The Case of the Lucky Legs

Chapter 6

Perry Mason tapped on the door of apartment 301 at the St. James Apartments.

Almost instantly he heard the quick rustle of motion from the interior of the apartment, then footsteps on the floor, then silence as the person on the other side of the door stood motionless, listening with an ear against the door.

Perry Mason knocked again.

He thought he could hear the sound of quick feminine whispers. Then, after a moment of silence, a voice said, "Who is it?"

Perry Mason said gruffly, "Telegram."

"Who for?" asked the feminine voice, louder and more confident this time.

"Thelma Bell," said Perry Mason.

There was the sound of a bolt clicking back. The door opened a crack and a bare arm thrust out through a loose sleeve that appeared in the crack in the door.

"I'll take it," said the voice.

Perry Mason pushed the door open and entered the apartment.

He heard the swirl of motion, the patter of footsteps. A door slammed shut before he could turn his head in the direction of the noise. There was water running in the bathroom, and Perry Mason could hear the steady churning of the water in the tub.

A woman wearing a kimono which had apparently been thrown hastily about her stood staring at Perry Mason with warm brown eyes which now held a trace of angry defiance as well as a trace of panic.

She was, perhaps, twentyfive years of age, well formed, and poised.

Perry Mason stared at her.

"Are you Thelma Bell?" he asked.

"Who are you?"

Perry Mason let his eyes drift over her, noticing the dampness of the fine hairs of her temples, the bare feet, hurriedly thrust into slippers, the pink coloring of the skin at the ankles.

"Are you Thelma Bell?" he again inquired.

"Yes," she said.

"I want to see Marjorie Clune."

"Who are you?"

"Is Marjorie here?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"I haven't seen Margy in ages," she said.

"Who's in there taking a bath?" Mason asked.

"There's no one in there," she said.

Perry Mason stood quietly, staring at the woman. The water in the bathroom had been turned off, and there could plainly be heard the sounds of hurried splashings as some one performed a quick, vigorous scrubbing. Then there was the sound of bare feet thudding to the floor.

Perry Mason let his smiling eyes contradict the girl's statement by calling her attention to the physical proof of her falsehood.

"Who are you?" she demanded again.

"Are you Thelma Bell?" he asked.

She nodded.

"I am Perry Mason, an attorney," he told her. "It's imperative that I get in touch with Marjorie Clune right away."

"Why?" she asked.

"I'll explain that to Miss Clune."

"How did you know she was here?"

"That is something I don't want to tell you right now," Perry Mason said.

"I don't think Miss Clune would wish to see you. I don't think she wants to see any one."

"Listen," Perry Mason said, "I'm all attorney. I'm here to represent Miss Clune. She's in trouble; I'm going to help her out."

"She isn't in any trouble," Thelma Bell said.

"She's going to be," Perry Mason retorted grimly.

Thelma Bell wrapped the kimono more tightly about her, moved to the bathroom door, tapped on the panels.

"Margy," she said.

There was a moment of silence, then a voice said, "What is it, Thelma?"

"There's a lawyer out here," she said, "who wants to see you."

"Not me," said the voice from the other side of the bathroom door. "I don't want any lawyer."

"You come on out," Thelma Bell said.

She turned back to Perry Mason.

"She'll be out in a minute.

"I wish you'd tell me how you knew Margy was here," Thelma Bell said. "There was no one who knew she was here. She came in this afternoon."

Mason frowned, crossed to a chair, dropped into it and lit a cigarette.

"Let's come down to earth," he said. "I know you; you're the young woman who won the leg contest Frank Patton held in Parker City. Patton gave you a fake motion picture contract and brought you here. You were too proud to go back. You've been getting by the best way you could. You met Marjorie Clune through Frank Patton. She was in the same kind of a jam that you were. You wanted to help her out.

"Marjorie Clune was at Frank Patton's apartment tonight. I've got to talk with her about what happened there, and I've got to talk with her before the police do."

"The police?" said Thelma Bell, her eyes widening.

"The police," Perry Mason repeated.

The door of the bathroom opened. A young woman with very blue eyes clasped a flannel bathrobe about her, stared at Perry Mason and then gave a quick little gasp.

"Oh, you recognize me, then," Perry Mason said.

Marjorie Clune said nothing.

