The Case of the Sulky Girl пм-2
Page 22
Tense, dramatic silence gripped the courtroom.
Judge Purley's hands tugged at the arm of the witness chair, and his face writhed in agony.
"My God!" he said. "I don't know! I have been asking myself that question for the last ten minutes, and I cannot answer it satisfactorily to my conscience. All I know is that it may have been!"
Perry Mason turned half around and faced the jury. His steady, unwavering eyes surveyed the faces of the nine men and the three women.
"That," he said, in a tone of finality, "is all."
For a long moment the courtroom remained silent, then there were rustlings, whispering, halfgasps. Somewhere in the background a woman tittered hysterically.
Judge Markham banged his gavel down on the desk.
"Order!" he said.
Claude Drumm bit his lip in an agony of indecision. Dare he go into the matter on redirect examination, or dare he wait until he could talk privately with the Municipal Judge?
And, in that moment of indecision, in that moment when the attention of every human being in the courtroom was fastened upon him, Claude Drumm hesitated for one second too long.
The attention of the crowd shifted.
Perry Mason, leaning back in his chair, his eyes placidly surveying the sea of faces, saw it shift. Judge Markham, sitting on the bench, wise in the ways of the courtroom, veteran of a hundred murder trials, saw it shift.
As with one motion, as though actuated by some subtle, psychic command, the eyes of the jurors, the eyes of the spectators, turned away from Claude Drumm, and fastened themselves upon the agonized face of Arthur Crinston.
It was the silent verdict of the courtroom, and that verdict exonerated the two defendants, and fixed the guilt of Edward Norton's murder squarely upon Arthur Crinston and his accomplice.
Chapter 26
Perry Mason sat in his office. The light from the window streaming in upon his rugged, virile features made him seem somehow older, brought out the strong lines of his face.
Frances Celane sat in the big black leather chair, her forefinger poking and twisting as she slid it along the smooth arm of the chair. Her eyes were dark and filled with emotion.
Robert Gleason stood leaning against the book case, his heavy, dark face twisted into that agony of silence which comes to those inarticulate men who have much to say, yet cannot find a means of expression.
Through the open windows, from the street below, came the cries of the newsboys, shouting their extra edition of the STAR.
Perry Mason tapped the newspaper on his desk; a paper which was still damp from the presses.
"That," he said, "is clever journalism. Nevers had that paper on the street before you had gone from the courthouse to my office. He had the thing all figured out and blocked out. All he needed to do was to add a brief summary of the testimony of Judge Purley, and the headlines."
He slid his forefinger along the headlines which streamed blackly across the top of the newspaper:
Murder Case Dismissed
Frances Celane said softly: "It wasn't the journalism in this case that was so remarkable, Mr. Mason; it was your wonderful analysis of what must have happened, and the steps you took to reconstruct the scene so that Judge Purley would be convinced. I watched him when he was on the witness stand the first time, and I could see the problem that you had with him."
Perry Mason smiled.
"Judge Purley," he said, "is rather opinionated, and he would very much have disliked having to confess himself in error. In fact, if I had asked him that question the first time he was on the witness stand, he would have indignantly denied that such could have been the case, and the denial would have so impressed itself upon his own mind, that no amount of subsequent testimony could ever have caused him even to entertain the faintest notion that he might have been mistaken.
"But the fact that I managed to duplicate the conditions in such a manner that his mind was totally unprepared for what was taking place, gave me the opportunity to approach him on a blind side, so to speak.
"Of course," went on Perry Mason, "I had all of the facts in hand at the moment that Arthur Crinston, in telling me about the murder, discussed the telephone call to the police as though he had no knowledge of it, except what he had learned through the police.
"That was the slip that Crinston made, and the fatal slip; that, and failing to report that telephone conversation in his testimony to the jury.
"You see, he was so obsessed with the idea that he must keep the authorities from knowing what had transpired in that room when Norton was murdered, that he made up a story out of whole cloth, and stuck to it.
"That is not skillful lying. It is not the proper way to commit perjury. The skillful perjurer is he who sticks to so much of the truth as is possible, and only departs from it when it becomes absolutely necessary. These men who make up stories out of whole cloth usually leave a few loose threads somewhere.
"Yet it is a strange thing about the human mind: It has many facts constantly thrust upon it, and it doesn't properly correlate those facts. I had the facts at my command for some time before I knew what must have happened.
"You see, Crinston had borrowed heavily on the partnership credit. The partnership was, of course, solvent, but Crinston's credit as an individual was all shot to pieces. He had made Graves an accomplice, and, together, they were deceiving your uncle; but when the bank sent the notice to your uncle, then Edward Norton learned for the first time what had happened.
"We can imagine what happened next. He gave Mr. Crinston a definite deadline, at which time Crinston was to have returned the money, or else be reported to the police. When Crinston failed to make the payment, your uncle, acting with that coldblooded efficiency which is so absolutely merciless, picked up the telephone and called Police Headquarters.
"Crinston sat there behind him, watching dumbly, knowing that the words which Norton was to say next would lead to his confinement in a penal institution. He heard Norton say: 'Police Headquarters, I have a criminal matter to report, and then Crinston acted upon a blind, murderous impulse. He struck Norton down without warning and probably without any great amount of premeditation.
