The Case of the Lucky Legs

Chapter 8

Perry Mason waited until Bradbury had entered the elevator in the Mapleton Hotel, and been whisked upward before he turned to the telephone booth and called his office.

Della Street's voice was low and cautious.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Why?" he wanted to know.

"There are two detectives up here."

"That's all right, tell them to wait. I'm coming."

"Are you all right, chief?"

"Of course I'm all right."

"Nothing's happened?"

"Nothing that need bother you."

Her voice came in a rapid rush.

"They're suspicious; they hear me talking on the telephone. They're going to plug in on the other line…" Then, in a higher voice, she said, "… simply can't tell you when he will be in. I think he's going to be in sometime tonight. He told me to wait until I heard from him. I haven't heard from him yet. If you'll leave your name, I'll tell him that you called, or you can leave your number, and he'll call you back if he wants to talk with you."

Perry Mason disguised his voice, said, "No message," and slid the receiver back on the hook.

He paused as he emerged from the telephone booth, to light a cigarette and stare at the glowing end with eyes that were fixed meditatively upon the curling smoke. Then, he suddenly nodded his head as though he had reached some decision, strode across the lobby, hailed a taxicab and went at once to his office. He was serene and jaunty as he pushed the door open, and said, "Hello, Della."

"These two gentlemen…" she began, and turned her head toward the two men who sat in chairs and had them tilted back against the wall.

One of the men flipped back his coat and pulled his suspender through the armhole of his vest far enough to show a gold shield.

"We want to talk with you a minute," he said.

Perry Mason let his face light up with a smile of welcome.

"Oh," he said, "from headquarters, eh? That's fine. I thought perhaps you were a couple of clients, and I'm tired tonight. Come on in."

He held open the door to the inner office and let the detectives go in ahead of him. In closing the door, he caught Della Street's white face, her troubled eyes resting upon him, and closed his own right eye in a swift wink. Then he closed the door to the private office, indicated chairs with a wave of his hand, walked over to the big swivel chair, sat down and put his feet up on the desk.

"Well," he said, "what is it?"

"I'm Riker," said one of the men, "and this is Johnson. We do some work with the Homicide Squad."

"Smoke?" asked Mason, shoving a package of cigarettes across the desk.

The men both took cigarettes.

Perry Mason waited until they had lighted up, and then said, "Well, what is it this time, boys?"

"You went out to see a man named Frank Patton, in the Holliday Apartments on Maple Avenue."

Mason nodded cheerfully.

"Yes," he said, "I went out there and played around, but couldn't get any answer. A police officer showed up with a woman leading him along and jabbering a string of stuff about some girl having hysterics in there. I figured perhaps there was a petting party and the man didn't want to be disturbed."

"There was," said Riker, "a murder committed."

Mason's tone was casual.

"Yes," he said, "I heard that the officer broke open the door and found a murder had been committed. I didn't have a chance to find out the details. The man was lying in the room, wasn't he?"

"Yes," said Riker, "he was found dead. He was lying on the floor in his underwear. He had a bathrobe half on and half off. There was a carving knife stuck in his heart."

"Any clews?" asked Perry Mason.

"Why do you ask that?" Johnson wanted to know.

Mason laughed.

"Don't get me wrong, boys," he said. "This man is nothing in my young life, except that I wanted to interview him. As a matter of fact, his death leaves me sitting pretty."

"Just what do you mean by that?" Riker wanted to know.

"You can find out all about it, as far as I'm concerned, by talking with Carl Manchester in the district attorney's office," Perry Mason told him. "We were working together on the case. I was going to be a special prosecutor to put Patton over the hurdles."

"On what kind of a charge?" Riker asked.

"Any kind of a charge we could put against him," Mason said. "That was where I came in. I was supposed to get some sort of a charge framed up that would stick. Carl Manchester wasn't certain that he could put one against him."

"Never mind the legal end of it," Johnson said. "Give us the lowdown."

"This fellow was in a racket that victimized girls with pretty legs," Mason said. "He would pick out a girl with pretty legs, and work a racket that would leave her holding the sack. It was something he worked in the small towns, picking on the Chamber of Commerce as the big sucker, and incidentally victimizing the girl."

"You mean to say he'd outslick the Chamber of Commerce boys?" asked Johnson.