"I saw you coming out of the Holliday Apartments," Perry Mason told her.

Thelma Bell's voice was quick and positive.

"You didn't see her coming out of the Holliday Apartments," she said. "She's been with me all the evening, haven't you, Margy?"

Marjorie Clune continued to stare at Perry Mason, her big blue eyes showing a hint of panic. She said nothing.

"The idea," Thelma Bell went on in a louder voice, "of you making such a statement as that! What would she be doing in Frank Patton's apartment? Anyway, she was with me all evening."

Perry Mason stared steadily at Marjorie Clune.

"Listen, Marjorie," he said in a kindly tone, "I'm here to represent you. You're in a jam. If you don't know it now, you will know it pretty soon. I'm a lawyer. I'm retained to represent your interests. I want to do what's best for you. I want to talk with you. Do I talk now, or do you want to wait until you can talk with me alone?"

"No," she said, "I want to talk now."

"Go ahead," Perry Mason told her, "and get some clothes on."

He turned to Thelma Bell.

"You, too," he said.

There was a small dressingroom which opened on one side of a swinging mirror, on the back of which was a wall bed. The girls exchanged glances, then moved swiftly toward the dressingroom.

"Don't take too much time comparing notes," Perry Mason said. "It won't do you any good. We've got to get down to brass tacks. The police may be here any minute. Make it snappy."

The door of the little dressing room slammed.

Perry Mason got up from the chair in which he had been seated. He looked around the apartment. He went to the bathroom and opened the door. Water was draining from the tub. There was a bath mat on the floor with wet stains on it. A wet towel lay in a heap near the bath mat. Perry Mason looked around. There were no clothes in the bathroom. He walked back to the apartment, saw a closet door, walked to the closet and opened the door. There was a long white coat with a fox fur collar hanging close to the door. Perry Mason picked up the bottom of the coat and ran it carefully through his fingers.

There was a puzzled frown on his face as he finished with his examination and let the coat drop back into position on the hanger. He noticed a shelf of shoes, and took down the shoes one at a time. There were no white shoes on the shelf.

He stood for a moment with his legs spread apart, standing with his weight slightly forward, his eyes squinted in thought, staring meditatively at the white coat with the fox fur collar. He was still standing in that position when the door of the dressingroom opened and Marjorie Clune entered the room, tugging her dress into position. A moment later, and Thelma Bell followed.

"Do you want to talk in front of her?" asked Perry Mason, jerking his head toward Thelma Bell.

"Yes," she said. "I haven't any secrets from Thelma Bell."

"Do you want to talk frankly and tell me everything?"

"Yes."

"I'll tell you first about me," Perry Mason told her. "I'm a lawyer. I've handled some pretty big cases here and I've been fairly successful. J.R. Bradbury is in this city. He's looking for you. He wanted to build up a case against Patton. He wanted to put Patton in jail if he could. He went up to see the district attorney; they told him nothing doing, that they didn't have enough evidence. Then he came to me. I think he wanted me to try and get a confession of some sort out of Patton. I think the district attorney had told him that he'd have to have something like that before we could do anything.

"Anyhow, I got a detective and we started locating Patton. We finally located Thelma Bell. She gave us a lead on Patton."

Perry Mason turned to Thelma Bell.

"You talked with some one from the detective agency tonight," he said.

She nodded.

"I didn't know he was a detective," she said. "I didn't know what he wanted. He wanted some information. I gave it to him. I didn't know what he wanted to use it for."

"Well," Perry Mason said, "that's the story. I was retained to represent you. I was retained to try and bring Patton to justice. I went out to Patton's apartment, when I found out his address from the detective who had been talking with Thelma Bell. I saw you, Marjorie, leaving the apartment."

The two young women exchanged swift glances.

Marjorie Clune took a deep breath, turned to stare steadily at Perry Mason.

"What," she asked, "did you find in Frank Patton's apartment, Mr. Mason?"

"What," asked Perry Mason, "did you leave there, Marjorie?"

"I couldn't get in," she said.

Perry Mason shook his head wordlessly in chiding negation.

"I couldn't!" she flared. "I went up to his apartment and pressed the buzzer. There wasn't any answer. I came back down."

"Did you try the door?" asked Perry Mason.

"No," she said.

