The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde

10

Morning sun shone brightly on the rain-washed buildings of the city. The blue sky was innocent of so much as the trace of a cloud. The sunlight poured through the eastern windows of Mason’s office and splashed a golden oblong on his desk as Della Street carefully dusted the top of his desk, then adjusted the Venetian blinds so that there would be no glare from the sunlight.

She had just finished when Mason clicked back the lock on the door of his private office.

“Hello, Della, did you sleep?”

“Some. How about you?”

Mason smiled and shook his head. “I was too damn mad to sleep. Give Paul Drake a ring and ask him if he can come in right away, will you, Della?”

Della Street stuffed her dust cloth into a drawer of her secretarial desk, picked up the telephone and put through the call to Paul Drake while Mason was putting his hat and light topcoat in the hat closet.

As Della Street hung up the telephone and said to Mason, “He’ll be right in,” the lawyer nodded, walked over to the desk, started to sit down, changed his mind and started pacing the floor.

“Can’t you,” Della Street asked, “get him for false arrest or something of that sort?”

Mason said, “I could make a few passes at him and make myself the laughing stock of the town. It would simply advertise what had happened. I’ve pulled too many fast ones to start crying for help when the party gets rough, but I’ll get that big ape yet. Lieutenant Tragg has brains, and he’s dangerous. Holcomb is simply a conceited, arrogant, dumb cop who thinks he’s tough. He...”

Drake’s code knock sounded on the door to Mason’s office and Della went over and opened it.

“Hi, Della,” Drake said, and grinned at Perry Mason. “What the hell have you two been doing?”

“Why?”

“I didn’t get any sleep last night.”

“Neither did I,” Mason said.

“I see your old friend Sergeant Holcomb is messing around, more belligerent than ever. I thought they’d transferred him.”

“He’s evidently worked his way into the good graces of the powers that be,” Mason said. “What did he do to you, Paul?”

“Came up and got me out of bed to tell me that one of my operatives was holding out a diary on him, then accused me of having been in Diana Regis’ apartment with you, of having stolen this diary and made my escape out of the window and down the fire escape.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I was too flabbergasted to even get mad,” Drake said. “I guess I finally convinced him, but the sheer surprise of it put me on the defensive enough so I called my operative who had been watching the apartment and asked him what had happened. He’d seen an automobile belonging to Jason Bartsler drive up and park in front of the place and a youngish man approach the outer door of the apartment house with all of the assurance in the world, fit a key to the door and go in. Naturally my operative assumed the man lived there, but because the guy looked in Diana’s mailbox, he got the license number on the car just as a matter of routine. He says the other operative on the job signaled you with two horn blasts.”

“Did he see this chap come down the fire escape?” Mason asked.

“No, he didn’t. The fire escape was on the alley and where my man was parked, you couldn’t see that. The law came there right after this bird went in and the relief operative started his car, signaled you with three blasts, and then got the hell out of there, so then this bird took over. Holcomb got rough with him trying to pump him. The guy acted dumb, said it was a routine tailing job, that he was to pick up a blonde with a black eye when she came out and he hadn’t paid much attention to people going in. He’s smart — a hell of a lot smarter than Holcomb, so he made it stick.”

“What did you do with Holcomb?”

“Well, after he crabbed around that we weren’t co-operating with the police, I woke up enough to get sore and put on a counter-offensive. That got rid of him — and I think scared him a little.”

“Then what, Paul?”

“Well, as soon as I learned it was Jason Bartsler’s car, I went up to the office and got hold of the reports which had come in from the operatives who were covering the Bartsler residence. Seems that a man who apparently was Carl Fretch, Jason Bartsler’s stepson, went out in a car and came home in the small hours of the morning in a taxicab.”

“Pass that information on to Sergeant Holcomb?”

“I did not,” Drake said. “Holcomb doesn’t even know that we were watching the Bartsler residence. He did spot my operative down in front of Diana Regis’ apartment house so I had to kick through on that. The other stuff I kept mum about.”

“Anything else happen out at Bartsler’s?”

