The Case of the Blonde Bonanza

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mason, Della Street, and Paul Drake ordered lunch to be served in their suite at the Mission Inn.

The telephone rang shortly after Mason had placed the order.

Della Street nodded to Mason. "For you, Chief," she said, and then added in a low voice, "Mrs. W."

Mason took the phone, said, "Hello," and Mrs. Winlock's smooth, cool voice came floating over the line.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Mason. How did the court hearing go this morning?"

"Very much as I expected," Mason said cautiously. "And do you want to do something that is for the best interests of your client?"

"Very much."

"If," the voice said, "you will adhere to the bargain I outlined to you, you should be able to score another triumph over the prosecution, have the defendant released and have the case thrown out of court.

"Both my son and I are in a position to testify, if necessary, that when we entered that unit the man was lying on the floor breathing heavily and we thought he was drunk. And I will testify that I was the one who made the phone call to the manager of the motel."

"Suppose I simply subpoena you and put you on the stand?" Mason asked.

She laughed and said, "Come, come, Mr. Mason, you're a veteran attorney. You could hardly commit a booboo of that sort. Think of what it would mean if I should state the man was alive and well when I left."

"And your price?" Mason asked.

"You know my price. Complete, utter silence about matters which will affect my property status and my social status. Good-by, Mr. Mason."

The receiver clicked at the other end of the line.

Della Street raised inquiring eyebrows.

Mason said, "Paul, you're going to have to pick up lunch somewhere along the line. I want you to go out to the Restawhile Motel. I want you to take a stop watch. I want you to get the manager to walk rapidly from the switchboard, out the front door, down to Unit to. I want you to have her open the door, walk inside, turn around, walk back, pick up the telephone, call police headquarters and ask what time it is. See how long it takes and report to me."

"Okay," Drake said. "What time do you want me back here?"

"Call in," Mason said. "I may have something else for you. Telephone a report just as soon as you have checked the time."

"Okay," Drake said, "on my way."

Five minutes after Drake had left, the chimes in the suite sounded, and Della Street opened the door to a very agitated George D. Winlock.

"Good afternoon," Winlock said. "May I come in?"

"Certainly. Come right in," Mason said.

Winlock looked at Della Street. "I would like very much to have a completely private conversation with you, Mr. Mason."

"You can't do it," the lawyer said. "Under the circumstances I'm not going to have any conversation with you without a witness. However, I may state that Miss Street is my confidential secretary and has been such for quite some time. You can trust to her discretion, but she'll listen to what's said and, what's more, she'll take notes."

Winlock said, "This is a very, very delicate matter, Mr. Mason. It is very personal."

"She's heard delicate matters before which have been very, very personal," Mason said.

Winlock debated the matter for a moment, then surrendered. "You leave me no choice, Mr. Mason."

"Sit down," Mason said. "Tell me what's on your mind."

Winlock said, "My wife has told you that she and her son, Marvin Harvey Palmer, are willing to testify that they were the two people who were seen entering Unit io between eight and nine; that at that time Boring was lying on the floor breathing heavily; that they smelled whiskey and thought he was lying there drunk; that Marvin Palmer waited for some minutes, hoping that Boring would revive so that he could talk with him; that my wife was there a much shorter period of time."

"Well?" Mason asked.

"It's not true," Winlock said, with some agitation. "Boring was in full possession of his health and his faculties when they were there."

"How do you know?"

"Because I was there after they were."

"You haven't told me," Mason said, "what was the nature of your interview with Boring."

"I told him I was going to have him arrested for blackmail, that there was no longer any opportunity to keep my relationship with Dianne secret, that you had uncovered it and that Dianne herself knew about it, that under the circumstances I was going to have him arrested in the event he wasn't out of town by morning."

"Did you ask him for the ten thousand dollars back?"

"Yes. I made him return the money."

"Without a struggle?"

"I threw a terrific scare into him. He hated to part with that money, but he didn't want to go to prison for blackmail."

Mason said, "You had given Boring ten thousand dollars in cash?"

"I had."

"At what time?"

