The Case of the Grinning Gorilla

Chapter number 9

Perry Mason sat in a small witness room at police headquarters. Half a dozen battered chairs lined the wall. There was a scarred oak table in the center of the room, bearing the traces of cigarette burns along the edges. A water cooler, with a container of paper cups, was at one end of the room. Aside from the chairs, the table, the water container, a wastebasket and two battered spittoons, the room was entirely bare.

Mason shifted his position in one of the uncomfortable chairs, stretched out his long legs, crossed the ankles, and glanced significantly at the place where his wrist watch should have been, then hastily lowered his bare wrist.

The uniformed officer who sat there, stolidly puffing away at a cigar, said, “It won’t be long now. Take it easy.”

Mason said angrily, “I don’t like being treated this way.”

“I suppose you don’t.”

“You’d think we had committed the murder.”

“You could have, couldn’t you? There wasn’t anyone else in the house.”

“Oh, bunk!” Mason said.

There was silence for several seconds.

“This business of putting my secretary in one room, me in another, my client in a third, holding us all where we can’t get in touch with each other — that’s cheap theatrical stuff as far as I’m concerned.”

“Well,” the officer said, puffing away at the cigar, “it’s orders as far as I’m concerned. What do you think of the Giants?”

“Doing all right,” Mason said.

“Uh-huh. The Dodgers is quite a team.”

“Uh-huh,” Mason said.

The officer smoked with that air of complete detachment which indicated that the only hour on the clock which meant anything to him was the time at which he would be off duty. Aside from that he took things as they came. He had been instructed to sit in this room with Perry Mason and keep him from communicating with anyone, and he was making himself as comfortable as possible while he was carrying out his orders.

“Who’s the mastermind that gave these orders?” Mason asked.

The officer hesitated a moment, turned the cigar in his mouth, inspected the end of it to make certain it was drawing evenly, and said, “Sergeant Holcomb.”

“Well,” Mason said, “my time’s valuable. My automobile is out there with the motor running and the lights on.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s right downstairs. You don’t need to tell anybody I told you, but you can quit worrying about your automobile.”

“That’s fine,” Mason said. “I’ll drive it home then.”

The officer grinned.

“Good Lord!” Mason said. “You don’t mean they’re going to impound that for evidence too.”

“The boys are going over it,” the officer told him. “Maybe they’ll be done by the time you get out of here. Maybe they won’t.”

Mason said angrily, “That’s what I get for instructing my secretary to call the police.”

“No,” the officer said, “that’s what you get for finding so damn many bodies. You get around too much. According to the way the Sarge thinks about it, you should stay in your office and let people come to you. You always get out on the firing line some place, and seem to have a knack for being around about the time somebody gets bumped off.

“You know, when it comes to pennant winning I like a team that has the old power house. You get fellows that can bunch their hits and that’s what counts. Funny the way some teams are like that. Some just scatter their hits all through the game; and then you can take a power house gang that’s playing along just ordinary baseball, and all of a sudden somebody sparks a play, and the next thing you know the whole team is going crazy, batting pitchers out of the box, slamming balls all over the diamond. They bring in a fistfull of runs and then they settle down. They can afford to. They’ve got the game won.”

Mason said wearily, “Runs are what win a ball game.”

“You said it, buddy. Now you take the Giants. Ever since Durocher got in there the team is like a unit. You can figure everything is teamwork. They’ll play machine-precision baseball until something happens to give them a break, and then they pounce on that break like nobody’s business. They...”

The door opened.

A tall, affable, good-looking man in plain clothes, stood on the threshold smiling at Perry Mason.

Mason got up out of his chair and said, “Well, well, Lieutenant Tragg himself. This is a pleasure. I thought I was going to have a session with Sergeant Holcomb’s bull-necked stupidity.”

Lieutenant Tragg shook hands. “You shouldn’t run down one officer to a brother officer, Mason,” he said. “Sergeant Holcomb is busy interviewing — others.”

“I hope he isn’t using his tact and diplomacy on Della Street,” Mason said.

Lieutenant Tragg walked over to the table and sat down.

“All right, Mason,” he said, “what’s the story?”

The door opened. A plain-clothes man with a shorthand notebook came in, sat down at the table, opened the notebook, took a fountain pen from his pocket, unscrewed the cap, shifted his position in the chair as though trying to get his hips and elbows in just the right place, then nodded to Lieutenant Tragg.

“You can begin at the beginning,” Lieutenant Tragg said to Mason.