"When you left the apartment," he said, "there was —"

"I tell you I wasn't in the apartment!"

"We'll let it go at that," he told her. "When you left the apartment house there was a woman bringing an officer to the apartment. She'd heard quite a bit of commotion in the apartment. She'd heard a girl screaming something about her legs being lucky, and having hysterics. Then she'd heard the sound of something falling, a heavy fall that had jarred the pictures on the wall."

Perry Mason stopped and stared steadily at Marjorie Clune.

"Well?" she asked, and her voice contained just the right amount of polite disinterest.

"Well," said Perry Mason, "what I want to know is whether you met that cop as you walked along."

"Why?"

"Because," he said, "you looked guilty. When you looked at me and saw I was looking at you, you turned your head the other way and acted as though you were afraid I was going to nab you and charge you with the theft of a thousand dollars."

Perry Mason watched her with his eyes slitted in shrewd contemplation.

The girl bit her lip.

"Yes," she said slowly, "I saw the officer."

"How far from the Holliday Apartments?"

"Quite a way; perhaps two or three blocks."

"You were walking?"

"Yes, I was walking. I wanted to…"

She broke off.

"Wanted to what?" asked Perry Mason.

"Wanted to walk," she said.

"Go ahead," he told her.

"That's all there was to it."

"You saw the officer. What happened?"

"Nothing."

"Did he look at you?"

"Yes."

"What did you do? Did you walk rapidly?"

"No," she said.

"Think again," Perry Mason told her. "You were almost running when I saw you. You were walking as though you were trying to win a walking race. Now, are you sure you didn't do that when the officer saw you?"

"Yes."

"What makes you so sure?"

"I wasn't walking at all."

"Oh, you stopped then?"

"Yes."

Perry Mason stared steadily at her and then said slowly and not unkindly, "You mean that when you suddenly saw the officer you turned faint. You stopped, perhaps put your hand to your throat, or something of that sort. Then you turned to look into a store window. Is that it?"

She nodded her head.

Thelma Bell slipped an arm around Marjorie Clune's shoulder.

"Lay off the kid," she said.

"What I'm doing," Perry Mason told Thelma Bell, "is for her own good. You understand that, Marjorie. You must understand that. I'm your friend. I'm here to represent you. There's a possibility that the officers may come here even before I've finished talking with you. Therefore, it's important to know just exactly what happened, and to have you tell me the truth."

"I am telling you the truth."

"You're telling the truth about not getting into that apartment?"

"Of course. I went to the apartment and couldn't get in."

"Did you hear any one moving around in there? Did you hear any one screaming? Any one having hysterics? Any one making reference to lucky legs?"

"No," she said.

"Then you came back down the elevator and out to the sidewalk?"

"Yes."

"And you're positive you didn't get in that apartment?"

"Positive."

Perry Mason sighed and turned to Thelma Bell.

"How about you, Thelma?" he said.

She raised her eyebrows.

"Me?" she asked in a tone of polite surprise.

"Sure, you," Perry Mason said, with a savage drive to his voice.

"Well," Thelma Bell said, "I'll bite. What about me?"

"You know what I mean," Perry Mason said. "Were you at the apartment tonight?"

"You mean Frank Patton's apartment?"

"Yes."

"Certainly not."

Perry Mason regarded her with calm appraisal, as though considering just what sort of an impression she would make on the witness stand.

"Tell me some more, Thelma," he said.

"I was out with a boy friend," she told him.

Perry Mason raised his eyebrows.

"Good girl," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"For coming home so early."

"That's my business," she told him.

Perry Mason regarded the toes of his shoes with casual interest.

"Yes," he said, "it's your business."

There was a period of silence. Perry Mason suddenly faced Marjorie Clune.

"Did you girls have an appointment with Frank Patton tonight?" he asked.

They looked at each other and raised their eyebrows.

"An appointment with Frank Patton?" said Marjorie Clune, as though it was a physical impossibility for her to believe her ears.

Perry Mason nodded.

The young women exchanged glances, then laughed in highpitched, patronizing amusement.

"Don't be silly," said Marjorie Clune.

Perry Mason settled back in the chair. His features were utterly without expression. His eyes were calm and tranquil.

"All right," he said, "I was trying to give you a break. If you don't want to take it, there's nothing I can do except sit here with you and wait for the police."

