Mason paced back and forth across the carpeted floor of his private office, his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his vest, his head slightly bowed.
Della Street sat patiently at her desk, an open shorthand book in front of her. The page was about half covered with notes. She was holding her pencil waiting for any other instructions Mason might choose to give.
Paul Drake had assumed his favorite position in the big overstuffed leather chair, sitting sideways with his knees draped over one of the rounded leather arms, his back propped against the other.
From time to time Mason made comments, more to himself than to the others, never pausing in his steady methodical pacing.
“You’d better give up, Perry,” Paul Drake said, “there’s no use butting your head against a brick wall. There isn’t any solution. This is once where even your agile mind can’t pull a rabbit out of the hat. Marion Shelby is guilty.”
“I’m working on a theory,” Mason said. “It’s so far just a weird theory, but...”
“I’ll say it’s weird,” Drake interrupted. “Now you let me tell you something about practical jury psychology, Perry. Something you know but which you won’t admit. You’ve forgotten it, lost sight of it. You let this woman keep quiet, and Hamilton Burger is going to cut you up into hamburger. The jury will be sore because they got a run-around. You put her on the witness stand, and he is going to make her and you the laughing stock of the city and he’s going to get a conviction of first-degree murder.”
Mason said, “I know. The way things are now I’m licked, but because this is Friday, I have a week end to...”
The telephone rang.
Mason frowned, then said to Della Street, “All right, Della. See who it is.”
Della Street picked up the telephone, said, “Hello, yes... All right.”
She said to Mason, “It’s the matron at the jail. Marion Shelby says she has to talk to you. The matron is going to let her talk on the phone.”
“All right,” Mason said, and picked up the phone. “Yes?” he said patiently. “What is it?”
Marion Shelby had evidently been crying. She said, “Mr. Mason you’re nice. You’re splendid. You’re just a marvelous man. You’re good. I’m afraid perhaps you’re too good for... for this kind of a case. I want to spare you any personal embarrassment. I’m... I... I am going to relieve you of all responsibility.”
Mason said, “Are you trying to tell me that you don’t want me to represent you any more?”
“That’s right.”
“You mean you’re going into court by yourself?”
“No, I’m going to have another lawyer. One who... one who understands this sort of case. A lawyer Mr. Lawton Keller is getting for me. He’s going to call on you. He’ll... he’s on his way up there now. He’ll explain everything but I wanted you to know... to understand... you’re relieved of responsibility. You understand, Mr. Mason? I need a lawyer who understands this sort of case.”
“You mean I’m being fired. Is that it?” Mason asked grimly.
“Not exactly fired, but I want to have a substitution of attorneys. I want you to be out of this mess. You’ll consent to it, won’t you?”
“You’re damn right I will!” Mason said and slammed up the phone.
“What is it?” Della Street asked anxiously.
Mason said, “She’s fired me. Lawton Keller has called on her. He’s persuaded her to get another lawyer, one who, to use her own words, ‘understands this sort of case.’ ”
Della Street jumped up, ran to Mason and threw her arms around him, kicking her right foot back from the floor in her excitement. “Oh, Chief, I’m so glad. I’m so darn glad!”
Paul Drake grinned, “After all, Perry, it’s a break.”
“A break?” Mason said angrily. “It puts me in the most humiliating position I ever occupied. I get taken for a ride and then...”
“Take it easy, Perry, take it easy,” Paul Drake said. “Look at the thing the way it should be looked at. You made a swell job cross-examining those witnesses. The facts in the case are all against you. The cards were completely stacked, but you made a swell job. You didn’t intimate what your defense was to be, you simply went into court and did a darn good job of cross-examining the witnesses of the prosecution.
“Now then, this smart guy, this Keller, enters the picture. He’s one of these masterminds, these know-it-alls from way-back. He talks the sort of language that your client is accustomed to. It’s a break. You’re out of it. Now we can square things with Ellen Lacey and wipe the slate clean.”
