The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde

9

A big incandescent bulb backed by a white porcelain reflector blazed light down from the ceiling. The desk of the Property Clerk occupied a corner of the room with steel bars forming a background. Ahead was a narrow barred passageway, and behind was a steel door opening into a wider corridor.

Perry Mason, white-faced with rage, stood in the silence of futility, his mouth a grim gash across his face, his eyes blazing, but he said nothing.

Sergeant Holcomb, hat on the back of his head, grinned at the two burly officers who stood by the desk of the Property Clerk.

“That all of it, boys?”

“That’s all of it,” one of the men said.

Holcomb said, “We keep this letter about a diary for evidence. Looks to me like they stole it out of the apartment. Mason hasn’t got that diary, so I guess the secretary had it. Phone up to the Matron’s office. If it ain’t there, it’ll be because they didn’t have a chance to get it before we showed up. Come to think of it, Mason was standing in the doorway of the kitchen when we got there. I guess this secretary of his was in the pantry.”

Holcomb slid a heavy manila envelope over toward Perry Mason. “You’re booked,” he said, “for obstructing justice, section one thirty-five. Penal Code, also for unlawful entry. You’re released on your own recognizance. You can have your property back by signing the receipt on the back of this envelope — all except that letter. That’s evidence. You can take it up with the D.A.’s office when the arraignment will be.”

Mason said in a voice that was harsh with his effort to control his rage, “I presume you know how irregular all this is?”

“Me, I don’t know nothing,” Sergeant Holcomb said grinning. “I’m just a dumb cop. You’re the smart guy. If you think there’s anything irregular about it, make a squawk to the proper authorities. In the meantime, Mason, don’t think you’re going to play button-button-who’s-got-the-button with evidence in this case. There are ways of getting what we want.”

Mason said nothing.

“Of course,” Holcomb went on, “if you want to go before a magistrate and have him release you on your own recognizance why that’ll be some time tomorrow morning, and you can go on into a cell and go to bed. But right now, I’m telling you can be released on your own recognizance. All you’ve got to do is to sign your name and walk out. You’re going to sign it and walk out some time, you may as well do it now and save yourself spending a night in jail. But if you want to have it done all nice and regular, and object to being released irregularly, why just wait until you can walk out with a court order. I don’t give a damn. There’s the door.”

Mason picked up the fountain pen which had been duly listed as a part of his property and signed the receipt on the back of the envelope. The Property Clerk tore off the flap with the receipt and the inventory of contents and filed it in a card case. He was completely bored with the entire affair and made no effort to conceal his indifference.

Sergeant Holcomb said to the man at the steel door, “Okay, open it up. He’s released on his own recognizance.”

Mason walked out through the steel door. Behind him Sergeant Holcomb chuckled audibly, said, “Shucks, you’re such a stickler for doing things according to law, I thought you’d stay in jail until a judge released you. Good-by, sweetheart!”

Mason crossed a barred waiting room, climbed a flight of stairs to a cage where another turnkey twisted a big brass key, shot back a bolt, opened a steel barred door and let Mason walk out of the jail, sickeningly sweet with its smell of disinfectant, into the pure night air.

Della Street was waiting outside. One glance at Perry Mason’s face told her all she needed to know. She came close to him and slipped her arm through his.

Silently they walked through the rain, back to the parking place where Mason’s car had been left. The lawyer climbed in white-faced with rage, and jabbed the ignition key into the lock.

Della Street said, “I know how people feel now when they commit murder.”

“Search you?” Mason asked.

“A matron stripped me to the skin and went through every inch of me.”

“What did they do with the diary?” Mason asked.

“There wasn’t any diary.”

Mason took his eyes from the dashboard of the car, swung around to look Della Street full in the face.

“Didn’t you get it?”

“Of course I got it,” she said, “and then I heard the signal for the police. There was part of a loaf of bread there. I dug out the inside, put in the diary, kneaded the bread back over the opening I’d made and dropped the half loaf into the garbage pail. Then I went to join you in the doorway where Sergeant Holcomb saw me.”

Mason’s face slowly relaxed. “Good girl!” he said.

He backed the car around out of the parking place, slammed it into low gear, stepped on the throttle, swung out into the rainy street, ran through the gears and started making speed.

“Going to make a try for it?” Della asked.

“No. That’s what they’ll be expecting us to do as soon as Holcomb checks up with the matron and finds out it wasn’t on you.”

“You mean they’ll follow us?”

“Not us,” Mason said. “They’ll put a lot of spotters around that apartment house. They’ll let us go in, and when we come out, they’ll arrest us all over again.”

“Do they have any right to do that?”

“No.”

“Chief, as far as I’m concerned, I... How I hate that man.”

Mason said nothing.

“The big baboon,” Della Street went on bitterly. “They took him off the Homicide Squad because you made such a monkey of him, and now he’s going in for strong-arm tactics. Won’t they find that diary in the garbage pail?”

“They may not,” Mason said. “Remember that Carl Fretch beat it down the fire escape. Sergeant Holcomb’s first reaction will be one of stupefied bafflement, then before he decides that you hid the diary some place in the building, he’ll remember the man who got down the fire escape. He’ll reach the conclusion the diary went with him.”

“Then what?” Della Street asked.

“It’s hard to tell,” Mason said. “He may think it was one of Paul Drake’s men and try to bring pressure to bear on Paul. He may get Jason Bartsler up out of bed. He may get a lead to Carl Fretch.”

There was another long interval of silence.

“Where are we going?” Della Street asked.

“Home.”

“You’re not going to do anything about Carl?”

“No.”

“Do you suppose Carl knows you were in there?”

“He may have stuck around long enough to hear some of the conversation with Sergeant Holcomb.”

“Suppose he knows about the diary?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was he after?”

“That again is something you can’t tell.”

“It gave me the creeps seeing him tiptoeing toward that bedroom. I wouldn’t want to have been sleeping in there. There was something so menacing about him... Chief, how did he get a key to that apartment?”

“When he had Diana Regis’ purse,” Mason said, “he undoubtedly took an imprint of all of the keys in there and had duplicates made.”

“And why did he do that?”

“Perhaps just amatory persistence. Perhaps something else.”

Once more they were silent. Mason drove rapidly through the deserted streets, swung his car to a stop in front of Della Street’s apartment.

“Night,” he said.

Della looked up at him solicitously. “Chief, get over it, will you?”

“What?”

“That tense rage.”

Mason tried a forced grin.

Della started to get out of the car, then glanced back at him. Her arm came up around his neck, pulled his head back down to hers. For a long interval her lips clung to his, then she suddenly freed herself from Mason’s embrace.

“That,” she announced, “should get your mind off of Sergeant Holcomb. Remember to wipe the lipstick off your mouth. Good night, Chief.”