The Case of the Glamorous Ghost

Chapter number 15

Mason, who had for hours been pacing back and forth in his office, said to Della Street, “Della, there has to be an answer. There’s something that doesn’t fit. Somewhere in here there’s a key due that...”

Suddenly Mason broke off and snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! It was right under my nose all the time. I should have had it sooner. I muffed it.”

“Muffed what?” Della Street asked.

“The keys.”

“What about them?”

“Remember,” Mason said, “that when we entered the Titterington Apartments I tried different keys until I found one that opened the front door?”

She nodded.

“And,” Mason went on excitedly, “we went up to the apartment that Hepner had maintained under the name of Newberg. I tried that key on the door. It slipped into the lock all right but it didn’t work the latch. I thought then I was on the wrong scent, but I tried the other keys just as a matter of routine and one of them opened the door.”

“I don’t see what that proves,” she said.

“On that type of apartment,” Mason said, “the front door has a lock that can be worked by any key to any apartment in the house. Hang it, Della, that other key is the thing we’ve been looking for.”

“The key clue, eh?” Della Street asked with a wan smile.

“Damned if it isn’t,” Mason said. “Stick around, Della. Ride herd on the office. Keep in touch with Paul Drake. If you don’t hear from me by nine-thirty, go on home.”

She laughed. “Try and make me. I’m going to wait here now until... Chief, can’t I go with you?”

He shook his head. “I need you to hold down the office and for all I know you may have to bail me out of jail.”

Mason grabbed his hat and hurried out of the door.

Mason picked up his car and drove to the Titterington Apartments.

He rang the bell marked “Manager.”

The same woman came to the door who had accompanied Sergeant Holcomb when Mason, Della Street and Paul Drake had been discovered in the apartment rented by Frank Ormsby Newberg.

Mason said, “I’m not sure if you remember me but...”

“Certainly I remember you, Mr. Mason.”

“I want some information.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Mason, but as far as that Newberg apartment is concerned I can’t...”

“Not about the Newberg apartment,” Mason said. “I want to compare a key that I have with duplicate keys of the apartments.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you. I’m working on a lead.”

She shook her head.

Mason took a twenty-dollar bull from his pocket and said, “I’m not going to take any of your keys. I simply want to check the keys of the different apartments.”

“Why?”

“I’m trying to find out something about the way these keys are made.”

“Well,” she said, “I guess... no one told me you couldn’t do that, although they warned me against you. They said you were pretty tricky.”

Mason laughed. “The police always adopt a dim view of anyone trying to make an independent investigation. The police theory isn’t always right.”

She debated the matter with herself for a moment, then said, “I’d have to watch you, Mr. Mason, to see what you’re doing.”

“Certainly,” Mason said.

She opened the door of a key cupboard and at the same time took the twenty-dollar bill which Mason extended toward her.

Mason took a key from his pocket, started comparing it with the other keys.

“Is this a key to an apartment here in the house?” she asked.

Mason said, “I’m trying to determine whether another key might open some apartment here.”

“Well, it certainly wouldn’t. These locks are the best.”

Mason, hurrying through his comparison of the keys, suddenly found a key that was identical with the key he held in his hand.

He held the key only long enough to make sure they were the same, noted the number of 281, then replaced the apartment house key on its hook without giving any sign. He went on comparing his key with the others until at last he came to the end of the board.

Slowly he shook his head.

“I could have saved you twenty dollars and a trip down here, Mr. Mason. All you needed to have done was to have telephoned me and asked me if some other key would have fitted one of these apartments. We’re very careful about them. We’ve had some trouble and...”

“Well, I just had to make sure,” Mason said, ruefully.

“How are things coming with your case?” she asked.

“So-so.”

The manager shook her head slowly from side to side. “I’m afraid that girl’s guilty.”

“Of course,” Mason said, “the fact that Hepner had an apartment here under the name of Frank Ormsby Newberg introduces an element of mystery into the case. I’d like to find out something about it.”

“So would I,” she said.

“Did he have any friends here in the building?”

She shook her head.

“Do you have many vacancies?”

“Very, very few.”

“Let’s take a couple of them at random,” Mason said. “For instance, here’s apartment 380. How long has the tenant been in there?”

“Some five or six years.”

“260?”

“About two years.”

“281,” Mason said.

“Well, that, of course, is exceptional.”

“Why?”

“That girl came here because she had a relative who was very ill and she had to be here off and on. She moved here from Colorado some place. It was temporary. Her relative died a week ago and she’s moving out for good.”

