“It is simply a case of differing procedures in different courts. Do you understand that, Mr. Mason?”
“I understand it,” Mason said.
“Very well. The case is adjourned until ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Mason placed a reassuring hand on Diana’s shoulder. “Keep a stiff upper lip, Diana,” he said.
“They’re going to bind me over to the Superior Court?”
“Probably,” Mason said, “but I want to find out as much about the case as I can before the Court makes its order.”
“And what happens when I get to the Superior Court?”
“You are tried by a jury. You have the benefit of any reasonable doubt.”
Mason bent forward to say in a low voice, “Where did you get that gun?”
“Just as I told you, Mr. Mason. It was on the floor with blood on it. I took it in the bathroom and washed the blood off and then put the gun in my purse. I had a hard time getting it in, and I guess that’s when I lost the credit card.”
“And you hid it in the airplane?”
“Yes, I took out the towels and felt all around in the back of the towel compartment and found this little opening way in back. I thought they’d never find the gun in there.”
Mason said, “Tell me — about the girls in the San Francisco office. Do you know who could have written that message to me?”
“It might have been any one of them.”
“It was written on an electric typewriter.”
“All the typewriters are electric,” she said.
“All right,” Mason told her, “keep a stiff upper lip. I’ll see you in the morning.”
The lawyer picked up his briefcase and left the courtroom.
16
Perry Mason, Della Street, and Paul Drake were huddled around a table in an Italian restaurant which was near the courthouse and where the proprietor was accustomed to devoting a small private dining room to the exclusive use of the trio.
“Well,” Drake said, “it looks as if the judge has his mind made up, from all I could hear.”
Mason nodded. “What have you found out, Paul?”
“Not a whole lot,” Drake admitted, “a lot of detached bits of information. I don’t know whether they’ll do you any good... As you, yourself, have remarked, your client is an awful liar.”
“She is and she isn’t,” Mason said. “She lied to me because she wanted to save her brother’s reputation. She thought there was something that was hanging over his head, something that he’d pay five thousand dollars to eliminate. She wanted to carry out his wishes.
“Therefore, she acted independently of my advice and she tried to deceive me, but when it came to a showdown I don’t think she did try to deceive me. At least, I think there’s a possibility she’s telling the truth.
“That’s a duty that a lawyer owes to his client. Regardless of how many times he has been lied to in the past, he always has to keep the faith. He always has to believe that in the final showdown, the client is telling the truth and putting the cards face up on the table.”
Drake said, “She can’t be telling the truth on this one, Perry. She went down there and tried to buy him off. She couldn’t do it and she killed him.”
“What have you found out?” Mason asked, detouring the subject.
“Well,” Drake said, “you probably had Moray Cassel pretty well pegged. The guy lived a mysterious life, and no one knows his real source of income or how much his income was.
“This much I did find out. The man was always armed. He carried a thirty-eight-caliber, snub-nosed revolver in a shoulder holster under his left armpit. His clothes were tailor-made, and for years the same tailor had been making his clothes and making them so that there was an extra bit of room under the left armpit so the bulge made by the gun wouldn’t be conspicuous.”
“The deuce!” Mason said.
Drake nodded.
“And that gun was on him at the time his body was found?”
“It must have been,” Drake said.
Mason’s eyes narrowed. “Now, isn’t it interesting that the police described everything in the room, showed photographs of the body lying fully clothed on the bed with a bullet hole in the forehead, the blood all over the pillow and down on the floor, and no one said anything about the gun?”
“Did you ask them?” Drake inquired.
Mason grinned. “I didn’t ask them. I wouldn’t have thought to have asked them about a gun, but I certainly should have thought to have asked them what was found in his pockets and whether anything significant was found in the room... What about the source of income, Paul?”
Drake shook his head. “The guy did everything with cash. He wore a money belt. There were four one-thousand-dollar bills in the money belt. He had a leather wallet that was pretty well crammed with hundred-dollar bills. As nearly as can be found out he had no bank account. He bought that Cadillac automobile and paid for it with cold, hard cash.”
“Women?” Mason asked.
“Women came to see him from time to time.”
“The same woman or different women?”
“Different.”
“What did you find out about the note that was placed on the display case in San Francisco where I’d pick it up?”
“The note was written on an electric typewriter,” Drake said. “They’re all electric typewriters, but this particular note, as nearly as I can determine, was written on the typewriter of Joyce Baffin.
“For your information, Perry, if it’s worth anything, Joyce Baffin left the import-export office at noon, Thursday, pleading a terrific headache. She was, however, back on the job Friday morning, and Joyce was and is very popular with the officials and employees of the company and was at one time very friendly with Edgar Douglas. In fact, he had quite a crush on her. But so did lots of other people. Perhaps Franklin Gage, who is a widower, and Homer Gage, who has a predatory eye, would have liked to enjoy a closer relationship with Joyce Baffin.”
Mason, sipping a cocktail, digested that information.
Drake went on. “I have some more odds and ends of various bits of information. I spent quite a bit of time and a fair amount of money with the telephone operator at Tallmeyer Apartments. I found out that Moray Cassel put through a lot of telephone calls to a local number. I found that number was the apartment of one Irene Blodgett, twenty-seven, blond, Millsep Apartments, divorced, employed steadily during the daytime at the Underwood Importing Company. At night she’s something of a gadabout but never anything spectacular. Quiet, refined, good-looking, popular — I’ve got operatives working quietly on her, but if there’s anything phony she’s pretty well covered.
“The only thing is that this Underwood Importing Company does have some dealing or has had dealings with the Escobar Import and Export Company.”
Della Street, watching Mason’s face, said, “You have an idea, Chief?”
“Just this,” Mason said. “At the time of his death, Moray Cassel was either standing by the bed or sitting on the edge of the bed. He was shot in the forehead by one shot from a high-powered, single-action, twenty-two-caliber revolver with a nine-and-three-eighth-inch barrel. The murderer must have been facing him.”
“Well?” Drake asked. “What’s so peculiar about that? Diana Douglas went to call on the guy. She rang the bell. Cassel let her in. She tried to bargain with him, then he got tough with her. She knew at that time that blackmailers never quit. Once they get a hold on a victim they bleed him white. Diana was obsessed with the idea she had to protect her brother.”