Case of the Beautiful Beggar

Chapter 15

A rather exhausted Della Street entered the office at ten o’clock the next morning to find Perry Mason already on the job.

“Perry!” she exclaimed in surprise. “How long have you been here?”

“About half an hour,” Mason said, grinning. “Get any sleep?”

“Just exactly half enough,” Della Street said. “Man, how I hated to get up.”

“Things are moving,” Mason said. “Paul Drake’s man from San Diego telephoned. Horace Shelby has crossed the border, gone through Tijuana and is on his way to Ensenada. Apparently, he doesn’t have the faintest idea that anyone is following him, and he’s breezing along as happy as a lark, driving faster and with more assurance. But he’s no longer in the Massachusetts car.”

“He isn’t?”

“No, he parked that one in San Diego, purchased a used car for cash at one of the car lots which was open early in the morning.”

“What about Daphne?”

Mason grew serious. “They don’t have a thing in the world against her,” he said, “but the district attorney’s office has had a complete report from the police, has read a lot of unwarranted meaning into the evidence and wants to try her. They think they’ve got a case.”

“What do you think?”

Mason closed his right eye in a wink, said, “I’m playing both ends against the middle, but I’m only representing Daphne, not anyone else. No matter what she wants me to do, I’m protecting her interests.”

“What have you done?”

“Demanded a preliminary hearing,” Mason said.

“Do they have enough evidence to bind her over?”

“They think so. They are absolutely convinced that Ralph Exeter was in that motel unit after Horace Shelby had left, that Daphne bought the Chinese food for him, and that Daphne and Exeter are the two who ate the food.”

“In which case, she gave him the barbiturates?” Della Street asked.

Mason nodded.

“How do they know Horace Shelby wasn’t there?”

“They’ve found the taxi driver that Paul Drake uncovered.”

“Do we have anything new?”

“Drake’s man is already planted in Unit 21 at the motel.”

“Any trouble?” she asked.

“None whatever. Now, Della, we’ve had some dealings with Bill Hadley, the physicist detective.”

“The one who specializes in automobile accidents?”

Mason nodded. “He knows metallurgy and all that stuff and can tell how fast cars were going because of the degree of impact and all that. I just have an idea that he might take a look at that disconnected gas pipe and come up with some answers the police don’t have as yet.

“They’ve accepted the gas pipe as just one of those things, but actually you don’t disconnect a gas pipe with your fingers. It takes tools, and regardless of what the police may think at the present time, no jury is going to feel that a girl like Daphne would have been carrying a bunch of tools with her to disconnect gas pipes.”

Della Street’s face lit up. “Why, that’s a thought,” she said. “That had never occurred to me.”

“I don’t think it’s occurred to Hamilton Burger, the district attorney,” Mason said, grinning.

“Get Bill Hadley on the telephone.”

A few moments later when Della Street had the physicist on the line, Mason said, “Bill, you’ve worked for me in a few automobile accident cases. This time I want you to work in a murder case. Get over to the Northern Lights Motel get into Unit 21. A murder was committed there — at least the police think it was a murder. A gas pipe was disconnected and a man who had been put to sleep with barbiturates was asphyxiated.”

“What do you want me to do?” Hadley asked.

“Find out what happened,” Mason said.

“Am I supposed to be clairvoyant or something?”

Mason said, “Take a look at that gas pipe. You don’t disconnect a gas pipe with fingers.”

“Can I get in?” Hadley asked. “Do I have to show any authority or—”

“None whatever,” Mason interrupted. “Go there as soon as possible. You’ll find the occupant will be very courteous as soon as you identify yourself. The pipe has been reconnected. See what you can find out.”

“I take it I am to bring cameras and take pictures?”

“Bring cameras, floodlights, microscopes, the works.”

“Okay,” Hadley said, “anything else?”

“Don’t let anybody on the outside know what you’re doing,” Mason said. “The man in the unit is all right.”

“Okay,” Hadley told him, “I’ll start getting things together right now. I’ll be there early in the afternoon.”

“Don’t arouse suspicions,” Mason warned.

“Shucks, I’ll be a tourist from the country,” Hadley promised, “a regular shutterbug.”

Mason hung up, said to Della Street, “Now, I’m going down and see Daphne and see what kind of a night she had.”

“The poor kid,” Della Street said.

“Well, it depends upon how you look at it,” Mason told her. “You have to admit she pulled a fast one getting her uncle to take that adjoining room and then pulling that sleep medicine gag.”