"At about five P.M. He had stopped by my office just before closing time. He was there very briefly. I had the money ready for him."

"And from your office he went directly to the motel?"

"I believe he did. You should know. Apparently you were having him shadowed."

"That's what the detective's report said," Mason observed.

Winlock said, "I am very deeply disturbed about this thing, Mr. Mason. I cannot permit my wife to commit perjury simply in order to save our reputation. That's altogether too great a price."

"And how do you know it's perjury?"

"Because Boring was in good health when I left him."

"That's what you say," Mason said, eying Winlock narrowly, "but there's another explanation."

"What?"

"That you killed him," Mason said.

"I did!"

"That's right. That you went to Boring and threatened him with arrest, and Boring told you to go ahead and arrest and be damned; that you weren't going to push him around. You had an argument, hit him, inflicting fatal injuries, and removed the money you had given him as the result of his blackmail.

"In that event, your wife's, testimony wouldn't be directed primarily at saving Dianne, but at saving you.

"The man was lying there dying when Dianne entered the motel unit. You were the last one to see him prior to the time Dianne saw him. The minute you state that he was alive and well when you saw him, you make yourself a murderer."

"I can't help it," Wirilock said. "I am going to tell the truth. I've steeped myself in deceit as much as I am going to."

"Now then," Mason went on, "what would happen if your wife went on the stand and your stepson went on the stand and both of them swore positively that when they entered that unit in the motel they found Boring lying on his back, breathing heavily, with the odor of whiskey overpoweringly strong?"

"If I were put on the stand I would still tell the truth."

"Suppose you weren't put on the stand?"

Winlock got up and started pacing the floor, clenching and unclenching his hands. "God help me," he said, "I don't know what I'd do. I'd probably get out of the country where I couldn't be interviewed. I-"

"You'd get out of the country," Mason said, "because you'd be avoiding a charge of murder."

"Don't be foolish, Mr. Mason. If I had killed him, I would be only too glad to ride along with the story my wife and stepson are thinking of concocting in order to purchase Dianne's silence. I would then perjure myself and swear that the man was unconscious and apparently drunk."

Mason said, "Unless this act you're now putting on is all a part of the over-all scheme to save your own neck and to confuse me… The minute you tell me that this man was alive and well when you left, you put me in a position of suborning perjury in the event I permit your wife and stepson to testify as witnesses for the defense that he was lying there in a stupor, apparently dead drunk."

"I can't help it, Mr. Mason. I've gone just as far as I'm going to along the slimy path of deceit in this thing. I've got to a point now where I can't sleep, I can't live with myself."

"And how does Mrs. Winlock feel about all this?" Mason asked.

"Unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case may be, she doesn't share my feelings. Apparently the only thing that is bothering her is the question of how to prevent this situation from being disclosed, how to prevent her social set from knowing that she has been living a life of deceit for the past fourteen years, that she hasn't been married to me at all. Her only concern is for the immediate effect on her social and financial life."

"All right," Mason said, "go home and talk it over with her. Remember this, as an attorney at law I'm obligated to do what is for the best interests of my client.

"You tell me that he was alive and well when you left, but your wife and your stepson tell me that he was lying there fatally injured; only, because his clothes were saturated with whiskey, they thought he was drunk.

"I'm not in a position to take your word against theirs. I have to do what's for Dianne's best interests."

Winlock said, "You can't do it, Mason. You're a reputable attorney. You can't suborn perjury."

"You think your wife is going to perjure herself?"

"I know it."

"You don't think Boring might have been putting on an act for their benefit? That he had poured whiskey over his clothes and was lying there, apparently in a stupor? That he then got up when you entered the unit and talked with you?"

"There was no odor of whiskey on his garments when I talked with him."

Mason said, "If such is the case, you are Boring's murderer. You have to be."

"Don't be a fool, Mason," Winlock said.

"Under those circumstances," Mason observed somewhat thoughtfully, "the case would-under those circumstances-be mixed all to hell. Nobody would know what to do. It would shake this community to its foundations."

