The Case of the Demure Defendant

Chapter Six

At police headquarters Mason walked down the corridor to the door marked “Homicide,” pushed it open and walked in.

“Lieutenant Tragg around?” Mason asked the orderly on duty.

“I’ll see. What name? Hey, it’s you!”

“Sure it is,” Mason said. “Whom did you expect? An impostor?”

“Wait just a second,” the orderly said, and dove through a door.

Within a matter of seconds a plain-clothes officer sauntered through the door, crossed the office, and went out of the exit door, but from the shadow on the frosted glass it was apparent he was waiting in the corridor just outside the door, blocking escape.

A moment later the orderly opened the door and said, “Lieutenant Tragg’s in there. He wants to see you. Go right on in.”

Mason entered Tragg’s office.

Lieutenant Tragg, a tall, good-looking individual who seemed somewhat harassed, indicated a chair. “Sit down, Mason.”

“How’s everything coining, Tragg?” Mason asked.

“So-so. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Mason sat down. Tragg said, “Excuse me for a second,” opened the door and walked out.

It was a good three minutes before Tragg returned. This time he was accompanied by Hamilton Burger, the big, barrel-chested district attorney, who tried to make it appear that his presence was casual.

“Hello, Mason,” he said. “Happened to be in the building. Heard you were here. What the devil’s all this about Nadine Farr and that bottle of poison?”

“That,” Mason told him, “is what I was trying to find out.”

Burger’s face. darkened. “You led with your chin this time, Mason.”

“Did I?”

“You know it.”

Mason shrugged his shoulders.

“I’m not going to institute formal proceedings until we’ve had an absolute identification,” Burger said, “but I’m damn soon going to have an identification.”

“Well, that’s interesting,” Mason said.

Abruptly the door opened. An officer gently shoved a woman into the room.

“Come in, Mrs. Felton,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “I’m going to ask you to take a look at Mr. Mason and tell us—”

“That’s the man,” she said.

“Thank you,” Tragg said. “That’s all.”

The officer who had held the door open beckoned to Mrs. Felton. She went out.

A few moments later the door opened again.

Mason grinned, lit a cigarette and said to Lieutenant Tragg, “Having fun?”

Tragg said, “Frankly, Mason, I’m not. I don’t like this. I’m sorry you did what you did.”

The officer ushered Arthur Felton into the room. “Is this the man who gave you the five dollars and then the twenty dollars?”

“That’s right,” Arthur Felton said. He was big-eyed, frightened and seemed on the verge of tears.

“Just tell us what happened,” Hamilton Burger said, saturating his voice with a benevolent, fatherly kindness which was badly overdone.

“Mr. Mason gave us each five dollars and asked us to dive down and try to find a bottle,” Arthur Felton said. “The guy that got it was to get twenty dollars.”

“And who finally found it?”

“I did.”

“And then what happened?”

“Then he said I was to come with him. I told him my folks didn’t want me to go anywhere with strangers, so he told me who he was and drove me home and told my mother he was taking me in to see a chemist and then he’d bring me right back.”

“And the bottle?” Hamilton Burger asked.

“He said I was to hang on to that bottle. I kept it in my hand all the time.”

“Until when?”

“Until we went to this chemist I was telling you about.”

“And what was the chemist’s name? Do you remember?”

“A Mr. Korbel.”

“You’re a bright boy,” Hamilton Burger said. “There isn’t any question in your mind that this is the man?”

“No. Of course he’s the guy.”

Hamilton Burger nodded toward the officer who put his hand on Arthur Felton’s shoulder, turned him around and escorted him from the room.

“Well,” Hamilton Burger said to Lieutenant Tragg, “I guess that does it.”

“Does what?” Mason asked.

Hamilton Burger made no attempt to conceal the dislike in his voice. “Makes you an accessory after the fact,” he said.

“Indeed,” Mason said.

“On a murder charge,” Burger elucidated.

“Well, well, well,” Mason told him, “you interest me. Who was murdered?”