Drake grinned. “Along about daylight this morning, Sergeant Holcomb and a couple of men went down and aroused the household. Lights were on for quite some spell, and then the cops, looking very hardboiled, marched Carl Fretch off to Headquarters. As nearly as I could tell, he’s there yet.”

Mason hooked his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, started pacing the floor, thoughtfully digesting the information.

“I take it, from what Sergeant Holcomb let slip, that you had rather a hard night, Perry.”

Mason clamped his lips in a firmly determined line. “I’m going to pay my respects to that gorilla one of these days.”

“What about the diary that’s missing?” Drake asked.

“It’s missing.”

“It just occurs to me,” Drake warned, “that the police are going to get really tough about that.”

“Let them get tough.”

“I have an idea there’s something in the diary about Diana Regis’ past life — something that will give them a good angle for an investigation.”

Mason said, “Phooey! They have an idea that they’ll find something prejudicial to Diana they can feed to the newspapers. They couldn’t get any of that stuff admitted in evidence and they know it, but they can dish it out to the newspapers and let the newspaper reporters smear it all over the papers. Then when the girl comes up for trial, the jurors will remember all about what they read in the papers. It’s an old police trick by which they get stuff before the jury they couldn’t possibly put in as evidence in the regular way.”

Drake said, “Well, I don’t know the law myself. Perry, but isn’t there some law that makes it a crime to withhold any evidence?”

Mason nodded.

“I’m just telling you,” Drake said, “that Holcomb is really worked up about this thing, feels that this diary slipped through his fingers by some hocus-pocus, and he’s really going to town on it. If you have that or know where it is, my own suggestion is that you’d better run for cover.”

“The hell with Sergeant Holcomb,” Mason said. “If there’s anything shady in the past life of my client, it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with this murder case.”

“How do you know it doesn’t?”

“Because it couldn’t.”

“It might furnish a motive.”

“Don’t be silly,” Mason said. “Suppose there was a diary kept by Mildred. And Mildred and Diana were old friends, and they’d been sharing an apartment. Why should Diana suddenly want to kill her because of something Mildred knew?”

“Why should she want to kill her anyway?” Drake asked.

“She didn’t.”

“The police think she did.”

“Bunk!... Paul, according to a letter which Mildred wrote Diana and which was probably the last thing she ever wrote, Mildred had taken Diana’s purse because a cop had pinched her for some minor violation and asked to check up on her driving license. She didn’t have one, so pulled the old gag that she’d left it in her apartment, and the cop decided to go up to her apartment and check with her. Now I want to find that cop.”

“Any idea what time the thing happened?”

“Probably sometime around the first part of the afternoon.”

“Yesterday?”

“That’s right.”

“You don’t know where?”

“It was evidently some place within a block or two of the apartment because Mildred evidently told the cop she’d just run down to do a little quick shopping and had forgotten to take her purse with her. The cop went back to the apartment with her and she naturally had to pick up Diana’s purse and take it along because that’s where Diana’s driving license was, and Mildred was passing herself off, for the time, as Diana.”

“I’ll see what I can find out,” Drake said, dubiously.

“And I want a complete check-up on the arrivals and departures at the Bartsler residence.”

Drake said, “Remember, Perry, my men didn’t get on the job there at Bartsler’s until midnight. You’ve got to take hearsay for most of this stuff. Apparently Mrs. Bartsler left around two or two-thirty in the afternoon. She was gone all evening and didn’t get back until eleven o’clock. Bartsler himself left at five o’clock and got back about ten. Carl Fretch left at six o’clock, got back at ten forty-five, was only in the house fifteen minutes, then picked up Bartsler’s automobile, went out at eleven and came back in a taxi at ten minutes to two. A man who evidently is associated with Bartsler, a chap by the name of Glenmore, left somewhere around noon, came back at nine-thirty and stayed there.”

“Driving a car?” Mason asked.

“His own.”

“First and last, seems to have been a lot of activity.”

“There was.”

“Do you know what time it started to rain last night, Paul?”

“Officially it started raining at seven forty-seven. That rain figures in the police theory of the murder, you know, Perry. The position of the body and the clues on the ground show that death took place sometime after the rain had started.”

Mason’s eyes became level-lidded with thought. “About how long after, Paul?”

