The Case of the Curious Bride пм-4

by Эрл Стенли Гарднер

  "I'm not feeling sorry for myself and I'm not going to waste time crying," she snapped back at him.

  "Your voice sounded like it."

  "Well, you try sitting down here, with your head pushed up against a metal telephone box and your knees pushed up against your chin, with a man's feet tramping all over your dress, and you'd talk like that too."

  Perry Mason indulged in a chuckle. "Go on," he told her.

  "Gregory was in trouble. I don't know just what kind of trouble. He's always in a jam of some sort. I think he'd been in prison. That's why I hadn't heard anything from him. He'd disappeared. I'd tried to trace him. I couldn't find out anything about him, except that he'd been killed in an airplane wreck. I don't know yet why he wasn't. He had a ticket to go on the plane, but, for some reason, he didn't take the plane. I guess he was afraid officers were watching for him. The passenger list showed that he had been on the airship. I thought he was dead. I'd have wagered anything he was dead, but his body wasn't found. And then… well, then I just acted on the assumption that he was dead."

  The lawyer started to say something, checked himself just as the words were on his lips.

  "Were you going to say something!" she asked.

  "No. Go on."

  "Well, Gregory came back. He insisted that I could get money from Carl. He said that Carl would pay to keep from having his name dragged into a lawsuit. He was going to sue Carl for alienation of affection. He said that I was still his wife and that Carl had come between us."

  Mason's laugh was sardonic. "Notwithstanding the fact that Gregory had taken your money, skipped out, and you hadn't heard from him for years," he said.

  "You don't understand. It wasn't a question of whether he could win the lawsuit; it was a question of whether he had the legal right to bring it. Carl would have died before he would have let his name get dragged into the courts."

  "But," Mason protested, "I thought you promised me you weren't going to do anything until you'd told me the whole story."

  "I went back to see Nell Brinley," she said. "There was another telegram there. It was from Gregory. He was furious. He told me to telephone him. I telephoned him, and he told me I would have to give him a final answer that night. I told him I could give him my final answer right then. He said no, he wanted to talk with me. He said he'd give me a break if I'd come to talk to him. I knew that I couldn't get away while my husband was awake, so I made an appointment for two o'clock in the morning with Gregory and then slipped a double dose of Ipral into Carl's chocolate, so that he'd be asleep."

  "Then what?" Mason asked, shifting his position slightly so that he could steal a hasty glance through the glass door of the telephone booth into the lobby of the airport building.

  "Then," she said, "I got up shortly after one, dressed and sneaked out of the house. I unlocked the garage door, backed out my Chevrolet coupe, closed the garage door, and evidently forgot to lock it. I started to drive away from the house, and then realized I had a flat tire. There was a service station that was open a few blocks from the house. I drove on the flat to that service station. A man there changed the tire for me, and then we found that the spare tire had a nail in it. It was almost flat. There was enough air in it so the puncture didn't show until he'd changed the tires. So he had to take that tire off, pull out the nail and put in a new tube. I told him I couldn't wait for him to repair the other, so he gave me a claim check for it and I was to pick it up later on."

  "You mean the tube that had the nail in it?"

  "Yes. He was going to put that in the other tire and put it back on the spare. The tube that had been in there was ruined. I'd driven on it when it was flat."

  "Then what?"

  "Then I went to Gregory's apartment."

  "Did you ring the bell?"

  "Yes."

  "What time was it?"

  "I don't know. It was after two o'clock. I was late. It must have been ten or fifteen minutes after two."

  "What happened?"

  "Gregory was in an awful temper. He told me I had to get him some money, that I must deposit at least two thousand dollars to his credit in the bank by the time the bank opened in the morning, that I had to get another ten thousand dollars from my husband, that if I didn't get it, he was going to sue my husband and have me arrested."

  "What did you do?"

  "I told him I wasn't going to pay him a cent."

  "Then what happened?"

  "Then he got abusive, and I tried to telephone you."

