The Case of the Careless Kitten

Chapter 20

Hamilton Burger, the district attorney, was a man with a huge chest, a thick neck and heavy shoulders. There was about him a suggestion of the massive strength of a bear. He was given to making unpredictable moves with the swiftness of a man who concludes his deliberations before taking action. Once he started to act, he threw himself into that action with a concentrated force that eliminated any possibility of re-examining the situation. Lawyers who had come to know him well said that once Hamilton Burger started charging, it took a brick wall to stop him. As one attorney had expressed it, “Once Burger starts moving, he keeps moving until he’s stopped, and it takes a hell of a lot to stop him.”

Mason knew that a reception had been prepared for him as soon as he entered the outer office of the district attorney. No assistant or trial deputy was assigned to interview him; but with the clocklike precision of a carefully-thought-out bit of campaign strategy. Mason was whisked down the corridor and into the district attorney’s office almost as soon as he had announced himself at the reception desk.

Hamilton Burger surveyed Mason with glittering, steady eyes.

“Sit down,” he said.

Mason took the chair across from Burger’s desk.

“Do you want to talk to me or am I going to talk to you?” Mason asked.

“I’m talking to you,” Burger said.

“Go ahead,” Mason told him, “do your talking first. I’ll say what I have to say when you’ve finished.”

Hamilton Burger said, “You’re unorthodox. Your methods are spectacular, dramatic, and bizarre.”

“You might add one additional word,” Mason said.

For a moment, there was a flicker in the district attorney’s eyes. “Effective?” he asked.

Mason nodded.

“That is the thing which bothers me,” Burger said.

“I’m glad to hear you admit it.”

“It doesn’t bother me in the way that you think, however,” Burger went on. “It simply means that if your spectacular, dramatic, swashbuckling methods continue to be effective, we’ll have every attorney at the bar trying to cut corners, playing legal sleight of hand to outwit the police. And heaven knows, one of you in this county is plenty.”

“If I beat the police to the correct solution of a crime, does that constitute outwitting the police?”

“That isn’t what I mean,” Burger objected. “It’s not our policy to prosecute the innocent. And understand this, Mason, I’m talking, not only about what you do, but about how you do it.”

“What’s wrong with my means?”

“You don’t try your cases in a courtroom. You don’t sit in your office and interview clients. You go tearing around the country, working by a catch-as-catch-can method of grabbing evidence, refusing to take the police into your confidence, and...”

“Wait a minute,” Mason said. “Do the police take me into their confidence?”

Burger ignored the question. “There have been times when I’ve co-operated with you because I thought you were cooperating with me. But it’s always been that same spectacular, flamboyant, pulling-the-rabbit-out-of-the-hat business with you.”

Mason said, “Well, if the rabbit I’m looking for happens to be in a hat, why not pull him out?”

“Because you usually furnish the hat. You can’t justify a legal hocus-pocus simply because you eventually squirm your way out. Now I’ll quit talking generalities with you. I’ll get down to specific instances.”

“That would be fine.”

“Specifically,” Burger said, “last night you uncovered a valuable, vital witness in a murder case. If the police had had the testimony of that witness, they might have solved the case by this time. As it was, they were given no opportunity. You and your secretary whisked this witness out from under the noses of the police.”

“You mean Lunk?” Mason asked.

“I mean Lunk.”

“Go ahead.”

“You took him to a hotel and secreted him. You did everything in your power to keep the police from finding him. The police have found him.”

“What are they going to do with him?” Mason asked. “If he’s so valuable, let him go ahead and solve the case.”

“I’m afraid it isn’t that simple,” Burger said.

“Why not?”

“We’ve uncovered some evidence that up to now has been unnoticed in connection with Franklin Shore’s disappearance.”

“What?” Mason asked.

“Specifically, that ten-thousand-dollar check which was given to Rodney French may have been a forgery.”

Mason settled back in his chair, crossed his long legs. “All right, let’s discuss that.”

“I’ll be glad to hear your ideas on it,” Burger said with stiff formality.

“In the first place,” Mason replied easily, “Franklin Shore told his bookkeeper he had put through such a check.”

“I will correct you there,” Burger interrupted, consulting his notes. “The testimony of the bookkeeper as given ten years ago was to the effect that Franklin Shore said he was putting through such a check.”

Mason waved the point aside. “All right, suppose he said he was putting through that check. That establishes its authenticity. But if the check was forged, the statute of limitations has run out. At present, that check business can have no legal significance.”

Burger said, “The check could furnish a motivation.”

“For what?”

“For murder.”

“Go ahead. I’m listening.”

“If we had been able to get in touch with Lunk last night, it is quite possible we could have uncovered some very valuable additional evidence.”

“Do you want to be more specific?”

“Yes. I think we could have found Franklin Shore.”

“And I am accused of keeping you from getting in touch with Lunk?”

“Exactly.”

Mason said, “I’ll puncture that theory right now. The first thing I did with Lunk was to take him down to the hospital to see Matilda Shore. That was where he wanted to go. But... and get this point straight, Burger, because it’s legally important — in place of trying to keep away from the police, I took him to the hospital knowing the police were guarding Matilda Shore, I told the police guards who Lunk was. I told them that he wanted to see Mrs. Shore, that he might have some important evidence, and that Tragg might want to see him. What more can anyone ask?”

Burger nodded. “That’s an outstanding example of your cleverness, Mason. As far as Lunk is concerned, that one very clever move virtually gives you immunity from any prosecution. You could make that stand up in front of a jury. And yet you know, and I know, that you deliberately staged that entire visit so that the guards would eject you and the man with you. You did it simply to give yourself a legal insurance policy.”