He lapsed into a calm, meditative silence.

"Why should the police come here?" asked Thelma Bell.

"Because they will know Margy is here."

"How will they know?"

"They'll find out the same way I did."

"How did you find out?"

He yawned, stifled the yawn with four fingers gently patting his lips, and, as he yawned, shook his head, but made no audible comment.

Marjorie Clune's glance toward Thelma Bell was distinctly uneasy.

"What will the police do?" said Marjorie Clune.

"Plenty," said Perry Mason grimly.

"Look here," said Thelma Bell suddenly, "you can't put this kid in a spot like that."

"What kind of a spot?" Perry Mason asked.

"Get her involved in a murder and stand by and not do anything to protect her."

The mask of patient tranquillity dropped from Perry Mason. He flexed his muscles. His eyes became hard, like the eyes of a cat slumbering in the sun who suddenly sees a bird hop unwarily to an overhanging branch.

"How did you know it was a murder, Thelma?" he asked, straightening in the chair and swinging about so that his hard eyes bored steadily into hers.

She gasped, recoiled slightly, and said with quivering lips, "Why, why you acted that way. From something you said, I guess."

He laughed grimly.

"Now listen," he said, "you can either take this from me or you can take it from the police. You girls had an appointment with Frank Patton tonight. Marjorie called up and left her telephone number. It was this number. The police will trace the number and come out here. Also, Margy telephoned a message Patton got just before he arrived at the Holliday Apartments, telling him to tell Thelma that she would be about twenty minutes late.

"Both of you girls have won contests that Frank Patton put on; both of you have been chosen as having the most beautiful legs in a small town. One of you, at any rate, has been referred to in the newspapers as having lucky legs—probably both of you. It's a line of publicity that Patton hands out to the local press.

"Now, there was a girl in the bathroom at Frank Patton's apartment who was having hysterics about her legs. She kept using the word 'lucky legs.

"I saw Marjorie Clune leaving Frank Patton's apartment house. She says she didn't see him. That's what she says. Perhaps she did and perhaps she didn't. The police are going to be very interested in finding out. Their methods of finding out are going to be quite direct and not very pleasant.

"I'm the only friend you kids have got in the whole world so far as this business is concerned. I'm trying to help you. I've had the experience and I have the knowledge. You won't accept my help. You sit there and arch your eyebrows at each other and exclaim, 'What? Us go to see Frank Patton? Ha, ha, ha! Don't be silly.

"Then I come up to the apartment and find both of you girls in a lather of cleanliness. You've got bathtub hysteria. You can't get into the bathtub quick enough. You've drawn two baths, and one of you has hardly jumped out of the bathtub before the other jumps in."

"What's wrong with that?" demanded Marjorie Clune aggressively. "I guess we can take baths if we want them."

"Oh, certainly," Mason remarked. "Except that the police will see the evidences of those baths this early in the evening and wonder if you didn't have some reason for taking them."

"What reason could we possibly have for taking a bath that the police would be interested in?" Marjorie Clune demanded in that same haughty tone she had used previously.

Perry Mason turned on her savagely.

"All right," he said, "if I've got to hand it to you, I'll hand it to you. The police would say that you were washing off blood stains; washing blood off your stockings; washing off blood that had spattered on your legs when you stood over Frank Patton."

The girl recoiled as though he had struck her a physical blow.

Perry Mason pulled his big boned frame from the chair, stood towering over the two young women.

"My God!" he said, "have I got to pick on two women in order to get the truth from them? Why weren't there any clothes in the bathroom? What did you do with the clothes you took off? And you, Marjorie Clune, what did you do with the pair of white shoes that you were wearing when you came from the apartment house?"

Marjorie Clune stared at him with eyes that were wide and frightened. Her lips quivered.

"Do… do the police know that?"

"They'll know plenty," he told her. "Now, let's come down to earth. I don't know how much time we've got, but we might just as well face the issue frankly."

Thelma Bell spoke in even, expressionless tones.

"Suppose we were there? What difference does it make? We certainly wouldn't have killed him."

"No?" asked Perry Mason. "You wouldn't have any motive, I suppose?"

He turned back to Marjorie Clune.

"How long had you been here before I arrived?" he asked.