Perry Mason nodded.

"Sure," he said. "Why not?"

"Aren't they supposed to be pretty wise babies?"

"They think they are," Mason said. "As a matter of fact, there are a whole bunch of rackets that are worked on them. If you ask me, they're pretty easy."

Riker's eyes were shrewd in their appraisal.

"You're pretty highpowered," he said.

"What do you mean?" Mason asked.

"I mean that it costs money to get your services."

"Fortunately," said Perry Mason, grinning, "it does."

"All right. Somebody was interested enough to put up the money to have you prosecute this fellow."

Mason nodded.

"Sure," he said, "that goes without saying."

"All right," Riker said, "who was it?"

Mason shook his head, smiled, and said, "Naughty, naughty."

"What do you mean?" Riker demanded.

"I mean," Mason said, "that you boys are all right. You're working for your living, just the same as I am. You've asked me something that perhaps you'd like to know. If I thought it had anything to do with the murder, I might tell you. But it hasn't got anything to do with the murder, and, therefore, it becomes none of your damned business."

He smiled cheerfully at them.

"It goes to establish a motive," Riker said. "Anybody who would pay you money to put that man in jail would have a good motive for murder."

Mason grinned.

"Not after he'd given me a five thousand dollar retainer to prosecute him," he said. "If he had intended to murder the man, he'd have hung onto his five thousand dollars; he wouldn't have decorated the mahogany with me, and then gone out and killed the man so that I didn't have to do any work in order to earn my fee."

Johnson nodded slowly.

"That's so," he said.

"Just the same," Riker said, "I'd a whole lot rather know who it was that employed you."

"Perhaps you would," Mason said, "but I'd a whole lot rather not tell, and it happens that under the law, this is one of those little things that is known as a professional confidence. You can't make me testify, and therefore you can't make me answer any question. But there are no hard feelings about it."

Riker stared moodily at the toe of his boot.

"I'm not so sure that there ain't," he said.

"Ain't what?" Mason asked.

"Hard feelings about it."

"Don't get off on the wrong foot," Mason told him. "I'm giving you boys a break. I've told you as much as I can without betraying a confidence."

"So he was getting girls on the spot, was he?" Johnson demanded belligerently.

Perry Mason laughed.

"Go ask Manchester about it," he said.

Riker stared moodily at Mason.

"And you're not going to give us a break?"

Mason said slowly: "Riker, I'd like to help you boys out, but I can't tell you the name of the man who employed me. I don't think it would be fair. But I can tell you this much…"

He stopped and drummed with his fingers on the edge of his desk.

"Go on and tell us," Riker said.

Perry Mason heaved a deep sigh.

"There's a girl," he said, "from Cloverdale—his last victim—a girl named Marjorie Clune. She's here in the city somewhere."

"Where?" asked Riker.

"I'm sure I couldn't tell you," Mason said.

"All right, go on," Johnson told him. "What about her?"

"I don't know so much about her," Perry Mason said. "But she's got a sweetheart who came on from Cloverdale—a Mr. Robert Doray. He's staying at the Midwick Hotel; that's out on East Faulkner Street. He's a heck of a nice chap. I'm sure he wouldn't have any murder ideas in his system. But if he had run across Patton, he might have given him an awful beating."

"Now," said Riker, "you're giving us a break."

Mason's expression was wideeyed in its babyfaced innocence.

"Sure I am," he said. "I told you I was willing to give you all the breaks I could. Shucks, you fellows are working for a living, just the same as I am. As a matter of fact, I've got nothing against the police on any of my cases. The police build up the best case they can, and I come into court and try to knock it down. That's business. If you fellows didn't build up your cases so you could make arrests, there wouldn't be any possibility for me to make fees by defending a man. A guy doesn't pay a lawyer fee before he's in trouble."

Riker nodded.

"That's so," he said.

"Can you tell us anything else about this Marjorie Clune?" asked Johnson.

Perry Mason rang for Della Street.

"Della," he said, "bring me that file in the Case of the Lucky Legs, will you?"

The girl nodded, stepped to the files and a moment later returned with a legal jacket.

Perry Mason nodded to her.

"That's all," he said.

She closed the door to the outer office with an indignant bang.

