The gorilla, its eyes fastened on Perry Mason, moved deliberately forward.
Babbling incoherently in fear, Hershey got to his feet. As he did so, he stumbled against Mason, throwing the lawyer off balance.
The gorilla lashed out savagely with the knife.
Mason side-stepped, suddenly grabbed the hairy arm which held the knife, and twisted it sharply.
For a moment it seemed that sheer surprise froze the muscles of the gorilla in awkward immobility.
Mason made the most of that moment. His right fist crashed into the hairy midriff. His right knee came up in a savage knee lift.
The revolver roared again and a bullet whipped past Mason’s head, crashed into the wall.
The big gorilla collapsed slowly, doubling forward, then toppling to the floor with a crashing impact which made the room tremble.
Mason turned toward Hershey.
The business manager raised the revolver, pointed it directly at Mason, pulled the trigger.
The hammer clicked.
Mason lunged, stumbled over the paw of the gorilla.
Hershey backed toward the hallway, hurriedly thrusting fresh cartridges into the open cylinder of the revolver.
Della Street appeared in the doorway, a stone image in her hands.
Hershey took another backward step.
Della brought the stone image down, hard.
Hershey’s knees buckled. He dropped the gun, fell forward.
“Della,” Mason said sharply. “I told you to start for help at the first...”
“Did you think I’d leave you? Hurry, Chief. Get going. We’ve knocked him out and...”
Mason scooped up Hershey’s revolver, then, stepping up to the big gorilla, rolled him over, fumbled with the back for a moment, and suddenly jerked a long zipper.
“Chief!” Della Street screamed.
Mason lifted the grinning head to one side, pulled back the skin of the gorilla and disclosed the limp body of Herman Barnwell.
“Well,” Mason said, “perhaps now you’ll consent to leave me in charge here, and go get the police.”
Chapter number 19
Mason, Della Street and Paul Drake sat in Mason’s private office.
Paul Drake, his eyes red from lack of sleep, but nevertheless alert with interest, said, “Good Lord, Perry, it’s a wonder that you weren’t killed.”
Mason said, “If I’d been absolutely certain, if I’d known what I know now, I’d have gone to Lieutenant Tragg and told him the whole story. I think he’d have searched the place and found the gorilla skin.”
“Of course, they must have been planning it for a long time,” Drake said.
“Sure they had. As it turns out now, Benjamin Addicks had caught both Hershey and Nathan Fallon in embezzlements — when you come right down to it, he had given these men an enormous amount of leeway. They had every opportunity in the world. Addicks was trying to cheat on his income tax by manipulating a lot of his transactions on a cash basis, and Hershey and Fallon had been taking a pretty generous cut.
“Of course, the disadvantage of trying to carry on a business the way Benjamin Addicks was doing it, is that you don’t have any really accurate books. You yourself can’t tell where your business stands. You scramble it all up so there are no written records, and you fool yourself as well as the government.”
“How much do you suppose they got away with?”
“Hershey’s confession says something over three hundred thousand dollars. That, of course, was small stuff to what they were preparing to do. Apparently they had been in touch with Herman for some time. Herman offered them a fortune if they could manipulate it so that Benjamin was put out of the way under such circumstances that Herman would inherit the fortune.
“When you look at it carefully they did a pretty smooth job. They overpowered Benjamin Addicks. They twisted the ligaments in his leg. They inflicted cuts and bruises on his face, and then they bound him and gagged him.
“That was when Herman Barnwell took over, masquerading as Benjamin Addicks. That was rather easy to do because they were very similar in build, complexion and general appearance. There was quite a remarkable brotherly resemblance.
“The idea was that they would call in some disinterested witness who didn’t know Benjamin Addicks personally. Because of the bandaged face and the fact that Hershey and Nathan Fallon would both identify Herman Barnwell as being Benjamin Addicks, they would then be in a position to go ahead with their scheme.
“Apparently they intended to bring James Etna into the picture as their disinterested witness, but it happened that I bought those diaries of Helen Cadmus, secured newspaper notoriety from it, and therefore walked right into the middle of things. They decided it would be better to use me than James Etna.
“So they built up a background that Benjamin Addicks distrusted Nathan Fallon but had complete confidence in Mortimer Hershey. They had, of course, been practicing forging Benjamin Addicks’ writing for a long time.
“Then it was all fixed that while Hershey and Fallon would prepare ironclad alibis for themselves so that they couldn’t possibly be implicated in murder, Herman Barnwell, masquerading as Benjamin, would get Josephine Kempton out to the house. On some pretext or other, he’d leave her a minute and go unlock the cages of a couple of harmless gorillas. In the meantime, liquor had been forced down Benjamin Addicks until he was sufficiently drunk so that he had passed out. Herman got into this carefully prepared gorilla-skin suit — the only bad thing about it was that the head necessarily had a natural fixity of expression which was what made Josephine Kempton think she was looking at a hypnotized gorilla.
“They lured Mrs. Kempton up into the room. She saw this huge gorilla, saw him stab the unconscious body of Benjamin Addicks. They counted on Mrs. Kempton not being able to resist the temptation of appropriating the check, which had already been carefully forged, with an endorsement that showed it was a forgery.
“Of course, the endorsement being forged, the check couldn’t be cashed. The money would return to the estate, and whoever inherited that estate would inherit the money on that check.
“The fact that I was able to show that Benjamin Addicks had been mistaken about the theft of the ring and the watch was a break for them. They decided to capitalize on that by incorporating that matter in the will which would give the whole thing an air of authenticity.
“They didn’t get all the breaks. A few things went against them. One was that while I was there Sidney Hardwick came out to see his client, and the masquerader, who was supposed to be Benjamin Addicks, said that he felt too upset to see him — to see his own attorney, mind you, although he had previously given me an audience, and I was not only a stranger, but a man whose interests were completely hostile.”
Drake said, “Then Josephine Kempton was telling the truth.”
“The truth about everything except that cashier’s check. She tried to hide that. Of course, Hershey, Fallon and Herman Barnwell knew that they had her the minute she took that check. It could either be found in her possession or she would try to cash it. As far as they were concerned they were perfectly willing for her to cash it. She could have taken the money and then Herman Barnwell, in checking into the business affairs, could have detected a forgery. The bank records would show the twenty-five thousand dollars had been paid to Josephine Kempton and there they had her.
“In other words, if the story of the gorilla murdering Benjamin Addicks went across all right, that was fine, that was the way they wanted it; but in the event anything went wrong, Josephine Kempton could be cast in the role of murderess. And in the event she wasn’t accused herself, once she had cashed that cashier’s check they had her absolutely in their power.”