Perry Mason, his thumbs pushed through the armholes of his vest, head dropped forward in thought, paced the floor of his office with rhythmic regularity. From time to time he flung remarks over his shoulder to Della Street; his eyes, however, kept staring straight ahead in fixed focus.
“—Can’t understand the thing — like reaching in the dark for a light globe that’s dangling from a string. It hits your fingers, bounces away. You grope for it, can’t find it,then bump into it again... What the devil could Packard have seen in that window?... And Packard was murdered, don’t forget that. Personally, I’m inclined to think he was unconscious when somebody ran the car over the bank. In the first place, it was a stolen car. Now, why the devil should Packard steal a car? In the second place, there wasn’t a single finger-print on the steering wheel, but Packard wasn’t wearing gloves. Someone stole that car, wiped all prints from the steering wheel. Packard was unconscious. They ran the car up the mountain road, then someone who wore gloves stood on the runningboard, pushed down the hand throttle, kicked in the clutch, ran it to the edge of the cliff, and let ’er go.”
Della Street tapped with her pencil on the polished surface of her desk. “Now listen, Chief,” she said. “Don’t forget our ship sails tomorrow. And, while I think of it, here’s the ticket for you to sign.”
She unfolded a sheet of paper filled with fine printing. Mason paused in his stride, whipped a fountain pen from his pocket, bent over the desk, and affixed his signature with a flourish.
“If a client did that you’d jump all over him,” she said.
“Did what?”
“Sign a printed form without reading it.”
He grinned. “After they get in trouble,” he said, “and bring a printed document in to me, bearing their signature, I always tell them they shouldn’t have signed it without reading it. And they shouldn’t. Not that one. But if a business man stopped to read over the nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand fine print regulations they put on the backs of tickets, bills of lading, telegraph blanks, and things of that sort, he’d be blind before he was fifty.”
“Perry Mason, you’re avoiding the question. Are you or are you not going to start getting your trunks packed?”
He frowned and said, “You know as well as I do, Della, we can’t leave on that ship until we have Rita Swaine out of her difficulties.”
“Suppose she’s guilty?”
“Do you think she’s guilty?”
“To tell you the truth, Chief, I don’t know. I don’t think I pay as much attention to the sob-sister stories women hand out as you do. But, just the same, it’s hard to figure how she could have gone in the house, killed Walter Prescott, and then tried to plan things so it would look as though her sister had done the job.”
“How about Rosalind Prescott?”
“I’m not so sure about her. Rosalind’s in love. A woman will do anything to protect the man she loves.”
“Even to the extent of getting her sister convicted of murder!”
“Her sister isn’t convicted of murder yet,” Della Street pointed out. “And if she is, it’ll be the first client you’ve defended who has been convicted. Rosalind may have passed the buck to you.”
Mason resumed his pacing of the floor and said, “Yes, that’s so.”
“Chief, will you please take the time out tonight to pack your trunks?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t promise. If I can’t clear this case up, there’s no use packing any trunks. You know as well as I do I won’t sail unless it’s finished.”
“That isn’t what’s bothering me,” she said. “I don’t doubt your ability to work out a solution of this case before tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock. But, what I’m afraid of is, you’ll get interested in some other case and stay over to handle that.”
“No,” he told her, “when we get this thing cleaned up we’re going around the world.”
“Will you promise you won’t take on any other case?”
Mason said, with a grin, “Well, now, a promise is definite and final.”
“So you really don’t mean it.”
“Well,” he offered, “I’ll make you a conditional promise.”
“What do you mean by a conditional promise?”
“I won’t take any ordinary case,” he said. “Of course, if something should come in which fairly reeked of mystery— Well, you wouldn’t want me to go around the world putting in every waking minute wondering what I’d left behind me, would you?”
“Yes,” she said, “I would.”
“I wouldn’t enjoy the trip.”
“You think you wouldn’t. If you once got started you’d get a kick out of it. You’d see so much beneath the surface that you’d get a lot of fun sizing up your fellow travelers, going ashore in the different ports, and—”
She broke off, to lift the receiver from the telephone on her desk as the bell shrilled into noise. Listening a moment, she looked up and said, “Frederick Carpenter, the Vice-President of the Second Fidelity Savings & Loan.”