"Just a mmmmminute," she quavered. "I didn't take a ccccab. I came on the street car."

"You were in Frank Patton's apartment, in the bathroom, having hysterics, talking about your lucky legs?"

She shook her head mutely.

"Look here," said Thelma Bell quickly, "will the police know anything about Marjorie being there if the officer who saw her on the street doesn't connect her in some way with the crime?"

"Perhaps not," Perry Mason said. "Why?"

"Because," said Thelma Bell, "I can wear that white coat with the fox fur collar. I can wear the little cap with the red button on it. I'll swear they belong to me."

"That will just put you on the spot," Perry Mason said. "The officer probably didn't remember the face as much as he did the clothes. He'll see the clothes and figure that you were the one he saw. He'll identify you as being the one."

"That's what I want him to do," said Thelma Bell slowly.

"Why?" asked Perry Mason.

"Because," she said, "I wasn't anywhere near the place."

"Can you prove it?" Mason inquired.

"Of course I can prove it," she said savagely. "You don't think I'd put myself in a spot like that unless I could prove it, do you? I want to give Marjorie a break, but I'm not foolish enough to get myself mixed up in a murder rap in order to do it. I'll wear those clothes. The officers can identify me all they want to. The officer on the beat can swear I'm the one he saw coming from the apartment. Then I'll prove to them that I wasn't there."

"Where were you?" Perry Mason asked.

"With a boy friend."

"Why did you go home so early?"

"Because we had a fight."

"What about?"

"Is it any of your business?"

"Yes."

"About Frank Patton."

"What about Frank Patton?"

"He didn't like Frank Patton."

"Why? Was he jealous?"

"No, he knew the way I felt toward Patton. He thought Patton was dragging me down hill."

"In what way?"

"The contacts he was making for me."

"What, for instance?"

"Modeling," she said. "Artists, illustrators, and such stuff."

"Your boy friend didn't like it?"

"No."

"What's his name?" Perry Mason wanted to know.

"George Sanborne is his name."

"Where does he live?"

"In the Gilroy Hotel—room 925."

"Listen," said Perry Mason, "you wouldn't try to kid me?"

"Try to kid my lawyer? Don't be silly."

"I'm not your lawyer," he said. "I'm Marjorie Clune's lawyer. But I want to give you a fair break."

She waved a hand toward the telephone.

"There's the telephone," she said. "Go ring up George Sanborne. The number is Prospect 83945."

Perry Mason strode to the telephone, jerked the receiver from the hook.

"Get me Prospect 83945," he said when the exchange operator in the lobby asked for his number. And, as he spoke, he was aware of swift feminine whispers behind him.

Perry Mason did not turn. He held the receiver against his ear, stood with his feet planted far apart and his chin thrust forward. There was the buzzing of the line, the click of a connection, and a feminine voice said, "Gilroy Hotel."

"Give me Mr. Sanborne in 925," said Perry Mason.

A moment later a masculine voice said, "Hello."

"Thelma Bell," said Perry Mason, "was hurt in an automobile accident about an hour ago. She's at the Emergency Hospital, and we find your name on a card in her purse. Do you know her?"

"What's that again?" asked the masculine voice.

Perry Mason repeated his statement.

"Say, what sort of a fake is this?" the masculine voice answered. "What do you think I am?"

"We thought here at the hospital that perhaps you were a friend who'd be interested," Mason said.

"Hospital hell!" said the man's voice. "I was out with Thelma Bell all the evening. I left her not more than half an hour ago. She wasn't hurt in no automobile accident then."

"Thank you," said Perry Mason, and hung up.

He turned to face Marjorie Clune.

"Look here, Marjorie," he said, "we're not going to do any talking now. You may think Thelma Bell is the closest friend you've got in the world, but there's only one person who's going to hear your real story—that's your lawyer. Do you understand that?"

She nodded her head.

"If you say so," she said.

"I say so."

He turned to Thelma.

"You're a loyal friend," he said, "but you won't misunderstand me. Anything Marjorie Clune tells you can be dragged out of you in front of a grand jury or in a court room. Anything she tells me is a privileged communication, and no power on earth can unseal my lips."

"I understand," said Thelma Bell, standing very erect and very whitefaced.

"Now, you're willing to help Marjorie out on this thing?"

