The Case of the Glamorous Ghost

Chapter number 17

In the judge’s chambers, Hamilton Burger, shaking with rage, pointed his finger at Perry Mason.

“That was a cheap trick to get the witness to exhibit emotion in front of the jury! It was a deliberate attempt to get testimony before the jury which Perry Mason knew the Court should exclude. That paper had been carefully put over the gems and was deliberately removed. This whole presentation turns a court of law into a carnival side show!”

“That whole thing was perfectly proper,” Mason said. “Douglas Hepner recovered those gems the day before his death. He was drugged and held a prisoner. They tried to find out what he had done with the gems. Actually what he had done with them was very simple. He had recovered the gems and he was going to try to leave the apartment house. He had tripped a burglar alarm when he found the hiding place of the gems. He knew that the chances of his escape were slim. Eleanor’s overnight case was lying there on the dressing table. It was open. He stepped over to that overnight case, unscrewed the tops of several cream jars, forced gems down inside of the jars, then hurried from the apartment house as though trying to make his escape.”

“You’re not grandstanding in front of a jury now,” Hamilton Burger said. “I want to see some proof.”

Mason glanced at his watch. “You will,” he said, “within a few minutes. Fortunately the Customs officials are a lot more open-minded. They have secured a search warrant and are at the moment searching Ethel Belan’s apartment. I am quite satisfied that they will find that her closet has been very skillfully subdivided so that the back part of it represents a place where smuggled goods can be deposited. If you’ll notice this map, which was drawn to scale and which was introduced in evidence as a part of your case, you’ll note that the closet in Ethel Belan’s apartment is approximately three and a half feet shorter than the closet in the Granger apartment. Yet there is no structural reason why the closets shouldn’t have been of the same length.

“And if you want to keep your face from being red in public, you’d better get Ethel Belan and Webley Richey into custody before this thing breaks wide open and before they’ve made good their escape. I deliberately made my opening statement in the way I did so they’d know the jig was up and try to escape. That would clinch the case against them and...”

Hamilton Burger bellowed, “I don’t have to take advice from you. I don’t have to...”

The telephone on Judge Moran’s desk tinkled into noise.

“Just a moment, gentlemen,” the somewhat bewildered jurist said, and picked up the telephone.

He said, “Hello,” listened for a few moments, then said, “I’ll call you back.”

He hung up the telephone and turned to the district attorney. “It seems,” he said, “that Mr. Mason left word with the Customs officials to telephone me as soon as the search warrant had been served. They found a concealed partition in the back of Ethel Belan’s closet. There were no gems there but there is an estimated two hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of illegal narcotics.

“I think, Mr. District Attorney, that you might do well to reconsider the entire situation before going back into court.”

Hamilton Burger’s expression was that of a man whose entire world is collapsing around him.

Judge Moran turned to Perry Mason. “I feel you should be congratulated, Mr. Mason, on your apparent solution of this case, although I deplore the dramatic manner in which you presented the facts.”

“I had to present them in that manner,” Mason said, “otherwise Ethel Belan and Webley Richey wouldn’t have tried to escape. As it was, when I produced those gems they felt certain I had them dead-to-rights.

“And don’t congratulate me on being astute. I should have noticed the significance of one closet being three feet and a half shorter than the others, and should have appreciated the fact that there were only two apartments Webley Richey could have been in where he could have heard that conversation. He was trapped by having remonstrated with Suzanne Granger about it and counting on her not telling the district attorney about it.

“If he hadn’t overheard that conversation while concealed in Suzanne Granger’s apartment there was only one other place where he could have been concealed and overheard what was said and that was in Ethel Belan’s apartment. But he couldn’t have been concealed in there unless he had been in some sort of a specially constructed place of concealment because the defendant had entered the apartment shortly after he did and she didn’t see him.

“Just because I have a client who is flighty, who became panic-stricken and resorted to falsehood, I almost failed to look at the evidence with a coldly analytical eye.”

Judge Moran glanced at Perry Mason. There was grudging admiration in his eyes. “Some very clever reasoning, Counselor,” he said, “but I still deplore your dramatic use of my courtroom.”

The judge turned to Hamilton Burger. “I think, Mr. District Attorney, it’s your move. The Court will give you another ten minutes to make it.”

Hamilton Burger started to say something, changed his mind, heaved himself up out of the chair, turned, and without a word lunged from the judge’s chambers. A moment later the door slammed.

Judge Moran looked at Perry Mason. A faint smile softened the jurist’s face. “I deplore your procedure, Mason,” he said, “but I’m damned if I don’t admire the effectiveness of your technique.”