The Case of the Velvet Claws

Chapter 7

A storm was whipping up from the southeast. Slow, leaden clouds drifted across the night sky, and bombarded the ground with great mushrooms of spattering water.

Wind was tugging at the corners of the apartment house where Perry Mason lived. A window was open only about half an inch at the bottom, but enough wind came through that opening to billow the curtains and keep them flapping.

Mason sat up in bed and groped for the telephone in the dark. He found the instrument, put it to his ear and said, “Hello.”

The voice of Eva Belter sounded swift and panicstricken over the wire.

“Thank God I’ve got you! Get in your car and come at once! This is Eva Belter.”

Perry Mason was still sleepy.

“Come where?” he said. “What’s the matter?”

“Something awful has happened,” she said. “Don’t come to the house. I’m not there.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m down at a drug store onGriswold Avenue. Drive out the Avenue and you’ll see the lights in the drug store. I’ll be standing in front of it.”

Perry Mason was getting his faculties together.

“Listen,” he said, “I’ve answered night calls before, where people have been trying to take me for a ride. Let’s make sure that there isn’t anything phony about this.”

She screamed at him over the telephone.

“Oh, don’t be so damned cautious! Come out here at once. I tell you I’m in serious trouble. You can recognize my voice all right.”

Mason said calmly, “Yes. I know all that. What was the name you gave me the first time you came to the office?”

“Griffin!” she shrieked.

“Okay,” said Mason. “Coming out.”

He climbed into his clothes, slipped a revolver in his hip pocket, pulled on a raincoat, and a cap which came down low over his forehead, switched out the lights, and left the apartment. His car was in the garage, and he nursed it into action; moved out into the rain before the motor was fully warmed.

The car spat and backfired as he turned the corner. Mason kept the choke out and stepped on the gas. Rain whipped against the windshield. Little geysers of water mushroomed up from the pavement where the big drops splashed down were turned to brilliance by the illumination of his headlights.

Mason ignored the possibility of any other traffic on the road as he swept past the intersections with increasing speed. He turned to the right onGriswold Avenue, and ran for a mile and a half before he slowed down and commenced to look for lights.

He saw her standing in front of a drug store. She had on a coat and no hat, and was heedless of the rain, which had soaked her hair thoroughly. Her eyes were wide and scared.

Perry Mason swung into the curb and brought the car to a stop.

“I thought you’d never get here,” she said, as he opened the door for her.

She climbed in, and Perry saw that she wore an evening gown, satin shoes, and a man’s coat. She was soaking wet and water trickled down to the floorboards of the car.

“What’s the trouble?” Perry Mason asked.

She stared at him with her white, wet face, and said, “Drive out to the house, quick!”

“What’s the trouble?” he repeated.

“My husband’s been murdered,” she wailed.

Mason snapped on the dome light in the car.

“Don’t do that!” she said.

He looked at her face. “Tell me about it,” he said, calmly.

“Will you get this car started?”

“Not until I know the facts,” he replied, almost casually.

“We’ve got to get there before the police do.”

“Why have we?”

“Because we’ve got to.”

Mason shook his head. “No,” he said, “we’re not going to talk to the police until I know exactly what happened.”

“Oh,” she said, “it was terrible!”

“Who killed him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what do you know?”

“Will you turn off that damned light?” she snapped.

“After you’ve finished telling me what happened,” he persisted.

“What do you want it on for?”

“The better to see you with, my dear,” he said, but there was no humor in his voice. His manner was grim.

She sighed wearily. “I don’t know what happened. I think it was somebody that he’d been blackmailing. I could hear their voices from the upper floor. They were very angry. I went to the stairs to listen.”

“Could you hear what was being said?”

“No,” she said, “just words and the tone. I could hear that they were cursing. Every once in a while there would be a word. My husband was using that cold, sarcastic tone that he gets when he’s fighting mad. The other man had his voice raised, but he wasn’t shouting. He was interrupting my husband every once in a while.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then I crept up the stairs because I wanted to hear what was being said.” She paused, catching her breath.

“All right,” pressed Mason, “go on. What happened then?”

“And then,” she said, “I heard the shot and the sound of a falling body.”

“Just the one shot?”

“Just the one shot, and the sound of the body falling. Oh, it was terrible! It jarred the house.”

“All right,” said Mason. “Go on from there. Then what did you do?”

“Then,” she said, “I turned and ran. I was afraid.”

“Where did you run?”

“To my room.”

