they can annul the marriage Carl can give his testimony. In the eyes of the law a void marriage is no marriage at all. If there was a valid marriage, even if it was subsequently dissolved by divorce, he can't testify against his wife without her consent."

  "But," Della objected, "you can't keep them from getting an annulment. The law plainly says that a subsequent marriage contracted by any person during the life of a former spouse is void from the beginning."

  "I'm glad it does," Mason answered, grinning.

  "But, when Rhoda married Carl Montaine, her former husband was still living."

  Mason resumed his savage pacing of the office. "I can lick them on that with my eyes shut," he said. "It's the other things that are worrying me… Stick around, Della, and give me a chance to think. I want to think out loud. I may have something for you to write out. Is someone watching the telephone board?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm expecting an important call," Mason said, "from Danny Spear. I think we're going to find the persons who were putting the screws on Moxley for the money."

  "Do you want to find them, chief?"

  "I don't want the district attorney to subpoena them," he said. "I want to get them out of the country."

  "Won't that be dangerous, compounding a felony, or something of that sort?"

  He grinned at her, and the grin, in itself, was an eloquent answer. After a moment, he said softly, "And are you telling me?"

  She looked worried and made aimless designs on the pages of her notebook. At length she glanced up at him, followed his pacing with anxious eyes and said, "Don't you think it would have been better if you'd relied on selfdefense?"

  He whirled on her savagely. "Sure, it would," he said. "We could have worked up a case of selfdefense that would have stuck. We might not have secured an acquittal, but it's a cinch the prosecution could never have secured a conviction.

  "But she walked into the D.A.'s trap. She can't claim selfdefense now. She's placed herself in front of the door, ringing the doorbell, when the murder was committed."

  Della Street pursed her lips and asked thoughtfully, "You mean she didn't tell the police the truth?"

  "Of course, she didn't tell them the truth. They gave her a nicely baited hook, and she grabbed at it, hook, line and sinker. She doesn't know that she's hooked yet, because it hasn't suited the district attorney to jerk the line and set the hook."

  "But why didn't she tell them the truth, chief?"

  "Because she couldn't. It's one of those cases where the truth sounds more unreasonable than any lie you can think up. That happens sometimes in a criminal case. When a person is guilty, a clever attorney makes up a story for him to tell the jury. Therefore, the defendant's story usually sounds pretty convincing. When a defendant is innocent, the facts don't sound nearly so plausible as they do when they're fabricated. When a person makes up a story, the first thing he tries to bear in mind is to make up a story that's plausible. When he relates events just as they happened, the story doesn't sound as plausible."

  "I can't exactly see that," Della Street objected.

  "You've heard the old adage," he asked, "that truth is stranger than fiction?" She nodded.

  "This is simply a concrete example of that same principle. There are millions of facts that may fall from the wheel of chance in any possible combination. Ninetynine times out of a hundred those combinations of facts are plausible and convincing, but once out of a hundred the actual truth challenges credulity. When a defendant is caught in that kind of a trap, it's one of the worst cases a lawyer can get hold of."

  "What are you going to do?" she asked.

  "Under the circumstances," he said, "I'm going to try to make the stories of the prosecuting witnesses sound improbable. What's more, I'm going to try and prove an alibi."

  "But you can't prove an alibi," she said. "You, yourself, have just admitted that the witnesses for the prosecution will prove that Rhoda Montaine was out keeping an appointment with Gregory Moxley."

  He nodded and chuckled. "Why the chuckle?" she asked.

  "I've thrown some bread out on the water," he said. "I'm waiting to see what comes back."

  There was a knock at the door. One of the typists who watched the switchboard when Della Street was in Perry Mason's private office said in a thin, frightened voice, "A man named Danny Spear just rang up. He said that he was one of Paul Drake's detectives, and that he couldn't wait for me to get you on the line. He said for you to come to fortysix twenty Maple Avenue just as fast as you could get there, that he'd be waiting for you in front of the entrance. He said that he'd already tried to get Paul Drake, but that Drake wasn't in his office, and that you should come at once."

  Perry Mason jerked open the door of the coat closet, pulled out his hat, jammed it down on his head. "Did he sound as though he was in trouble?" he asked.

  The girl nodded her head.

  "Type out the divorce complaint, Della," Perry Mason said as he shot through the door. He sprinted down the corridor, caught an elevator, flagged a cab at the entrance to the office building, and said, " Fortysix twenty Maple Avenue, and keep a heavy foot on the throttle."

  Danny Spear was standing at the curb as the cab pulled in to the sidewalk. "There you are, boss," said the cab driver. "It's the dump over there on the right—the Greenwood Hotel."

  Mason fumbled in his pocket for change. "I'll say it's a dump," he said.

  The cab driver grinned. "Want me to wait?"

  Mason shook his head, waited until the cab had rounded the corner before he turned to Danny Spear.

  Danny was a dejected and bedraggled looking individual. The collar of his shirt had been ripped open, and was now held in place with a safety pin. His necktie had been torn. His left eye was discolored, and his lower lip was puffed out and red. "What happened, Danny?" asked Perry Mason.

  "I walked into something," Danny Spear said.

  Mason surveyed the battered countenance, nodded, waited for further information. Spear pulled the hat lower on his forehead, depressed the brim so that it shaded his bad eye, tilted his head forward and turned toward the Greenwood Hotel. "Let's go in," he said. "Barge right past the bench warmers in the lobby. I know the way."

  They pushed their way through the swinging doors. Half a dozen men were sprawled about the narrow lobby of
the thirdrate hotel. They stared curiously. Danny Spear led the way past the long row of chairs and thickbellied, brass cuspidors, to a narrow, dark stairway. Over on the left was an elevator shaft screened with heavy iron wire. The cage seemed hardly as large as the average telephone booth. "We can make time using the stairs," Danny Spear called back over his shoulder.

  They reached the corridor on the second floor, and Spear led the way to a door which he flung open. The room was dark and smelly. There was a white enameled bed with a thin, lumpy mattress, a bedspread with several holes in it. A pair of socks, one of them with a large hole in the toe, had been thrown over the iron rail of the bed. A shaving brush with dried lather on it was standing on the bureau. A wrinkled necktie hung to the side of the mirror. A piece of brown paper, large enough to wrap a bundle of laundry in, lay on the floor. A laundry ticket was beside it. Half a dozen rusted safety razor blades were on the top of the scarred bureau. To the left of the bureau was a half open door which led to a closet. Chips of wood lay all over the floor. The lower part of the door had been whittled away and broken out. Danny Spear closed the door to the corridor, swept his arm about the room in an inclusive gesture. "Well," he said, "I stepped on my tonsil."

  "What happened?" asked Perry Mason.

  "You and Paul crossed over to the other corner and took the taxicab after you came out of the Balboa Apartments. I guess the jane was watching you from a window, because you hadn't any more than rounded the corner before she came out in a rush and ran over to the curb, looking for a cab to flag. It took her three or four minutes to get a cab, and she was almost wringing her hands with impatience.

  "A yellow finally pulled in to the curb for her. Evidently she never figured on being followed. She didn't even bother to look out of the rear window as the cab pulled away. I started the crate and jogged along behind, nice and easy, not taking any chances on losing her. She came to this place and paid off the cab. She was wide open.

  "When she started to go in the hotel, however, she seemed to get a little bit suspicious. It didn't look so much as though she suspected she'd been followed, as though she was doing something she shouldn't. She looked up and down the street, hesitated and then ducked into the hotel.