The Case of the Demure Defendant

Chapter Eight

Della Street unlocked the door of Mason’s office to find the lawyer reading advance copies of the Supreme Court reports.

“Well, how was the trip, Della?”

She laughed. “I had visions of spending a few days at the beach, getting a sun tan and a little surf bathing.”

Mason said, “And I had visions of a beautiful legal battle with Hamilton Burger over corpus delicti, legal medicine and professional ethics.”

“And now everything has blown up?”

Mason nodded.

“Just what happened?”

“Well,” Mason said, “it turns out that we’ve had a tempest in a teapot. Nadine Farr found an extra bottle of sweetening pills on the shelf. It never occurred to her that it wasn’t the regular bottle she had been using until Mosher Higley tasted the chocolate, suddenly became convulsed with pain and accused her of having poisoned him. She dashed down to her room, looked in the place where she had secreted the cyanide tablets, and found they were gone. That was when she found out that she had taken tablets from an extra bottle in the kitchen that she hadn’t noticed before.

“Of course, in view of Higley’s accusation, she reached what seemed to her to be a thoroughly logical conclusion — that someone had put the cyanide tablets where she would naturally place them in Higley’s drink and poison the old man.”

“But she hadn’t?” Della Street asked.

Mason grinned. “She had a guilty conscience. She jumped at conclusions from insufficient data. That’s the worst of circumstantial evidence, Della. You grab a button and sew a vest on it and then think the button must have come off the vest.”

“But what do you suppose did become of the cyanide tablets Nadine Farr placed in her room?”

“That,” Mason said, “is something we’ll have to investigate quietly, tactfully and rapidly. Naturally it isn’t a good idea for a young woman who has entertained suicidal thoughts to remain in possession of a collection of cyanide tablets, although I think the incentive for suicide has now passed.”

“Chief, what in the world do you suppose was back of Higley’s persecution of Nadine Farr? Think of a man telling a young girl who was in love that she must go away and never communicate with the man she loved, that she must never see him again.”

“That,” Mason said, “isn’t the significant thing.”

“What is?”

“The fact that she was going to do it.”

“She wasn’t.”

“She was going to kill herself, which amounts to the same thing.”

“Higley must have been a devil.”

Mason said, “I don’t like to judge Higley on the strength of Nadine Farr’s statements. Higley is dead. He can’t defend himself. Nadine Farr hated him. Oh well, that’s all water under the bridge now. What did you do with Nadine?”

“I left her down at the beach.”

Mason raised his eyebrows.

“She wanted to stay. She’d been under quite a strain and when I told her that everything was all right she had quite a reaction. You know how she is. She won’t cry. She keeps her emotions all bottled up inside herself. That’s why she’s under such terrific tension.”

“And she didn’t want to go back home?”

“No, she said she didn’t want to face anyone for a little while. She said that since the rooms were already paid for she’d stay down there overnight and take a bus in the morning.”

“You think she’ll be all right, Della?”

“I think so. It’s hard to judge her, but she said she’d be fine. It was my idea that perhaps she wanted to telephone John Locke and have him meet her. She wanted to be the one to tell him — before he heard a garbled version from someone else.”

Mason nodded. “That’s probably it. Well, we may as well call it a day and—”

Paul Drake’s code knock sounded insistently urgent on the outer door.

Della Street raised her eyebrows in silent interrogation.

Mason nodded.

Della Street went over to open the door. “Hi, Paul,” she said. “We were just calling it a day. What is it? You look all excited.”

Drake closed the door, walked over to the clients’ chair, and for once didn’t sprawl out crossways but sat straight and erect. His eyes searched those of Perry Mason.

“Perry,” he said, “would you pull a fast one without telling me about it?”

“What seems to be the trouble, Paul?”

“Look, Perry, you’re in a real jam this time. It looks as though they’ve caught you with the goods.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m just wondering,” Drake said, “if you are crazy enough to do it.”

“To do what?”

“Throw that bottle out into Twomby’s Lake and then pay a boy to recover it.”

“Now wouldn’t that be something!” Mason said. “Do you mean to tell me, Paul, that Hamilton Burger is insinuating I did that?”

“He hasn’t specifically accused you as yet. He may later on. At the moment he’s dealing only in innuendoes.”

“And what’s given him all those ideas?” Mason asked.

Drake said, “Of course, you have to admit, Perry, that dredging out that bottle which Nadine Farr insisted contained cyanide of potassium and—”

“She didn’t insist on it,” Mason said. “She simply thought it might have contained cyanide tablets.”

“According to the way I heard it,” Drake said, “she told the doctor positively and absolutely that the bottle contained cyanide.”

“Well, you can hear lots of things,” Mason said, “but what interests me at the moment is what has caused you to become so steamed up and imbued with the idea that I planted this bottle of evidence.”

“They found the other bottle,” Drake said.

“What!” Mason exclaimed.

“After you walked out of police headquarters, leaving Lieutenant Tragg and Hamilton Burger sitting there with their mouths open, Burger began to get an idea that this might have been one of your fast ones.

