The Case of the Long-Legged Models

Chapter Twenty-One

Perry Mason, Della Street, Homer Garvin, Paul Drake, and Stephanie Falkner sat grouped about the table in Mason’s law library. A bottle of whisky, a siphon of soda, a big jar of ice cubes and glasses were on the table.

Mason said to Stephanie Falkner, “You should have told me.”

“I wasn’t going to tell anyone, Mr. Mason. I saw Homer as he drove away from George Casselman’s apartment house. He didn’t see me. Later on, when he gave me that gun and I found there was an exploded cartridge in it, I felt I knew what had happened. Then when you arranged to have Junior give me a gun so that in case the police asked me to produce the gun they are calling the Holster Gun, the one that had been given me by Homer Garvin, I could give them the Junior Gun which his son had given me. I thought I would be smart in substituting guns, so that the police would find the murder weapon just where Junior would be forced to testify he had left the Junior Gun which he had given me. The Junior Gun I snatched from the table as soon as you folks left my apartment, and dropped it into a sack of flour in the kitchen. Later on I took it out of the flour sack, walked over to an adjacent lot where they were building a house and pushed the gun down into some wet cement that had just been poured into forms.”

Homer Garvin said, “I didn’t know you had seen me there at that apartment house, Stephanie. I went up to tell Casselman that I wanted a showdown. He told me he had an important appointment in ten minutes and that he simply couldn’t see me. Eva Elliott must have been in there at the time. I told him I’d be back at eleven o’clock, and that I was going to call for a showdown.”

Mason said, “Eva Elliott must have been the one who telephoned while I was in conference with Casselman, and said she was coming right up. It was that which disturbed him. He asked for a two-minute delay. That shows she was phoning from a nearby phone. I went out the front door and watched the front of the apartment house, but didn’t see anyone come in. The fact that I knew someone was coming in, but didn’t see anyone arrive, should have warned me that the person who entered the apartment must have gone up by the back stairs.”

“Well, we know the whole story now,” Garvin said. “She went in the back door. Casselman had persuaded her to put through checks on phony bills. He had promised her top billing in a floor show in the new motel. He’d promised her television contracts. She was willing to do anything to get in that floor show as the top actress. She wasn’t the victim of her lack of secretarial experience. She was deliberately getting money for Casselman. Then she found out, somehow, he was double-crossing her.”

Stephanie said, “A woman held the outer door open for me. I went up to Casselman’s apartment and rang the bell. No one answered. I tried the knob of the door. The door was unlocked. I opened it and went in. George Casselman was lying there dead. I... I didn’t know what to do. I suddenly realized I’d stepped in the pool of blood and then I became panic-stricken. I went into the bathroom and tried to wash the blood off my shoe. I had knelt over him to see if he was dead, and there was blood on my hands. I washed and washed and washed, and then I went down the back stairs.

“Because I felt certain Homer had killed him, I said nothing. I felt that it wasn’t my duty to turn State’s evidence.”

Homer Garvin looked at her thoughtfully. “And you’d have taken a chance on being convicted of first-degree murder rather than implicate me?”

She said, “You should talk! After you thought I had committed the murder, you deliberately tried to put your neck in the noose so as to save mine.”

Suddenly both of them started laughing.

“All right,” Garvin said. “We’ll discuss that later. In the meantime, Mason, I have something to say about your fee.”

Garvin took out his checkbook, signed his name to a blank check, slid it across the table to Perry Mason, and said, “You fill it out and fill it out for plenty.”

The phone rang. Della Street answered it, said, “Just a moment.”

She turned to Mason. “Junior’s on the line,” she said. “He says he’s sorry he lost his temper. He says he’ll take six hundred dollars off that sports job you were driving when you took him to see Stephanie.”

Mason grinned, picked up the blank check Garvin had signed.

“Tell him to call later, Della. I think we may make a deal.”