"Yes, I saw one just a few nights ago," Everly said.
"Now, then, can you remember the most dramatic part of the show — the place where the lump in your throat was biggest — where your eyes felt moist?"
"Certainly, I doubt if I'll ever forget it. It was a scene where the woman…"
"Never mind that right now," interrupted Perry Mason. "But let me ask you: what were you doing three minutes after that emotional scene?"
Everly looked at him in surprise.
"Why, sitting right there in the theater, of course."
"No, I don't mean that," Perry Mason said. "What was your emotion?"
"Why," said Everly, "I was just watching the play and…" Abruptly he smiled.
"Now," said Perry Mason, "I think you're getting my point. What were you doing?"
"I was laughing," said Everly.
"Exactly," Perry Mason said, as though that disposed of the matter.
Everly watched him in puzzled bewilderment for a few moments.
"But," he said, "I don't see what that's got to do with the jury in this case."
"It has everything to do with it," Perry Mason said. "A jury is an audience. It's a small audience, but it's an audience just the same. Now, the playwrights who are successful with plays have to know human nature. They recognize the fickleness of the mass mind. They know that it's incapable of loyalty; that it's incapable of holding any emotion for any great period of time. If there hadn't been a chance to laugh after that dramatic scene in the play you saw, the play would have been a flop.
"That audience was fickle, just like all audiences are fickle. They had gone through an emotional strain of sympathizing with the heroine in her darkest hour. They felt for her. That feeling was sincere. They would have died to have saved her. They would have killed the villain, could they have laid hands on him. They felt honestly, sincerely and wholeheartedly. But they couldn't have held the emotion for more than three minutes, to have saved their lives. It wasn't their trouble; it was the heroine's trouble. Having felt for her deeply and sincerely, they wanted to even the emotional scales by laughing. The wise playwright knew that. He gave them an excuse to laugh. And, if you'd studied psychology, you'd have noticed how eagerly the audience grasped at that opportunity to laugh."
Everly's eyes lit up.
"All right," he said, "now tell me just how that applies to the jury. I'm commencing to think I see."
"This case," Perry Mason said, "is going to be short, snappy and dramatic. The policy of the district attorney is to emphasize the horror of a murder case; to emphasize the fact that it's not a battle of wits between counsel, but the bringing to justice of a human fiend who has killed. Ordinarily, the defense attorney tries to keep that impression of horror from creeping into the case. He jumps to his feet with objections to photographs. He waves his arms and shouts arguments. He crouches in front of the witnesses and points his finger in dramatic crossexamination. It has a tendency to break the emotional chain; to soften the horror of the situation, and to draw the jurors back to the courtroom drama, instead of letting their minds revert to the horror of the murder."
"Well," said Frank Everly, "I should think that would be exactly what you'd want to do in this case."
"No," said Perry Mason slowly, "it always pays to do exactly the opposite of what custom decrees. That is particularly true with Claude Drumm. Claude Drumm is a logical fighter; a dangerous, dogged adversary, but he has no subtlety about him. He has no sense of relative values. He isn't intuitive. He can't 'feel' the mental state of a jury. He's accustomed to putting in all of this stuff after a long battle; after the attorney on the other side has done everything possible to soften the horror of the situation.
"Did you ever see two men in a tug of war, where one man let go suddenly and the other man staggered backwards off balance and fell down?"
"Yes, of course."
"For the simple reason," said Perry Mason, "that he was pulling too hard. He was expecting a continued opposition. When he didn't get it, he pulled so hard that he was thrown down by the very vehemence of his own effort."
"I think I begin to see," Frank Everly said.
"Exactly," Perry Mason told him. "The jurors came into court this morning, interested spectators expecting to see a show. Drumm started in showing them horrors. I didn't do anything about it, and Claude Drumm simply went wild on the horror angle. He's had the jurors soaked in horror all the morning. He'll continue to soak them in horror after lunch. Unconsciously the minds of the jurors will seek some relief. They'll want something to laugh at. They'll unconsciously pray for something dramatic, such as happened yesterday, to take their minds away from the horror. It's a subconscious effort of the mind to adjust itself. Having experienced too much horror, it wants a bit of laughter as an antidote. It's part of the fickleness of the human mind.
"And remember this, Frank: whenever you get to the trial of a case, never try to arouse one single emotion in the minds of a jury and bear down steadily on that emotion.
"Pick some dominant emotion if you want, but touch on it only for a few moments. Then swing your argument to something else. Then come back to it. The human mind is like a pendulum; you can start it swinging a little at a time and gradually come back with added force, until finally you can close in a burst of dramatic oratory, with the jury inflamed to white rage against the other side. But if you try to talk to a jury for as much as fifteen minutes, and harp continually upon one line, you will find that the jurors have quit listening to you before you finish."
A look of dawning hope came over the young man's face.
"Then you're going to try and stampede the jury this afternoon?" he asked.
"Yes," said Perry Mason, "this afternoon I'm going to bust that case wide open. By not objecting, by not crossexamining, except upon minor points, I am speeding the case up. Claude Drumm, in spite of himself, finds his case moving so rapidly that it's getting out of hand. The horror sensation that he had expected to be doled out at varying intervals, over a period of three or four days, has all been dumped into the lap of the jury in two hours. It's too much horror for the jury to stand. They're getting ready to seize on some excuse to furnish an emotional relief.
"Claude Drumm expected to fight his way doggedly toward a goal. Instead of that, he finds that there's no resistance whatever. He's galloping down the field with such unexpected speed that his information can't keep up. He's busting his own case wide open."
"And you're going to do something this afternoon?" asked Frank Everly. "You're going to try something of your own?"
"This afternoon," said Perry Mason, his face set in firm lines, his eyes staring fixedly ahead, "I am going to try and get a verdict of not guilty."
He pinched out the cigarette, scraped back his chair.
"Come on, young man," he said, "let's go."
Chapter 21
True to Perry Mason's predictions, Claude Drumm introduced the clerk at the sporting goods store, who had been brought from Santa Barbara. The clerk identified the murder weapon as one that had been sold to the defendant on the 29th day of September of the preceding year. He showed the sale on the register of firearms; showed the signature of Bessie Forbes.
Triumphantly, Claude Drumm made a gesture toward Perry Mason.
"You," he declaimed, "may crossexamine the witness."
"No questions," drawled Perry Mason.
Claude Drumm frowned as the witness left the stand, then turned toward the courtroom and said, dramatically. "Call Thelma Benton."
Thelma Benton gave her testimony in a low, resonant voice. In response to questions by Claude Drumm she sketched rapidly the human drama in the life of the dead man. She told of his life in Santa Barbara; of the infatuation with Paula Cartright; of the elopement; of the purchase of the house on Milpas Drive; of the happiness of Forbes and his companion, in their illicit romance; then the mysterious tenant of the adjoining house; the continued inspection through binoculars; the sudden realization that this neighbor was none other than the wronged husband; the abrupt departure of Paula Cartright, and then of the murder.