“Lieutenant Tragg contacted the car dispatcher and they sent a radio car hurrying out to Twomby’s Lake. The cops started kids diving all over again and this time they found the bottle.”

“What do you mean, the bottle?”

“Well, call it a bottle,” Drake said. “Anyway, they found another bottle.”

“And what about this one?”

“This was the same type of bottle as the other. It had shot and tablets in it, but these tablets were cyanide of potassium.”

“The devil!” Mason exclaimed.

“That’s right. Look at the thing from Hamilton Burger’s viewpoint. He feels he has you dead to rights. Of course, Perry, I know that you have unorthodox, unconventional ideas about the cross-examination of witnesses, but if you fixed up a bottle with sugar substitute pills and shot, then went out and tossed it off the end of the pier so the boys could recover it and thereby kill the case against Nadine Farr, you really and truly stuck your neck out.”

“Is there any evidence I did anything like that?” Mason asked.

“Burger says there is. Two of the boys saw you throw something out into the water.”

“Oh Lord!” Mason exclaimed. “How dumb can the guy get! I threw a stone out into the water to estimate the distance where Nadine’s bottle would have hit the water.”

“Well, the kids saw you throwing something and that’s enough for the district attorney.”

Mason began to laugh, then suddenly became serious. “Go ahead, Paul.”

“That’s it,” Drake said. “That’s the story, Perry. The D.A. got to thinking things over and it occurred to him that that would be what he referred to as ‘a typical Perry Mason trick.’ So he ordered a radio car to go back and hire boys to search the lake again. And they found this other bottle, which Burger, of course, insists is the real bottle.

“If you were in Burger’s shoes you’d feel the same way he does. He acted on a hunch, and as a result of that hunch he uncovered the evidence.”

“How did you get the information, Paul?”

“From one of the newspaper reporters.”

“Hamilton Burger is giving it to the papers?”

“He’s being very ethical. He’s letting the police give it. The cops are making a dramatic story out of it. Apparently the murder case blew up when the bottle which had been recovered proved to contain only a sugar substitute. But good old Hamilton Burger, realizing the fact that he was dealing with Perry Mason, whose reputation for being ingeniously resourceful is well known in legal circles, insisted that there was no direct evidence that this bottle which Perry Mason had so ‘opportunely recovered’ was the same bottle which Nadine Farr had admitted throwing into the lake.

“So Hamilton Burger, with his keenly logical legal mind, refused to be diverted from the scent. He sent divers down to look for another bottle. And, sure enough, they found that other bottle and apparently it contained cyanide. In any event, the substance has the distinctive odor of cyanide and is now in the process of being analyzed.”

Mason motioned to Della Street. “Get Nadine on the phone.”

Della Street’s nimble fingers flew over the dial on the telephone.

Mason lit a cigarette.

Drake, his voice showing his concern, said, “Perry, you didn’t^ did you?”

“Didn’t what?”

“Didn’t plant that bottle?”

“Hell’s bells,” Mason said, “do I look like a damn fool, Paul?”

“But if you had got away with it, it would have been such a slick scheme. It was diabolically ingenious — an answer to the whole puzzle, a simple solution that would have left Hamilton Burger out on the end of a limb, the laughingstock of everyone.”

“In other words,” Mason said, somewhat ominously, “what Hamilton Burger calls ‘a typical Perry Mason trick.’ ”

“Now don’t get me wrong, Perry,” Drake said. “I was just asking.”

“Well,” Mason said, “for your information, Paul, that is not a typical Perry Mason trick. I sometimes do things that will expose the weakness of the police theory. I sometimes cross-examine a witness by bringing him face to face with physical conditions which demonstrate the fallacy of his testimony, but I don’t go around planting evidence in order to compound murders.”

Drake’s face showed relief. He settled back in the chair. “Well,” he said, “that’s that. Although I’m darned if I know just how you’re going to go about proving that you didn’t do it.”

Mason said, “Let’s let Hamilton Burger go about proving that I did do it.”

Drake shook his head. “As far as public opinion is concerned he’s already done that. When a man says, ‘I feel that this magician was intending to pull a rabbit out of his hat; if I’m right, when I look in the silk hat I’ll find a rabbit,’ and then he looks in the silk hat and pulls out a rabbit, he’s proved his point as far as popular opinion is concerned.”

Della Street, looking up from the telephone, said, “The motel reports that Miss Farr has checked out.”

“Who’s on the line?” Mason asked.

“The manager — in this case a woman.”

“Let me talk with her.”

Mason picked up the phone, said, “Good evening. I’m sorry to bother you but I’m very anxious to get some information about Miss Farr. You say she’s checked out?”

“That’s right. She was only here a short time.”

“Can you tell me how she left?”

“A young man called for her. He asked for the number of Miss Farr’s unit. I gave it to him and... well, under the circumstances, I made it a point to keep an eye on him. We have to be rather careful, you know, particularly with single women who register.