Mason grinned and said, “That may be good. Better listen in.”
He strode to his desk, jerked up his telephone, said, “Hello. Mason speaking.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Mason. This is Mr. Frederick Carpenter of the Second Fidelity Savings & Loan. You’ll remember talking with me about the account of Walter Prescott, deceased.”
“I remember it perfectly,” Mason said, winking across at Della Street.
“At the time you talked with me,” Carpenter went on, in the slow, deliberate voice of one who has trained himself not to do things in a hurry, “I felt that it would be far better to wait until your client had been appointed by the court before making any accounting. However, after taking the matter up with our legal department, we have concluded that perhaps it might be better to co-operate with you and not force you to take steps to ascertain the exact amount which—”
Mason impatiently interrupted the smooth cadences of the banker’s voice. “Never mind explaining,” he said. “How much is his balance?”
Carpenter cleared his throat. “Sixty-nine thousand, seven hundred and sixty-five dollars and thirty cents,” he said.
“Can you tell me how that’s been deposited?”
“The deposits,” Carpenter said, “were rather unusual.For the most part, they represented sums ranging from five to fifteen thousand dollars, deposited in cash.”
“By Walter Prescott personally?”
“As far as I am able to ascertain from our records and the recollection of the persons who handled the account, by Walter Prescott personally.”
“Thanks,” Mason said.
“And if we can be of any assistance to you in the future,” Carpenter said, “please ask for me personally, Mr. Mason.”
Mason said, “Okay,” dropped the receiver into place, and stared across at Della Street. “That,” he said, “doesn’t look very much as though we were sailing tomorrow.”
“Why not, Chief?”
“It means there’s another complicating circumstance which we haven’t considered; something which has to be ironed out before we can reach a solution.”
“Why does it have to be ironed out?”
“Because,” he told her, “a solution of any crime which doesn’t account for all of the various factors involved is no solution at all. Now, I’ve paid too much attention to the people the district attorney’s office suspect, and not enough to the victim. In the long run, Della, the essence of all successful detective work lies in reconstructing the life of the victim. That gives motivation, and motivation makes murders.
“Virtually every man has enemies. Sometimes they’re business enemies. More often they’re personal enemies, people who hate him, people who will look down their noses and say it’s too bad when they hear he’s bumped off, but who will be tickled to death just the same; but it takes a peculiar psychological build-up to perpetrate a murder. A man must have a certain innate ferocity, a certain lack of consideration, and, usually, a lack of imagination.”
“Why a lack of imagination?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “except that it’s nearly always true. I think imaginative people sympathize with the sufferings of others because they’re able to visualize those sufferings more keenly in their own minds. An unimaginative person, on the other hand, can’t visualize himself in the shoes of another. Therefore, he sees life only from his own selfish angle. Killers are frequently cunning, but they’re rarely original. They’re selfish, and usually determined. Of course, I’m not talking now about a murder which is the result of some sudden overpowering emotion.”
“Why couldn’t this murder be one of that type?” she asked.
“It could,” he admitted readily enough. “In that event, I’d say that Rita Swaine pulled the trigger. But, whether she was justified, is another question.”
“Would you represent her if she’s guilty?”
“It depends on what you mean by being guilty. I don’t necessarily define murder the same way the district attorney defines it. If there were circumstances of moral provocation, they might be just as compelling as circumstances of physical provocation. In other words, the law says that if a man is in a position to do you great bodily harm, or to kill you, and he comes at you, apparently for the purpose of putting a murderous intent into execution, you have the right to kill him. In other words, that’s a physical provocation. It’s all the law, in its blundering generality, can take into comprehension. But, how about the person who brings a crushing mental or moral pressure upon a more or less helpless victim? I admit circumstances like that aren’t common. But, with certain temperaments, they might be possible.”
“Chief,” she said, “will you please unfocus your mind long enough to get your clothes packed?”
“Not now,” he told her, frowning, and starting once more to pace the floor. “I’m going back to first principles and building up from there. Now then, let’s look at the victim — Walter Prescott — an unsocial individual — selfish, cruel, cold, ruthless— In short, just the type of person who could commit a murder.”
