“Not Myrtle!” Drake said, grinning. “Her heart is made of India rubber.”
“Those are the kinds that fool you,” Della Street said. “Probably beneath that cynical exterior, she’s extremely sensitive and— Don’t you go destroying her illusions, Paul Drake!”
“You can’t destroy them,” Drake said, “because she hasn’t got ’em. As a matter of fact, I get a kick out of being with her. She knows that I’m trying to pick her brains to find out something about the case that has eluded us so far, and she’s doing everything she can to help. She’s telling me every little thing she can think of about the operation of the hotel, about what happened that night and all that.
“My gosh! The gossip I can tell you about the things that go on in that hotel! And what a miserable little stooge this Bob King is! He’d do absolutely anything just to curry favor with the authorities.”
Again Mason started pacing the floor. “The trouble is we’re one woman short in this matter. That woman couldn’t have disappeared into thin air. She couldn’t have disappeared from Gifford Farrell’s life. He wouldn’t have let her.
“Tomorrow I’m going to start asking embarrassing questions. The prosecution isn’t accustomed to trying cases against lawyers who know anything about forensic medicine. The average lawyer considers it out of his line, and doesn’t bother to study up on it. In this case the medical testimony is of the greatest importance and has some peculiar angles.
“Moreover, we’re missing that woman and—”
Suddenly Mason stopped stock-still in his pacing, paused in the middle of a sentence.
Della Street looked up quickly. “What is it, Chief?”
Mason didn’t answer her question for a matter of two or three seconds, then he said slowly, “You know, Paul, in investigative work the worst thing you can do is to get a theory and then start trying to fit the facts to it. You should keep an open mind and reach your conclusion after the facts are all in.”
“Well,” Drake said, “what’s wrong?”
“Throughout this entire case,” Mason said, “I’ve let my thinking be influenced by Jerry Conway. He’s told me that this was a frame-up which was engineered by Gifford Farrell, that the line to his office had been tapped, and that he was suckered into this thing by Farrell.”
“Well, it stands to reason,” Drake said. “We know that someone cut in on the program Evangeline Farrell had mapped out for Conway. Mrs. Farrell was going to make certain that he wasn’t followed and then she was going to have him meet her where she could give him those papers.
“She was to call him at six-fifteen, but somebody beat her to the punch by a couple of minutes and—”
“And we’ve jumped to the conclusion that it was some accomplice of Giff Farrell!” Mason said.
“Well, why not? The whole setup, the substitution of guns, the burying of the fatal weapon — all that shows a diabolical ingenuity and—”
Mason said, “Paul, I’ve got an idea. Get your friend Myrtle Lamar and have her in court tomorrow. Sit there in court and have her listen. I want to have her beside you.”
“She has to work, Perry...”
“I’ll serve a subpoena on her as a witness for the defense,” Mason said. ‘‘Then she’ll have to be there. I’m beginning to get the nucleus of an idea, Paul.
“You say you’ve had trouble holding your man Inskip in line?”
“I told you we’d have trouble,” Drake said. “He keeps feeling that he’s withholding evidence that the police should have, and it bothers him. When you finally spring your idea and he’s called as a witness, the police will want to know why he didn’t give them the tip, and—”
“Let him give them the tip,” Mason said.
“What do you mean?”
“Get hold of Inskip,” Mason said. “Tell him to go to the police. Let him tell the police that his conscience is bothering him and he can’t hold out any longer, that he knows I have an ace in the hole, that we discovered this hole in the mattress in Room 728. Let him give them the bullet that we took from the mattress and let Redfield check that bullet with the Smith & Wesson gun Conway turned over to the police. The bullets will check.”
Drake said, “That would be awfully nice from Inskip’s viewpoint but it would leave you right out in the open, Perry. They would know exactly what you were trying to do.”
“That’s okay,” Mason said. “That suits my plans fine!”
“And then what’ll happen?”
“Then tomorrow,” Mason said, “the prosecution will feel they know what I’m leading up to and they’ll want time to combat it. I think this Dr. Garfield is a pretty fair sort of individual. I’ll start laying the foundation, and Hamilton Burger will go into a panic. He’ll start stalling for time.”
“But you’ve been the one who wanted to rush things along so you could have the case over before the stockholders’—”
“I know, I know,” Mason interrupted. “There’s still time. Go ring up Inskip. Tell him to go tell the police the whole story!”
“The whole story?” Drake said.
“Everything!” Mason said. “Then get your girl, Myrtle Lamar, and be in court tomorrow morning. I’m beginning to get the damnedest idea and I think it’s predicated on sound logic.”
Chapter Fourteen
Judge DeWitt said, “The jurors are all present. The defendant is in court. At the conclusion of yesterday’s testimony Dr. Reeves Garfield was on the stand. Will you please resume your place on the stand, Dr. Garfield?”
Dr. Garfield took his place in the witness chair.
“Directing your attention to this discoloration which you noticed on the left side of the body,” Mason asked, “can you tell us more about the nature of that discoloration?”
“It was barely noticeable; only in certain lights could you see it. It was simply a very, very faint change in the complexion of the skin.”
“Would you say that it had no medical significance, Doctor?”
“I would never state that any phenomenon one may find in a cadaver in a murder case had no medical significance.”
“Was there a dispute as to whether this color had any real significance or not?”
Hamilton Burger was on his feet. “Your Honor, we object to that as being improper cross-examination. It calls for something which is incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial. It makes no difference whether there was a dispute or not. This Court is trying this defendant not for the purpose of determining what argument someone may have had, but for the purpose of getting the ultimate facts.”
“I will sustain the objection,” Judge DeWitt said.
“Was there a dispute between you and Dr. Malone as to the significance of this slight discoloration?”
“Same objection,” Hamilton Burger said.
Judge DeWitt hesitated for a long, thoughtful moment, then said, “The same ruling. I will sustain the objection.”
“Isn’t it a fact,” Mason said, “that this slight discoloration may have been due to the fact that the body lay for some appreciable interval after death on its left side, and that the I slight discoloration marked the beginnings of a post-mortem lividity, which remained after the body had again been moved?”
“That is, of course, a possibility.”
“A distinct possibility?”
“Well, it is a possibility. I will concede that.”
“Now, did you ever know of a case where there had been a pronounced development of rigor mortis in the right arm and shoulder with no rigor mortis in the left shoulder, unless someone had broken the rigor?”
“I know of no such case.”
“Is it your opinion that the rigor in the left shoulder had been broken?”