“There was some suspicion because Miss Farr and another young woman came in together and rented separate units. However, apparently it was quite all right. Miss Farr checked out a few minutes after the young man called for her. They drove away together.”

“And about how long ago?” Mason asked.

“Not over ten or fifteen minutes. Now may I ask who you are and what is the reason for your interest?”

Mason said, “I’m acting in loco parentis, and thank you very much.”

The lawyer hung up, turned to Paul Drake. “All right, Paul. Back to normal.”

“What do you mean?” Drake asked.

“You were complaining about this case,” Mason said. “You had become so accustomed to being rushed you didn’t want to do things in a leisurely manner. That’s all over now. You can get back to the routine of running around in circles, putting on swarms of operatives, burning the midnight oil, juggling phone calls.”

“What do you want?”

“Everything you can get your hands on,” Mason said. “I want a line on John Avington Locke, a young chap in whom Nadine is very much interested and with whom she left the High-Tide Motel at the beach fifteen minutes ago. I want to know everything I can about the background of Mosher Higley. I want to find out about Mr. and Mrs. Jackson Newburn. I want to know what the police are doing in this case. I want to know everything that’s pertinent.”

Drake said, “This character they call Cap’n Hugo is in my office. He worked for Mosher Higley for years and years. He’s quite a character. I suggested that he come in and see you.”

“When?” Mason asked.

“I told him to come in during office hours and wait in my office, but he came strolling in just before I got that report about the second bottle of poison. I left him sitting there and dashed on in here.”

“What does he know?” Mason asked.

“Everything.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

“He was a general man of all work. He’d been with Mosher Higley for some thirty years. When my men interviewed him they found out Cap’n Hugo is one of those rich, racy characters who doesn’t miss a thing. My man made a report giving me a summary of Hugo’s story, but he said I should talk with Hugo myself because there’s a certain amount of local color about him that can’t be put in a report. So I thought I’d size him up and you could see him if it seemed worthwhile.”

“Hugo agreed to come in?”

“He didn’t want to,” Drake said. “Claimed that he was busy. My man told him he’d pay him ten dollars to come in and talk with me and Hugo grabbed the money. Higley left him without a cent.”

Mason said, “Go back to your office, Paul, and bring him down here.”

“Anything else?” Drake asked.

“Get men working,” Mason told him. “Get your reports together. Let’s find out all the facts we can, and let’s try to find some of them first.”

“How serious can this be?” Drake asked.

“Can what be?”

“Hamilton Burger accusing you of planting a bottle for him to find—”

“Damn serious,” Mason said. “I can protest my innocence until I’m black in the face but no one’s going to believe me. It would have been such a shrewd, ingenious trick that people won’t stop to look at the ethics of it. They’ll simply smile and say that I was caught manipulating evidence.

“However, I can get around that in some way. What I’m worrying about is what it’s going to do to Nadine Farr.”

Mason turned to Della Street. “Have any idea where Dr. Denair was going, Della?”

She shook her head. “I could call his office and find—”

“Don’t. His nurse is keeping company with a police detective. That’s probably how the story of the tape recording leaked out. Okay, Paul, get busy. Bring Cap’n Hugo down here.”

Drake got up, started for the door, paused with his hand on the knob and said, “You want lots of action on this, Perry?”

Mason nodded.

“I may have to pay out a little money for fast information — getting leads on—”

“Pay out anything you have to,” Mason said, “only get the information.”

After Paul Drake had left, Della Street glanced at Perry Mason. There was no concealing the worry in her eyes.

“What do you suppose happened?” she asked.

Mason shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you suppose Nadine got to thinking about that confession she had made, went and got some sugar substitute tablets, put them in a bottle with some shot and went out and threw them off the pier?”

“Why would she have done that?” Mason asked.

“Good heavens, why not? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred that would have been all there was to it.

“Gosh, Chief, just look at the facts. Nadine took a truth serum test. She probably thought she could control what she said. She couldn’t. She told everything about Mosher Higley’s death. Then we played that tape recording back to her. She said she wanted twenty-four hours to think things over. And whatever she was planning to do was something she wanted to do in private. Remember that she wouldn’t even let Dr. Denair drive her when she left here?

“What’s more logical than for her to take some of those sugar substitute tablets, put them in a bottle with some shot, throw the bottle off the end of the pier and then sit down to wait? She knew that sooner or later a search would be made.”

“She’d have to be diabolically clever to have thought all that up,” Mason said, his manner thoughtful.

“Well,” Della Street told him, “there are clever women, you know.”

“I know,” Mason said. “It might interest you to know that Mrs. Jackson Newburn, Mosher Higley’s niece, came in to warn me about Nadine Farr.”

“What did she think of Nadine?”

“Her appraisal agreed with yours.”

Before Della could say anything else, Drake’s code knock sounded on the door of the private office.

Della Street opened it and Paul Drake said, “Here’s Cap’n Hugo to talk with you, Perry, and if you’ll excuse me I’m on my way. I’ve got some hot stuff coming in over the wire. If there’s anything you want, get in touch with me and I’ll be right down.”