“But he didn’t commit a murder, Chief. He was murdered.”
Mason said, “That’s the puzzling part of it, Della. He should have been the murderer instead of the corpse.”
“This,” Della Street pointed out, “isn’t getting us any nearer China.”
“I think it is,” Mason said thoughtfully. “It sounds foolish, and yet I think it’s getting me some place. It’s paradoxical. The man who was murdered isn’t the man who was murdered, but the man who committed the murder. Now, if we can follow that contradictory premise through to a logical conclusion, Della, we’re certainly going to be one jump ahead of the police, because that’s a starting point of deductive reasoning which would never suggest itself to them.”
“No,” she admitted with a smile, “you win on that.”
“Now then,” Mason said, “let’s suppose that Walter Prescott is a murderer. Let’s suppose that what Jason Braun, alias Carl Packard, saw in the window of that house didn’t have to do with the murder of Walter Prescott but did have to do with the murder of someone else — someone Walter Prescott was killing.”
Della Street said, “You also win on that, Chief. I can’t conceive of the police being able to follow you into that line of reasoning.”
“It’s goofy,” he admitted, “and yet, somehow or other, I feel that I’m getting on the track of what really happened. Somehow, putting all these possibilities in words takes away that feeling of fumbling around in the dark. Now then, with that as a starting point, and considering that Packard saw something connected with a murder, who was the victim? If Walter Prescott had killed someone, who would he have killed? If he’d tried to kill someone, who was that someone, and what could Packard have seen— Wait a minute, Della— good Lord!”
Mason paused in his pacing, to stand in the middle of the floor, his legs spread apart. “Della,” he said slowly, “if what I think happened is actually the real solution, then—”
A series of knocks sounded on the door which led to the corridor. Mason said, “That’s Paul Drake. Let him in, Della, and see what he wants.”
Della Street crossed the room and opened the door.
“Hello, folks,” Drake said. “What’re you doing?”
“We’re engaging in a new form of logic,” Della answered with a grin. “It’s swell. It solves murders and everything.”
“Gimme,” Drake said, entering the room.
“Well, it goes like this,” Della said. “Because you’ve come in the room, you must have been the person going out of the room. Therefore, having gone out of the room while you were coming into the room, someone who saw you in the corridor coming into the room, would have known you were going out of the room, and—”
“Oh, I see,” Drake said, “like a puppy chasing his tail, huh?”
“Exactly,” Della agreed, “only the puppy catches his tail. Then, having swallowed himself, he becomes, so to speak, completely self-contained.”
Mason chuckled and said, “Don’t mind her, Paul. She’s filled with travel bugs. She’s been down picking out light whatnots to wear in tropical countries.”
“Not only in the countries,” Della Street said, “but on shipboard, under the stars, and in the moonlight. Think, Chief, of sailing down below the equator, with the Southern Cross blazing overhead, the wind a warm caress on the skin, the wake of the boat streaming out behind in a white path. The scent of spices in the air, the hiss of water past the bow. Over on the right—”
“Starboard,” Drake interrupted. “By the time you’ve gone below the equator, you’ll know the nautical terms.”
“Okay,” she said, with a sweep of her arm, “over on the starboard is an island, the crests of the volcanic mountains silhouetted against the stars. Down lower against the water, where the palm trees fringe the lagoon behind the barrier reef, is a native village. And, from the deck of the ship you can hear the rhythmic throb of the native drums, the peculiar wail of primitive music—”
“No,” Mason interrupted, “you’re wrong again. The captain wouldn’t be standing in that close to an island after dark. He’d be out where there was plenty of sea room and—”
Della Street shook her head sadly. “Pardon me! My mistake! What we should talk about is murder — corpses with battered heads — clues, circumstantial evidence, bloodstained bullets, perjured testimony, and the beautiful things in life. Murderers who are corpses, corpses who are murderers. Now you, Paul Drake, get a load of this: Tomorrow the Chief and I are going to sail on the President Monroe on a round-the-world cruise. We have our staterooms all engaged, our tickets bought and paid for. There’s only one thing standing between us and the gangplank and that’s this Rita Swaine, who drifted in here with a lame canary and a hard luck story and got the Chief all tangled up in a mess. Now, you two get busy and straighten it out. But just remember that tomorrow—”
Drake, who had slid into his favorite position in the big leather chair, shook his head mournfully and said, “That’s what I came to tell you about, Perry. It’s all over except the shouting. You can sail any time you get ready.”
