The Case of the Velvet Claws

Chapter 15

Perry Mason sat in his room at the hotel. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his face was gray with fatigue. The eyes, however, were steady in their calm concentration, dominating the entire face.

Morning sunlight was streaming in through the windows. The bed was littered with newspapers. Headlines streamed across them news of the Belter murder, which had developed enough interesting angles to betray to the newsskilled reporters that a major sensation was due to break.

The Examiner carried headlines which monopolized the front page.

Underneath in smaller headlines:

These headlines appeared over different articles on the front page of the paper. The inside page showed pictures of Eva Belter sitting with her knees crossed, a handkerchief to her eyes. There were headlines with the byline of a wellknown sob sister:

Reading the newspapers, Mason had kept abreast of the situation. He had learned that the police had traced the gun to one Pete Mitchell, who had mysteriously disappeared immediately after the shooting, but who had a perfect alibi covering the time when the crime had actually been committed. It was the assumption of the police that Mitchell was shielding some one to whom he had given the gun.

No names were mentioned, but Mason was able to realize that the police were getting close to Harrison Burke. He had also read, with increasing interest, about a chance remark which Eva Belter had made which had caused the police to start seeking an attorney who had represented her, and who had mysteriously disappeared from his office. The police were confidently predicting that the mystery would be solved within another twentyfour hours, and the man who fired the fatal shot be behind the bars.

Somebody knocked at the door.

Perry Mason put down the newspaper he was reading, cocked his head on one side, and listened.

The knock was repeated.

Mason shrugged his shoulders, walked to the door, twisted the key, and opened it.

Della Street was in the hall.

She pushed her way into the room, slammed the door behind her, and locked it.

“I told you not to risk it,” Mason told her.

She turned around and looked at him. Her eyes were slightly bloodshot, with dark circles under them, and her face was haggard.

“I don’t care,” she said. “It was all right. I managed to ditch them. I’ve been playing tag with them for an hour.”

“You can’t ever tell about those fellows, Della. They’re clever. Sometimes they let you think you’ve got away in order to find out where you wanted to go.”

“They didn’t slip anything over on me,” she said in a voice that told of raw nerves. “I tell you they don’t know where I am.”

He caught the note of hysteria in her voice. “Well, I’m glad you’re here. I was just wondering who I could get to take down some stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“Some stuff that’s going to come up.”

She made a gesture toward the newspapers on the bed.

“Chief,” she said, “I told you that she was going to get you into trouble. She came into the office and signed those papers. There were a bunch of reporters hanging around, of course, and they started going after her. Then the detectives took her down to Headquarters for further questioning. You can see what she did.”

Mason nodded. “That’s all right. Don’t get excited, Della.”

“Get excited? Do you know what she did? She made the statement down there that she recognized your voice. That you were the man that was in the room with Belter when the shot was fired. And then she pulled a fainting fit, and a lot of hysterics, and stuff of that sort.”

“That’s all right, Della,” he said soothingly. “I knew she was going to do that.”

Della stared at him with wide eyes.

“You did?” she asked. “I thought I was the one who knew that!”

He nodded. “Sure you did, Della. So did I.”

“She’s a rat and a liar!” Della Street said.

Mason shrugged his shoulders and walked to the telephone. He gave the number of Drake’s Detective Bureau, and got Paul Drake on the line.

“Listen, Paul,” he said, “make sure you’re not tailed, and sneak over to Room 518 in the Hotel Ripley. Better bring a couple of stenographer’s notebooks, and a bunch of pencils along with you. Will you?”

“Right away?” asked the detective.

“Right away,” he said. “It’s eight fortyfive now, and I’m expecting a show to start at nine.”

He hung up the telephone.

Della Street was curious. “What is it, chief?” she asked.

“I’m expecting Eva Belter to be here at nine o’clock,” he said briefly.

