The Case of the Counterfeit Eye

Chapter 18

Perry Mason leaned back in his office chair. The top of his desk was littered with newspapers.

"Good for Sergeant Holcomb," he said. "I always knew he had the stuff in him."

"I thought you hated him," Della Street remarked.

"His stupidity is irritating at times," Mason agreed, "but it's only because of his zeal that he gets himself into those situations. So Colemar pulled a gun and tried to smoke his way out when he saw he was cornered?"

She nodded slowly.

"In many ways," Mason said, "that last situation is typical of the pair of them. Sergeant Holcomb came roaring up to the airport with his sirens screaming."

"But he had to use his siren to make the time he did through traffic," Della Street pointed out.

"Certainly, through traffic. But not after he had gone through the traffic. He had the whole airport in front of him, and yet he had to come up with his sirens screaming. Of course Colemar knew what that meant. He hid in the Men's Room, put his eye to the keyhole and waited to see what happened. After a while, Holcomb started for the restroom. Colemar poked his gun through the glass panel in the door and opened fire. If he hadn't been nervous, he'd have killed Holcomb with that first shot.

"So far, Holcomb had run true to form. He blundered everything he did. He alarmed his quarry by going up to the station with the siren going. He should have known, after he had searched the waiting room, that Colemar was in the Men's Room. The fact that he suspected it strongly is indicated by the fact that he strode toward the door. A more intelligent man would have moved up on the place from the side jerked the door open, leveled his gun, and ordered his prisoner to come out. But not Holcomb. He pounded up toward the door, broadside on. Then comes the side of Sergeant Holcomb that gets my respect and admiration.

"That was a.45 slug that hit him in the shoulder. And, sister, I'm here to tell you that a.45 slug, catching a man in the shoulder, takes a lot of steam out of him. Holcomb didn't even have his gun in his hand."

She nodded.

"Tell me," he asked, "did he stop while he was getting his gun out, or what did he do?"

"He kept right on walking," she said. "The impact of that slug turned him halfway around. He straightened himself, set his jaw, and kept walking toward that door, pulling out his gun as he walked. Colemar took one more shot, and Holcomb started shooting through the door. You could see the places where his slugs went through the wood. He made as perfect a group as though he'd been shooting at a target on the police range."

Mason nodded slowly, and said, "A damn good man. It takes guts to do that."

Mason picked up one of the newspapers. District Attorney Burger's likeness was spread over three columns on the front page. Below it, in large print, appeared:

To the right, and slightly below, was a picture of Sergeant Holcomb. The space in between was filled with line drawings showing Sergeant Holcomb approaching the door of the Men's Room, firing from the hip, while Colemar was crouched back of the door, emptying a.45 revolver at the officer.

"They certainly hogged plenty of credit," Della Street said resentfully, her voice betraying her feelings. "You were the one who thought it all out. You put the cards in their hands. All they had to do was to lay them down and take the tricks."

Mason chuckled.

"You saw that Thelma Bevins got her money?" he asked.

"Yes. And she got a nice bonus from Pete Brunold."

"Good for Brunold. He's great stuff for the sobsisters, isn't he?… Thelma Bevins came through splendidly."

"What would you have done, Chief, if she'd fallen down? She could have become frightened, you know, and told the whole story before she got on the witness stand."

"The nice part of it was," Mason said, "that she couldn't. If she told Burger the story of what actually had happened, Burger would have become convinced she was a clever liar and was simply trying to protect me. Using the buildup that I did, Burger hypnotized himself on her identity. And the more she denied it, the more he'd have become certain she was lying."

"But suppose something had happened?"

"I could have blasted it out of Colemar," he said slowly, "on crossexamination. But I didn't want to do it."

"Why,?"

"Because then it would have looked as though I'd slipped one over on Burger. Burger gave me a square deal. I wanted to give him one. Burger has a horror of prosecuting an innocent man. That's a distinct asset so far as I'm concerned. Looking back on this case, his recollections are going to be very pleasant. He'll give me the breaks the next time I want him to investigate some particular piece of evidence."

"Chief," she said suddenly, "how did that glass eye get put into Harry McLane's hand? It's certain Colemar wouldn't have put it there."

Mason looked at her and smiled significantly.

The meaning of that smile dawned upon her.

"Why," she exclaimed, "you… you could have…!"

"It would," Mason said, "have been a swell break for Brunold, if Brunold had been in jail at the time the murder was committed. Unfortunately, he wasn't. I had to move fast to keep the police from suspecting."

"But you shouldn't have done that. In the first place, you had no right taking those chances. In the second place it wasn't… wasn't… I can't describe it."

"Is ethical the word you're groping for?" he asked.

"Not exactly. It's so out of keeping with your position. You do the darnedest things. You're half saint and half devil. There isn't any middle ground. You go to both extremes."

He laughed at her and said, "I hate mediocrity."

"How about Hazel Fenwick?" she asked.

"They'll pick her up one of these days," Mason told her. "Dick Basset certainly had a narrow escape. If it hadn't been for that murder, the female Bluebeard would have chalked up two more victims."

"Two more!"

"Sure," he said. "She'd have bumped Hartley Basset first, and then Dick. Perhaps she'd have cleaned up on Sylvia Basset as well."

"How can women do things like that?"

"Just sort of a disease," he said. "It's a mental quirk."