Mason flung out his hand in a gesture of disgust. “All right, the hell with it,” he said. “Let’s go eat.”
“It’s about time,” Della Street said. “Gosh but I’m starved.”
Mason walked over to the hat closet, put on his hat. He said, “We take the deposition of Ellen Lacey at this office tomorrow, Della. I have a stipulation from her lawyer — old Attica, the shyster!” Mason was just getting into his coat when knuckles pounded on the outside of the door.
“See who it is,” Mason said to Della Street, “and tell them to come back next Christmas.”
Della Street called through the door, “The office is closed.”
“Let me in, this is Lawton Keller. I want to see Mr. Mason.”
Mason paused, grinned at Paul Drake and said, “All right, this is going to be good. We may as well let the situation have its last ironical touch of humor. Open the door and let him in, Della.”
Lawton Keller was quite evidently well pleased with himself. A cigar was pushed up from a corner of his mouth at an angle of self-satisfied smugness. He entered the room with the utmost assurance, nodded, removed his hat, said, “Evening, everybody,” walked over and sat down.
Mason, perched on the corner of his desk said, “It’s got to be brief, Keller, because I’m going out.”
“It’ll be brief, all right,” Keller said. “I am sort of interested in this whole business.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“You’re a fine lawyer, Mason.”
“Thank you.”
“For a certain type of case, you can’t be beat.”
“You can’t believe how much I’m thrilled at hearing you say so,” Mason observed.
“Now don’t get sore, Mason. Keep your shirt on. This is a case that’s different from the kind you’re accustomed to handle. I’ve got a lawyer that’s a friend of mine that knows these things up one side and down the other. He’s been wringing his hands all day, talking about how the defense was being butchered up. He says you’re a swell lawyer to defend an innocent guy but when it comes to... Well, you know, a case of this kind...”
“Who is this lawyer?” Mason asked.
Keller said, “It’s Attica of the firm of Attica, Hoxie and Meade.”
Drake whistled.
“Know him?” Keller asked Drake. “He’s a whiz.”
Drake said, “He’s a shyster. He’s the lawyer who’s representing Ellen Lacey in that suit against us.”
“Sure he is,” Keller said. “And look how clever he is. He gets his client swell publicity as...”
“He stinks,” Mason said.
“Now keep your shirt on, Mr. Mason. I shouldn’t have mentioned what he said about you butchering up the case, but anyway, I’m calling on you and appealing to your sense of decency and sportsmanship.”
“What do you want?” Mason asked.
“Now what happened was this,” Lawton Keller said, taking the cigar out of his mouth and gesturing with it. “This Scott Shelby was pretty much of a chaser. He was fooling around quite a bit, making passes at everybody. Well, that’s all right, you can’t blame him for that. After all, a man is only human. But this guy was pretty much of a rat. He kinda tried to blackmail his way. You know, he’d get something on someone or get them under obligations to him and then he’d strut his stuff. Get me?”
“Go on,” Mason said, “let’s hear the rest of it.”
“Well, on this night that they were on the yacht, his wife had just about got fed up with the whole business. She decided she was going to get a divorce, but you can’t get a divorce without evidence and naturally a fellow doesn’t drag his sweethearts into the family bedroom. So, she had to get up and go out looking for the evidence. Get me?”
“I get you,” Mason said dryly.
“Well, she woke up, hubby was gone. She sensed he was out on a philandering expedition. She saw the gun that was lying on the dresser and without thinking, she picked that up...”
“Let me finish for you,” Mason said ironically. “She ran out on deck, half crazed with jealousy and disappointment. She saw her shattered romance falling in pieces about her feet. The poor little woman was beside herself. She didn’t stop to think that she wasn’t properly clothed. She wasn’t thinking of anything. She couldn’t think in the sense that one intelligently correlates one’s acts. She had wakened, found her husband was gone, and still in that sleep-dazed half-wakened state, was running along the yacht looking for him, thinking perhaps that something had happened to him.”