“In the beginning,” Mason said. “Della Street and I were in my office. The switchboard kept clattering away. It’s rather annoying. Ordinarily we wouldn’t answer calls at night, and ordinarily we wouldn’t have any calls. But we took the call. Somebody asked us to go out to Benjamin Addicks’ place.”

“Someone?” Tragg said.

“That’s right.”

“Who was someone?”

“I didn’t recognize the voice myself,” Mason said, “not well enough to swear to it.”

“Well, you’ve got your opinion, haven’t you?”

“I thought you wanted evidence.”

“Are you going to be difficult, Mason?”

“No, just cautious.”

“All right, I’ll put it to you straight. Was it Mrs. Kempton on the line?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did the voice say it was Mrs. Kempton?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“What do you mean, you can’t tell me? Don’t you know what the voice said?”

“Yes, but I haven’t had a chance to talk with my client.”

“How long has she been your client?”

“There again,” Mason said, “we get into a matter which I would like to talk over with my client before I discuss it with the police. If you’ll give me an opportunity for a five or ten minute private talk with my client, I can save us both a lot of time.”

“We might surprise you by doing just that,” Tragg said casually, as though conceding a minor point. “So you went out to the Addicks’ place. What did you find when you got out there, Mason?”

“A door.”

“Good heavens, you astound me! And what did you do when you found the door?”

“I rang the bell. Nobody answered. I tried the door. It was open. I looked inside. I didn’t like what I...”

“Yes. Go on,” Tragg said as Mason hesitated.

“I didn’t like the setup,” Mason said.

“So what?”

“So I told Della Street that if I wasn’t back in five minutes to call the police. I didn’t get back in five minutes, and she called the police.”

“Why didn’t you get back?”

“I was busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Playing tag with a bunch of gorillas who seemed to want to play a little rough, and finding bodies.”

“Where was the body when you found it?”

“I presume exactly where it was when you found it. Lying face down on a bed.”

“Face down?”

“Well, the body was lying on its stomach, but the head had been turned slightly to one side so you could see the man’s profile. There was a wound in the neck, and a knife was sticking out of the back, pretty nearly between the shoulders, just a little to the left side of the backbone, I would say.”

“And where was Mrs. Kempton when you found her?”

“Lying on the floor.”

“Doing what?”

“Breathing, and that’s all.”

“Then what?”

“Then we left the house and the police picked us up.”

“I’d like a little more,” Tragg said.

Mason shrugged his shoulders.

Tragg pushed back the chair, grinned at the officer, said, “Take Mr. Mason into the room where Mrs. Kempton is being held. Tell the officer in charge that I want them left alone. I want them given an opportunity to have a ten minute conversation that is absolutely private. Then Mason can come back.”

“Thank you,” Mason said.

“Not at all. It’s a pleasure,” Tragg told him.

The officer escorted Mason across a corridor, into another room where Mrs. Kempton was seated in a chair with an officer on guard.

Mason said rapidly, “Lieutenant Tragg has arranged that we are to have a ten or fifteen minute conversation in private, Mrs. Kempton.”

“Oh, I’m so glad.”

Mason looked at the officer.

“In private.”

The officer in the room received a nod by way of signal, got up and walked out through the door.

As soon as the door closed Mason whipped a fountain pen from his pocket, pulled out a notebook and said, “Now, Mrs. Kempton, just try to relax and tell me exactly what happened.”

He put the notebook down on the table and wrote, “There’s undoubtedly a microphone in this room. Tell me that you’re too nervous to talk.”

Mrs. Kempton said, “Oh, I couldn’t... I couldn’t tell you much now, Mr. Mason. I’m too terribly nervous.”

“You’ve talked with the police?” Mason asked.

“No.”

“Well, you must have told them something.”

“I told them you were my lawyer.”

“What else?”

“I told them if they wanted any statement from me they could get it from my lawyer.”

“Well, that’s fine,” Mason said. “However, we can discuss matters now and then I’ll know what to tell the police. Although perhaps... well, if you’re nervous we’ll try and go at it gradually.”

Mason wrote on the notebook. “Tell me that you don’t want to make any statement until James Etna is here with me.”

Mrs. Kempton cleared her throat and said, “Well, I would like to tell you exactly what happened — as far as I know, Mr. Mason.”

“That’s right,” Mason said. “Of course you can only tell what you know, and only as much as you know.”

“But, after all, I have another lawyer, James Etna. I don’t know why we couldn’t get him. I wouldn’t want to tell you and then tell him all over again. I think I’d better wait, Mr. Mason, until I can get Mr. Etna and then I can tell both of you everything that I know, which isn’t much — and, of course, I’m terribly nervous now.”