“Mosher Higley, in case you want all of the formal details. You can’t say I didn’t acquaint you with the specific charge against you. Now I’m telling you, Mason, that you’re going to be accused of a crime. You don’t need to make any statement unless you want to. In the event you do make any statement, it will be used against you. Now what do you want to say?”

Mason took a deep drag at his cigarette. “I want to say that you’re all wet. There wasn’t any murder. Mosher Higley died a natural death.”

“He was murdered.”

“How do you know he was murdered?”

“In case you want to know, we have a tape-recorded confession from the woman who murdered him.”

“Very interesting,” Mason said. “I think you’ll have a little trouble using that as evidence, Burger.”

“I suppose you’re going to try that old hooey about this being a privileged communication. I have a little law on that that will surprise you.”

Mason took the cigarette from his mouth, blew out smoke, stretched, yawned, adjusted himself more comfortably on the chair and said, “When can you use a confession, Burger?”

“As soon as I can get the case into court.”

“Of course,” Mason said, “I haven’t looked it up recently, but as I remember it, in order to use a confession it is first necessary to prove a little matter known as the corpus delicti.”

“All right, I’ll prove the corpus delicti,” Hamilton Burger said.

“How?” Mason asked.

“I don’t have to go into that with you.”

“Oh yes, you do,” Mason said. “You can’t accuse me of being an accessory after the fact in a murder case until you can prove there was a murder in the first place. You can’t prove there was a murder in the first place by using the tape-recorded conversation with Nadine Farr. She was under the influence of drugs when she made that statement and—”

“That goes to the weight to be given to evidence, not to its admissibility,” Burger interrupted.

“Don’t be too certain,” Mason told him. “The woman was incompetent at the time. She couldn’t have been called as a witness. If she had been on the witness stand in that drugged condition the court wouldn’t have let her testify. A court isn’t going to let words that are on a recorded tape have greater weight than would be given those same words in a courtroom.”

“We’ll see about that,” Burger announced belligerently.

“And then, of course,” Mason said, “you have to prove that Mosher Higley didn’t die a natural death. The attending physician said he died of coronary thrombosis. Now let’s quit making grandstand plays and get down to brass tacks. Are you going to have a warrant issued for Nadine Farr?”

Hamilton Burger said, “You’ve already made yourself an accessory after the fact. If Nadine Farr is going to be your client you don’t want to weaken your joint case further by having her a fugitive from justice. I’m demanding that you produce her at this time.”

“Got a warrant for her?” Mason asked.

Hamilton Burger started to say something, then checked himself.

“Got a warrant?” Mason repeated.

“No.”

“Going to get one?”

“I’ll handle this case the way I damn please and without discussing my plans with you, Mason. I told you to produce Nadine Farr.”

“Get a warrant for her arrest,” Mason said, “and I’ll see that she is surrendered.”

“I want to question her,” Burger said.

“That’s fine,” Mason told him. “If you want to question her make an appointment at my office. I’ll have her there.”

“I want to question her in private. I want the answers from her, not from you.”

“Then,” Mason said, “as I remember my law, Burger, I think you’ll have to swear out a warrant charging her with murder, have her arrested and booked — and once that is done I will advise her to make no statement except in the presence of counsel.”

Mason got up, stretched, yawned, ground out the cigarette in the ash tray. “Well,” he said, “I’ll be seeing you.”

“You’re seeing me right now,” Burger shouted.

“You mean I can’t leave?” Mason asked.

“That’s right.”

“Why not?”

“You’re going to be charged with a crime.”

“Accessory after the fact?” Mason asked. “You’ve said that several times. Better get a warrant if you want to hold me on that, Burger, and you’ll have some trouble with that charge.”

“There are other charges.”

“What?”

“Tampering with evidence.”

“What evidence?”

“The bottle of poison.”

“And how did I tamper with it?” Mason asked.

“You had no right to touch any evidence. The minute you went out there and recovered evidence in that murder case—”

“Bless your soul,” Mason said, “I didn’t recover any evidence. I didn’t tamper with any evidence. I was assisting the police. Arthur Felton will be the first to tell you that I didn’t even touch the bottle. I made him hold it in his hand all the time. I drove Felton to a consulting chemist who is a man of unquestioned integrity and has a fine professional reputation. I told him to find out what was in the bottle. I took every step to safeguard that bottle so it could be used as evidence, and then I came directly to police headquarters to tell you where you could go to get the evidence.”