Perry Mason pulled the photograph out of the jacket.

"Well, boys," he said, holding up the photograph, "that photograph is of Marjorie Clune. Think you'd recognize her if you saw her again?"

Riker whistled.

Both men got from their chairs and came closer to look at the photograph.

"A girl with legs like that," Johnson proclaimed, "was just born to cause trouble. I'll bet she's mixed in this murder case."

Mason shrugged his shoulders.

"Can't prove it by me, boys," he said cheerfully. "I got a fee to prosecute Patton. Now he's dead and I don't have to prosecute him. You can check up on all of my statements by getting in touch with Manchester. In the meantime, you'd better make a check on this Dr. Doray. By the time the news gets into the papers, Doray may decide there's nothing to keep him here, and go on back to Cloverdale."

"I thought he came for the girl," Riker said.

Mason raised his eyebrows.

"Did he?" he asked.

"Didn't you say so?"

"I don't think so."

"Somehow I got that impression."

Mason sighed and made an expressive gesture with his hands.

"Boys," he said, "you can't prove anything by me. I've told you all I know about the case that isn't a violation of a professional confidence, and you can talk from now until two o'clock in the morning without getting me to tell you any more."

Riker laughed and got to his feet.

Johnson hesitated a moment, then pushed back his own chair.

"You can go out this way," Mason told them, and opened the exit door into the corridor.

When he heard their steps diminish in volume as they turned the angle of the corridor toward the elevator, Mason slammed the door, made certain that the spring lock was in place, walked to the door which led to the outer office, opened it and smiled down at Della Street.

"What's happened, chief?" she asked, with a throaty catch in her voice.

"Patton was murdered," he told her.

"Before you went out there, or afterwards?"

"Before," he said, "if he had been murdered afterwards, I'd have been mixed up in it."

"Are you mixed up in it now?"

He shook his head, then sat down on the edge of her desk, sighed, and said, "That is, I don't know."

She reached out and dropped her cool, capable fingers over his hand.

"Can't you tell me?" she asked in a low voice.

"Paul Drake telephoned just before you got here," he said. "He gave me Patton's address. It was out in the Holliday Apartments. I busted on out there. Drake was to follow me in five minutes. Just before I went into the place, I saw a goodlooking Jane coming out. She had on a white coat and a white hat with a red button, also white shoes. She had blue eyes. The eyes looked frightened. I noticed her particularly because she seemed to look guilty, and frightened to death. Then, I went on up to the apartment, and knocked at the door. Nothing happened. I tried the buzzer. There was no response. I tried the door knob and it clicked back and the door opened."

He paused for a moment, with his head bent forward, and the fingers of her hand made gentle pressure on the back of his.

"Well?" she asked.

"I walked in," he said. "Something looked a little fishy to me. There was a livingroom. There were hat, stick and gloves in the livingroom. I'd seen them through the keyhole before I walked in. It made me think some one was home."

"Why did you have to go in?" she asked.

"I wanted to get something on Patton," he said, "He didn't answer the door. I thought it might be a break for me."

"Go on," she told him.

"There wasn't anything in the livingroom," he said, "but when I went through the door into the bedroom, I found Patton lying on the floor, dead. He'd been stabbed with a bigbladed knife. It was a messy job."

"In what way?" she asked.

"He died instantly, all right," Mason told her, "but it was a big cut. It caught an artery right over the heart, and those things spurt, you know."

She fought back a spasm of horror from her face and said calmly, "Yes, I can imagine. Then what?"

"That was about all," he told her. "There was a blackjack lying in the other room. I haven't figured that one out yet."

"But, if he was killed with a knife," she said, "what was the blackjack there for?"

"That's what I can't figure," he told her. "There's something funny there."

"Did you notify the police?" she asked.

"That," he said, "is where the cards turned against me. I wiped my fingerprints off the doorknobs and started out. I knew that Paul Drake was going to come in about five minutes. I was going to let Drake be the one to discover the body. I had other things to do. I knew that Drake would notify the police.