“Oh, I believe I read of the case. She’s a blonde?”

“No, a brunette. About twenty-seven. Rather quiet but with a very nice appearance, well-dressed, good figure. She impresses you.”

Mason frowned. “I wonder if I’ve seen her. What’s her name?”

“Sadie Payson.”

“I don’t believe I am familiar with the name,” Mason said. “How about 201?”

“That’s a man. He’s been with us six or seven years.”

“You evidently have a bunch of steady, reliable tenants.”

“That’s the kind of a place I try to run, Mr. Mason.”

“How long have you been manager?”

“For ten years. I’ve made it a point to weed out my tenants carefully, to get those who are steady and dependable. It’s a lot better to have rentals coming in regularly than to have trouble with collections and having people moving in and out.”

“That, of course, is true. But I don’t see how you can weed them out.”

“Well, I flatter myself I’m a pretty good judge of character.”

“What about this man that you knew as Newberg?”

“That’s one of the reasons I was suspicious when I saw his picture in the paper. He didn’t fit in somehow. He was like a phony diamond. It’s nice-looking and it glitters and it sparkles, but you just have the feeling all the time that there’s something wrong.”

“And that’s the way you felt about Newberg?”

“Yes — after he’d moved in and been here for a while. When I first met him I felt that he was just the type I wanted. He told me he was studying to be an engineer and that he’d be away on field trips quite a bit.

“Well, it wasn’t long before I realized the man wasn’t really living in the apartment. He was just using it for some reason or other. You can tell when an apartment’s being lived in. There’s a feel about the place.

“Of course, Mr. Newberg would come and stay a few days. He’d sleep there lots of times, but you couldn’t feel right about him. He paid the rent right on the dot so there was no way I could question him or ask him to move.”

“Women?” Mason asked.

“Definitely not. I watched him on that. Of course a man’s apartment is his home and ordinarily I don’t snoop, but in this case if he’d been at all promiscuous... well, good heavens, here I am rambling on, and I had orders not to talk to you or give you any information about Newberg.”

“Nothing wrong with what you’re telling me,” Mason said. “I really should hire you to sit with me in court and help me pick jurors. I see that you can judge character quickly and accurately.”

“Well, after you’ve seen enough of people you can spot the ones that aren’t on the up-and-up — at least I know I can.”

“Thanks a lot,” Mason told her. “I’d like to visit with you and talk about people, but since the police told you not to talk to me I’ll be on my way.”

He went out, walked twice around the block, came back ten minutes later and pressed the button opposite the name of Sadie M. Payson.

There was no answer.

Mason opened the front door with his key and went up to the second floor. He walked down to 281, rang the doorbell, and when he received no answer, inserted the key in the lock, twisted it and found that the look worked back smoothly.

The lawyer withdrew the key, stood in front of the door, hesitating.

Abruptly a woman’s voice on the other side of the door said, “Who’s there?”

Mason said, “I’m the new tenant.”

“The new tenant! What in the world are you talking about? I’m not out yet.”

“I’m the new tenant,” Mason said. “I have the key. I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you but...”

The door was flung open. An indignant brunette, pulling up a zipper on a housecoat, regarded him with flashing eyes. “Well, I certainly like that! And I certainly admire your crust! I’m not leaving until midnight. I haven’t moved out and I haven’t surrendered my key and the rent’s paid until the first.”

“I’m sorry,” Mason said, “but it’s imperative that I get some measurements of the apartment.”

She stood there in the doorway, bristling with indignation. Behind her, Mason saw two suitcases, open on a bed, being packed. There was a traveling bag on a chair. She was evidently wearing only the housecoat and slippers. She said, “Why, if you’d have come walking in here you’d have caught me... undressed.”

“But you didn’t answer the door.”

“Of course I didn’t answer the door. I didn’t want to be disturbed. I’ve just had a bath and I’m getting my things packed and then I’m going to the airport. The manager had no right renting you this apartment.”

“I’m sorry,” Mason said. “I understood you were leaving and I have to have measurements for some of the things I’m buying.”

“I’m leaving at midnight. I haven’t checked out, and the rent’s paid.”

“Well,” Mason said, with his best smile, “I guess there’s no harm done.”

“No harm done because I threw on a housecoat when I heard your key in the look! Haven’t I seen you somewhere before? Your face...”

“Yes?” Mason asked as she broke off abruptly.

“You’re Mason,” she said, “Perry Mason! I’ve seen your face in the papers. That’s why you looked familiar! You’re the one who’s defending that woman. You...”

She started to slam the door.

Mason pushed his way into the apartment.