“What’s happened?” Mason asked.
“Your client’s confessed.”
“You mean Rita?”
“Yes.”
“What did she confess to?”
“Oh, a lot of things — going upstairs to change her clothes, stepping into the bedroom, finding Walter’s body, going through his pockets, taking a letter out of his wallet, and all that sort of stuff. After the contradictory stories she’s told, plus the fact that she forthwith skipped out of the state and fought extradition, a jury will bring in a first-degree murder verdict without leaving the box. You can probably get her life imprisonment if you change her plea from not guilty to guilty, and right now that’s the best thing you can do for your client. Then you can catch your ship and go bye-bye.”
Mason stood staring down at the detective. “How did you hear about this, Paul?”
“One of the newspaper boys tipped me off. The district attorney released a statement. The thing will be on the street in half an hour. Hell, Perry, they had the goods on her, anyway. They had her fingerprints on the wallet, and they’ve found bloodstains on her shoes and had reconstructed enough of the charred fragments in the fireplace to know what letter had been taken from Prescott’s pocket and burned. The D.A. was holding all that stuff back, getting ready to slap you in the face with it when you walked into court.”
“Did she,” Mason asked, “admit that she killed him?”
“I don’t know. I think she’s still holding out on that.”
“Anything else?” Mason asked. “What have you found out about that Rosa Hendrix?”
Drake said, “Hell, Perry, you know the answer to that without me having to tell you. If you want to be mean about it, you’ll have a chance to do it tonight.”
“How so?”
“She’s leaving for Reno tonight.”
“You mean Rosa Hendrix?”
“No, not Rosa Hendrix, but Diana Morgan, the rich young divorcee who has the swell apartment in the Bellefontaine.”
“Certain about that?” Mason asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay. What else?”
“Something’s happened to whatever it was Trader delivered to the garage. He says he can’t remember exactly, a couple of boxes, and he thinks a barrel. At any rate, the stuff disappeared. Trader says he set it just inside the door, as Prescott had instructed him to.”
“Perhaps the D.A. took it for evidence,” Mason said.
“No. One of the newspaper boys did a little snooping for me and finds out that the district attorney overlooked that angle of the case entirely.”
“I wonder,” Mason said thoughtfully, “if the whole thing may not have been a stall. I’m wondering if Trader actually did return to Prescott’s house and deliver stuff to the garage.”
“Yes. Mrs. Weyman saw him back the van up to the garage.”
“How about Weyman? Was he home at the time?”
“He was home, but indisposed,” Drake grinned.
Mason looked at his wrist watch. “What else do you have on Rosa Hendrix, anything?”
“Not a thing,” Drake said cheerfully. “Rosa Hendrix is a nice girl, but I have my suspicions about Diana Morgan. That girl seems to know her way around and she has an independent income from some place.”
“How about Wray?” Mason asked. “Does he play around with the redhead after office hours?”
“Apparently not. Wray is quite a mixer, fond of clubs, lodges, smokers and all that sort of stuff. His gregarious instinct seems to have for its ultimate goal the making of contracts and the landing of business for the firm of Prescott & Wray.”
“Any idea who’s putting up the money?” Mason asked.
“Not for Diana Morgan,” Drake said, “but I have a line on Rosa Hendrix.”
“What sort of a line?”
“In case you’re interested,” Drake said, “she has a luncheon engagement tomorrow with Jimmy Driscoll.”
Mason stared at him with thought-slitted eyes.
“Listen, Paul,” he said, “what sort of baggage does that woman have?”
“Rosa Hendrix,” Drake said, “has a cheap, split-leather suitcase with a pasteboard backing, a steamer trunk, and—”
“No, I’m not talking about her. I’m talking about her other identity — Diana Morgan.”
“The sort of baggage that would go well with a three-hundred-and-ninety-five dollar apartment,” Drake said. “Hat boxes, suitcases, trunks, finest of leather—”
“How are they marked?”