"If my wife and my stepson get on the stand and commit perjury," Winlock said, "I suppose I have no alternative but to get on the stand and tell a similar story, but I'll tell you right now, Mason, it would be a lie."

"Under those circumstances," Mason said, "I wouldn't call you as a witness. But that doesn't keep me from calling Mrs. Winlock and Marvin Harvey Palmer."

Winlock looked at Mason, then hastily averted his eyes. "I wish I knew the answer to this," he said.

"And I wish I did," Mason told him, eying him thoughtfully.

"I can, of course, get my wife out of the jurisdiction of the court," Winlock said.

"Sure you can," Mason said, "but I'll warn you of one thing. If I decide to put on a defense and call your wife and stepson and they're not available, I'll tell the court the conversations I have had with them and the fact that they have offered to testify. I'll insist on having the case continued until they can be called as witnesses, and you can't stay out of the jurisdiction of the court indefinitely. You have too many property interests here."

Winlock shook his head, said, "I have no alternative. I'm gripped in a vise." He walked to the door, groped for the knob and went out.

Della Street regarded Mason quizzically.

Five minutes later the telephone rang.

Della Street said, "Mrs. Winlock for you, Mr. Mason."

Mason took the receiver.

Again Mrs. Winlock's voice, almost mockingly cool, said, "Have you reached a decision yet, Mr. Mason?"

"Not yet," Mason said.

"I'll be available at my house, Mr. Mason. Give me a few minutes to get ready. My son will be with me."

"And you'll testify as you have indicated?" Mason asked.

"I'll testify as we have indicated, provided you will give me your word as a gentleman and an attorney that you and Dianne will preserve the secret of Dianne's relationship, and will accept the financial settlement offered by Mr. Winlock.

"Good day, Mr. Mason."

Again the phone was hung up at the other end of the line.

At that minute two waiters appeared, bringing in the luncheon.

"Well, Mr. Perry Mason," Della Street said, when the waiters had left the room, "you seem to have worked yourself into a major dilemma."

Mason nodded, toyed with the food for a few minutes, then pushed his plate aside, got up and started pacing the room.

"Know what you're going to do?" Della Street asked.

"Damn it!" Mason exploded. "The evidence points to the fact that George Winlock is the murderer."

"He has to be," Della Street said. "That is, unless Dianne is lying."

"I have to take my client's story as the truth," Mason said. "I am bound to accept her statement at face value. And yet she has to be lying about making that phone call to the manager of the motel. Mrs. Winlock must be the one who made that call. Dillard's testimony as to the time Dianne left clinches that. Dianne simply didn't have time to get to the phone and make that call.

"Now then, the significant thing is that Mrs. Winlock didn't make the call until after her husband had left the cabin and had a chance to report to her that he had frightened or forced Boring into returning the blackmail money."

"Then that leaves George D. Winlock the murderer," Della Street said.

"And he's handled things so cleverly," Mason agreed, "that if I do try to expose him as a murderer, I look like a heel. If, on the other hand, I put Mrs. Winlock and her son on the stand and let them swear to the story they've offered to tell, I get Dianne off the hook but leave myself open to a charge of suborning perjury at any time Winlock wants to lower the boom on me."

"Could this be a very shrewd, clever stunt that they jointly have carefully worked out and rehearsed?" Della Street asked.

"You're damn right it could," Mason said.

"And," she asked, "what's going to be your countermove?"

"I don't know," Mason told her. "At first I thought it was simply an offer to furnish perjured testimony and I was going to throw the whole thing out in the alley. Now I'm not so certain that it isn't a carefully, cunningly contrived plot to hamstring my defense and put me in such a position that I don't know what actually did happen."

The lawyer resumed his pacing of the floor.

After a few minutes he said, "Of course, Della, it's not up to me to prove who did murder the guy-that's up to the prosecution. My job is to prove Dianne innocent."

"Can you do it?" she asked.

"With this testimony I could do it hands down," Mason said.

Again the telephone rang.

"Paul Drake," Della Street said.