“Well,” Mason said, putting the notebook and fountain pen in his pocket, “if that’s the way you feel, Mrs. Kempton, I’m not going to try to urge you. I would only suggest that you regain your composure as soon as possible. I want you to tell us what happened so that we can make a statement to the police and to the press. I think the police are entitled to a statement at the earliest possible moment, and, of course, it’s always a bad thing when you adopt the position with the press that you won’t make any statement at all.”

“They haven’t let me see the press yet — or, rather, they haven’t let the press see me.”

“They probably will,” Mason said affably, stretching and yawning. “However, you can tell them that as soon as we’ve had a joint conference with James Etna, we’ll release a statement of some sort to the press.”

“Thank you.”

They were silent for a few seconds.

Abruptly the door opened, and the officer said to Mason, “Come on back. Lieutenant Tragg wants to see you.”

Mason said, “I haven’t been here more than three minutes. I was to have a ten or fifteen minute conference.”

“That’s all right. The Lieutenant wants to see you.”

The officer who had been guarding Mrs. Kempton, and who was standing in the corridor, entered the room and sat down.

Mason made a reassuring gesture to Mrs. Kempton, followed the other officer back to the room where Lieutenant Tragg was waiting.

“You take anything out of that house?” Lieutenant Tragg asked.

“What house?”

“That Addicks house, Stonehenge.”

Mason shook his head.

“Well,” Tragg said, “we’ve got to make sure. It’s just a formality. You don’t have any objections, do you?”

“Certainly I have objections.”

Tragg said, “Don’t be difficult, Mason. You know as well as I do that if you make objections to being searched we’ll simply book you as a material witness, and when we book you we’ll take all your things away from you and put them in an envelope, and put you in a nice quiet cell and...”

“Okay,” Mason said. “Go ahead.”

Tragg ran his fingers quickly over Mason’s clothes and said, “Take everything out of your pockets and put them in a pile on the table, Mason.”

Mason said, “Ordinarily I’d tell you to go to hell, Lieutenant, but because I’ve got a lot of work to do tonight, and want to get this over with, I’ll be agreeable.”

“That’s fine,” Tragg said.

“And,” Mason went on, “because I have nothing to hide.”

Mason took the notebook from his pocket.

Tragg grabbed it.

Mason tried to retrieve it, but it was too late.

Tragg grinned and said, “This is what I wanted, Mason.”

“You have no right reading my personal notes,” Mason said.

Tragg riffled through the notebook, came to the page on which Mason had written his instructions to Mrs. Kempton, tore that page out of the book, said, “Hell, I knew you wouldn’t walk into anything like that, but this will establish my point with the guy who thought it was a swell idea.”

Mason said, “You have no right to take that page out of my notebook.”

“I know, I know,” Tragg said. “Go into court and get an order and we’ll give it back. Why are you so afraid to let your client talk?”

“Because I don’t know what she’s going to say.”

“All right,” Tragg said. “Now I’m going to tell you something, Mason, something for your own good.”

“What?” Mason asked.

“There’s some evidence against Mrs. Kempton. She’s going to be kept here all night and perhaps tomorrow.”

“On what charge?”

Tragg grinned.

“You put a charge against her,” Mason said, “or I’ll slam a writ of habeas corpus on you.”

Tragg said, “Go ahead, and slam the writ of habeas corpus on us, Mason, then we may charge her and we may turn her loose. Until you get a writ she’s going to be right with us. And I’m going to warn you not to get tied up with her too much and too deep until you know what her story is. Actually, Mason, she and Benjamin Addicks were the only two people in that house. One of those persons was stabbed to death. Now where does that leave your client?”

Mason said, “If you’d give me a chance to hear her story I’d...”

“I gave you your chance,” Tragg said. “You wouldn’t let her talk.”

“Sure,” Mason told him. “With a microphone right back of that table and seventeen detectives sitting there listening at the other end of the wire.”

“Well, what did you expect?” Tragg asked.

“Just that,” Mason said.

“Then you weren’t disappointed. I have some other news for you. Your car’s ready. Della Street’s waiting there for you. Go on back to your office. If you want, get out a writ of habeas corpus. You may have trouble finding a judge at night and it’ll be tomorrow morning before you can get a writ and have it served. Give me a ring tomorrow morning and I may save you the trouble.”

“And in the meantime?” Mason asked.

“In the meantime Mrs. Kempton stays with us.”