"Just as I was leaving the apartment, I heard the slam of the elevator door, and voices. I heard a woman saying something about a girl having hysterics and gathered from what she said she was talking to a cop. I figured right away what must have happened. If I had been seen walking away from the apartment where the man was murdered, I'd have been in a hell of a fix. If I'd have stood my ground there and told the story of exactly what happened, I'd never have been believed. Not that they'd necessarily have accused me of the murder, but it would have looked as though one of my clients had committed the murder and had telephoned me, and that I had rushed up to suppress certain evidence, or something of that sort. You can see what a spot that would put me in. I figured that some of the people I had been paid to represent might be mixed up in it. After the cop had seen me coming out of the apartment, or standing at the door of the apartment as though I had just come out, I could never have represented any one charged with the murder, because the jury would have figured that my client must have been guilty and had given me a tipoff to what had happened."

"What did you do?" she asked, with quick interest. "You were in a spot."

"There was only one thing to do," he said, "the way I figured it. I had to think fast. I might have played it differently, I don't know. It was one of those times when a man has to make decisions and make them fast. I jerked a passkey out of my pocket and locked the door. It was a simple lock. Then, I pretended I didn't know there was a cop within a mile, and started banging on the door. The cop came around the corner in the corridor and saw me standing in front of the door and pounding on the panel. I jabbed my finger on the button a couple of times; then made a gesture of disgust and turned to walk away. Then I pretended to see the cop for the first time."

"Clever," she exclaimed.

"That part of it was all right," Perry Mason said judiciously, as though he had been commenting on the manner in which he had played a hand in a bridge game after the cards were all played. "But then, I made the mistake of my life."

"What?" she asked, her eyes slightly widened and staring steadily at his face.

"I underestimated the intelligence of J.R. Bradbury."

"Oh," she muttered, with a distinct feeling of relief, and then said, after a moment, "Has he any…?"

"You're damned right he has," Perry Mason said.

"I can say one thing about him," she said, "he has a roving eye and a youthful disposition. He was offering me a cigarette when you went out of the door, remember?"

"Yes."

"He leaned forward to give me a light."

"Did he try to kiss you?"

"No," she said slowly, "and that's the funny part of it. I thought he was going to. I still think he intended to try to, but something made him change his mind."

"What was it?"

"I don't know."

"Thinking perhaps you'd tell me?"

"No, I don't think it was that."

"What did he do?"

"He leaned close to me, held the match to the cigarette; then straightened, and walked to the other side of the office. He stood staring at me as though I had been a picture, or as though he had perhaps been trying to figure just where I'd fit into a picture. It was a peculiar stare. He was looking at me, and yet not looking at me."

"Then what?" Perry Mason asked.

"Then," she said, "he snapped out of it, laughed, and said he guessed he had better be going after the newspapers and the brief case."

"And he left?"

"Yes."

"By the way, what did he ever do with them?"

"He left them here."

"Did he say anything about the brief case when he went out?"

"No, that was what he telephoned about from the hotel."

"What did you do with them?"

She motioned toward the closet.

Perry Mason got up, walked to the closet, opened the door and took out a leather brief case and a pile of newspapers. He looked at the top newspaper. The heading showed that it was the Cloverdale Independent of an issue dated some two months earlier.

"Got a key to the closet?" asked Mason.

"Yes, it's on my key ring."

"Let's lock this closet door and keep it locked while we've got the stuff in here," Mason said.

"Should we have it in the safe?"

"I don't think it's that important, particularly. But just the same, I'd like to have it under lock and key."

She crossed to the closet door and fitted the key to the lock, and snapped the bolt into position.

"You still haven't told me," she reminded him, "about how you underestimated Bradbury's intelligence."

"I had seen a girl walking away from the place. I figured she was mixed up in the murder in some way. I didn't know just how. I didn't care particularly, unless the girl happened to be Marjorie Clune. But I wanted to make certain about it, so I telephoned Bradbury."

"And told him Patton was murdered?"

"Yes, and asked him about Marjorie Clune. I knew that if it had been Marjorie Clune that was leaving the apartment, I had to work fast and keep ahead of the police."

"But there wasn't anything else you could have done, was there?" she asked. "You had to find out about it, and find out what Bradbury wanted done."

"I guess so."

"I thought," she said, "there was something wrong. He acted so absolutely startled when you telephoned to him. I don't know what there was in what you said, but it seemed to knock him for a loop. I thought he was going to drop the telephone. He started breathing through his mouth, and his eyes got so big I could have knocked them off with a stick."