“Did anybody see you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I waited there a minute.”

“Did you hear anything?”

“Yes, I heard the man who had fired the shot run down the stairs and out of the house.”

“All right,” Mason said insistently, “then what happened?”

“Then,” she said, “I decided that I must go and see George and see what could be done for him. I went up to his study. He was in there. He’d been taking a bath, and had thrown a bathrobe around himself. He was lying there—dead.”

“Lying where?” pressed Mason, remorselessly.

“Oh, don’t make me be so specific,” she snapped. “I can’t tell you. It was some place near the bathroom. He’d just come out of his bath. He must have been standing in the bathroom door when this argument took place.”

“How do you know he was dead?”

“I could tell by looking at him. That is, I think he was dead. Oh, I’m not sure. Please come out and help me. If he isn’t dead, it’s all right. There won’t be any trouble. If he is, we’re all of us in a hell of a mess.”

“Why?”

“Because everything’s going to come out. Don’t you see? Frank Locke knows all about Harrison Burke, and he’ll naturally think that Harrison Burke killed him. That will make Burke mention my name, and then anything may happen. Suspicion may even shift to me.”

Mason said, “Oh, forget it. Locke knows about Burke all right. But Locke is nothing but a lightweight and a figurehead. As soon as he loses your husband as a prop, he won’t be able to stand up. Don’t think for a minute that Harrison Burke was the only man who had it in for your husband.”

“No,” she insisted, “but Harrison Burke had the motive, more so than any of the others. The others didn’t know who ran the paper. Harrison Burke knew. You told him.”

“So he told you that, eh?” said Mason.

“Yes, he told me that. What did you have to go to him for?”

“Because,” said Mason, grimly, “I wasn’t going to take him for a free ride. He was getting a lot of service, and I intended to make him pay for it. I wasn’t going to have you put up all the money.”

“Don’t you think,” she said, “that that was something for me to decide?”

“No.”

She bit her lip, started to say something, then changed her mind.

“All right,” he said. “Now listen and get this straight. If he’s dead there’s going to be a lot of investigation. You’ve got to keep your nerve. Have you any idea who it was that was in that house?”

“No,” she said, “not to be sure; just what I could gather from the tone of the man’s voice.”

“All right,” he told her. “That’s something. You said you couldn’t hear what was being said?”

“I couldn’t,” she said, slowly, “but I could hear the sound of their voices. I could recognize the tones. I heard my husband’s voice, and then this other man’s voice.”

“Had you ever heard that other voice before?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who it was?”

“Yes.”

“Well, don’t be so damned mysterious,” he said. “Who was it? I’m your lawyer. You’ve got to tell me.”

She turned and faced him. “You know who it was,” she said.

“I know?”

“Yes.”

“Look here, one of us is crazy. How would I know who it was?”

“Because,” she said, slowly, “it was you!”

His eyes became cold, hard and steady.

“Me?”

“Yes, you! Oh, I didn’t want to tell! I wasn’t going to let you think I knew. I was going to protect your secret! But you wormed it out of me. But I won’t tell any one else, never, never, never! It’s just a secret that you and I share.”

He stared at her with his lips tightening. “So that’s the kind of a playmate you are, eh?”

She met his eyes and nodded, slowly.

“Yes, Mr. Mason, I’m the sort you can trust. I’m never going to betray you.”

He sucked in a deep breath, then sighed.

“Oh, hell,” he said, “what’s the use!”

There was a moment of silence. Then Perry Mason asked, in a voice that was entirely without expression: “Did you hear a car drive away—afterwards?”

She hesitated a moment, and then said: “Yes, I think I did, but the storm was making a lot of racket up there with the trees rubbing against the house and everything. But I think I heard a motor.”

“Now listen,” he told her. “You’re nervous and you’re unstrung. But if you’re going to face a bunch of detectives and start talking that way, you’re just going to get yourself into trouble. You’d either better have a complete breakdown and get a physician who will refuse to let any one talk with you, or else you’d better get your story licked into shape. Now you either heard a motor or you didn’t hear one. Did you, or didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, defiantly, “I heard one.”

“Okay,” he said. “That’s better. Now, how many people are in the house?”

“What do you mean?”

“Servants and everybody,” he said. “Just who’s there. I want to know everybody that’s in that house.”

“Well,” she said, “there’s Digley, the butler.”

“Yes,” said Mason, “I met him. I know all about him. Who else? Who is the housekeeper?”

