“You did what?” Burger asked, astounded.
“Came here to tell you where you could go to find the evidence,” Mason said. “What the devil did you think I came up here for?”
Tragg and Hamilton Burger exchanged glances.
“You knew that we’d been to Korbel’s place and already had the evidence,” Lieutenant Tragg charged.
Mason grinned. “That doesn’t affect the situation. I came here for the express purpose of telling you where you could get the evidence and what steps I had taken to preserve the evidence.”
“If you were so damned considerate of the evidence,” Burger said, “it was your duty to turn that bottle over to the police just as soon as you received it.”
Mason shook his head. “In that case,” he said, “I could well have been convicted of slander and defamation of character. I couldn’t have gone to you and said, ‘Gentlemen, this is a bottle of poison that was hurled off the end of the pier.’ How the devil do I know it’s poison? How do I know when it was hurled off the end of the pier, or by whom? No, gentlemen, I took steps to protect you as well as myself. I wanted to be certain that the bottle contained poison before I reported to you.”
Mason indicated Tragg’s telephone.
“Can I get Hermann Korbel on the line, Tragg?” Mason asked.
Lieutenant Tragg hesitated for a moment, glanced at Hamilton Burger’s angry face. There was a faint flicker of amusement in the lieutenant’s eyes. “Just ask for outside and dial your number,” he said.
Mason asked for outside, then dialed Korbel’s number.
Mason, talking into the telephone, said, “Hello... Hello, Hermann?... This is Perry Mason. What did you find out?”
Burger said, “He didn’t find out anything. We took the evidence away from him.”
Mason motioned the district attorney to silence. “Yes, Hermann, go on.”
Once more Hermann was excited. “Of course,” he said, “I have no way of knowing, Mason, that the tablets in that bottle were all the same. I took a sample from one tablet.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Mason said.
“And I had that sample that the police didn’t know about.”
“I know. Go on,” Mason said.
“You talked about poison,” Korbel said. “I tested it for cyanide. It was not cyanide. It was not arsenic. I only had a little sample. I used X-ray diffraction. I got a peculiar graph. Then I remembered the bottle had the name of a sugar substitute blown in the side.
“By golly, Mason, what you know? That tablet was just what the bottle said, by damn. That tablet was this chemical sugar substitute. Then I used a spectrograph. By golly, those tests are so delicate that if the other tablets had been different, I would have found some traces from their rubbing around against those shot. Those tablets are just what the bottle said they were.”
Mason held the phone for a moment thinking that over. A slow grin spread over his face.
“You there?” Korbel asked.
“That’s right,” Mason said.
“You heard what I said? It’s the sugar substitute.”
“That’s fine. Thanks,” Mason said. “I may call you later. Take good care of that sample. Check your conclusions. You’ll probably have to testify.”
Mason dropped the receiver back into place and grinned at Hamilton Burger.
“You probably didn’t realize, Burger, that when you had the police swoop down on Korbel and grab the bottle with the tablets Korbel had already made a scraping from one of the tablets in that bottle so he could complete his analysis.
“I told you that I was acting in good faith in the matter and that as soon as I had Korbel’s analysis I intended to advise the police in the event the contents of that bottle turned out to be poison.
“I am now glad to announce that Hermann Korbel has just told me the bottle contained exactly what it was supposed to contain. The trade name was blown in the glass in the side of the bottle. It’s a chemical sugar substitute. If you ever want to reduce I can’t recommend it too highly. And from the color of your face I think you’d better take off about thirty pounds.
“And now, gentlemen, in view of that information, if you want to try and stop me from walking out, go ahead.”
Mason walked over to the door, pushed it open.
A plain-clothes man barred his way.
Behind him Mason heard excited whispers, then Tragg’s voice said to the officer, “Okay, let him go.”
Chapter Seven
Mason unlocked the door of his private office, picked up the telephone and said to the girl at the switchboard, “I’m back, Gertie, and I want you to call Della Street for me at the High-Tide Motel.”
“Yes, Mr. Mason, and you have someone out here who wants to see you, a woman who... well, she says it’s an emergency, something about this Nadine Farr case.”
“Come on in and tell me about her,” Mason said.
“Do you want Della first?”
“No, come in now. You can call Della afterward.”
A moment later Gertie stood in the doorway of the private office, her manner showing she was excited.
Gertie, a girl in her late twenties, inclined to put on weight with every chocolate sundae which she “simply couldn’t resist,” never failed to dramatize each incident which took place during the day. Long experience had taught Perry Mason and Della Street to discount her excitement.
She romanticized life and sex. In her more slender moments she was prone to indulge in tight sweaters while imprisoning herself in the tightest, firmest girdles that she could possibly wear. At such times she was happy. Then when the inevitable desire for sweets got the best of her curves, she would go to the other extreme, subsisting for two or three days on buttermilk and grapefruit juice, looking wan and weak, but fighting her avoirdupois with grim determination, only to surrender again as soon as she had partially achieved her objective.
“Gosh, Mr. Mason,” she said, “this woman seems to know all the answers. She’s born to the velvet. You get that feel about her and she’s been trying to tell me things about Nadine Farr. Are you interested in that case, Mr. Mason?”
“Very much,” Mason said smiling, “only I don’t think there’s going to be a case. What’s this woman’s name, Gertie?”
“Mrs. Jackson Newburn.”
“How old, Gertie?”
“Well, I’d say thirty-one or thirty-two. Della would probably say thirty-five. Della looks at their hands. I look at—”
“What’s her connection with the case?”
“She’s related to Mosher Higley, that is, she was related to him.”
“She told you what she wanted to see me about?”
“Well, she told me just enough to make me realize that it was important that she see you.”
“All right,” Mason said, “tell her I’ve been out, that I’ve just come in and that I’ll see her briefly.”
“And what about Della?”
“Telephone Della first, but don’t let anyone in the outer office hear whom you’re calling.”
Gertie looked at him reproachfully. “I never do, Mr. Mason. I use that device so that no matter how close they’re sitting they can’t hear.”
“That’s fine, Gertie. Call Della. And as soon as I’ve finished talking with her send Mrs. Newburn in.”
Gertie nodded, swirled into a rightabout-face and gently closed the door behind her.
A few moments later Mason’s phone tinkled and Mason, picking up the phone, heard Della Street’s voice at the other end of the line.