The Case of the Troubled Trustee (26 page)

"That concludes your voir dire?" Judge Alvarado asked Burger.

"Yes, sir."

"The defense has offered this in evidence. Do you have any objection?"

"I certainly do, Your Honor. I object on the ground it is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial. It is a physical impossibility that this could have been fired from the 'murder weapon. Therefore, it has no significance standing by itself. The only possible significance could be in the place where it was found, or the time when it was found; and it has just been shown by the evidence of this witness who so fortuitously participated in findingthis cartridge case, that it is impossible to vouch for the time when it was placed there."

"Nevertheless," Judge Alvarado said, "I think that, while your objection goes to the weight rather than to the admissibility of the evidence, the Court is going to allow this to be received in evidence. Counsel will have ample opportunity to argue to the jury as to what this means."

"In that case," Hamilton Burger said, "while I realize that this matter should be handled expeditiously, I would like to have a recess until tomorrow morning to try to find out more about this most fortuitous discovery." judge Alvarado frowned, started to shake his head.

Mason said, "We have no objections; if the prosecution wants this continuance, the defendant is willing to join in the motion, and since the jurors are not being confined, it should not work too great a hardship upon them."

"Very well," Judge Alvarado said, "on that understanding I will grant the motion, rather reluctantly, however."

Judge Alvarado turned to the jurors. "The jurors will understand that the Court is empowered to keep the jurors together during the trial of a case. This sometimes works an unnecessary hardship; and, if in the judgment of the Court it is not necessary, the Court is permitted to let the jurors return to their homes. The Court will admonish you, however, that the jurors will be violating their oath if they listen to any television discussion of this case, any comment about it on radio, or read anything in the newspapers. The jurors are again admonished not to form or express any opinion in regard to the merits of the case, not to discuss it among yourselves, and not to permit any person to discuss it in your presence.

"Under those circumstances, and in view of the fact that there has been a joint request for a continuance, the Court is somewhat reluctantly taking a recess until tomorrow morning at ten o'clock."

Judge Alvarado left the bench.

Paul Drake, his expression ominous, came over to stand by Mason while he glared across at the prosecution's table.

Hamilton Burger managed to avoid meeting the detective's eyes.

"Take it easy, Paul," Mason warned.

"Someday," Drake said, "I'm going to plant a punch right in the middle of his snout."

"He's only doing his duty," Mason said.

"Well, I don't like the way he does it."

"Neither do I," Mason agreed, "but there are some things about the way I conduct a case which he doesn't like."

"If he'll only look up here," Drake said, "I'll wish him a very good evening in a tone of voice which will be as sarcastic as his voice was when he said, 'That's all.'"

Mason got up, took Drake's arm and gently turned him around. "You'll do nothing of the sort," he said. "That isn't the sort of publicity we want at this particular stage of the game."

"You think the jurors are going to refrain from reading the newspapers?" Drake asked.

Mason smiled. "Come on, Paul, let's both quit being naпve."

Mason picked up his brief case and smiled at Della Street.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Back in his office, Della handed Mason the newspapers. "You take a good picture," she said.

"You're the one who takes a good picture," he told her. "Getting that outfit was a stroke of genius on which I pride myself.

"I think," he continued, "that the picture might not have been published if it hadn't been for the feminine angle."

"Angle?" she asked archly.

"Curve," Mason corrected.

She smiled.

Mason read the account in the paper.

"No wonder Hamilton Burger felt peeved," he said. 'This makes quite a story."

Mason finished with the paper, started to put it aside; then a headline on an inside page caught his eye.

"Well," he said, "the decedent, Rodger Palmer, seems to have had his name cleared posthumously."

"How come?"

"Another one of those mysterious stocking murders in a cheap hotel.

"You remember that the report made by Drake's detective stated that at one time the police considered Palmer a suspect. He'd lived in two of the hotels where these stocking murders had been committed. He was in the hotel at the time of the crime… That was just a little too much of a coincidence for the police.

"They, of course, took the names of every person residing in the hotel at the time of the crime and then checked those names with the guest lists of other hotels. When they found Palmer's name on two lists, they de. scended on him like a ton of bricks."

"That certainly was a coincidence," Della Street said.

Mason nodded. "Those things happen in real life, and yet- Hang it, it is quite a coincidence. We'd have given it a lot of thought if it hadn't been that Palmer was very dead by the time we started investigating him.

"Get me that report from Drake's operative, Della. Let's study it again."

Della Street went to the file, returned with a report on the dead man.

Mason thumbed through the numerous typewritten sheets of flimsy. "The guy seems to have been pretty much of a lone wolf," he said, "never married, an oil worker, then down and out-sort of a sharpshooter.

"He may have been a professional blackmailer. He had something on the Steer Ridge Oil and Refining Company that was worth money to someone, or at least he thought it was. He was fighting for proxies… and he must have had something rather degrading on Fred Hedley-probably a prior marriage that had never been dissolved."