The woman in the housecoat fell back toward the rear of the apartment.

Mason kicked the door shut.

“Get out,” she said. “Get out or I’ll...” Her voice trailed away into silence.

“Call the police?” Mason asked.

She whirled abruptly toward one of the suitcases, came up with a gun that glittered in her hand.

“I’ll do something more effective than that, Mr. Mason.”

“And then what will you tell the police?” Mason asked.

“I’ll tell them I...”

She started groping for the zipper on the housecoat. “I’ll tell them that you tried to attack me — and I’ll make it stick.”

Mason stepped forward. “Before you do anything like that,” he said, “permit me to give you this document.”

“What... what’s that?”

“That,” Mason said, “is a subpoena to appear in court tomorrow and testify on behalf of the defense in the case of the People of the State of California versus Eleanor Corbin alias Eleanor Hepner.”

Her eyes showed dismay, then determination. Her hand found the zipper on the housecoat, jerked it half down. She ripped a jagged tear in the cloth. Mason, lunging forward, grabbed the hand that held the gun, pushed the arm back and up, twisted the gun from her grasp and put it in his pocket.

She flung herself at him and Mason threw her over onto the bed.

“Now,” he said, “sit down and quit acting like a fool. I may be the best friend you have in the world.”

“You,” she exclaimed, “the best friend! I like that!”

“I may be the best friend you have in the world,” Mason repeated. “Look at the spot you’re in. You posed as Douglas Hepner’s mother, living in Salt Lake. You worked with him on a racket that started out as a freelance detective business, getting twenty percent of smuggled gems, and developed into blackmail.

“Then Douglas Hepner is found dead with a bullet in the back of his head and you are on the point of taking a midnight plane out of the country.”

“So what? What if I am? This is a free country. I can do as I damn please.”

“Sure you can,” Mason said, “and by doing it, put a rope right around that pretty little neck of yours. If I were as unscrupulous as you seem to think I am, I’d like nothing better than to let you get on the plane and then drag you into the case and accuse you of the murder. That would save Eleanor from a first-degree murder rap.”

“He was killed with her gun,” the woman said.

“Sure he was,” Mason said, “and she’d given him her gun as protection. Somebody had been jabbing him with a hypodermic needle and he was under the influence of morphia when he died. He was probably so groggy he only had a faint idea of what he was doing. Under those circumstances it would have been easy for anyone to have taken the gun from his pocket and shot him in the back of the head.”

“You say he was under the influence of morphine?”

“I think he was. He’d been jabbed with a hypodermic.”

“That,” she said, “explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“I don’t have to tell you,” she said. “I’m just getting things straight in my own mind.”

“No,” Mason told her, “you do have to tell me. I’ve served a subpoena on you. You’re either going to talk to me now in private or you’re going to talk on the witness stand in public — with newspaper reporters making notes of everything you say.”

“You can’t bluff me.”

“Somewhere,” Mason said, “you have a family — a mother, a father, perhaps you’ve been married and separated and have a child. You don’t want those people to get that picture of you. You...”

She blinked back tears. “Damn you,” she said.

“I’m simply pointing things out to you,” Mason said.

“You don’t have to drag my family into it.”

“You’d be the one who was dragging your family into it,” the lawyer told her. “You and Doug Hepner were working a racket. I don’t know how much of it was handled for the reward, how much of it was blackmail, but you had a system of signals, When Doug wanted someone blackmailed he’d make himself agreeable until he had them hooked for a week-end trip somewhere. Then he’d telephone you and give you the name and address. You’d show up and be Hepner’s wife, sort of a complicated badger game. You’d threaten to name the woman as a correspondent and...”

“No, no,” she said, “it was nothing like that. I didn’t sink that low.”

“All right,” Mason told her, “what was it?”

She struck a match and lit a cigarette with trembling hands. “I got teamed up with Doug when I went to Europe as a secretary for one of the Governmental agencies. I served a trick over there and came back. I thought I was smart. I smuggled in a little jewelry — not too much, just what I could afford. It got past the Customs all right but it didn’t get past Hepner.”

“How did he know about it?” Mason asked.

“I suppose I talked too much. I talked to another girl who had been with me over there. She was my closest friend, but she fell head over heels in love with Hepner on the boat, and babbled everything she knew.

“Well, one thing led to another and I became Doug’s partner.”

“Also his mistress?” Mason asked.

“What do you think?”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“Doug was clever, unbelievably clever. He had a magnetic personality and he could insinuate his way into anyone’s good graces. We worked a great racket. He’d travel back and forth to Europe. He’d get enough information lined up to keep going for quite a while in between trips.”