"Well," Mason said, "that's the situation in a nutshell."

"And how does that get you in bad?" she asked.

"It gets me in bad," he said, "because I don't dare let the cops know that I was in that room. If I should tell them the truth now, they'd probably suspect me of the murder. I've got to stand by my story of the locked door. On the other hand, that locked door may figure in the case quite prominently. A whole lot more prominently than I want."

"Well," she said, "isn't that up to the police to figure out?"

"I'm not so certain," he said, "but I am certain that Bradbury is going to be a dangerous antagonist."

"An antagonist," she said, "why, he's a client. Why should he become an antagonist?"

"That," he said, "is just the point. That's where I overlooked my hand."

"How do you mean?"

"The girl who left the apartment was Marjorie Clune. She's mixed up in the thing some way. I don't know just how much. Bradbury is crazy about her. He's desperately in love with her, and he's served notice on me that if she gets mixed in it, he doesn't care whom he has to sacrifice. He's going to clear her at any cost."

Della Street squinted her eyes thoughtfully; then suddenly turned to her notebook.

"Did you," she said, "expect a message from a young woman who was to ring up and leave an address?"

"Yes," he said, "that's Marjorie Clune. She's going some place where I can talk with her. I haven't had a chance to talk with her yet and find out what happened. She had an audience all the time."

"Just before you came in," Della Street said, "a young woman's voice came over the telephone and said, 'Simply tell Mr. Mason I'm at the Bostwick Hotel, room 408, and to check that alibi. "

"That was all?" he asked.

"That was all."

"Check what alibi?"

"I don't know. I figured you would."

"There's only one person who has an alibi in this case," he said, "and I've checked it."

"Who's that?"

"That's Thelma Bell. She was out with a fellow named Sanborne, and I checked it before she got in communication with him."

"Perhaps that's the alibi she wanted you to check."

"I've already checked it."

He frowned thoughtfully at her; then shook his head slowly.

"That's the only thing it could mean," he said. "I'll check it again as soon as I've talked with Paul Drake. He'll be waiting around for me. He was to have met me out at Patton's apartment, but he got wise to what had happened, and kept back under cover."

"You want me to wait?" she asked.

"No," he said, "you go on home."

As she put on her hat and coat, and added touches of powder to her cheeks and lipstick to her lips, Perry Mason hooked his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, and started pacing up and down the floor.

"What is it, chief?" she asked, turning away from the mirror to watch him.

"I was thinking," he said, "about the blackjack."

"What about it?"

"When you can tell me," he said, "why a man should kill another man with a knife; then walk into another room and throw a blackjack in the corner, you'll have given me the solution of this whole case."

"Perhaps," she said, "it's one of those cases where a man planted evidence. He might have had a blackjack that had some one's fingerprints on it, some one that he wanted to implicate in the crime. The fingerprints might have been made months before he carried the blackjack, and then —"

"And then," he said, "he certainly would have killed the victim with the blackjack. There wasn't a mark on Patton's head. The thing that killed him was that knife thrust, and it killed him instantly. That blackjack had no more to do with the man's death than the revolver that's in the upper righthand drawer of my office desk."

"Why was it left there then?" she asked.

"That's what I want to know," he told her, and then suddenly laughed.

"You've got enough to puzzle your brains over without trying to turn detective."

She stood with her hand on the knob of the door, regarding him curiously.

"Chief," she said, "why don't you do like the other lawyers do?"

"You mean plant evidence, and suborn perjury?"

"No, I don't mean that. I mean, why don't you sit in your office and wait until the cases come to you? Let the police go out and work up the case, and then you walk into court and try and punch holes in it. Why do you always have to go out on the firing line and get mixed up in the case itself?"

He grinned at her.

"I'm hanged if I know," he said, "except that it's the way I'm built. That's all. Lots of times you can keep a jury from convicting a person because they haven't been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I don't like that kind of a verdict. I like to establish conclusively that a person is innocent. I like to play with facts. I have a mania for jumping into the middle of a situation, trying to size it up ahead of the police, and being the first one to guess what actually happened."

"And then to protect some one who is helpless," she said.

"Oh, sure," he said, "that's part of the game."

She smiled at him from the door.

"Good night," she said.