“I don’t want to be here when that woman’s here,” Della Street said. “I can’t trust myself around her. She’s doublecrossed you all the way from the start. I want to kill her. She’s such a sleek little gutter rat.”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “Sit down and take it easy, Della. There’s going to be a showdown.”

There was a sound at the door. The knob turned, the door opened, and Eva Belter walked in.

She looked at Della Street, and said, “Oh, you’re both here.”

“Apparently,” Mason said, “you’ve been doing some talking.” He gestured, as he spoke, toward the newspapers which were piled on the bed.

She walked over to him, ignoring the other woman, placed her hands on his shoulders, looked up in his eyes. “Perry,” she said, “I never felt so rotten about anything in my life. I don’t know how I happened to say it. They got me down at Headquarters and barked questions at me. Everybody shrieked questions. I never saw anything like it. I didn’t dream that it would be anything at all like that. I tried to protect you, but I couldn’t. It slipped out, and just as soon as I made the first slip, they all started piling on me. They made threats, and told me they’d name me as an accessory.”

“What did you tell them?” asked Mason.

She looked in his eyes, then went over to the bed, sat down, took out her handkerchief from her purse, and started to cry.

Della Street moved two swift steps toward her, but Mason caught her arm and pushed her back.

“I’m handling this,” he said.

Eva Belter continued to sob into her handkerchief.

“Go ahead,” said Mason. “What did you tell them?”

She shook her head.

“Never mind that sob stuff,” he said, “it doesn’t go over so big right now. We’re in a jam and you’d better tell me what you said.”

She sobbed. “I just ttttold them that I heard your vvvvoice.”

“Did you say it was my voice? Or some one that sounded like me?”

“I tttold them everything. That it was your voice.”

His tone was hard. “You knew damned well it wasn’t my voice.”

“I didn’t intend to tell them,” she wailed, “but it was the truth. It was your voice.”

“All right. We’ll take it that way,” Mason said.

Della Street started to say something, but stopped when he turned on her and fastened her with levellidded eyes.

There was a silence in the room, broken only by the faint rumble of noises from the street, and the sobs of the woman.

After a minute or two the door opened, and Paul Drake walked in.

“Hello, everybody,” he said, cheerfully. “Made time, didn’t I? I got a break. There was nobody who seemed to have the slightest interest in where I was, or what I was doing.”

“Did you see anybody hanging around the front of the place?” asked Mason. “I’m not entirely certain that they didn’t shadow Della.”

“Nobody that I noticed.”

Mason waved his hand toward the woman who sat on the bed with her legs crossed.

“This is Eva Belter,” he said.

Drake grinned and looked at the legs.

“Yes,” he said, “I recognized her from a picture in the paper.”

Eva Belter took the handkerchief down from her eyes, and stared up at Drake. She smiled ingratiatingly.

Della Street snapped, “Even your tears weren’t genuine!”

Eva Belter turned and looked at her, her blue eyes suddenly grown hard.

Perry Mason whirled on Della. “Listen, Della,” he said, “I’m running this show.” He looked over at Paul Drake. “Did you bring the notebooks and pencils, Paul?”

The detective nodded.

Mason took the notebooks and pencils, and passed them over to Della Street.

“Can you move the table and take down what’s said, Della?” he asked.

“I can try,” she said in a choked voice.

“All right. Be sure and get what she says,” and he jerked his thumb in the direction of Eva Belter.

Eva Belter looked from one to the other. “What is it?” she asked. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to get the straight of this,” Mason told her.

“You want me here?” asked Paul Drake.

“Sure,” Mason told him. “You’re a witness.”

“You make me nervous,” said Eva Belter. “That’s the way they did last night. They had me in the District Attorney’s office, and they had people sitting there with notebooks and pencils. It makes me nervous to have people take down what I say.”

Mason smiled. “Yes, I should think it would. Did they ask you anything about the gun?”

Eva Belter widened her blue eyes in that stare of innocence which made her seem so young and helpless.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You know what I mean,” Mason persisted. “Did they ask anything about how you happened to have the gun?”