“On smuggling?” Mason asked.

“The smuggling was the small end of it,” she said. “The blackmail was the big end. Doug would get a line on gems that had been smuggled. He’d turn in enough to the Customs for his twenty-percent take to give himself a standing and an apparent occupation. The rest of the time it was blackmail.”

“Who did the blackmail?”

“I did.”

“Go on.”

“I had an apartment in Salt Lake. Over the telephone I’d pose as Doug’s mother. When he had someone ready to be picked he’d get them out on a week-end trip. Obviously I had to know just as soon as they got started. Well, Doug would telephone me, but he did it in such a way that he always put the girl on a spot. He’d call me as his mother. He’d introduce the girl over the telephone and would say something out of a clear sky that indicated he was intending to marry the girl.

“You know how that would make a girl feel. She was starting out on a week-end trip and then it would appear that the guy’s intentions were honorable and he was thinking of marrying her... well, that was my cue. While Doug and the girl were away I’d take the first plane and get into the girl’s apartment. I’d really go through it and, believe me, I know how to search. If there was anything in the apartment I found it. If it was very valuable I appropriated it. The girl couldn’t afford to make a complaint, but if it was run-of-the-mine stuff then I’d show up later on as a Customs agent. I’d state that I was very sorry but that we had traced the gems and that it was going to be necessary to swear out a warrant for arrest and things of that sort.

“Quite naturally the girl would turn to Doug for advice and he’d act as intermediary and finally suggest that I could be bought off. Well, you know what that meant. There wasn’t any end to it.”

“But what about Eleanor?” Mason asked. “Had she or her family been smuggling?”

“If they had, I didn’t find anything when I searched their apartment.”

“I don’t get it. Doug seems to have been in love with Eleanor and was planning to marry her. And he has you search her apartment?”

“You don’t get the sketch. Doug wasn’t really in love with Eleanor and never had any intention of marrying her. But he was working on something big, something that was really terrific. He was on the trail of a regular professional smuggling ring. And he needed her help. He was just stringing her along.”

“Did he know who was in it?”

“Certainly we knew who was in it.”

“Who?”

“Suzanne Granger.”

“Go on,” Mason said. “Tell me the rest of it.”

“Well, Doug needed somebody that he could use, someone who had a definite background. It was a deal that he couldn’t use me on, or at least he said he couldn’t.”

“You doubted that?”

She said, “There had been many women in Doug Hepner’s life. Eleanor was just another leaf on the tree, and when the leaves begin to fall you don’t count each individual leaf. You simply rake them up in a pile and cart them away or burn them.”

“You’re bitter,” Mason said.

“Of course I’m bitter.”

“At Eleanor?”

“It wasn’t her fault. Doug started playing her in the routine way, or at least that’s what he made me think. He started out with her on a week end when her whole family was to be away, telephoned from Indio and...”

“And you went to search their place?”

“Yes. I had to watch my chance. I got in and searched the whole place. I drew a blank. I went back to Salt Lake. I didn’t hear from Doug for a week. Then he got in touch with me. He said he had been working on a big deal.

“I don’t think he’d really fallen for Eleanor. He was on something big and he was playing square on the financial end. He was going to give me my cut. At least I think he was.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

“Well, Doug said he could use Eleanor, that she could pose as a jealous neurotic. He thought that he could get her into the apartment next to Suzanne Granger.”

“And then?”

“Then Doug made his usual play for Suzanne. He got her to go to Las Vegas with him over a week end. He telephoned me from Barstow. I was on a plane within an hour of the time he telephoned. I went through that girl’s apartment and, believe me, I went through it. I thought, of course, she might be using her tubes of paint as a means of smuggling.”

“What did you find?”

“Not a thing.”

Mason said, “It came out in testimony today that Ethel Belan saw Eleanor with a whole bunch of gems — at least that’s what she claimed.”

She said, “I’m going to tell you something, Mr. Mason. No one else knows this. On the morning of the sixteenth Doug telephoned me. He was excited. He said, ‘They almost got me last night, but I’ve got the thing licked. It was a different setup from what I thought it was and it was so clever it had me fooled for a while. You’d never have guessed their hiding place. But I’ve got the stones now and if I can ever get out of here without being killed we’re going to be sitting pretty. This is a professional smuggling ring and your cut on this is going to run into big money.’ ”

“He was excited?”

“Yes.”

“And he was evidently in the apartment house?”

“He must have been right in Suzanne Granger’s apartment.”