“You did what?” Burger asked, astounded.

“Came here to tell you where you could go to find the evidence,” Mason said. “What the devil did you think I came up here for?”

Tragg and Hamilton Burger exchanged glances.

“You knew that we’d been to Korbel’s place and already had the evidence,” Lieutenant Tragg charged.

Mason grinned. “That doesn’t affect the situation. I came here for the express purpose of telling you where you could get the evidence and what steps I had taken to preserve the evidence.”

“If you were so damned considerate of the evidence,” Burger said, “it was your duty to turn that bottle over to the police just as soon as you received it.”

Mason shook his head. “In that case,” he said, “I could well have been convicted of slander and defamation of character. I couldn’t have gone to you and said, ‘Gentlemen, this is a bottle of poison that was hurled off the end of the pier.’ How the devil do I know it’s poison? How do I know when it was hurled off the end of the pier, or by whom? No, gentlemen, I took steps to protect you as well as myself. I wanted to be certain that the bottle contained poison before I reported to you.”

Mason indicated Tragg’s telephone.

“Can I get Hermann Korbel on the line, Tragg?” Mason asked.

Lieutenant Tragg hesitated for a moment, glanced at Hamilton Burger’s angry face. There was a faint flicker of amusement in the lieutenant’s eyes. “Just ask for outside and dial your number,” he said.

Mason asked for outside, then dialed Korbel’s number.

Mason, talking into the telephone, said, “Hello... Hello, Hermann?... This is Perry Mason. What did you find out?”

Burger said, “He didn’t find out anything. We took the evidence away from him.”

Mason motioned the district attorney to silence. “Yes, Hermann, go on.”

Once more Hermann was excited. “Of course,” he said, “I have no way of knowing, Mason, that the tablets in that bottle were all the same. I took a sample from one tablet.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Mason said.

“And I had that sample that the police didn’t know about.”

“I know. Go on,” Mason said.

“You talked about poison,” Korbel said. “I tested it for cyanide. It was not cyanide. It was not arsenic. I only had a little sample. I used X-ray diffraction. I got a peculiar graph. Then I remembered the bottle had the name of a sugar substitute blown in the side.

“By golly, Mason, what you know? That tablet was just what the bottle said, by damn. That tablet was this chemical sugar substitute. Then I used a spectrograph. By golly, those tests are so delicate that if the other tablets had been different, I would have found some traces from their rubbing around against those shot. Those tablets are just what the bottle said they were.”

Mason held the phone for a moment thinking that over. A slow grin spread over his face.

“You there?” Korbel asked.

“That’s right,” Mason said.

“You heard what I said? It’s the sugar substitute.”

“That’s fine. Thanks,” Mason said. “I may call you later. Take good care of that sample. Check your conclusions. You’ll probably have to testify.”

Mason dropped the receiver back into place and grinned at Hamilton Burger.

“You probably didn’t realize, Burger, that when you had the police swoop down on Korbel and grab the bottle with the tablets Korbel had already made a scraping from one of the tablets in that bottle so he could complete his analysis.

“I told you that I was acting in good faith in the matter and that as soon as I had Korbel’s analysis I intended to advise the police in the event the contents of that bottle turned out to be poison.

“I am now glad to announce that Hermann Korbel has just told me the bottle contained exactly what it was supposed to contain. The trade name was blown in the glass in the side of the bottle. It’s a chemical sugar substitute. If you ever want to reduce I can’t recommend it too highly. And from the color of your face I think you’d better take off about thirty pounds.

“And now, gentlemen, in view of that information, if you want to try and stop me from walking out, go ahead.”

Mason walked over to the door, pushed it open.

A plain-clothes man barred his way.

Behind him Mason heard excited whispers, then Tragg’s voice said to the officer, “Okay, let him go.”