"When he had done that and hung up the receiver, he suddenly realized that the police must have a record of that call which Norton had sent in, and that this would lead to his detection. So he did a very clever thing. He called Police Headquarters right back, and pretended that he was Norton. He had to have something to report in the nature of a criminal matter, because your uncle had already said that he had such a report to make.
"The policy of automobile insurance was lying on the desk, and Arthur Crinston plunged blindly into that lead. Then, when you heard of your uncle's murder, and knowing that Rob Gleason had been in the house with you, and that there might be some possibility you would either be implicated, or have to explain what Gleason was doing there, you seized at what seemed to be the best opportunity to establish an alibi for yourself, by stating that you had been driving the Buick automobile at the time that your uncle reported it lost.
"On the face of it, it was almost mathematical. In other words, a man with a trained mind, sitting down and concentrating upon the evidence, should have been able to point his finger to the murderer at once. Yet I confess that the circumstances were so romantic and so unusual that I was confused for some little time, and failed to realize what must have happened.
"When I did realize it, I knew that I was up against a most serious problem. I felt certain that I could explain my theory well enough to raise a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury, and get either an acquittal or a hung jury, but I realized also that unless I could trap the murderers into betraying themselves, I could never entirely remove the stigma of doubt from your names.
"I recognized at once that Judge Purley was the key witness, and knew that the man's conceit and love of posture, would render any ordinary crossexamination futile. Therefore, I had to devise some means by which a doubt would be raised in
his own mind before he knew that the doubt was there, and then crash it home to him with dramatic force."
Fran Celane got to her feet with tears showing in her eyes.
"I can't begin to tell you," she said, "what it has meant to me. It's been an experience that will always leave its imprint."
Perry Mason's eyes narrowed. "You're lucky," he said, in a tone of tolerant patience, "to have escaped with nothing but an unpleasant experience."
Frances Celane smiled and blinked tears back as she smiled. "I didn't mean it that way, Mr. Mason. I meant that it has been an experience I wouldn't have missed for anything!"
He stared at her.
"I mean it," she said. "Not the murder trial, but the being in jail, getting a glimpse of the sufferings of other people. It gave me a chance to see things in a different light. I think it's helped cure my fiendish temper.
"And then it brought out the loyalty in Rob. He knew that I couldn't be guilty, but he knew that the evidence was against me, and that I stood a chance of being convicted. In those dark hours when you didn't take us into your confidence and things seemed to be stacking up so much against us, he came forward and was willing to give his life to save mine."
"Yes," said Perry Mason, looking thoughtfully at Rob Gleason, "it was a noble and magnanimous thing to do, but if I hadn't been sure of my theory of the case, he would have thrown me entirely off my stride. His confession was most convincing, save for the fact that he claimed he had taken the thousand dollar bills from the body. I knew that he couldn't have done that, because you had given me ten of those bills the next morning. And then you, Miss Celane, weren't frank with me. You kept certain things back, trying to protect yourself."
"I know it," she told him. "It was all on account of that first lie about the Buick automobile. I couldn't tell the truth after that. I grabbed at the story about being out in the automobile as the best way to prove an alibi, and then I found I was trapped. I couldn't even tell you about getting the money from my uncle, because I was supposed to have been out in the automobile at that time."
There was a knock at the door, and Della Street entered the room.
She looked at Perry Mason with eyes that were starry with pride. When she spoke, her voice had something of caressing tenderness in it.
"There is a telegram for you," she said.
Frances Celane walked quickly across to Perry Mason and extended her hand.
"Rob and I will be going," she said, "and there's no use trying to tell you how much we appreciate what you've done. We can compensate you financially, but in addition to that we want you to know…"
Her voice shook, and there were tears in her eyes.
Perry Mason gripped her hand, then nodded. "I know," he said.
When the door leading from his private office to the corridor had closed on them, he turned to Della Street.
"Here," she said, "is the telegram. If you can make sense from it, you can do more than I can."
He took the telegram and read:
Sending you special delivery air mail photograph of utmost importance in case I am about to present. Keep photograph and await me in your office without fail.
(Signed) Eva Lamont.
Perry Mason stared at the telegram curiously.
"Did the photograph come?" he asked.
"Yes," she said, "a few minutes ago." She opened a drawer in her desk and took out a photograph. It was the photograph of a young woman, generously displaying a beautiful pair of legs. Below the photograph was a typewritten caption which had been pasted to it. The caption said, simply:
The Girl with the Lucky Legs
The photograph did not show the woman's face, merely her shoulders, hips, arms, hands, which held the skirts very, very high, and the legs. They were slim, straight legs, perfectly formed, stockinged and gartered.
"Now," said Perry Mason, his curiosity aroused, "what the devil does that mean?"
"I don't know," said Della Street, "but I'm going to make a file—The Case of the Girl With the Lucky Legs."
Perry Mason looked at his watch. The weariness had dropped from his face, and his eyes were sparkling.
"I wonder," he said, "just what time Eva Lamont is due here."
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