"Hello, Perry," Paul Drake said. "I'm finished down here at the Restawhile Motel."

"What did you find out?"

"The distance to be covered is about a hundred feet each way. Moving at a fairly normal rate of speed it takes about thirty seconds each way. Moving at a rapid rate of speed, you cut that time down.

"Getting in, picking up the telephone and putting the call through accounts for seven seconds. So her testimony is approximately correct. Figure about a minute and ten seconds as the outside time limit if she did what she said she did."

"All right," Mason said, "here's something else for you, Paul. Drive down to the telephone booth three blocks down the street. Time yourself from the entrance of the motel. Call me from that booth and let me know how long it takes until you hear my voice. I'll be waiting here at the phone."

"Okay," Drake said, "and then I want some lunch. I'm ravenous. I suppose you folks are sitting up there smug and well fed."

"We're neither smug nor well fed," Mason said. "I'm sitting on the end of a great big limb and I'm not too certain somebody between me and the tree doesn't have a very sharp saw.

"Get busy and see what you can find out, Paul."

Four minutes later, Paul Drake telephoned.

"Hello, Perry," he said when he had the lawyer on the line. "It took me exactly two minutes from the time I left the entrance of the motel to get down here, park my car, get in the telephone booth, close the door, dial you and get your answer."

"Hang it," Mason said. "Dianne couldn't have left the place and placed that call, or else the time element is all wrong."

Drake said dryly, "She was the last person to see Harrison Boring alive. You may be able to mix Dillard up on the time element but that's all it's going to amount to, just a technicality. The facts speak for themselves."

"Of course," Mason said into the telephone, almost musingly, "the time Dianne left can be checked with physical facts. The time she entered is fixed only by Dillard's watch.

"Just suppose he made the mistake of setting his watch not by the radio but by the clock there in the motel office."

"Would it help if you could show that?" Drake asked.

"Anything would help," Mason said. "That is, anything that clarifies the situation."

"Or confuses it," Drake said dryly. "I'm going to get some lunch."

Mason hung up the telephone, turned to Della Street. "Two minutes," he said.

"And that throws Dillard's time off about four minutes?"

"Something like that."

Della Street said, "He was looking at his watch in the dark and he could have misread the hands."

"It's vital as far as Dianne is concerned," Mason said.

"Of course," she pointed out, "it opens up some question of doubt, but after all she was in there at least ten minutes, even if Dillard did make a mistake."

"She says she wasn't," Mason said.

"But," Della Street pointed out, "she admits she remained long enough to search for and find the contract. She was only estimating the time."

Mason said, "The thing that annoys me is the smooth assurance of this district attorney who acts on the assumption that this is just a simple routine matter of another preliminary hearing in another murder case and there's no reason on earth why he shouldn't have it all buttoned up inside of half a day."

"But," Della Street said, "the main problem is whether Winlock is lying, whether the whole family isn't protecting the stepson, or who struck the fatal blow and when. After all, Dillard's time discrepancies are minor matters."

Mason said, "I have in my hand an opportunity to introduce testimony that will throw the district attorney's case out of the window, get Dianne in the clear and at the same time get a property settlement for her running into a very substantial figure.

"If I do that, Winlock is either going to claim I was guilty of suborning perjury-or at least is in a position to do so any time he chooses to lower the boom."

"What will happen if you don't do it?" Della Street asked.

"Then," Mason said, "Dianne is going to get bound over on a murder charge. She'll be in jail awaiting trial, she'll come up before a jury; by that time Mrs. Winlock will have withdrawn her offer and sworn she never made it. It will be the word of Dianne against a lot of circumstantial evidence and against the evidence of a man who has a great deal of influence in the community, George D. Winlock.

"Then I'll spring a dramatic surprise that Winlock is the girl's father and is testifying against her to protect himself. I'll make a high-pressure plea to the jury-and in all probability they'll convict Dianne of manslaughter rather than murder. That's about the best I can hope to accomplish. That's the price of trying to be ethical. To hell with it."

Della Street, realizing the nature of the crisis which confronted the lawyer, watched him in worried silence.