The men almost ran to the elevator, as though the woman who stood in the doorway might be afflicted with some sort of plague. When the elevator door had closed on them and the cage was rattling downward, Paul Drake glanced inquiringly at Perry Mason. "She was ready to spill her story," he said ruefully.
"No, she wasn't. She was going to pull a line to get our sympathy, a long tale of woe about how Moxley tricked her. She'd never have told us about the man. He's the one we want. She'll go to him now. There's nothing that gets a person's goat like not letting them talk when they are trying to make a play for sympathy."
"Do you suppose it's some one living there with her?" Drake asked.
"It's hard to tell who it is. The thing that I'm figuring on is that it may be a detective or a lawyer."
The detective gave an exclamation. "Boy, some lawyer is going to be plenty mad when she comes to him with a story about a couple of dicks who were going to arrest her for using the telephone to demand money. Do you suppose she'll call him on the telephone to tell him?"
"Not after the line we handed her about the calls being watched. She'll be afraid to use the telephone. She'll get in touch with him personally, whoever he is."
"You think she smelled a rat?" asked Drake.
"I doubt it," Mason answered. "Remember, she's awed by the city—and, if she does smell a rat, she'll think we're police detectives laying a trap for him."
The men piled out of the elevator, strode across the lobby and were careful not to even glance in the direction of the car, where Danny Spear sat slumped behind the wheel. They turned to the right, crossed the street, so that they would be in full view of the apartment house, and signaled a cruising cab.
Chapter 15
Back in his office, Perry Mason paced the floor, his thumbs thrust in the armholes of his vest. Della Street, seated at the corner of the big desk, the sliding leaf pulled out to hold her notebook, took down the words which Perry Mason flung over his shoulder as he paced up and down the room.
"… wherefore, plaintiff prays that the bonds of matrimony existing between her, the said Rhoda Montaine, and the defendant, the said Carl W. Montaine, be dissolved by an order of this court; that the said plaintiff do have and recover of and from the said defendant, and that the said defendant pay to the said plaintiff by way of alimony, and as a fair and equitable division of the property rights of the said parties herein, the sum of fifty thousand dollars, twenty thousand of which to be paid in cash, the remaining thirty thousand to be paid in monthly installments of five hundred dollars each, until the whole of the same is paid, such deferred payments to bear interest at the rate of seven percent per annum; that the said plaintiff prays for such other and further relief as to this court may seem meet and equitable…"
"That's all, Della. Put a blank on there for the signature of the attorney for the plaintiff and an affidavit of verification for Rhoda Montaine to sign."
Della Street finished making pothooks across the page of the notebook, raised her eyes to Perry Mason and asked, "Is she really going to file this suit for divorce, chief?"
"She is when I get done with her."
"That puts you in a position of fighting the annulment action, yet filing an action for divorce?" Della Street asked.
"Yes. If they got the annulment there wouldn't be any alimony. That's one of the things that C. Phillip Montaine is figuring. He wants to save his pocketbook. The district attorney wants Carl to testify in the murder trial."
"And if you can beat the annulment action, he can't testify?"
"That's right."
"Will he be able to testify if he gets a divorce, chief?"
"No. If they can annul the marriage Carl can give his testimony. In the eyes of the law a void marriage is no marriage at all. If there was a valid marriage, even if it was subsequently dissolved by divorce, he can't testify against his wife without her consent."
"But," Della objected, "you can't keep them from getting an annulment. The law plainly says that a subsequent marriage contracted by any person during the life of a former spouse is void from the beginning."
"I'm glad it does," Mason answered, grinning.
"But, when Rhoda married Carl Montaine, her former husband was still living."
Mason resumed his savage pacing of the office. "I can lick them on that with my eyes shut," he said. "It's the other things that are worrying me… Stick around, Della, and give me a chance to think. I want to think out loud. I may have something for you to write out. Is someone watching the telephone board?"
"Yes."
"I'm expecting an important call," Mason said, "from Danny Spear. I think we're going to find the persons who were putting the screws on Moxley for the money."
"Do you want to find them, chief?"
"I don't want the district attorney to subpoena them," he said. "I want to get them out of the country."
"Won't that be dangerous, compounding a felony, or something of that sort?"
He grinned at her, and the grin, in itself, was an eloquent answer. After a moment, he said softly, "And are you telling me?"
She looked worried and made aimless designs on the pages of her notebook. At length she glanced up at him, followed his pacing with anxious eyes and said, "Don't you think it would have been better if you'd relied on selfdefense?"
He whirled on her savagely. "Sure, it would," he said. "We could have worked up a case of selfdefense that would have stuck. We might not have secured an acquittal, but it's a cinch the prosecution could never have secured a conviction.
"But she walked into the D.A.'s trap. She can't claim selfdefense now. She's placed herself in front of the door, ringing the doorbell, when the murder was committed."
Della Street pursed her lips and asked thoughtfully, "You mean she didn't tell the police the truth?"
"Of course, she didn't tell them the truth. They gave her a nicely baited hook, and she grabbed at it, hook, line and sinker. She doesn't know that she's hooked yet, because it hasn't suited the district attorney to jerk the line and set the hook."
"But why didn't she tell them the truth, chief?"
"Because she couldn't. It's one of those cases where the truth sounds more unreasonable than any lie you can think up. That happens sometimes in a criminal case. When a person is guilty, a clever attorney makes up a story for him to tell the jury. Therefore, the defendant's story usually sounds pretty convincing. When a defendant is innocent, the facts don't sound nearly so plausible as they do when they're fabricated. When a person makes up a story, the first thing he tries to bear in mind is to make up a story that's plausible. When he relates events just as they happened, the story doesn't sound as plausible."
"I can't exactly see that," Della Street objected.
"You've heard the old adage," he asked, "that truth is stranger than fiction?" She nodded.
"This is simply a concrete example of that same principle. There are millions of facts that may fall from the wheel of chance in any possible combination. Ninetynine times out of a hundred those combinations of facts are plausible and convincing, but once out of a hundred the actual truth challenges credulity. When a defendant is caught in that kind of a trap, it's one of the worst cases a lawyer can get hold of."
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"Under the circumstances," he said, "I'm going to try to make the stories of the prosecuting witnesses sound improbable. What's more, I'm going to try and prove an alibi."
"But you can't prove an alibi," she said. "You, yourself, have just admitted that the witnesses for the prosecution will prove that Rhoda Montaine was out keeping an appointment with Gregory Moxley."