“Now you’ve got it,” Lawton Keller said, with a trace of respect in his voice. “That’s exactly the situation. Hang it, you make it sound damn good!”
“And there in the bow of the boat she found her husband, in the close embrace of another woman. The other woman jumped up and ran, and as soon as she did so, the husband saw his wife, and, in an angry mood, reproached her, telling her that he didn’t want to have her snooping around, and demanding roughly to know what the hell she meant by following him.”
Lawton Keller nodded approvingly.
“The poor little woman was distraught. She was beside herself. She still wasn’t fully awake,” Mason went on, dramatically, “she was numb with the disillusionment of it all. She started to cry and then her husband got rough, grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around and kicked her, told her to get back down in the stateroom where she belonged and stay there. And then, that kick did something to her. It aroused her resentment. It wakened her thoroughly. She told him she wasn’t going to stand for it. She was going to get a divorce. And then, when he suddenly realized that she meant what she said, angry and in a frenzy of rage, he grabbed her and tried to throw her overboard.
“She struggled with him, tried to scream to him not to do that, but he had her by the throat and was throttling her. Then, just when she was on the point of losing her balance, she twisted and turned and fell and dragged her husband down with her. And, her husband stumbled over a rope, lost his balance, pitched overboard, and as he started to fall he grabbed her arm, trying to hold to her. The hand of that arm had the revolver in it; and just as she wrenched the arm from his grasp, she heard an explosion. She never did realize that the explosion was that of the gun that was in her own hand. She thought it was someone else who had fired the shot. It wasn’t until afterwards that she realized that the gun must have gone off, apparently of its own accord. Or, perhaps, the husband, clutching frantically, had grabbed the barrel of the gun and pulled it down so that the pressure of her finger against the trigger discharged it. And the proof of that is that the bullet struck against the smooth side of the trim yacht, and then, on a glance, struck the husband.
“The man killed himself, fired by his own rage, trapped by circumstances which would almost seem to have been set in motion by some higher power. It was not murder. It was not even self-defense. She didn’t kill him, this poor, half-wakened woman. The heel killed himself!”
Lawton Keller’s eyes were wide and awestruck. “Cripes,” he said, “you’re doing it even better than... You don’t need to get out of this case!”
“The hell I don’t,” Mason told him angrily, “I need to get out of the case, and you need to get the hell out of this office, beginning now.”
Mason came down off the desk, crossed over to Keller’s chair with two swift strides, grabbed the man’s coat collar and jerked him up out of the chair.
“Say,” Keller demanded in surprise, “what the hell’s got into you? Look, maybe we can do business after all. I was just interested in the little girl because...”
Della Street glanced questioningly at Mason.
Mason nodded.
Della Street opened the door.
Mason straightened his arm, leaned his weight against Keller and gave him the bum’s rush out of the office.
The man fell flat as he hit the corridor. Mason dusted off his hands, stepped back in the room. Della Street, acting as though the whole thing had been carefully rehearsed, closed the door and locked it.
Perry Mason finished dusting his hands, said, “And I guess that calls for a drink.”
He walked over and opened a locked drawer in a filing cabinet, pulled out a bottle of whisky and glasses.
Paul Drake was watching him with admiration. “Cripes, Perry, I never saw it done neater.”
“You mean throwing a rat out of the office?” Mason asked uncorking a bottle.
“Christ no!” Drake said. “The old hokum about the aggrieved wife. Why the hell don’t you stay in the case and get her off, Perry?”
Mason quit pouring the whisky. “Do you want to go out in the corridor?” he asked pointedly.
Drake grinned. “Have it your own way, Perry,” he said dryly. “Keep on pouring the drink. But, for a guy that the district attorney claims is always cutting corners, you certainly are a babe in the woods. Make mine a double one, and then I’m going to ring up Ellen Lacey’s lawyer and see how much kale it’s going to take to let me wriggle off the hook.”