Mason slowly thumbed through the pages of the report; then went back and reread it.

Abruptly the lawyer straightened himself in the office chair, started to say something, checked himself, looked up at Della and back to the report.

"Something?" she asked.

"I don't know," Mason said thoughtfully.

The lawyer got up and started pacing the floor. Della, knowing his habits, sat very quietly so she would not interrupt his thinking. Later on, when the lawyer had clarified the situation in his own mind, she might ask him questions so that by answering those questions he could crystallize his thoughts, but right at the moment she knew he needed an opportunity for complete concentration.

Mason suddenly paused in his pacing.

"Della," he said, "I want an ad in the papers that will be in the night editions."

As she started to say something, Mason said, "I know that's impossible. I know those want ad pages are printed in advance, but I want this in a box somewhere in the newspapers, entitled, 'Too Late To Classify,' or something of that sort. Tell them that it's important to get it in. Money's no object."

"What's the copy?" she asked.

"Make it this way. Put the initials, capital P, capital M; then, 'The thing that was too hot for the grass on the golf course is now even more valuable than ever. Call this number at nine o'clock sharp and follow instructions.' "

"And the number?" Della Street asked.

Mason said, "Go to a service station in Hollywood. Find a telephone booth; get the number.

"Now then, you're going to have to work fast. You're going to have to get co-operation from the papers. Tell them it's a red-hot tip and if they'll put the ad in and say nothing about it to anyone, they may get a red-hot story later on.

"Then, while you're pulling wires, I'll get Paul Drake and we'll get an operative we can trust who will be at this number at exactly nine o'clock with instructions to act as decoy in case somebody bites on our little scheme."

"And in case no one bites?" Della Street asked.

"Then," Mason said, "Burger can show that Paul Drake got another fifty-dollar charge on his bill."

Della Street typed out the want ad, said, "I'm on my way."

Mason called Paul Drake. "Paul," he said, "I want an operative to be at a public pay station at nine o'clock sharp tonight, and if he is contacted there, to make an appointment to meet whoever calls at one of the most lonely, secluded spots your man will be able to pick Out during the afternoon.

"That spot has to be wooded. It has to be within a reasonable distance of the highway. It has to be unlighted."

"Have a heart, Perry," Drake said. "About the only place I know of would be a golf course, and we've had enough of golf courses in this case."

"Golf courses are out," Mason said. "Try a city dump."

"Suppose no one calls the operative when he's in the service station?"

"Then," Mason said, "we'll give him a call and give him further instructions.

"Get busy, Paul. This is of real importance. It may be the payoff."

"You have a live lead?" Drake asked.

"I'm playing a hunch," Mason said. "It's a wild hunch, but it may pay off."

Mason hung up; then picked up the other telephone and said to Gertie at the switchboard, "Get me Homicide at the police department, Gertie. I want to talk to Lieutenant Tragg."

"No one else, if he's out?"

"If he's out," Mason said, "I don't even want anyone to know who's calling."

Chapter Twenty-Four

Perry Mason, Lt. Tragg, Della Street, Paul Drake and one of Drake's operatives huddled in the dark shadows of a g'roup of stunted trees.

In their nostrils was the sour smell of a city dump.

"You certainly picked a sweet-smelling place," Lt. Tragg said.

Drake, speaking in a hushed voice, said, "It was the only one that we could find that gave us what we wanted."

Tragg said, "Now, let's have this definitely understood. There's to be no publicity."

"No publicity unless yougive it publicity," Mason said.

"I don't publicize my wild goose chases," Tragg said. "I don't want the D.A.'s office to know anything about this, and I'm risking my official neck just trying to play ball with you."

"I've put the cards on the table," Mason said.

"You certainly did, and I never saw such a collection of jokers in my life," Tragg grunted.

Paul Drake nervously reached for a cigarette, then checked himself as he remembered the admonition of no smoking.

Night insects shrilled in the distance. Somewhere a chorus of frogs started croaking, then lapsed into silence, then started croaking again.

"Suppose no one calls him?" Tragg asked.

"At five minutes past nine," Mason said, "one of Drake's operatives will call him. The phone will ring and the man in the booth will pick up the receiver just as though it were a bona fide call."

"And then?" Tragg asked.

"Then he'll start for here."

"And if anyone calls?"

"We'll know we're on the right track," Mason said.

"Well," Tragg told him, "that's the trouble with amateurs. You get crazy ideas. I'll bet ten to one no one calls him."

"We'll know pretty quick," Mason said, consulting his wrist watch and then raising the antenna on a walkie-talkie.

"He isn't carrying a walkie-talkie with him, is he?" Tragg asked.

"No," Mason said. "But he does have a citizen's band transceiver on his car, but I wanted to use a walkietalkie for receiving because we don't want to have any loud noises."

Suddenly the walkie-talkie in the hands of Perry Mason made squawking noises, then a little pinched voice said, "Do you read me?"

"I read you. Come in," Mason said. "What's happened?"