Mason grinned. “I can’t help it if you fill up your police force with morons. I took Lunk there, and told them who he was. They pushed him back in the elevator, told him to get out and stay out.”

“I understand,” Burger said patiently. “Now let me call your attention to something. Under our law, any person who willfully prevents or dissuades a person who is, or who may become a witness, from attending upon any inquiry authorized by law is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

Mason nodded.

“And, under another law, if any person gives or promises to give such a witness a bribe to keep him away, he’s guilty of a felony.”

“Go right ahead,” Mason said. “I’m interested in your theory.”

“Under the decisions,” Burger said, “it isn’t necessary that this attempt should be successful. Nor does the witness have to be actually kidnaped. It’s been held in one of our sister states that it’s a crime within the meaning of a similar law to get a witness intoxicated so he couldn’t testify.”

Mason said, “Well, I didn’t bribe anyone, and I didn’t get anyone intoxicated. What’s all the shooting about?”

Burger said, “Lunk adopts a sullen, defiant attitude toward the police, and won’t tell us what he knows. However, he isn’t too intelligent. Once you understand his peculiar psychology and take the time to work with him, it’s possible to get a story out of him — a bit at a time.”

“Well?”

“Lunk has told us enough so that we know Franklin Shore was at his house, that your secretary went out and picked him up. Tragg had told you specifically he wanted Franklin Shore as a witness to appear before the grand jury.”

Mason said, “Go ahead and finish what you have to say, and then I’ll tell you how I feel about it.”

“You want the last word, eh?”

Mason nodded.

Burger said, “Mason, I’m going to hit you where it hurts, and I’m going to hit you hard.”

“By picking on my secretary, I suppose?”

Burger said, “You got her into this. I didn’t. You kept Lunk tied up while she jumped in a cab and went to Lunk’s residence, got Franklin Shore out of bed, told him that he had to get out, and made arrangements to conceal him.”

“You can prove all this, I presume?”

“I can prove it by circumstantial evidence. You know very well, Mason, that you wanted to talk with Franklin Shore before the police did. You sent your secretary out there to pick up Franklin Shore and conceal him.”

“Does she admit that?”

“No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t have to admit it. We’ve got the evidence to prove it.”

“When you say prove, what do you mean?”

“I mean to the satisfaction of a jury.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s circumstantial evidence,” Burger said, “but we have it.”

“You’ve got it like I’ve got the Hope diamond!” Mason said insultingly.

Hamilton Burger met his eyes unflinchingly. “I’ve sympathized with some of the things you’ve done in times past, Mason. I have been so intrigued by your rapid-fire methods and the results you have achieved that I haven’t realized that as far as justice was concerned the viciousness of those methods more than offsets the benefits achieved. Now then, I’m going to pull your house of cards down.”

“How?”

“I’m going to convict your secretary of spiriting off a material witness in a murder case. After that, I’m going to try you as an accessory and I am going to convict you. Then I am going to have you disbarred on the strength of those convictions. Now, you probably have a writ of habeas corpus in your pocket that you’ve been preparing to slap down on my desk as your last word. Go ahead and slap it. I have no desire to be unduly harsh with Miss Street. I am proceeding against her because that’s the only way I can get at you. I don’t intend to confine Miss Street in jail. I am perfectly willing to let you have a writ of habeas corpus. I am perfectly willing to see that she is admitted to bail. I am, however, going to convict her of a crime. If she wants to apply for probation, that’s all right. I won’t stand in her way. Then I am going to convict you of a crime. I am not going to ask for a jail sentence. I am going to see that a fine is imposed, and then I am going to use that conviction to terminate your activities as a member of the Bar.”

Burger pushed back his swivel chair and got to his feet. “Now then, that last word that you were talking about — that business of slapping the writ of habeas corpus on my desk, loses some of its dramatic punch, doesn’t it, Mason?”

Mason also got to his feet, stared across the desk at the district attorney. “All right, I told you I was going to have the last word. Now I’ll have it.

“Burger, the trouble with you is that you’ve hypnotized yourself by looking at law entirely from the viewpoint of a district attorney. District attorneys have organized themselves and they’ve organized public sentiment. You have gradually lulled the public into a feeling of confidence that it can trust you to see that no innocent person is ever knowingly prosecuted.”

Hamilton Burger said, “I am glad to hear you admit that, Mason.”

“You shouldn’t be. You should be sorry.”

“Why?”

“Because the public has sat idly by and let the organized prosecutors amend the law until the constitutional guarantees of the public were swept away. We’re living in a period of changing times. It’s quite possible that the definition of crime will be broadened to include things which we might at present list in the category of political crimes. When the ordinary citizen is dragged into court, he’ll find that the cards have been stacked against him. Ostensibly, they were stacked against the professional criminal by organized public servants, but actually they’ve been stacked against Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary Citizen, because the whole legal procedure has been completely undermined.

“It’s high time for citizens to wake up to the fact that it isn’t a question of whether a man is guilty or innocent, but whether his guilt or innocence can be proved under a procedure which leaves in the citizen the legal rights to which he is entitled under a constitutional government.

“You object to spectacular, dramatic methods of defense. You overlook the fact that for the past twenty-five years you have beguiled the public into releasing its constitutional rights so that the only effective methods of defense which are left are the spectacular and the dramatic. Now then, Mr. District Attorney, you go ahead and arrest Della Street, and we’ll thrash this thing out in a courtroom.”

Burger said, “That’s right, Mason. We’ll thrash it out in a courtroom. And, if you ask me, your last word didn’t amount to much.”

Mason paused in the doorway, his face hard with anger. “I haven’t had that last word yet,” he said. “I’ll have it in court.”

And he slammed the door behind him.