“A Mrs. Veitch,” she said, “and she has her daughter staying with her now. The daughter is there for a few days.”

“All right, how about the men? Let’s check up on the men. Just Digley, the butler?”

“No,” she said, “there’s Carl Griffin.”

“Griffin, eh?”

She flushed. “Yes.”

“That accounts for the fact that you used the name ‘Griffin’ when you came to call on me the first time?”

“No, it doesn’t. I just used the first name that came into my mind. Don’t say anything like that.”

He grinned. “I didn’t say anything like that. You’re the one that said it.”

She rushed into rapid conversation.

“Carl Griffin is my husband’s nephew. He’s very seldom home at night. He’s pretty wild, I guess. He leads a pretty gay life. They say he comes in drunk a good deal of the time. I don’t know about that. But I know that he’s very close to my husband. George comes as near having affection for Carl as he does for any living mortal. You must know that my husband is a queer man. He doesn’t really love any one. He wants to own and possess, to dominate and crush, but he can’t love. He hasn’t any close friends and he’s completely selfsufficient.”

“Yes,” said Mason, “I know all that stuff. It isn’t your husband’s character that I’m interested in. Tell me some more about this Carl Griffin. Was he there tonight?”

“No,” she said, “he went out early in the evening. In fact, I don’t think he was there for dinner. It seems to me that he went out to the golf club and played golf this afternoon. When did it start to rain?”

“Around six o’clock, I think,” said Mason. “Why?”

“Yes,” she said, “that’s the way I remember it. It was pleasant this afternoon, and Carl was playing golf. Then I think George said that he had telephoned he was going to stay out at the golf club for dinner and wouldn’t be in until late.”

“You’re sure he hadn’t come in?” asked Mason.

“Certain.”

“You’re sure that it wasn’t his voice that you heard up there in the room?”

She hesitated for a moment.

“No,” she said, “it was yours.”

Mason muttered an exclamation of annoyance.

“That is,” she said hastily, “it sounded like yours. It was a man who talked just like you. He had that same quiet way of dominating a conversation. He could raise his voice, and yet make it seem quiet and controlled, just like you, but I’ll never mention that to any one, never in the world! They could torture me, but I wouldn’t mention your name.”

She widened her blue eyes by an effort, and stared full into his face with that look of studied innocence.

Perry Mason stared at her, then shrugged his shoulders. “All right,” he said, “we’ll talk about that later. In the meantime you’ve got to get yourself together. Now were your husband and this other man quarreling about you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know!” she said. “Can’t you understand that I don’t know what they were talking about? I only know that I must go back there. What will happen if somebody else should discover the body and I should be gone?”

Mason said, “That’s all right, but you’ve waited this long, and a minute or two isn’t going to make any great difference now. There’s one thing I want to know before we go.”

“What is it?”

He reached over and took her face and turned it until the light from the globe in the top of the car was shining full on her face. Then he said, slowly, “Was it Harrison Burke that was up in the room with him when that shot was fired?”

She gasped. “My God, no!”

“Was Harrison Burke out there tonight?”

“No.”

“Did he call you up tonight or this afternoon?”

“No,” she said, “I don’t know anything about Harrison Burke. I haven’t seen him or heard from him since that night at the Beechwood Inn, and I don’t want to. He has done nothing but bring trouble into my life.”

Mason said, grimly: “Then, how did it happen that you knew that I had told him of your husband’s connection with Spicy Bits?”

She dropped her eyes from his, tried to shake her head free of his hands.

“Go on,” he said, remorselessly, “answer the question. Did he tell you that when he was out there tonight?”

“No,” she muttered in a subdued voice. “He told me that when he telephoned me this afternoon.”

“Then he did call up this afternoon, eh?”

“Yes.”

“How soon after I had been at his office, do you know?”

“I think it was right after.”

“Before he had sent me some money by messenger?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that before? Why did you say that you hadn’t heard from him?”

“I forgot,” she said. “I did tell you earlier that he’d called up. If I had wanted to lie to you, I wouldn’t have told you at first that I’d heard from him.”

“Oh, yes, you would,” said Mason. “You told me then because you didn’t think there was any possibility that I would suspect him of having been in that room with your husband when the shot was fired.”

“That’s not so,” she said.

He nodded his head slowly.

“You’re just a little liar,” he said, judicially and dispassionately. “You can’t tell the truth. You don’t play fair with anybody, not even yourself. You’re lying to me right now. You know who that man was that was in the room.”

