Hardwick said, “This complicates the situation. Mason, what’s your interest in this?”
“I’m interested.”
“I understand, but in what way? Who has retained you?”
“No one,” Mason said and then added, “as yet.”
“Well, now,” Hardwick said, “that poses, of course, an interesting question. Under the circumstances I would suggest that Mr. Addicks retain you to assist me in handling this case which is coming up the day after tomorrow, a case in which, of course, it may be possible — however, I think I’ll discuss the legal aspects with you after you have been retained.”
“I’m sorry,” Mason said, “but I’m not open to a retainer from Mr. Addicks.”
“Are you giving me to understand then that you’re retained by Mrs. Kempton?”
“Not exactly,” Mason said. “I do happen to know something about the suit, and I have discussed it with her attorney.”
“All right,” Hardwick said, “let’s be fair about this, Mr. Mason. Don’t tell Mrs. Kempton or her lawyer anything about this until we have had a chance to effect a settlement.”
Mason smiled and shook his head.
“You mean you’re going to them with the information?”
“I mean I’m going to tell James Etna of Etna, Etna and Douglas, about the entry in the diary, and I’m going to tell him about what we found.”
“It won’t do a particle of good,” Hardwick said. “It may do harm.”
Mason shrugged his shoulders.
“Let’s look at the thing from a cold, legal standpoint,” Hardwick went on. “There are two instances in which one person may accuse another person of crime with no liability on the part of the person making the accusation. One of them is in the event the person actually is guilty of the crime. The law of slander and libel in this country is different from what it is in many countries. Here the truth is always a defense to a statement with might otherwise be libelous or slanderous.”
“Thank you for telling me the law,” Mason said.
Hardwick smiled. “I’m not telling you the law. I’m pointing out a legal situation. The second class of case, Mr. Mason, is a privileged communication.
“Now let’s suppose Mr. Addicks accused Josephine Kempton of crime. He has two defenses. In the event she was guilty of crime, he can plead the truth, and that’s a complete defense. In the event she wasn’t guilty of crime but he said she was, all he needs to do is to show that the communication was privileged. In other words, that he was acting in good faith in giving information to a person who had a legitimate interest in the matter. That completely disposes of any question of defamation.”
Mason stretched his arms, yawned, and said, “I never like to argue legal points unless I’m paid for it. So far no one has retained me, and somehow I don’t think anyone is going to.”
Hardwick said, “Of course, Mr. Mason, circumstances have put you in rather a peculiar position. Am I to understand that you first suspected the articles in question might have been concealed in this stone urn because of entries in the diary of Helen Cadmus?”
“That’s right.”
“Those entries were in her handwriting?”
“Frankly, Counselor, I don’t know.”
“Of course, such entries wouldn’t be evidence of anything,” Hardwick said. “They couldn’t be introduced in court. It’s merely something that Helen Cadmus has written. They could have been self-serving declaration.”
“In what way?” Mason asked.
“She could have taken these things herself and concealed them in the urn and then gone to the trouble of making this entry in the diary so that in the event she was ever involved in any way, she could refer to the entry as supporting her statement that the monkey had been concealing things here. Surely, Mason, you don’t need to have me point out to you that this would be a self-serving declaration?”
Mason said, “I don’t think I need to have you point out anything to me.”
Hardwick turned to Nathan Fallon. “I think we had better go into conference with Mr. Addicks at once.”
“He told me to tell you he wouldn’t see you,” Fallon said obstinately. “He’s been hurt. Yesterday he was almost killed by a gorilla that he’d been training. I saw the whole thing.”
Hardwick frowned. “Well, Nathan, I think we won’t need to detain Mr. Mason and Miss Street any longer. I take it they were just leaving.”
“That’s right.”
“Good night,” Hardwick said abruptly, shaking hands with Mason and bowing once more to Della Street.
Fallon said, “I’ll telephone the gateman so that he’ll let you out, Mr. Mason. I think it’s only fair to warn you to keep driving at a steady pace right on down the driveway and through the gate. Don’t stop and, above all, don’t get out of the car. Good night.”
“Good night,” Mason said.
Chapter number 5
Perry Mason eased his car through the big iron gates. The watchman stood suspiciously alert. The moment the car had passed through the stone portals, the heavy, wrought iron gates swung ponderously on their hinges, clanged shut, and an iron bar dropped into place.
Mason stepped on the throttle.
“Well, that’s that,” Della Street said.
“Quite a bit of action for one evening,” Mason said.
“What do we do now?”
“We do several things,” Mason told her. “One of the things is that we try to get hold of James Etna. Let’s hope he’s still up. There’s a drugstore with a phone booth down here about half a mile, as I remember.”
Mason put the car into speed.
“Did you notice the peculiar, musty odor in that house?” Della Street asked. “It was something that... I can’t place it, and yet it gave me the creeps.”
“The odor of a zoo,” Mason said, “Animals are confined in cages.”
“It makes goose pimples,” she said, laughing.
“It’s a creepy place,” Mason told her. “I’d like to know a lot more about Benjamin Addicks, but, after all, it’s no skin off our nose, Della. We’ll do James Etna a good turn and let it go at that.”
He drove to the drugstore. Della Street called James Etna’s residence, talked for a minute, then nodded to Mason and said, “It’s all right, they haven’t gone to bed yet. I’ve talked with his wife. He just got in from the office.”
She said into the transmitter, “This is Mr. Mason’s secretary, Mr. Etna. Just hold on a moment, please.”
She got up from the stool. Mason slid into position in the telephone booth, and said, “I’m sorry to bother you at this hour of the night, Etna, but there were some rather peculiar developments. As a matter of fact, Addicks’ attorneys are going to be in touch with you trying to effect a compromise, and I thought that in view of your courtesies extended earlier in the evening I should let you know what happened.”
“Addicks won’t compromise,” Etna said, his voice weary from the strain of his long night session at the office. “He’s one of those obstinate chaps who will fight just as long as he has anything to fight with, and that’s going to be a long time. He swears he has never paid out a nickel by way of compromising lawsuits yet, and he doesn’t intend to.”
“He’ll pay out a nickel now,” Mason told him. “As a matter of fact, Sidney Hardwick is probably going to call you within the next few minutes, or at least as soon as you open the office in the morning, and start talking compromise.”
“What happened?”
“They found the platinum watch and the big diamond solitaire which Addicks thought Mrs. Kempton had stolen.”
“The devil they did!” Etna exclaimed jubilantly over the telephone.
“That’s right.”
“Where were they and how did they happen to find them?”