“How I happened to have the gun?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Mason. “Harrison Burke gave it to you, you know, and that’s the reason you had to telephone him—to tell him that it was his gun that had been used in the shooting.”

Della Street’s pencil was skipping rapidly over the page of the notebook.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eva Belter said with dignity.

“Oh, yes, you do,” Mason told her. “You telephoned Burke that there had been an accident or something, and that his gun had figured in it. He’d had the gun given him by a friend named Mitchell, and he drove right around and picked up Mitchell. The two of them ducked under cover.”

“Why,” she exclaimed, “I never heard of anything like that!”

“That line isn’t going to get you anywhere, live,” Mason told her, “because I saw Harrison Burke, and I have a statement signed by him.”

She stiffened in sudden consternation.

“You have a statement signed by him?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I thought you were representing me.”

“What’s wrong with representing you and having a statement from Burke?” he asked.

“Nothing, only he’s lying if he said that he ever gave me that gun. I never saw it in my life.”

“That makes it more simple,” Mason commented.

“What does?”

“You’ll see,” he told her. “Now let’s go back and clear up another point or two. When you got your purse it was in your husband’s desk. Do you remember that?”

“What do you mean?” she inquired in a low cautious voice.

“When I was there with you,” Mason said, “and you got your purse.”

“Oh, yes, I remember that! I’d put it in the desk earlier in the evening.”

“Fine,” said Mason. “Now, just between the four of us, who do you think was in the room with your husband when the shot was fired?”

She said, simply, “You were.”

“That’s fine,” Mason said without enthusiasm. “Now, your husband had been taking a bath just before the shot was fired.”

For the first time she seemed uneasy. “I don’t know about that. You were there. I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you know,” Mason insisted. “He was in the bath, and he got out and put a bathrobe around him, without even waiting to dry himself.”

“Did he?” she asked mechanically.

“You know he did, and the evidence shows he did. Now, how do you suppose that I got in to see him if he was in his bath?”

“Why, I guess the servant let you in, didn’t he?”

Mason smiled. “The servant doesn’t say so, does he?”

“Well, I don’t know. All I know is that I heard your voice.”

“You’d been out with Burke,” Mason said, slowly, “and you came in. You didn’t carry your purse with you while you were wearing your evening clothes, did you?”

“No, I didn’t have it with me then,” she said, and suddenly bit her lip.

Mason grinned at her.

“Then how,” he said, “did it get in your husband’s desk?”

“I don’t know.”

“You remember the receipts that I gave you for the amounts you paid on account of fees?” Mason asked.

She nodded her head.

“Where are they?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I’ve lost them.”

“That,” Mason said, “clinches it.”

“Clinches what?” she asked.

“The fact that you killed him. You won’t tell me what happened, so I’ll tell you what happened.

“You had been out with Burke. You came in, and Burke left you at the door. You went upstairs, and your husband heard you coming. He was in the bath at the time. He was in a towering rage. He jumped out of the bath, threw the robe around him, and called to you to come into his suite. You went in there and he showed you the two receipts that he’d found in your purse while you were out. They had my name on them. I’d been there and told him what it was that I was trying to keep out of Spicy Bits. He put two and two together, and knew who it was that I was representing right then.”

“Why I never heard of such a thing!” she said.

He grinned at her. “Oh, yes, you did! You knew that it was a showdown right then, and you shot him. He fell, and you rushed out of the place, but you played it pretty smooth at that. You dropped the gun on the floor, knowing that it could be traced to Harrison Burke and could never be traced any farther. You wanted to get Harrison Burke in it, so that he’d have to get you out. And you wanted to get me in it for the same reason. You went down and telephoned Burke and told him that something had happened, and that his gun would be found, that he’d better get out and lie low, and that his only hope was to keep sending me plenty of money so that I would go ahead with the case.