“And when was this?”

“About ten o’clock in the morning of the sixteenth.”

“But you’d searched Suzanne Granger’s apartment.”

“I’d searched it Saturday and, believe me, I’d made a good job.”

“How did you get in?”

She said, “I’ve developed a technique for that.”

“And what about this apartment you’re in now?”

“This is my hideout here. I posed as a woman who was nursing a sick relative who wasn’t expected to live. I had a key to Doug’s apartment and he had a key to mine. Of course I didn’t dare use hotels.”

“His apartment was searched,” Mason said hastily.

“That’s what bothers me — and it frightens me.”

“You didn’t search it?”

“Heavens no. If he’d had the gems he’d have come to my apartment with them the first thing. I waited here for him all day and that night. When I finally found out his apartment had been searched I dashed back to Salt Lake, packed up everything in the apartment and waited to see if he’d call me there.

“That’s when your call came in. I thought you were one of the gang teamed up with Suzanne Granger, so I played it straight and told you just what Suzanne could have told you. Then I hung up, threw my suitcases into my car and got out of there.”

“Didn’t you think it was dangerous to come here?”

“At first. Then I realized no one knew of this place. The rent was paid for three months so I decided to stay on. There was always the chance I’d get some clue as to what Doug had done with those gems. If I could be on the spot and get them I’d be sitting pretty. Otherwise...” She broke off with a little shrug of her shoulders.

“Do you know who killed him?”

“Eleanor killed him. I think she found out when he got the gems... I don’t know. All I know is that Doug had the gems before he was killed.”

“And he was dealing with a professional smuggling ring?”

“Yes. One that operated on a big scale.”

“And Eleanor wasn’t in it?”

“Heavens no. Eleanor was helping him. She had set the stage for spying on Suzanne Granger.”

“And you knew that Doug Hepner had coached her to take the part of a jealous mistress, a woman who had used that approach to get herself into Ethel Belan’s apartment? You knew she had instructions to threaten to kill Doug Hepner to keep anyone else from having him?”

She hesitated. “If I say that will it help the girl?”

“It may result in her acquittal.”

“And if I don’t admit that it may mean she gets convicted?”

“Yes.”

She paused, took a deep breath. “I don’t know that she isn’t guilty. I don’t have to say a thing.”

Mason said, “There’ll be a terrific battle over whether I can get your testimony into the evidence. I think the judge will let it in. In any event, if you’ll tell the truth, I’ll try. The district attorney will claim it’s hearsay, not part of the res gestae and too remote.

“However, before I can lay my plans I’ll have to know where you stand and I’d have to know the facts.”

“I’d have to take the witness stand?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “I can’t do it. You called the turn. I have a child — a daughter, eight years old. I don’t want newspaper notoriety. I can’t be cross-examined about my past.”

Mason said, “You can’t let Eleanor walk into the gas chamber for a crime she didn’t commit.”

She shook her head. “I’m not going to help you, Mr. Mason.”

Mason’s face was as granite.

“You’re going to help me,” he said. “You don’t have any choice in the matter. That’s why I served that subpoena on you.”

She said bitterly, “You have lots of consideration for that Eleanor Corbin, who has a fortune back of her, but think of me. I’m leaving here with just what you see on the bed.”

Mason said, “I’m sorry. The honest part of your business was one thing. The blackmail was something else. You’re going to have to begin over.”

“On what?” she asked bitterly. “On what’s inside of this housecoat! That’s the only asset I have in the world, except a bus ticket to New Mexico, thirty dollars in cash, and...”

“I thought you were taking a midnight plane,” Mason said.

Her laugh was bitter. “My days of plane travel are over. I’m going by bus, but I didn’t think I had to tell the apartment manager that.”

“All right,” Mason said, “now listen. I’m not making any promises but if we can get this case solved it might be that we could recover the gems that Doug Hepner told you about. It might be that we could break up that smuggling ring.”

“And then you’d grab...”

“No,” Mason told her, “that’s what I’m trying to tell you. That would be your cut.”

She studied him with thoughtful eyes. “You’re dealing with a tough bunch,” she said.

Mason said, “My secretary, Della Street, is going to come and get you. You’re going to a place where you’ll be safe. Tomorrow morning you’re going on the witness stand. If we recover those gems you get the reward. Then you promise me that you’re going to turn your back on blackmail and rackets and are going to be the kind of a mother that your child can be proud of.”

She regarded him steadily for a moment, then got up and put her hand in his. “Is that all you want?” she asked.

“That’s all I want,” Mason told her.