The Case of the Duplicate Daughter

Chapter Thirteen

As soon as court had adjourned, Mason, his eyes tense with concentration, said to Paul Drake, “All right, Paul, I want some action and I want it fast. Who’s the best polygraph operator in this area? I want to give some of my people a lie-detector test. Let’s find out who’s lying.”

“For my money, Cartman Jasper is about the best — but who’s going to take a lie-detector test? Carter Gilman is in custody and you can’t give him a lie-detector test without the consent of the police and the prosecutors. Glamis Barlow is being held as a material witness and...”

“Primarily I’m thinking of Nancy Gilman,” Mason said. “There’s a woman who is something of an enigma. She has too much poise, too much polish, too much sex, in a nice sort of a way. She’s dynamite and you’re never going to be able to tell what she’s thinking unless you can break below the surface.”

“All right, what do you want me to do?”

“Get Cartman Jasper in one of your offices. Get him to set up his equipment all ready for a lie-detector test.”

“And you’re going to run Nancy Gilman?”

“That’s right,” Mason said.

He turned to Della Street. “Della, will you get Nancy Gilman and tell her that I want her in my office, that I want to talk with her?”

Della Street nodded.

“Stay with her,” Mason said. “Take her right up to the office and wait for me.”

As Della left, Mason turned to Paul Drake and said, “You get on the telephone and get Cartman Jasper up there and I may want to give you a lie-detector test, too.”

“Me?” Drake exclaimed in surprise.

“Exactly,” Mason said. “You might become a key witness in this case.”

“How come?”

“This man McCoy may be the key to the whole thing. He’ll swear that he saw Glamis Barlow leaving the office of Vera Martel at nine fifteen. Now, your notes show that Glamis Barlow was playing the slot machines in a casino up to nine eleven. She wouldn’t have had time to get to Vera’s place, have gone in, ransacked it and left by nine fifteen.”

“Remember,” Drake said, “that after she broke away and dashed out into a taxi, I don’t know where she went.”

“But,” Mason said, “you called me and I sent you out to see Steve Barlow and you found her there.”

“That, of course, was some time later.”

“How much later?”

“Well, that was... well, she’d been gone three quarters of an hour.”

“But up to nine eleven she was playing the slot machines?”

“Up to nine eleven she was playing the slot machines.”

“Any chance you could be wrong on the time?”

“None whatever. Not unless I misread my wristwatch.”

“Well, you’re a hell of a detective if you can’t tell the time from your wristwatch,” Mason said. “Don’t start introducing a negative element when you get on the witness stand. You were watching her at nine fifteen?”

“I was watching her play slot machines from forty minutes past eight until nine eleven,” Drake said, “and then I didn’t lose sight of the cab she was in until nine twelve.”

“That’s better,” Mason said. “Get positive about it. Now then, you go get on the phone and get Cartman Jasper all set up in your office. I’m going to keep Della Street and Nancy Gilman waiting until I know that you’re all ready to give a lie-detector test. Then I’m going to go to my office, try to cross-examine Nancy into telling me the truth, and then we’re going to spring a lie detector on her.”

“What’s the truth?” Drake asked.

“The truth,” Mason said, “is that she must have known Vera Martel.”

“And Vera Martel was blackmailing her over something in her past?” Drake asked.

“It must have been some sort of a new angle on blackmail,” Mason said. “Burger is maneuvering for position, trying to get us out on a limb. However, as Judge Alvord has pointed out, they’ve made a prima-facie case against Carter Gilman long ago and he is going to get bound over for murder unless we can dope this thing out within the next few hours, find out exactly what did happen and prove that he’s innocent.”

“You can never prove he’s innocent in the face of this evidence,” Drake said. “Hell’s bells, the minute he went up to that locksmith with the impression of keys to Vera Martel’s apartment and offices he was licked. The evidence of the sawdust is bad enough, but that key business has him so far behind the eight ball even you can’t get him out.”

“I know,” Mason said, “but there’s one person who can get him out.”

“Who?”

“Hamilton Burger.”

“Are you crazy?” Drake asked.

Mason shook his head. “Hamilton Burger is so eager to get a case built up where he’ll have two of my clients so firmly enmeshed in a fabric of falsehood that they can never get clear, that he’s losing sight of the fact Judge Alvord is going to upset his apple cart if he falls down on any element of the case.”

“What element is he going to fall down on?”

“Glamis Barlow breaking into Vera Martel’s office.”

“Oh, look, Perry,” Drake said. “That’s simply a question of a mistake in the time element. Either McCoy or I was mistaken on the time.”

“You don’t sound too damn positive,” Mason said.

“I’m positive, all right,” Drake said, “but it’s easy to make a mistake in the time. You put too much stress on this time element and McCoy will weaken on the witness stand and say, ‘Well, I thought it was nine fifteen but I might have heard wrong. I guess it could have been ten fifteen.’ ”

Mason said, “You be certain that you don’t weaken on the time element because I think we’re on the trail of something.”

“On the trail of what?”

“I wish I knew,” Mason said. “Get busy and get Cartman Jasper up there in your office. If you can’t get him, get someone else that’s good, but have someone there just as fast as he can get in and get a polygraph set up.”

“They like to do that polygraph work in their own offices,” Drake said. “They’re all equipped for it and—”

“I know, I know,” Mason interrupted impatiently. “It isn’t what they like in this case, it’s what I like. They have portable lie detectors that they can bring in and set up, and if Nancy is a good reactor we can find out a lot within fifteen minutes after we start running her on the machine.”

“Okay,” Drake said, “I’ll get Jasper.”

Mason looked at his watch. “I’m going to give Della Street about a fifteen-minute head start,” he said. “I think she can hold Nancy there that long and by that time Nancy is going to be just a little apprehensive.”

“And then you come in?” Drake asked.

“Then I come in,” Mason said.

“Okay,” Drake told him. “I’ll get hold of Jasper. I’m quite certain I can reach him. We’ll be ready whenever you come in.”