The Case of the Lazy Lover

by Erle Stanley Gardner

“Yes, sir. That is.”

  “And where did you leave the car?”

  “At this point.”

  “And where was the luggage compartment of the car located?”

  “Right about here. Right where you see the footprints of this woman—the dots marked here as ‘Woman’s Footprints Running.’ You see they start here. That’s where the luggage compartment was located. They run down to the road.”

  “And then you see a series of dots marked ‘Woman’s Footprints Returning’?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And what are those?”

  “Well, of course, I don’t know what they are. I think that’s where Mrs. Allred and …”

  “Never mind what you think,” Danvers interrupted. “Just confine your answers to what you know, and I’ll make Mr. Mason confine his questions to the issues. I object, Your Honor, to Counsel’s question on the ground that it calls for a conclusion of the witness and …”

  “The objection would have been sustained, but the question was already asked and answered.”

  “Not completely answered, Your Honor.”

  “Very well, the objection is sustained. The answer of the witness will be stricken from the record. Go ahead, Mr. Mason.”

  “Why,” Mason asked, “didn’t you complain to the police?”

  “I didn’t have an opportunity.”

  “You had an opportunity to get to a telephone and call Donnybrook 6981, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “The number of someone in whom you are interested?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you wanted to appeal to this person for help?”

  “Well, I wanted to get away from the predicament in which I found myself.”

  “And did you, or did you not, talk with this person at Donnybrook 6981?”

  “I did not. That was the number of Miss Bernice Archer, a friend of mine.”

  “A close friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you wanted to advise her of what was happening?”

  “Yes. I didn’t intend to ask her for help or to notify the police, but I didn’t want her to think I skipped out with a married woman.”

  “You placed a call to her from a service station telephone, while Mrs. Allred was in the women’s rest room at the service station?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And then didn’t wait for the call to be answered?”

  “No, sir. There was some delay. Then Mrs. Allred came out and I didn’t want her to see me at the telephone.”

  “That was the first opportunity you’d had to use a telephone?”

  “Well, just about the first opportunity, yes.”

  “You were in a motel all day Sunday?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Monday morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “There was no phone there?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you try to find a phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was Mrs. Allred there all that time?”

  “Not all the time, no. But she was right close. I don’t think she was ever away from me over, well, over ten or fifteen minutes at a time.”

  “You could have got up and walked out any time you wanted to?”

  “Well, I guess I could have. Yes.”

  “You didn’t want to?”

  “Well, I wanted to see how the situation was going to adjust itself.”

  “Yet you realized that Allred might show up at any moment?”

  “To tell you the truth, Mr. Mason, I didn’t want to do anything that would make a scene, because I didn’t want to be put in a position of having to explain my actions.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I thought that if I could fool everyone, and if Allred thought that I thought Patricia’s car had struck the blow that knocked me out, I might turn the situation somewhat to my advantage.”

  “In what way?”

  “I could lull Allred into a feeling of false security and have a chance to communicate with Mr. Jerome and explain matters to him.”

  “Had you made any attempt to communicate with Jerome?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “While we were there at the motel at Springfield.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I called Mr. Jerome on the phone.”

  “Oh you did, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I didn’t talk with him. I left a message for him. He was out.”

  “What did you say in this message?”

  “Objected to as incompetent, irrelevant and hearsay,” Danvers said. “Not proper cross-examination.”

  “Sustained,” Judge Colton snapped.

  “Now just a moment,” Mason said. “Your attitude toward the defendant in this case, Mrs. Allred, is influenced in some way by your business connections?”

  “Well, only in a way.”

  “You know that as the surviving partner, Mr. Jerome will be in charge of winding up the partnership business?”

  “Well, generally, yes.”

  “And you expect to be employed by Mr. Jerome?”

  “Objected to as incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial,” Danvers said.

  “I beg your pardon,” Mason snapped. “This is going to the motivation of the witness, his bias, his interest in the testimony which he is giving. I am entitled to show that on cross-examination.”

  “You’re right,” Judge Colton said. “The objection is overruled.”

  “Well,” Fleetwood said, and hesitated. “I guess I’d thought of that.”

  “And the real reason, the underlying reason that you didn’t simply get up and walk out on Mrs. Allred there at that motel, was because you felt that at some time in the future you’d be able to turn the tables on Bertrand C. Allred and kill him, and that George Jerome with his money and his connections would stand back of you. Isn’t that right?”

  “No.”

  “Not even generally?”

  “No.”

  “Then why didn’t you simply wait until a propitious moment, smile at Mrs. Allred and say, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Allred, but this is all an act on my part. I’m going to leave you now’?”