  "What happened next?"

  "I ran to the telephone and reached for the receiver."

  "Just a moment," Mason said. "Were you wearing gloves?"

  "Yes."

  "All right, go on."

  "I tried to pick up the receiver. He grabbed me."

  "What did you do?"

  "I struggled with him and pushed him away."

  "What happened after that?"

  "I broke loose from him. He came toward me again. There was a stand by the fireplace, with a poker, a shovel and a brush on it. I dropped my hand and grabbed the first thing I came to. It was the poker. I swung it. It hit him somewhere on the head, I guess."

  "Then did you run away?"

  "No, I didn't. You see, the lights went out."

  "The lights went out?" Mason exclaimed.

  She squirmed about, vainly trying to find relief from her cramped position. "Yes, every light in the place went out all at once. The power must have been turned off."

  "Was that before you hit him, or afterwards?" Perry Mason asked.

  "It was just as I hit him. I remember swinging the poker and then everything got dark."

  "Perhaps you didn't hit him, Rhoda."

  "Yes, I did, Mr. Mason. I know I hit him, and he staggered back and I think he fell down. There was someone else in the apartment—a man who was striking matches."

  "So then what happened?"

  "Then I ran out of the room, into the bedroom and stumbled over a chair and fell flat."

  "Go on," Mason said.

  "I heard a match striking—you know, the sound made by a match scraping over sandpaper, and the sound of a man trying to follow me into the bedroom. It all happened in just a second or two. I ran through the bedroom, out into the corridor, and started to go downstairs, and some one was following me."

  "Did you go down the stairs?" the lawyer asked.

  "No, I was afraid to. You see, the bell had been ringing."

  "What bell?"

  "The doorbell."

  "Some one was trying to get in?"

  "Yes."

  "When did it start ringing?"

  "I don't know exactly. It was sometime during the time we were struggling."

  "How long did it continue to ring?"

  "Quite a while."

  "How did it sound?"

  "As though some one were trying to waken Gregory. I don't think the person at the door could have heard the sounds of the struggle, because he rang the bell in a funny way. He rang it for several seconds at a time, then stopped for several seconds, and then rang again. He did that several times."

  "You don't know who it was?"

  "No."

  "But you didn't go down until the bell stopped ringing?"

  "That's right."

  "How soon after the bell stopped ringing?"

  "Just a minute or two. I was afraid to stay in there."

  "You don't know whether Gregory was dead or not?"

  "No. He dropped to the floor when I hit him and lay motionless. Anyway I heard him fall. I guess I killed him. I didn't mean to. I just hit out blindly."

  "So, shortly after the bell stopped ringing, you went downstairs, is that right?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you see anyone?"

  "No."

  "Where was your car parked?"

  "Around the corner on the side street."

  "You went to it?"

  "Yes."

  "Now, then, you'd dropped your keys in Gregory's apartment. Apparent
ly you dropped them when you picked up the poker."

  "I must have."

  "Did you know they were missing?"

  "Not then."

  "When did you find it out?"

  "Not until I read the newspaper."

  "How did you get in the car?"

  "The car door wasn't locked. The ignition key was in the lock. I drove the car back to the garage, and…"

  "Just a minute," Mason interrupted. "You had closed the door of the garage when you left, but hadn't locked it?"

  "Yes, I thought I locked it, but I didn't. It was unlocked."

  "And it was still closed?"

  "Yes."

  "Just as you had left it?"

  "Yes."

  "So what did you do?"

  "So I opened the door."

  "And in order to do that, you had to slide it back along the runway?"

  "Yes."

  "All the way back?"

  "Yes."

  "And you did that and then drove your car into the garage, is that right?"

  "Yes."

  "And you left the garage door open?"

  "Yes. I tried to close it, but when I'd pushed it back, I'd shoved it over the bumper of the other car. It caught there, and I couldn't get it loose."

  "And you went upstairs to bed?"

  "Yes. I was nervous. I took a powerful sedative."