She shook her head. “No, no, no, no,” she said. “Won’t you understand, I don’t know who it was? I think it was you! That was why I didn’t call you from the house. I ran down to this drug store to call you. It’s almost a mile.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because,” she said, “I wanted to give you time to get home. Don’t you see? I wanted to be able to say that I called you and found you at your apartment, if I should be asked. It would have been awful to have called and found that you were out, after I recognized your voice.”

“You didn’t recognize my voice,” he said quietly.

“I thought I did,” she said demurely.

Mason said, “There’s no thinking about it. I’ve been in bed for the last two or three hours, but I couldn’t prove any alibi. If the police thought I’d been to the house I’d have the devil of a time trying to square myself. You’ve figured that all out.”

She looked up at him and suddenly flung her arms around his neck.

“Oh, Perry,” she said, “please don’t look at me that way. Of course, I’m not going to tell on you. You’re in this thing just as deep as I am. You did what you did to save me. We’re in it together. I’m going to stand by you, and you’re going to stand by me.”

He pushed her away and put his fingers on her wet arm, until she had released her hold. Then he turned her face once more until he could look in her eyes.

“We’re not in this thing a damned bit,” he said. “You’re my client, and I’m sticking by you. That’s all. You understand that?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Whose coat is that you’re wearing?”

“Carl’s. I found it in the corridor. I started out first in the rain, and then realized I would get soaking wet. There was a coat in the hallway, and I put it on.”

“Okay. You be thinking that over while I’m driving up to the place. I don’t know whether the police will be there or not. Do you know if any one else heard the shot?”

“No, I don’t think they did.”

“All right,” he said, “if we’ve got an opportunity to go over this thing before the police get there, you forget this business about running down to the drug store and putting in the telephone call. Tell them that you called me from the house, and then you ran down the hill to meet me. And that was why you were wet. You couldn’t stay in the house. You were afraid. Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” she said, meekly.

Perry Mason switched out the dome light in the car and snapped back the gear lever, eased in the clutch, and started the machine boring through the rain.

She came over and cuddled closely to him, her left arm around his neck, her right arm resting on his leg.

“Oh,” she wailed, “I’m so afraid, and I feel so alone.”

“Shut up,” he said, “and think!”

He drove the car at a savage pace up the long grade, turned onElmwood Drive, and went into second as he climbed the knoll on which the big house was situated. He turned in at the driveway and parked the car directly in front of the porch.

“Now listen,” he said to her in a low voice, as he helped her out, “the house seems to be quiet. Nobody else heard the shot. The police aren’t here yet. You’ve got to use your head. If you’ve been lying to me, it will mean that you’re going to get into serious difficulties.”

“I haven’t been lying,” she said. “I told you the truth—honest to God.”

“Okay,” he said, and they sprinted across the porch.

“The door’s unlocked. I left it unlocked,” she said, “you can go right in.” And she hung back, in order to let him be the first to enter the house.

Perry Mason tried the door.

“No,” he said, “it’s locked. The night latch is on. Have you got your key?”

She looked at him blankly.

“No,” she said, “my key’s in my purse.”

“Where’s your purse?” he asked her.

She stared at him with eyes that were indistinct, but her poise was that of one who is rigid with terror.

“My God!” she said, “I must have left my purse up in the room with… with my husband’s body!”

“You had it with you when you went upstairs?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “I know I did. But I must have dropped it. I don’t remember having it with me when I came out.”

“We’ve got to get in,” he said. “Is there another door that’s open?”

She shook her head, then suddenly said, “Yes, there’s a back door where the servants come in. There’s a key that we keep hanging up under the eaves of the garage. It will open the door, and we can get in that way.”

“Let’s go.”

They walked down the steps from the porch and around the gravel driveway which circled the house. The house was dark and silent. Wind was lashing the shrubbery, and rain was pelting against the sides of the house, but no noise whatever came from the interior of the gloomy mansion.

“Don’t make any noise,” he cautioned her. “I want to get in without the servants hearing us. If nobody’s awake, I want to have a minute or two to check things over after I see how the land lies inside.”

She nodded, groped in the eaves of the garage, found the key, and opened the back door.

“All right,” he said. “You sneak through the house and let me in the front door. I’ll lock this back door from the outside, and put the key back in the place on the nail.”

She nodded her head and vanished in the darkness of the house. He closed the door, locked it, and put the key back where it had been; then he retraced his steps around the front of the house.