  “Well … because of certain complications. I wanted to stall along until Jerome could have a chance to catch Allred red-handed. The message I left for Jerome would tell him what to do. I wanted to keep Allred occupied with me until Jerome had the evidence sewed up.”

  “You were then working hand-in-glove with Jerome?”

  “In a way. I expected to co-operate with him, and have him co-operate with me.”

  “That’s all,” Mason said.

  “No further questions. Call P. E. Overbrook.”

  Overbrook, attired in overalls and jumper, strode up to the stand, a big, good-natured giant, embarrassed by the crowd in the courtroom and his strange surroundings.

  He took the oath, gave his name and address to the clerk, and turned uneasily to face Danvers.

  “You’re the P. E. Overbrook who has the property described as the Overbrook ranch? You have seen this diagram and can identify this as marking the location of your house on that diagram?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mason said to Danvers, “As I understand the rule, Counselor, leading questions are permitted on direct examination when they are preliminary, merely; but I would suggest that if you don’t want me to object, you had better let the witness himself testify from here on.”

  “My question was merely preliminary. I was trying to save time.”

  “You could save more time if you gave all the testimony for this witness,” Mason said. “Time is important, but there are other matters more important.”

  Danvers grinned and said, “I’m trying to save time, and you’re trying to save the defendant’s neck.”

  “That will do, gentlemen,” Judge Colton said. “Please get on with the case, Mr. Danvers.”

/>   “You’ve seen the witness, Fleetwood, who just testified?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When did you first see him?”

  “Why, he came to my place Monday night.”

  “About what time Monday?”

  “Well, now, I can’t tell. It was after I’d gone to bed, and I woke up because the dog was barking. I never looked at the watch.”

  “All right. What wakened you?”

  “First I heard the dog bark, and then I thought I might have heard a car.”

  “So you were awake, then, when Fleetwood came to the house?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Well, the dog barked real loud and I knew someone was right out in the yard. Then I heard someone speak to the dog and then there was the sound of knuckles on the door.”

  “The dog didn’t bite?”

  “No. The dog doesn’t bite. He barks, and he runs up and smells people, and I don’t know what would happen if a person tried to do something he wasn’t supposed to do. But as long as a person is going directly to the house and knocking on the door, the dog just keeps on barking, and that’s all.”

  “So you went to the door and let Fleetwood in?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Well, this man told me that he found himself wandering around, that he guessed he’d been in an automobile accident, that he didn’t know who he was and couldn’t remember anything about himself. So, naturally, I took him in.”

  “Where did you put him?”

  “Well, sir, I didn’t know anything at all about who he was, and thinking I might have heard a car motor stop down there made me kind of suspicious.”

  “You didn’t say anything to this man about hearing the car stop?”

  “No. I wasn’t even certain I had heard a car. I thought I might have—and the way the dog acted I thought a car had stopped.”

  “Did the man tell you anything about having driven up in an automobile?”

  “No. He said he just couldn’t remember a thing, that he just found himself walking along the road.”

  “You knew that was a lie?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I thought the guy was hot.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Well, it was a cold, drizzly night and I didn’t want to turn him out, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I had a spare room with a cot in it and some blankets were there. I told him that I ran a bachelor’s place, and that he’d have to get in a bed without sheets, just some blankets.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He seemed tickled to death. So I put him in that room.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then,” Overbrook said with a grin, “I took Prince, that’s the dog, and put him in the living room, and I told Prince to watch him and keep him in there, and then I went back to bed and went to sleep. I knew that that fellow could never get out of that room without Prince nabbing him.”

  “You feel absolutely certain that he didn’t leave the room after he once entered it?”

  Overbrook grinned and said, “When I tell Prince to keep somebody in a place and to watch him, why you can gamble Prince is going to do it.”

  “How big a dog is Prince?”

  “He weighs about eighty-five pounds. He’s a lot of dog.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Well, then, the next day this man Mason came and there was a party with him, and a woman that said she was this man’s wife, and everything seemed to be all hunky-dory, so they had a grand family reunion with a lot of billing and cooing, and this woman seemed just crazy to get her husband away from there and that was okay by me.”

  “In other words, you accepted everything at its face value?”

  “I still thought the guy was hot,” Overbrook said, “but I wasn’t sticking my neck out.”

  “So they went away?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Well,” Overbrook said, “nothing happened, until the next morning.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, about daylight the next morning I began doing a lot of thinking. I remembered noticing Fleetwood’s tracks and I thought I’d see if I couldn’t back-track him a ways.”

  “Now this was Wednesday morning?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Well, I started out and picked up Fleetwood’s tracks, and then I back-tracked him. I was careful not to step in his tracks. I just walked along …”

  “On this diagram,” Danvers interrupted, “there’s a line of dots which are labeled FLEETWOOD’S TRACKS TO THE HOUSE.”

