Mason smiled at her. “Did you say that?”
“Why... I guess I must have. I hadn’t thought about this man until you asked me. Then, when you did, I could remember him. I can see him now sitting there without a hat, a man about middle age — well, maybe thirty.”
“How about the cars that were coming toward you? Who was driving them?”
“Well, there was one driven by a man and one driven by a woman.”
“You know that because of what someone has told you or because of what you saw?”
“Because I saw them.”
“That all took place in a very short time, just a second or so, did it not?”
“I will say so. It was the biggest mix-up you ever saw. One moment we were going along talking about a show, and the next minute we were all mixed up in a mess of smash-ups.”
“Yet you saw all these things?” Mason asked.
“That’s right.”
“That’s all,” Mason said. “Only don’t call thirty as middle age.”
“That’s our case, Your Honor,” Hanley said, as a ripple of laughter in the court subsided.
“May I have a five-minute recess?” Mason asked.
Judge Cortright nodded, motioned to an attorney who had been waiting, and said, “You have something you wanted to take up with me, Mr. Smith?”
Mason leaned across to whisper to Stephane Claire. “I hate to do this to you, but you have got to go on the stand and tell your story.”
“Well, why shouldn’t I?”
“In the first place,” Mason said, “it is poor trial technique. I think that Lions girl has a vivid imagination, and is something of a liar as well, but her testimony will make a case. She probably got so excited at the time she didn’t even know what she was doing. Later on, she reconstructed everything in her own mind. She has hypnotized herself. But she is positive and definite. The judge is going to bind you over. Under those circumstances, the wise thing for a lawyer to do is to make the district attorney show his hand — and quit.”
“Well, if he is going to bind me over anyway, why not do that?”
“Because,” Mason said, “I want to force them to put Homan on the stand. If you tell your story, they won’t dare to let it go without some sort of contradiction. They will put Homan on the stand.”
Stephane Claire said, “Okay, you are the doctor.”
“Don’t go into too many details,” Mason warned. “Just tell your story in a straightforward manner about how you were picked up by this man, about his drinking, about the accident, and about seeing this man again in the Gateview Hotel.”
“You think then they will put Homan on the stand?”
“Yes.”
“Will that help us?”
“I hope it will,” Mason said. “I have got to solve a murder in order to find out what is back of the association between Homan and Greeley. I have got to find out what Greeley was doing in San Francisco, and if he hadn’t gone as far as San Francisco, where he had gone and what he was doing.”
“Why?”
“Because Greeley never stole that car. Greeley isn’t the sort who would steal a car. If he was using that car, he was using it with Homan’s permission and that means Homan is lying in his story about the car having been stolen. Homan sent Greeley on a mission of some sort, and Greeley took Homan’s car with Homan’s knowledge and consent. The only reason Homan is lying now is because he simply doesn’t dare to have the nature of that mission come out.”
“And he is willing to sacrifice me in order to keep it from coming out?”
“That’s it... and he saves himself a few thousand dollars as well.”
“And you want me to find that key in my purse, just the way...”
Mason said, “No. I want you to tell it just the way it actually happened, that you found the key in your purse when I asked you about it, there in the hospital.”
“And you gave it back to me?”
“Yes.”
She said, “Horace Homan, the producer’s younger brother, came to see me yesterday. He said he knew I hadn’t stolen the car. Seems to be very much — well, interested. He wanted me to go for a moonlight cruise on his brother’s yacht and then rang me up and said his brother had changed his mind and wouldn’t let him have the yacht.”
“Do you like him?”
“Well, he is interesting. He told me about a lot of behind the scenes stuff on Hollywood. He says his brother really doesn’t want to see me in any trouble, that if I should be convicted, they would try to get probation for me.”
“That is significant. Had he talked that over with his brother?”
“He said his brother was the one who told him. He is a very dynamic young man, isn’t he? I can’t help contrasting him with Jacks Sterne. Now...”
Judge Cortright finished scribbling his signature across a paper, and looked inquiringly down at Mason. Mason nodded, and the judge said, “Proceed, Mr. Mason.”
“I will call the defendant, Stephane Claire,” Mason said.
Stephane Claire got to her feet, walked forward, was sworn, and told her story. Hanley gave her only a perfunctory cross-examination, limited for the most part to identification of the body she had been called on to view in the Gateview Hotel as that of the man who had been driving the car.
“That is our case,” Mason said.
Judge Cortright looked at Hanley. “Any rebuttal.”
“Yes, Your Honor. I have one witness here in court and one whom I shall have to summon by telephone — man who holds an important position in a Hollywood studio. It will take him a few minutes to get here, but I think this other witness will fill in...”
“Very well, call this witness.”
“Mrs. A. P. Greeley,” Hanley said.
Mrs. Greeley, attired in black, walked slowly down the aisle of the courtroom, held up a black-gloved hand as she took the oath and settled herself in the witness chair.
“I am going to make this as brief as possible,” Hanley said. “Your name is Daphne Greeley. You are the widow of Adler Pace Greeley, a broker?”
“I am.”
“On Friday of last week you were called upon by Lieutenant Tragg of the Homicide Squad to identify a body in a room in the Gateview Hotel?”
There was a moment of silence, then Mrs. Greeley said, “Yes,” so faintly that the word was all but inaudible.
“And that body was that of your husband?”
“Yes.”
“And the same body which Stephane Claire had previously identified as being that of the driver of the car in question?”
“Yes.”
“Now, Mrs. Greeley, I want to spare your feelings as much as possible, but it is necessary that I direct your attention to Wednesday, the nineteenth of this month. Do you remember what happened on that day?”
She nodded.
“You will have to speak up, Mrs. Greeley, so that the court reporter can write down your answer. Do you remember the date?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything in particular which fastens it upon your mind?”
“Yes. It was — it was — our wedding anniversary.”
“And can you tell us generally what your husband did on that day — as far as you know?”
“Yes. We decided that we would have a quiet day at home. Adler had been very much engrossed in business...”
“Now, by Adler, you are referring to your husband, Adler Greeley?”
“Yes.”
“And what happened, Mrs. Greeley, on the nineteenth?”
“He said that he wouldn’t go to the office at all. Several days before, he told Irma Watkins, his secretary, that he was going to be out of the office that day, and not to bother him with any matters of business, not to try and reach him, that it was his wedding anniversary, and he was going to forget business.”