The Case of the Drowning Duck

Chapter 22

Della Street said reproachfully to Perry Mason, “You certainly do give a person plenty of scares, don’t you?”

“Do I?”

“You know darn well you do. When it came two o’clock and the judge didn’t come out to go on with the case, and then the deputy sheriffs began to go around picking up people here and there, I decided they’d nailed you on the charge of tampering with evidence or being an accessory or something.”

Mason grinned. “The district attorney was a hard man to sell, but once he got the idea, he really went into action. Let’s go pack and get out of here.”

“What about Witherspoon?” she asked.

Mason said, “I think I’ve had about all of Witherspoon I want for a while. We’ll send him a bill on the first of the month, and that will wind up our acquaintance with Mr. John L. Witherspoon.”

“Has Mrs. Dangerfield confessed?”

“Not yet. But they’ve got enough evidence on her now to really build up a case. They found the box which was checked at the Pacific Greyhound station, the bottle of detergent and, best of all, where she’d burned a letter of instructions from Burr. The ashes still held enough writing so they can prove the conspiracy. Also they got a few fingerprints from Milter’s apartment.”

“You’d have thought she’d have worn gloves up there,” Della Street said.

Mason laughed. “You forget that she’d put on a striptease act to scare away visitors. A woman doesn’t appear at the head of the stairs wearing next to nothing, and with gloves on her hands.”

“No. That’s right,” Della Street admitted. “How about Lois and Marvin?”

“Off on a honeymoon. Did you bring along the papers in that will-contest case, Della?”

“They’re in my brief case, yes. I thought you might find time to work on them.”

Mason looked at his watch. “I know a desert inn,” he said, “run by a quaint old man, and a woman who makes the most marvelous apple pies. It’s up at an elevation of about three thousand feet where there’s a lot of granite-rock dikes to be explored, interesting groups of cacti — where we’d be completely undisturbed, and could check over the papers in that whole tile, dictate a plan of strategy and a preliminary brief...”

“What causes all the hesitation?” Della Street interrupted.

Mason grinned. “I just hate to get so far away from an interesting murder case.”

Della grabbed his hand, said, “Come on, don’t let that hold you back. You don’t have to worry about finding cases any more. They hunt you out. My Lord, how frightened I was when Lois Witherspoon got up and started to tell what she knew, and I realized you were just sparring for time!”

Mason grinned. “I sweat a little blood myself. I kept one eye on the clock and tried to stir up a lot of excitement that would take the district attorney’s mind off what he was doing. If I had used the usual tactics of objecting to the questions and the witnesses, I’d have simply centered suspicion on myself. As it was, I managed to stall it through, but don’t ever kid yourself — it was by the skin of my eyeteeth.”

She said, “Your eyeteeth won’t have any skin left. Did anyone ask why the duck didn’t sink eventually?”

“No,” Mason said.

“What would you have told them if they had?”

Mason grinned. “From the time Haggerty arrived in the room, he was in charge of the case. It was up to him to explain why the duck didn’t drown.”

Della Street studied him with the shrewd appraisal which a woman gives a man whom she knows very, very well. “You went into that apartment,” she charged. “You saw the drowning duck, and you thought that Marvin Adams had been there. You sympathized with him because his dad had been executed for murder and because he was in love, and you deliberately, willfully, maliciously, and with felonious intent started to juggle the evidence.”

Mason said, “You should add, against that peace and dignity of the People of the State of California.”

She looked up at him with laughing eyes. “How far is it to this desert inn?” she inquired.

“It’ll take us two hours’ hard driving.”

“I’ll telephone the office and tell Gertie,” she said. “When shall I tell her we’ll be back? How long will it take to get the dictation done in the will contest?”

Mason squinted his eyes thoughtfully, looked up at the cloudless blue of the Southern California desert sky, felt the welcome touch of the sunlight which bathed the metropolis in brilliant warmth.

“You tell Gertie,” he said, “that we’ll be back when she digs up a good murder case for us — and not before. Tell her that just any old ordinary murder case won’t do. We want...”

Della Street started toward the hotel, Mason striding along at her side, people on the streets craning their necks, turning to watch them.

Della Street looked up at Perry Mason. “Well,” she said, “you’ve contributed to the education of an agricultural community. You’ve shown them how to drown a duck. City slicker! Now, what else do you know?”