“Then you telephoned to me and got me to come out there. You told me that you recognized my voice as the voice of the man who was in the room with your husband because you wanted my help, and also because you wanted to fix it so that I couldn’t prove an alibi if you wanted to spring this business about recognizing my voice in the apartment.

“You figured that if you could drag me and Harrison Burke both into the mess, we’d get you out while we were getting ourselves out. You figured that I’d get busy and square the thing some way, with Burke’s money back of me, and the fact that I was in a jam to spur me on.

“You figured that you could pretend you didn’t realize just how much you had me in your power by saying that you recognized my voice as that of the man in the room with your husband.

“Also, you figured that if you got in a position where they commenced to put the screws on you, you’d switch the whole thing to me, and let Burke and me fight it out between us.”

She was staring at him now her face chalkwhite, her eyes dark with panic.

“You’ve got no right to talk that way,” she charged.

“The hell I haven’t!” he said. “I’ve got proof.”

“What kind of proof?”

He laughed harshly. “What do you think I was doing all the time you were being questioned last night?” he said. “I got in touch with Harrison Burke, and we got in touch with the housekeeper. The housekeeper was trying to protect you, but she knows that you came in with Burke and that your husband called to you as you went upstairs. She knows that he was looking for you earlier in the evening, and that he had your purse, and had found the two receipts with my signature on them.

“When you had the receipts made out without any name on them, you thought it would be all right. But you forgot that my name was signed to them, and that as soon as your husband knew the case that I was working on and found the receipts in your purse, he knew that you were the woman in the case.”

Her face was twisting now. “You’re my lawyer. You can’t use all of the things that I’ve told you to build up a case against me. You’ve got to be loyal to my interests.”

He laughed bitterly.

“I suppose I should sit tight and let you drag me into the murder, so that you can walk out, eh?”

“I didn’t say that. I just want you to be loyal to me.”

“You’re a hell of a person to talk of loyalty.”

She tried another defense. “All that is a mess of lies,” she charged, “and you can’t prove it.”

Perry Mason reached for his hat.

“Maybe I can’t prove it,” he said, “but you put in the night making wild statements to the District Attorney. I’m going down and make a statement now. When I get done they’ll have a pretty good idea of the real facts of the case. What with telephoning to Harrison Burke about the gun, and telling him to get out, and the motive that you had in order to keep your husband from discovering your affair with Burke, the police will have a pretty good case.”

“But I didn’t gain anything by his death.”

“That’s another slick thing,” he said coldly, “that is just like everything else you did. It’s just slick enough to look good on the face, but not clever enough to really get by. The forgery of that will was a good job.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said,” he snapped. “Your husband told you that you were disinherited, or else you found the will in his safe. At any rate, you knew the terms of the will, and you knew where it was kept. You tried to figure some way of getting around that will. You knew that if you destroyed it, it wouldn’t do you any good because Carl Griffin and Arthur Atwood, his lawyer, had seen the will, and that your husband had told them about it. If it was missing they’d suspect you.

“But you figured that if you could trap Griffin into claiming under the will and then prove that the will was a forgery, you’d have Griffin in a questionable position. So you went ahead and forged the will that your husband had drawn, making the forgery crude enough to be easily detected, but copying the will word for word. Then you planted your forged will where you could get it whenever you wanted to.

“When you had me at the house, examining the body, you pretended to be overcome with emotion. You wouldn’t come near the body. But while I was busy looking things over, you got the original will and destroyed it. You planted your forged copy. Naturally Griffin and his lawyer walked into the trap and claimed that the will was the original holographic will of George Belter, because they knew the terms of the genuine will.

“As a matter of fact, it’s such a clumsy forgery, that they can’t even get a handwriting expert to testify that it’s genuine. They realize now the position that they’re in, but they’ve already filed the will and made affidavits to the effect that it’s genuine. They don’t dare to back up. It’s pretty slick.”

She got slowly to her feet.

“You’ve got to have some proof of this,” she said, but her tone was thin and trembling.