  “That’s right. Those are his tracks.”

  “And another line of dots going in an opposite direction labeled OVERBROOK’S TRACKS FOLLOWING FLEETWOOD’S TRAIL.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And those are your tracks?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now those tracks follow along parallel with the tracks left by Fleetwood?”

  “Yes, sir. I back-tracked him down to where the car had stopped, and I started to circle around and then all of a sudden I seen these tracks where a woman had jumped out of the automobile and run back to the highway, and then I looked and saw a woman’s tracks coming back again from the highway and getting in the automobile apparently to drive it off. So I knew I’d better call the officers. It looked like a woman had been shut up in the luggage compartment.”

  “So then what did you do?”

  “Well, I kept right on walking to the hard ground without looking around any. You can see where these tracks of mine circle right up into the high ground up here. I have a farm road up there that runs out to my grain field.”

  “A farm service road?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I walked up to that road and went back to the house and kept thinking things over; so then I took my tractor and trailer and loaded on a lot of scrap lumber, so people could get out there without messing things up any, and put the lumber down.”

  “How did you put it down?”

  “Why the way a person would put down lumber so as to save tracks that way. I’d put down a board and then walk out along that board and put down another board and then walk out along that board and put down another board until I had boards all the way out to where the car had stopped, and then I walked back along the boards, got in my tractor and drove back to my house, got my jalopy out of the shed and drove in to where there was a telephone. I called the sheriff and told him that I’d been putting up a man that said he had amnesia and I thought he might be hot and that I’d tracked him out to where he’d parked his automobile and, sure enough, I’d found there’d been a woman in the back end of the car and she’d jumped out and run down to the highway, and then after a while apparently she’d sneaked back and picked up the car and driven off.”

  “At that time had you heard of Allred’s death?”

  “No, sir. I hadn’t.”

  “Cross-examine,” Danvers said.

  Mason smiled reassuringly at the witness.

  “So Fleetwood came to your place on Monday night and was there until sometime Tuesday?”

  “That’s right; until you came and got him.”

  “During that time he stayed in the house?”

  “Not all of the time.”

  “You didn’t stay in the house?”

  “Me? No. I was out around the place doing chores.”

  “You left Fleetwood alone there?”

  “Some of the time, yes.”

  “Fleetwood could have walked away and gone anywhere he wanted to?”

  “Sure.”

  “You didn’t tell the dog to guard him then?”

  “No, the dog was with me.”

  “You and the dog are quite close?”

  “I’m fond of him and he’s fond of me.
”

  “He accompanies you wherever you go?”

  “Everywhere,” Overbrook said, “except when I’ve got some job for him to do like watching somebody or something. Aside from that, my dog’s with me all the time.”

  “The dog is loyal to you and devoted?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you could have left him to watch Fleetwood and the dog would have kept him there?”

  “Sure, but I couldn’t have done it without Fleetwood knowing what I was doing.”

  “And you didn’t want to do that?”

  “It didn’t seem exactly hospitable.”

  “Weren’t you afraid Fleetwood would steal something and …”

  Overbrook’s grin was slow and good-natured. “Mr. Mason,” he said, “the stuff I got out in my cabin isn’t the stuff a man like Fleetwood would steal. I’ve got a little bacon and some flour and a little salt and some baking powder. I have some blankets and some cots to put ’em on, but—well, Mr. Mason there isn’t anything there for anybody to steal. I live kind of simple, myself.”

  Mason said, “It didn’t occur to you to back-track Fleetwood to see where he came from until Wednesday morning?”

  “Well, I just kept thinking things over all the time. Things kept churning around in my mind and I couldn’t get them straightened out. The way you folks had showed up and taken this man away with you, and all this stuff, I just couldn’t get the thing out of my mind. So I started looking around and then just as soon as I seen the tracks made by this woman—you could see she was running.”

  “Even without walking over to where the tracks were?”

  “Yes, sir. People that live out in the country the way I do get so they’re pretty good at telling things about tracks, and the minute I saw these tracks, even without walking over to them, I could see that a woman had got out of that automobile and had really high-tailed it down the road; and then I saw where she’d come back and she was walking slow and easy like when she came back. So I decided I’d just better tell the sheriff about the thing.”

  “So then what did you do?”

  “Just what I told you.”

  “Now, would it have been possible for any person to have gone out to that automobile without leaving tracks?”

  “Not in the ground that’s around that automobile. No, sir. There’s kind of a seepage there and the ground is nearly always soft for quite a little while after a rain.”

  “Did you find the gun?”