  "You had a talk with your husband this morning?"

  "Yes, he was up making coffee. I thought it was rather strange, because I'd given him enough hypnotic to keep him sleeping until late."

  "You asked him for some coffee?"

  "Yes."

  "He asked you if you'd been out?"

  "No, not that way. He asked me how I'd slept."

  "And you lied to him?"

  "Yes."

  "Then he went out?"

  "Yes."

  "And what did you do?"

  "I went back to bed, dozed a bit, got up, took a bath dressed, opened the door, brought in the milk and the newspaper. I thought Carl had gone for a walk. I opened the newspaper and then realized I was trapped. The photograph of the garage key was staring me in the face. I knew Carl would recognize it as soon as he saw it. What's more, I knew the police could trace me sooner or later."

  "So then what?"

  "So I telephoned the express company, had them express my trunk to a fictitious name and address, packed up my things, had a cab come, and rushed out here to take a plane."

  "You knew there was a plane left about this time?"

  "Yes."

  Perry Mason pursed his lips thoughtfully.

  "Have you any idea," he asked, "who the person could have been that was ringing the doorbell?"

  "No."

  "Did you leave the doors open or closed when you left?"

  "What doors?"

  "The door into the hallway from Gregory's apartment, and the door at the foot of the stairs, that leads to the street."

  "I can't remember," she said. "I was frightfully excited. I was quivering all over and drenched with perspiration… How did you know about the garage door?"

  "Your husband told me."

  "I thought you said he told the police?"

  "He did. He came to call on me first."

  "What did he say?"

  "He said he'd recognized the key that was photographed in the newspaper, that he knew you had tried to drug him; that you'd gone out, that he'd heard you come in, that you got the garage door stuck and lied to him when he asked you about it being open."

  "I didn't think he was that clever," she wailed, "and that lie about the garage door is going to trap me, isn't it?"

  "It won't do you any good," Mason said grimly.

  "And Carl told you he was going to tell the police?"

  "Yes. I couldn't do anything with him on that. He had ideas of what his duty was."

  "You mustn't judge him by that," she said. "He's really nice. Did he say anything about… about any one else?"

  "He told me he thought you might try to shield some one."

  "Who?"

  "Doctor Millsap."

  Mason could hear her gasp. Then she said in startled tones, "What does he know about Doctor Millsap?"

  "I don't know. What do you know about him?"

  "He's a friend."

  "Was he there at Moxley's house last night?"

  "Good heavens, no!"

  "You're sure?"

  "Yes."

  Perry Mason dropped another nickel into the telephone, gave the number of Paul Drake's office. "Perry Mason talking, Paul," he said when he heard the voice of the detective on the wire. "You've read the papers, of course."

  The receiver made a succession of metallic sounds. Rhoda Montaine, crouched in the cramped position on the floor of the telephone booth, moved a few inches to one side, shifted her knees slightly. "Okay," Mason said. "You know the general situation then. I'm representing Rhoda Montaine. You probably know by this time that she's the woman you saw come out of my office yesterday. I want you to start a general investigation. The police must have taken photographs of the room where Moxley was found. I want to get some of those photographs. Some of the newspaper men should be able to give you a break. I want you to investigate every angle you can uncover. And here's something funny. There were no fingerprints on that doorknob. I want to know why… What if she was wearing gloves?… That would have concealed her fingerprints, but others must have been using that door. Moxley must have opened and closed it a dozen times during the day. I was there earlier in the day. It was a hot day, and my hands were perspiring. There must have been some fingerprints on that doorknob.

  "Yes, keep on with Moxley. Find out everything you can about him and about his record. Interview the witnesses. Get all the dope you can. The district attorney will probably sew up the witnesses who are going to testify for him. I'm going to beat him to it if I can. Never mind that now. I'll see you later… No. I can't tell you. You get started. There'll be some developments within a few minutes. G'bye." Mason slammed the receiver back on the hook.