"Yes."

"Get those things on," he said. "Let's see how you look."

She went to the closet and took down the coat. She put it on, fitted the hat into place.

"Good enough," he said. "Got any white shoes?"

"No," she said.

"He probably won't remember the shoes anyway," Perry Mason said. "What I want you to do is to get out of the apartment and walk around on the other side of the street. Some time tonight you'll see a police car drive up here. You can probably tell it by the license. If you can't, you can tell it by the kind of a car it is. It'll either be a car from the homicide squad, and, in that event, three or four broadshouldered men who look like cops in plain clothes will get out of it; or else it'll be a radio car. In that event, it'll be a light roadster or coupe, and there'll be two men in it. One of them will get out and the other one will stay in the car to keep track of the radio calls."

"I think I can spot it all right," she said. "What am I supposed to do then?"

"As soon as you see the men head for this apartment building," Perry Mason said, "you'll come walking across the street as though you had just returned from an errand somewhere. You can say you've been to the drug store for some aspirin, or any other kind of a stall that you want to make. Walk right into the arms of the police. They'll start asking you questions. Don't tell them that you've got an alibi too soon. Pretend that you're all confused. Answer the questions in a way that'll arouse their suspicions. Get angry with them and tell them that you don't have to tell anybody where you were and what you were doing.

"If the officer on the beat saw anything particularly suspicious about the way Margy acted, he'll have turned in her description. The probabilities are it'll be a description not so much of the girl as of the clothes. She saw his uniform and that threw her into a panic. She stopped and turned her back to him, looking in the display windows. It probably registered with him at the time, but he was going on another job with this woman who had pulled him in to see what was happening in the apartment, and he didn't pay too much attention to her. But after he got in Patton's apartment and found those telephone messages in there, with Margy's name and Thelma Bell's name, he's going to start thinking back, trying to see if he remembers seeing any woman who acted as though she'd been mixed up in a murder. He's pretty likely to remember the coat and the hat.

"Now, that's going to put you right square on the spot. It isn't going to be pleasant. It's going to mean notoriety, and it's going to mean a lot of things. The question is, Can you do it?"

"I can," she said, "and I will."

Perry Mason turned to Marjorie.

"Go through this apartment," he said. "Pick out anything in here that belongs to you. Put it in a suitcase. Beat it out of here just as quick as you can. Go to a hotel somewhere. Register under your own name, but do it in a way that won't make you too easy to find—what's your middle name?"

"Frances," she said.

"All right," he said, "register as M. Frances Clune, also remember not to give your address as Cloverdale. You're here in the city now. Figure that you're a resident of the city, and put that as your address. Here's one of my business cards. The telephone number is on there, Broadway 39251. Call up my office, ask for Miss Street—she's my secretary—she'll know who you are. Don't mention any names over the telephone, simply say that you talked with me earlier in the day, and that I asked you to leave your address. Tell her the hotel that you're registered at. Then lock yourself in your room. Don't go out at all; don't get away from the telephone. Be where I can reach you at any hour of the day or night. Have your meals sent into your room. Don't try to communicate with me unless something happens. If the police should find you, put on your best expression of baby faced innocence and don't answer a single question, except as to whether you've got an attorney. Tell them that I'm your attorney. Demand that you be allowed to communicate with me."

She nodded slowly, her eyes fastened steadily upon him.

"You understand all that?"

"I think so."

"Get started then," said Perry Mason. "And remember that no matter what happens, you aren't to make any statement to any one until you have talked with me. You aren't even to answer questions. You won't even tell them who you are or where you came from. The minute any one puts you under arrest, you demand to be placed in communication with your attorney. Show them the card. Demand that you be allowed to telephone me. If they let you telephone me, I'll talk with you over the telephone and tell you not to say anything. If they don't let you telephone me, get sulky. Tell them that if they won't do what you want them to do, you won't do what they want you to do; that if they won't let you telephone me, you won't answer the questions they ask. And every time they ask you a question and you refuse to answer, use that same formula, that you won't answer questions unless they let you call me. You understand?"

"I understand," she said.

Perry Mason strode to the door. As he passed Thelma Bell, he patted her on the shoulder.

"Good kid," he said.

He stepped out into the corridor and heard the door close behind him and the bolt click into position.