“I suppose they’ll use that against her,” Della Street said.

“Oh, sure, Tragg fished every last pellet out of the stomach contents.”

The lawyer chuckled. “I can’t get over remembering the squawk she made when she hit that cold water in the bathtub, thinking it was going to be lukewarm.”

Mason left the office, went to the detention ward and muttered expressions of sympathy as a bedraggled Daphne Shelby, who had quite evidently passed a sleepless night, was brought into the consulting room by the matron.

Mason said, “Somehow it seems impossible to impress upon you that you should play fair with your lawyer.”

“What have I done now?”

“It’s what you haven’t done. You forgot to tell me about your Uncle Horace having been registered in the hotel in that room right next to yours — 720 — and the fact that you had been in there talking with him which was the reason you didn’t hear me when I first knocked on the door of your room.”

“Mr. Mason,” she said, “let’s have one understanding. I’m going to be fair and play fair with you except for one thing. I’m not going to tell you anything that might hurt Uncle Horace.”

“You know by this time he isn’t related to you?”

“I can’t help it, I have a feeling for him. I’ve been like a daughter to him. I’ve watched over him and guarded him, and now he’s an old man and he’s sick and I’m going to protect him in every way that I can.”

“Do the officers know anything about his being in the adjoining room?” Mason asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Then you haven’t told them?”

“Heavens, no!”

“Their questions haven’t indicated that they have any idea he was there?”

“No.”

“Did you know that he was driving Ralph Exeter’s car?”

She looked him defiantly in the eyes, took a long breath, and said, “No!”

“All right,” Mason said, “we’re playing games, Daphne. You’re playing games with me to protect your uncle. Now, I’m going to tell you something. I’m representing you. I’m going to try and get you acquitted on this murder charge.

“I’m not representing your uncle. I’m not representing anyone except you. I’m going to try every legal and ethical strategy that I know of to get you acquitted. That’s my duty. Do you understand that?”.

“Yes, I guess so.”

“You’re going to have to stay here for a while,” Mason said.

“I’ll get accustomed to it.”

Mason got up to go.

Suddenly her hand was on his arm. “Please, Mr. Mason, I can take it. I’m young. I’m resilient. I can stand it but if Uncle Horace got in one of these places, if he had bars over the windows and guards and cells and things of that sort, he’d go absolutely crazy.”

Mason smiled down at her. “Daphne,” he said, “I’m protecting you. A lawyer doesn’t have room for more than one allegiance. You’ll have to get accustomed to that.”

“And,” she said, “I’m protecting Uncle Horace. You’ll have to get accustomed to that.”

Mason grinned. “I’ve learned to accustom myself to that,” he said, and then added, “the hard way.”

Mason returned to his office to find that Paul Drake had a significant report. A Nevada car had been registered at the Northern Lights Motel. The owner had registered as Harvey Miles of Carson City, but the car registered in the name of Stanley Freer of Las Vegas.

“Get a rundown?” Mason asked.

“On Freer, yes,” Drake said. “Miles seems to be simply a name, but Freer is a collector.”

“A collector?”

“Yes. They use him when some tin-horn tries to squirm out of paying a gambling debt.”

“Methods?” Mason asked.

“Since gambling debts are illegal in most states,” Drake said, “the methods used by Freer are reported to be illegal — but highly successful.

“Now, if Exeter owed a gambling debt and Freer called on him and perhaps told him Horace Shelby was hiding in Unit 21 at the Northern Lights, it’s a cinch Exeter would have gone there to try a shakedown.

“At least that’s the way I figure it.”

Mason was thoughtfully silent. At length he said, “That figures, Paul. Some men from Nevada were watching the sanitarium. They were anxious to talk with the doctor the Court appointed.

“That means the gamblers were getting tired of waiting, and it also means they were very much on the job.

“They could have discovered when Horace Shelby left the place and where he went. Then they told Exeter they weren’t going to wait for Shelby to die, that it was up to Exeter to get the money or else.

“Then a ‘collector’ would have tagged along to see what Exeter was doing — and if Exeter bungled the job, that collector might have lowered the boom on him.”

“It’s a possibility,” Drake agreed. “Those collectors are willing to write a debt off every once in a while in order to throw a scare into the pigeons. If word gets around a man who gets too delinquent in payments doesn’t stay healthy, it helps with collections everywhere.

“Usually, however, they get some muscle men to give a guy a beating first.”

Mason thought the situation over. “A jury might buy that theory, Paul. I might even buy it myself.”