Mason nodded his head to Drake.

“Go in the next room, Drake,” he said. “You’ll find Mrs. Veitch in there. Bring her out and let her corroborate what I’ve said.”

Drake’s face was like a mask. He got up and walked to the connecting door which led to the adjoining room. He opened it.

“Mrs. Veitch,” he called.

There was a rustle of motion.

Mrs. Veitch, tall, bony, dressed in black, walked into the room with her lackluster eyes staring straight ahead.

“Good morning,” she said to Eva Belter.

Perry Mason suddenly said, “Just one moment, Mrs. Veitch. There’s one other matter I want to clear up before I have you make your statement to Mrs. Belter. If you’ll just step back in the other room for a moment, please.”

Mrs. Veitch turned and walked back to the room.

Paul Drake flashed Perry Mason a quizzical glance, and shut the door.

Eva Belter took two steps toward the outer door, then suddenly toppled forward.

Perry Mason caught her as she pitched forward.

Drake came up and took her legs. Together, they carried her to the bed, and laid her down.

Della Street laid down her pencil, gave a little exclamation, and pushed back her chair.

Mason turned on her almost savagely.

“Stay there!” he said. “Take down everything that’s said! Don’t miss a word!”

He went to the washstand, sopped a towel in cold water, and slapped it down on Eva Belter’s face. They loosened the front of her dress, and slapped her chest with the towel.

She gasped and recovered consciousness.

She looked up at Mason, and said, “Please, Perry, help me.”

He shook his head. “I can’t help you,” he said, “as long as you’re trying to give me the doublecross.”

“I’ll come clean,” she wailed.

“All right. What happened?”

“Just what you said, only I didn’t know Mrs. Veitch knew about it. I didn’t know any one heard George call me or heard the shot.”

“How close to him were you when you shot him?”

“I was way across the room,” she answered tonelessly. “Honestly, I didn’t intend to do it. I just shot him on impulse. I had the gun to use for defense in the event he should attack me. I was afraid he’d try to kill me. He had a violent temper, and I knew that if he ever found out about Harrison Burke, he’d do something awful. As soon as I knew he’d found out, I slipped the gun into my hand. When he started for me, I screamed and shot. I guess I dropped the gun right there on the floor. I wasn’t certain about it at the time. Honestly, the idea of getting Burke into it never occurred to me then. I was too rattled to think of anything. I simply ran out into the night.

“I’m not a fool, and I knew how black things would look for me, particularly in view of the mess that I was in with Harrison Burke on account of the Beechwood Inn murder.

“I just ran blindly out into the rain and didn’t have very much of an idea what I was doing. I remember grabbing a coat as I went past the hall stand. But it shows how rattled I was that I didn’t even take my own coat. It was there, but I grabbed an old overcoat that Carl Griffin sometimes wore. I threw it around me and kept running. After a while I got my wits about me and decided that I’d better call you. I didn’t know then whether or not he was dead. But I knew that if I was going to have to face him, I wanted to have you with me.

“He didn’t run after me, so I was afraid that I’d killed him. It really wasn’t premeditated. It was just on impulse. He’d found my purse and gone through it. That was a habit he had, looking for letters. I wasn’t foolish enough to have any letters in there, but I did have those receipts, and he put two and two together.

“He was taking a bath when I came in. He heard me, I guess. He climbed out of the bathtub, and threw the bathrobe around him, and started bellowing for me. I went up there and he had the receipts. He accused me of being the woman who was with Harrison Burke, and then he accused me of a lot of things, and said that he was going to throw me out without a penny. I became hysterical, and grabbed the gun and shot him. After I got down to the drug store, and was ready to telephone you, I realized that I was going to need somebody to stand back of me. I didn’t have any money of my own. I told you that. My husband kept all the money, and only gave me a little at a time. I knew about the will that was made out in favor of Carl Griffin, and I was afraid that I couldn’t get any money out of the estate while it was being tied up in probate. I knew that Harrison Burke would be afraid of getting his name mixed into the thing, and that he’d leave me flat. I had to have money; I had to have somebody to stand back of me. So I rang up Harrison Burke and deliberately mixed him into it. I told him that something had happened, and that his gun had figured in it. That I didn’t know who the man was that had killed him, but I did know that his gun was on the floor.