“Oh, sometime around an hour to an hour and a half. They’re fixing the time of death, I understand, as between eight and nine.”

“Just how much of a case have they got against Diana?” Mason asked.

“It’s pretty early to tell much about it. I get most of my information as to police activities through a friend on the newspaper who gets his stuff from the cops. I can tell you this much, Perry, the case they have against her is pretty strong. There’s mud on Diana’s shoes, and an analysis of that mud shows it’s exactly the same soil as that in which the body was found. There are footprints near the body and those footprints were still sufficiently well preserved when the police found the body so they can pretty well pin them on Diana. All of that stuff doesn’t make too strong a case, but they’re working on the thing and may uncover some more evidence. The police theory is that Mildred Danville started to run from Diana when she realized Diana was trying to kill her; that Diana opened her purse, pulled out a gun and shot; that she dropped her purse when she fired; that after she had killed Mildred she went down to the body, bent over it and took something from the body — something that the killing was over, and the police would like to claim it was that diary — so you can see that letter you found becomes pretty important.”

“You know what was in that letter?” Mason asked.

“Sure, it’ll be in the newspapers tonight, a complete facsimile of it.”

Mason said, “Damn Holcomb anyway.”

“It’s evidence,” Drake said. “They’re holding it as such.”

Mason resumed his pacing of the floor.

“Of course,” Drake went on, “if they should claim that letter is a forgery they’ve got a lot of stuff to back them up — the fact that the letter was found in your possession rather than in the mailbox, and that you’re acting as her attorney and all that stuff.”

“I know,” Mason said, “but once we can prove that Mildred picked up Diana’s purse it’s up to the police to prove that she gave it back. You get busy and see if you can find that cop who made the pinch.”

Drake uncoiled himself from the big chair where he’d been sitting, said, “Well, I’ll start my men out and see if we can find that cop.”

“If you find him,” Mason warned, “get a statement out of him. Sew his testimony up before Holcomb tampers with his evidence.”

“Think Holcomb would do it?”

“You’re damn right I do. Holcomb would do anything to get a conviction in this case. He’s mixed up in it too deep himself.”

Drake said, “I’m on my way. Want me to still keep men on Bartsler’s house?”

“I think so.”

“It’s a little difficult with things happening the way they are. They may spot my men.”

“If they do, they’ll think it’s the police,” Mason said. “Stay with it. Also keep a check on the place where Mildred and Diana had their apartment. I want to know what goes on there.”

Drake said, “I’ll keep you posted,” and went out.

Della said, “I’d like to know what Carl told the police.”

“So would I.”

Mason said, “Now that Holcomb’s mixed up in the case he’ll move Heaven and earth to get hold of that diary. He’d like to smear Diana’s reputation all over the newspapers. And watch the way they’ll see that the newspapers have a chance to play up the fact that she has a black eye.”

“Why?”

“Oh, you just don’t associate a black eye with a woman of respectability,” Mason said. “And there’s a big section of the reading public that will think that a girl who has a black eye is fully capable of murder. The thing I can’t figure out is why Diana’s black eye got Mildred so excited. It must be because Carl Fretch had gone through Diana’s purse. Now if Mildred had borrowed this purse on some prior occasion, we can begin to see some reason for Mildred’s excitement. But suppose there’s some other reason. Suppose it was something other than Carl...”

The telephone rang, the unlisted telephone to which no more than half a dozen persons in the city had the number.

Mason himself picked up the receiver, said, “Yes. Hello. What is it?”

Paul Drake’s dry laconic voice came over the wire. “Looks like you lose, Perry.”

“What?”

“The police have found the murder weapon.”

“Where?”

“Diana Regis’ apartment shoved down in the bottom of the dirty clothes hamper.”

Mason said angrily, “Then it was planted there. That’s what Carl Fretch was doing when...”

“Take it easy, Perry, take it easy,” Drake said. “You haven’t heard all of it yet.”

“Give me all of it then.”

“It’s got Diana’s fingerprints all over it. And those are the only fingerprints on the gun.”

“That all?” Mason asked.

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Too damn much,” Mason said, and dropped the receiver back into place.