“Simply with the initials ‘D.M.’ You’ll have a chance to see the stuff tonight, Perry. She’ll be moving out on that trip to Reno.”
“Do you think she actually intends to go to Reno?”
“Diana Morgan does,” Drake said, grinning, “but Rosa Hendrix will be on the job tomorrow — don’t forget Rosa’s luncheon engagement with Jimmy Driscoll.”
“I won’t,” Mason promised him. “Do you happen to know what time tonight she intends to move the baggage, Paul?”
“ ‘Happen’ is not the word to describe the manner in which I attain my knowledge,” Drake said, twisting his fish-mouth into a droll grin. “It takes elbow-grease, concentration, perspicacity, and perspiration, a rare combination of intuitive—”
“Yes, I know,” Mason interrupted, matching Ms grin. “I’ll find all that in the expense account when I get it. But, please tell me, Mr. Worldly-Wise Man, what time she intends to move the baggage.”
“She told the porter to be up at her apartment at ten-thirty; that a transfer man would be waiting outside the apartment house at that time.”
Mason said, “And do you happen to know, Mr. Human Wonder, whether the transfer man who will move the baggage of Miss Diana Morgan is Mr. Harry Trader of the Trader’s Transfer Company?”
The grin left Paul Drake’s face. His round, slightly protruding eyes showed a flash of surprise back of the glassy film which covered them. He slid around in the chair, got to Ms feet and said, “By God, Perry, I don’t. And I’m going to find out. You hit the nail on the finger with that crack.”
“Let me know as soon as you get the dope,” Mason called out as Drake jerked open the exit door and pounded down the corridor toward the office.
Mason turned to Della Street. “Della, how about your baggage?”
“I have my things nearly all packed.”
“I’m not talking about your things,” he told her. “How about your baggage?”
“You mean my suitcases, trunks and things?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” she said, “I’ll get by. I’ve borrowed a couple of trunks and—”
“I have an idea which beats that all to pieces,” Mason interrupted. “Why not let Rita Swaine pay for your baggage? I have a scheme by which—”
“Now listen, Chief,” she interrupted. “ I’m going to catch that boat. If you’re thinking up any stunt which’ll land me in jail you can forget it right now.”
“No,” he told her, “this’ll be perfectly legal.”
“Never mind if it’s legal,” she said. “Will it look legal?”
“Well,” Mason admitted, hesitating, “I’ll confess that it may look just the slightest bit—”
She interrupted and said, “That’s enough. The answer, in words of one syllable is ‘No.’ ”
“Now don’t be like that, Della,” he pleaded. “This is a cinch. You go down to the best luggage store in the city, buy yourself a whole flock of suitcases, hat boxes, trunks and what have you, and have them lettered with the initials ‘D.M.’ You put in some bricks, newspapers, boards and old shoes, to give the luggage a reasonable amount of weight. Then you have a transfer man take the luggage up to Rita Swaine’s apartment at 1388 Chestnut Street. Tell him the number of the apartment is 408, and if you’re not there he’s to get a passkey from the attendant and put the baggage right in the apartment.”
Della Street yawned and said, “Sorry, Chief, I’m not interested. When the ship pulls out tomorrow, I want to be standing on deck, waving bye-bye to a few of my envious friends who’ll have come down to see me off. I wouldn’t care to be behind bars in the county jail, thank you.”
“You don’t have to be,” Mason told her. “This is perfectly legal.”
“Will I get arrested?”
“They can’t hold you in jail—”
“Never mind whether they can hold me. Will they arrest me?”
“Well,” Mason conceded, “before we get done Sergeant Holcomb may be a little bit put out about it.”
Enough so he’d take me to the hoosegow, Chief?”
Mason said, “Sergeant Holcomb’s impulsive, but I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll steal a march on him, Della. Get your book and I’ll give you some dictation.”
She said, “Oh, well, you’ve never yet gone so far I wouldn’t back your play. Let’s go.”
She moved over to her secretarial desk, opened her shorthand notebook and held her pen poised above the paper, “Okay, Chief,” she said, “what is it?”
“In the Matter of the Application of Della Street,” Mason dictated, “for a Writ of Habeas Corpus.”