“It was a stall that wouldn’t have gone over with you, but it went over with Burke all right. Burke was frantic.

“I told him there was only one thing to do, and that was for him to get under cover, and fix it so they couldn’t trace the gun to him, if he could. And in the meantime, to see that you had plenty of money to go ahead and do anything that you could. Then I telephoned you and got you to come over.

“While you were driving down there, I got to thinking how much better it would be if I could have you in a position where you were forced to get me out of it in order to save yourself and also, have some kind of an explanation that I could make to the police if the police should start suspecting me.

“You were right about that.” She went on, “I knew that they could never convict you, because you were too smart and skillful. You could get out of it, and I figured that if they got to crowding me too close, I’d give them the information that I did, so that they’d go after you and that would clear me. If they ever tried to come back on me after you had drawn their fire, I knew that it would be an easy case to beat.”

Mason looked up at Paul Drake and shook his head.

“Nice little playmate, isn’t she?” he said.

There was a knock at the door.

Mason looked at the occupants of the room. Then tiptoed to the door, and opened it.

Sidney Drumm stood on the threshold. There was another man back of him.

“Hello, Perry,” he said. “We had a devil of a time finding you. We trailed Della Street to this hotel, but it took us quite a little while to find out what alias you were registered under. I’m sorry to bother you, but you’ve got to take a little ride with me. The District Attorney wants to ask you a few questions.”

Mason nodded. “Walk right in,” he said.

Eva Belter gave a little cry. “Perry, you’ve got to protect me! I came clean. You’ve got to stand back of me.”

Perry looked at her, then turned abruptly to Sidney Drumm.

“This is a break for you, Sidney,” he said. “You’re going to be able to make the arrest. This is Eva Belter, who has just confessed to the murder of her husband.”

Eva Belter screamed, got to her feet and swayed uncertainly.

Drumm looked from one to the other.

“It’s a fact,” Paul Drake said.

Mason motioned toward Della Street.

“It’s all down there,” he said, “in black and white. We’ve got witnesses, and we’ve got her statement taken verbatim.”

Sidney Drumm whistled under his breath.

“By God, Perry,” he said, “that’s a lucky break for you! They were going to charge you with the murder.”

Mason’s voice was savage, “There wasn’t any luck about it. I was willing to give her a break as long as she shot square. But when I read in the paper about her dragging me into it, I made up my mind that I was going to call for a showdown.”

Paul Drake said, “Do you really know where Harrison Burke is?”

“Hell, no!” said Perry Mason. “I didn’t even get out of this room last night. I simply sat here and thought. I did get hold of Mrs. Veitch, and told her that Eva Belter was going to be in here this morning and wanted her to be here in order to corroborate a statement she was going to make to the reporters. I sent a taxi out for Mrs. Veitch and had her come in.”

“She wouldn’t have backed you up in the statement?” asked Drake.

“I don’t know,” said Mason. “I don’t think so. I didn’t talk with her at all. She wouldn’t talk with me. I think she’s holding something back, though. I’m satisfied she knows something. I simply wanted to have you open the door and let Eva Belter see her here for the purpose of exerting a little pressure.”

Eva Belter stared whitefaced at Perry Mason.

“Damn you,” she said, “for a doublecrossing backstabber!”

It was Sidney Drumm who gave the situation its last touch of irony. “Hell,” he said, “Eva Belter was the woman who told us where you were, Perry. She said she was going to see you this morning and that we could wait until someone else came here and claim we’d followed that other person. She wanted to have you think we’d followedDella Street or someone, instead of her.”

Mason made no comment. His face was suddenly very weary.