  "Now," he said to Rhoda Montaine, "we've got to work fast. The men from the Chronicle will be here any minute. Those fellows drive like the devil. The police are going to question you. They're going to do everything they can to make you talk. They're going to give you all kinds of opportunities to bust into conversation. You've got to promise me that you'll keep quiet. Can you do that?"

  "Yes."

  "No matter what happens you're going to keep quiet?"

  "Yes."

  "Insist on calling me. Tell them you want me there whenever they get you on the carpet. Will you do that?"

  "Of course. I've told you I would half a dozen times. How many more times do I have to tell you?"

  "Dozens," he told her, "and that probably wouldn't be enough. They'll…" There was a gentle tap on the door of the telephone booth. Mason broke off and looked through the glass. A young man held a card against the glass. The card showed that he was a reporter from the Chronicle. Perry Mason twisted the knob of the door. "Okay, Rhoda," he said, "let's go."

  The door opened. "Where's the girl?" asked the newspaper man.

  Another reporter slipped around from behind the corner of the telephone booth. "Hello, Mason," he said.

  Rhoda Montaine reached for Perry Mason's hand, got to her feet. The newspaper men stared at her in surprise. "She was in there all the time?" asked one of the reporters.

  "Yes," Mason said. "Where's your car? You've got to rush her…"

  The second reporter rasped out an oath. "The cops," he said.

  Two men emerged from behind the low, glassenclosed partition which separated the ticket office from the lobby. They came up on the run. "This," said Perry Mason, speaking rapidly, "is Rhoda Montaine. She surrenders to you gentlemen as representatives of the Chronicle, knowing that the Chronicle will give her a square deal. She has recognized the garage key which was published in the paper as the key to her garage. She…"

  The two detectives swooped d
own on the group. One of them grabbed Rhoda Montaine by the arm. The other pushed a face that was livid with rage up close to Mason's face. "So that's the kind of a dirty damn shyster you are, is it?" he said.

  Mason's jaw jutted forward. His eyes became steely. "Pipe down, gumshoe," he said, "or I'll button your lip with a set of knuckles."

  The other detective muttered a warning. "Take it easy, Joe. He's dynamite. We've got the girl. That's all the break we need."

  "You've got hell!" one of the reporters said. "This is Rhoda Montaine, and she surrendered to the Chronicle before you ever saw her."

  "Like hell she did. She's our prisoner. We tracked her here and made the arrest. We get the credit."

  One of the reporters moved toward the telephone booth. He grinned as he dropped a nickel and gave the number of the Chronicle. "In just about fifteen minutes," he said, "you boys can buy a paper on the street and read all about who gets the credit."

  Chapter 8

  Perry Mason paced his office with the restlessness of a caged tiger.

  Gone was the patient air of philosophical contemplation which characterized many of his meditative indoor perambulations. He was now a grim fighter, and his restless walking furnished an outlet for excess physical energy, rather than a means of concentration. Paul Drake, the detective, a leatherbacked notebook poised on his knee, took notes from time to time of the points of information Mason wanted uncovered. Della Street was seated at a corner of the desk, her stenographer's notebook under the tip of a poised pencil. She watched the lawyer with eyes bright with concentrated admiration. "They've buried her," Mason said, frowning at the silent telephone. "Damn them! They would work that trick on me."

  Paul Drake looked at his wristwatch. "Perhaps," he volunteered, "they…"

  "I tell you, they've buried her," Mason interrupted, his tongue savage. "I've arranged to be notified whenever she enters either headquarters or the district attorney's office. She's showed up at neither place. They've taken her to some outlying precinct." He flung about and snapped an order at Della Street. "Della," he said, "get to the files. Dig out the application for a writ of habeas corpus in the case of Ben Yee. Follow the allegations of that petition. I'll sign it as an attorney acting on behalf of the prisoner. Get one of the typists to rush it out. I'll slap them in the face with a habeas corpus. That'll smoke them into the open before they've got a chance to do too much damage."