“Why?”
“Because that gorilla was one of the really bad ones. He was really dangerous. You couldn’t tell what he’d do. I guess he must have smashed the door down or something, because I remember seeing the broken door, and I think it was the sound of some terrific crash that helped me to regain consciousness.”
“Go ahead,” Mason said.
“You know all the rest. I knew we were in terrible danger, and I... well, I told you what to do.”
Mason said, “This is the screwiest, most cockeyed story I have ever heard in my life.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mason. It’s the truth.”
“The whole truth?”
“The whole truth, so help me.”
Mason got up and began to pace the floor. After a moment he said, “I suppose there’s one chance in a hundred that it could be the truth. But whoever knocked you out would have then carried you back to the room. I look at you while you’re talking and you sound almost convincing. Then I look away and I can’t believe my ears.”
“Mr. Mason, are you doubting my word?”
“Yes,” Mason said.
She became angry. “I’ve told you exactly what happened.”
“Well,” Mason said, “when you stop to figure the environment out there, I suppose that you could say perhaps there was one chance in eight or ten the story might be the truth, but who’s going to believe it? A jury won’t, a judge won’t, the newspapers won’t.”
“I don’t see why anyone should disbelieve it. After all, Mr. Addicks had been deliberately training those gorillas to do just that thing, he’d been trying to hypnotize them and give them homicidal impulses and...”
“It’s completely crazy,” Mason said.
“There’s nothing crazy about it!” she flared at him. “If you ask me, Mr. Addicks had something terrible in his past. He was always afraid that he was going to be charged with a murder. I think that it was a murder that had been committed in some foreign country, and I think Mr. Addicks was going to claim that he had been hypnotized by someone, and that gradually the hypnotic influence had worn off, but that he had never regained his memory.”
Mason walked over to stand by the window. “Yes,” he said slowly, “when you look at the case in the light of the undisputed facts you can see that — but, good Lord, fancy trying to put up a defense like that in a courtroom and in front of a jury.”
“Don’t worry. You won’t have to,” she said. “The police have found out about that gorilla because they turned me loose and apologized for holding me. I don’t see what you’re worrying about a jury for, Mr. Mason. I’m not going to be charged with anything.”
“And there’s the craziest thing of the whole business,” Mason said. “You’re alone in a house where a man is murdered. If you’d told this story and signed a written statement they might have turned you loose while they made an investigation — you didn’t tell them this story, did you?”
“I didn’t tell them anything.”
“Well, don’t,” Mason warned. “Keep your lips closed until I can find some way of checking this thing. Hang it all, when you stop to figure the thing in the light of the facts it probably is all right, but it’s such a crazy story to try to make anyone believe.”
“But it had to be that way, Mr. Mason. There was no one in the house except Mr. Addicks, myself and the gorillas.”
“Exactly,” Mason said, “and there’s no reason why a shrewd person, who knew the way Mr. Addicks had been training his animals, couldn’t have plunged a knife into him while he was asleep, and then claimed that he’d been killed by a gorilla.”
“But what possible motive would I have for doing that?”
“That,” Mason said, “is what gets me. I can’t understand what possible motive you had for going out there without talking with James Etna or calling me.”
“I suppose I should have done so, but Mr. Addicks asked me to say nothing to anyone.”
Mason was on the point of saying something else when knuckles banged on the door with booming authority.
“Open up, Mason,” Sergeant Holcomb’s voice ordered. “This is the police.”
Mason nodded to Della Street. She opened the door.
Sergeant Holcomb, smiling triumphantly, said, “Well, well, Mason, this is the case we’ve been waiting for. This is the one we really want. Come on, Mrs. Kempton. You’re going with us.”
“Going with you?” she said. “Why, you’ve just turned me loose.”
“We sure did,” Holcomb agreed. “And now you’re going back with us, and this time the charge is first-degree murder.”
Holcomb and two other officers pushed their way into the office, took Mrs. Kempton by the arms, and, before she could protest, snapped handcuffs on her.
“See you in church, Mason,” Holcomb said.
“Just a moment,” Mason said, getting between the officers and the door. “Have you got a warrant for the arrest of this woman?”
“Right here,” Holcomb said, pulling a folded paper from his pocket.
Mason stepped forward.
The two officers gave him the shoulder, pushing him away from the door. Sergeant Holcomb rushed Mrs. Kempton into the corridor.
Mason gained the door.
An officer pushed him back. “Go get a writ if you want,” he said, “but don’t try to interfere with officers in the performance of their duties.”
The other officer and Sergeant Holcomb hurried Mrs. Kempton down the corridor.
“You’re damn right I’ll get a writ,” Mason said angrily.
“That’s the spirit,” the officer grinned. “Get a couple of ’em.”
Mason said to Etna: “Go check the records, slap a writ on them if they aren’t in order, Jim.”
Etna nodded, and started toward the elevators.
“Take the stairs,” Mason said as he turned back to the office. “Quick, Della, help me search this place for a microphone. If they’ve been listening in on a confidential communication made to an attorney by a client, we’ll show them something they’ve never even thought of.”
Mason and Della Street frantically searched the office.
At the end of an hour they admitted themselves baffled. They had looked in every nook and corner, behind every picture. They had moved furniture, raised the rug, inspected every inch of the walls.
“Well?” Della Street asked.
Mason said, “I don’t get it. They’ve got something that we don’t know about.”
“What could it be?”
“I’m hanged if I know.”
“Do you suppose she’ll tell the police the same story she told us?”
“I hope not,” Mason said.
The lawyer walked over to the window, stood moodily looking down at the traffic of the busy street.
Suddenly he turned. “Della,” he said, “there’s such a thing as becoming too skeptical.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mrs. Kempton tells us a story that sounds weird and bizarre and therefore we immediately reject it.”
“You mean she might have told the truth?”
“There’s one other possibility.”
“What?”
Mason said, “Let’s look at it this way, Della. Suppose you wanted to kill Benjamin Addicks and suppose you wanted to have it appear that someone else had done it and that you weren’t guilty.”
“Well?” she asked.
“So,” Mason said, “you would get Josephine Kempton into the house. You would get her to tell a story that absolutely no jury on earth would believe. Then you’d go ahead and kill Benjamin Addicks and be pretty certain that Josephine Kempton would be convicted.”
“But how on earth would you get her to tell any such story?” Della Street asked.
“Look at the whole thing,” Mason said. “Look at it from a cold-blooded, analytical standpoint. What about Mrs. Kempton’s story?”