"Wait a minute... Wait a minute," the Federal District Attorney interrupted, jabbing frantically at the push-button on his desk, "I'm going to have this statement taken down in shorthand."
"Go ahead," Mason said easily.
Paul Drake looked across at Mason, an expression of startled incredulity on his face. Duncan glanced triumphantly about him and lit a cigar. A man with a shorthand notebook and fountain pen came hurrying in from an adjoining office. The Federal District Attorney said, jabbing his finger at Perry Mason, "This is Perry Mason, the lawyer. He's making a confession. Take it down."
"A confession?" Mason asked.
"Go right ahead," the Federal District Attorney said, "we won't quibble over words. You've already admitted pushing open the door. You've admitted Sylvia Oxman was in the outer office at the time, and had been in the private office. You gentlemen have heard that statement?"
Wilson's eyes swept the circle of faces, and received grave nods of acquiescence. "Let the record show," he said to the shorthand reporter, "that the people in this room all reply in the affirmative."
"Let the record show that I'm nodding too," Mason said, grinning, apparently enjoying himself hugely... "Well, as I was remarking, I entered the inner office and found Grieb's body slumped over the desk. I grabbed Sylvia Oxman as she was leaving the office. She admitted then she'd been in there before. I told her to go on out. When she'd gone, I opened the drawer of Grieb's desk, deposited seventy-five hundred dollars, the face value of the three IOU's Sylvia Oxman had signed, touched a match to the IOU's and burned them up."
"You what?" the district attorney asked, his eyes wide.
"I burned them up."
"Didn't you know you were committing a crime when you did that, Mr. Mason?"
Mason raised his eyebrows and said, "Why, no. What crime?"
"Compounding a felony."
"In what way?"
"Those IOU's furnished a motive for the murder."
"Did they?" Mason said. "Well, of course, that's news to me."
"And when you destroyed them, you destroyed evidence. You were also guilty of a felony in wrongfully taking those IOU's."
"Personally," Mason said, "I don't think they're evidence of anything. Therefore, I wasn't guilty of anything when I destroyed them. Furthermore, I didn't take them, I paid for them."
"Wait a minute," Wilson said, frowning. "This doesn't agree with Oxman's statement."
"That's right," Mason said easily.
"I'm afraid," the Federal District Attorney went on, "that so far as the Federal Jury is concerned, Mr. Mason, they will be far more inclined to take Oxman's word than yours."
Mason shrugged his shoulders. "Well, that's all right. Let them. But I don't think they'll take Oxman's written statement against my word. Oxman had better show up and try to substantiate his story if he wants to make it stick."
The district attorney frowned. "I don't care to argue the point, Mr. Mason. Do you have any further statement to make?"
"Yes," Mason went on easily. "Shortly after I'd destroyed the IOU's, an electric signal in the office announced someone was coming down the corridor. I slipped back into the outer office and pulled the door shut behind me just as Duncan and Perkins entered the office. I believe Mr. Duncan has correctly stated what happened after that... Oh, yes, there's one point I wanted to make: you'll remember, Perkins, that Duncan crossed over to the vault, saying he wanted to open it. He grasped the door handle, and turned the knob of the combination. You advised him not to open it."
"That's right," Perkins said.
"That's true?" Mason asked Duncan.
Duncan mouthed his cigar for a second or two, and then slowly nodded and said, "Yes, that's true. I wanted to look in the vault and see what had happened to those IOU's."
Mason grinned at the district attorney and said, "Well, there's your murder case."
"What do you mean?" the district attorney asked.
"My God," Mason said, "do I have to draw you a diagram? Don't you see it yet?"
The district attorney flushed, and said with dignity, "I see, Mr. Mason, that, according to your own confession, you have involved yourself as an accessory after the fact. You have aided and abetted Sylvia Oxman in her escape. You have failed to do your duty as an attorney and an officer of the court."
Mason lit a cigarette, grinned across at the district attorney and said, "Where was Manning?"
Duncan said, "You know where Manning was. He was out in the casino. And as soon as I pressed the signal which summoned him, he entered the offices and took charge. Didn't you, Arthur?"
"Well," Manning said with slow deliberation, "there was a delay of a few seconds after you gave the signal, before I actually reached the offices."
Mason chuckled and the district attorney said acidly, "There's no occasion for humor, Mr. Mason."
Mason said to Perkins, "You saw Duncan spin the combination on that vault door?"
"Why, yes, Mr. Mason."
"He spun it through several revolutions without looking at numbers, didn't he?"
"I'm not certain. I remember he went over to the vault and said something about opening the door and spun the knob on the combination."
Mason grinned. "That's right, Perkins. He said he was going to open the vault door. As a matter of fact, the vault door was unlocked. What he was doing was locking it."
"You're crazy!" Duncan exclaimed. "What the hell are you trying to pull, anyway?"
Mason said simply, "That your accomplice, Arthur Manning, having killed Grieb by taking Grieb's gun from the drawer and shooting him through the head, was trapped in the inner office by Sylvia Oxman's arrival. There was no place for him to hide except in the vault. The murder had all been fixed up between you and Manning. You wanted Grieb out of the way. There was bad blood between you. Grieb was commencing to check up on you. You prepared an elaborate alibi by going to Los Angeles to file a case in the Federal Court. You knew Grieb would ring for Manning sometime during the evening. Manning was to grab Grieb's gun from the drawer, shoot him, leave the gun so it would look like a case of suicide, and then slip out and pull the door shut behind him.
"Grieb summoned Manning to perform some errand or other, but Manning couldn't close and lock the door without making Grieb suspicious, since Manning was supposed to go right out again. Manning grabbed the gun and shot Grieb just as the exhaust of a speed boat drowned the noise of the shot. But the roar of that exhaust also drowned out the sound the buzzer made when Sylvia Oxman came walking down the corridor. The first thing Manning knew, before he'd had a chance to drop the gun or plant any evidence, he heard Sylvia Oxman in the outer office calling, 'Yoo-hoo! May I come in?'