“How are you getting it?”
“We just asked her questions. We...”
“Shut off that light!” Lieutenant Tragg ordered. “Shut it off instantly!”
A light switch clicked and suddenly her tired, aching eyes were able to relax as the bright light ceased to beat into her brain through her weary eyes.
“I sent Miss Marlow up here for questioning,” Lieutenant Tragg said angrily. “I didn’t mean that she was to be browbeaten. She’s just a witness.”
“Witness, hell!” Sergeant Holcomb said. “I don’t want to seem disrespectful, Lieutenant, but she’s admitted to being in the house just about the time the crime was committed. She claims that Rose Keeling was dead at the time, but there’s no evidence to back her up. And then she called Perry Mason. She got Mason to go up there, and Mason evidently fixed things up so she could take a powder. She admits that she used the telephone in there to call Mason. Remember, her fingerprints weren’t on the receiver, just Mason’s prints, not another print there. The thing had been wiped and polished clean as a whistle.”
“Nevertheless,” Tragg said angrily, “I do not care to have Miss Marlow submitted to the indignity of an inquisition. You men get back to your posts. I’ve left assignments for you. Get out and get busy. Try and get some evidence by using your head and your feet instead of mouths.”
With the glaring overhead light out, Marilyn Marlow could see Lieutenant Tragg clearly now, a tall, somewhat slender, well-knit individual whose clean-cut features were a welcome relief from the heavy faces of the officers who had been leering at her.
There was a general scraping of chairs, a shuffling of feet. Men sullenly left the room, until finally only Lieutenant Tragg was there with her.
“I’m sorry about this, Miss Marlow. Was it really quite terrible?”
“It was ghastly,” she said with a note of hysteria creeping into her voice. “That light got to beating down on me until — I just couldn’t get away from it anywhere. I...”
“I know,” Tragg said sympathetically.
“It gave me a beastly headache and... I hardly knew what I was saying.”
“I understand. Won’t you come in my office?”
He escorted her through a door into an inner office, gave her a comfortable chair, carefully turned the desk light so that the blessed shadow enveloped her, left the light shining on the desk blotter and on Tragg’s features.
Tragg took a cigar from his pocket, then paused with the match halfway to the cigar. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all.”
He lit the cigar, settled back in the chair, said casually, in a well-modulated voice, “The life of an officer is not a happy one.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t.”
“I have been going all day,” Tragg said, “hitting a pretty hard pace. This whole case is, of course, a tragedy to you. To me it’s just another case, one that has to be investigated and cleaned up.”
He took the cigar from his mouth, stretched, yawned, regarded the tip of the cigar for a moment, then puffed out more blue smoke. “I guess Rose Keeling was a rather peculiar girl,” he said.
“I think she was.”
“Any idea how she happened to write you that letter?”
“What letter?”
Tragg said, “The one that she sent you. I believe yesterday. The Endicotts have a carbon copy of it.”
“No, I don’t know what caused her to write it.”
“Think there was any truth in it?”
“Definitely not. I don’t think there was anything irregular about the execution of that will. I talked with her before Mother died and I’ve heard her tell what happened several times, and I just can’t account for that letter.”
“By the way,” Tragg said quite casually, “the carbon copy of that letter isn’t the best evidence. Of course, we can use it if we have to, because it’s a bona fide carbon copy and there’s no question but it’s in the handwriting of Rose Keeling. But I’d like to have the original. Do you happen to have it with you?”
He extended his hand as casually as though he had asked her for a match.
“Why, I... no, not with me.”
“Oh, it’s at your apartment?”
“I... I don’t know where it is.”
Tragg raised his eyebrows. “You received it yesterday — or was it this morning?”
“This morning.”
“Oh, yes, I see. That is the reason you went to see Rose Keeling.”
“No, Lieutenant. Frankly, it isn’t.”
“No?”
Lieutenant Tragg raised his eyebrows with just the right expression of polite incredulity.
There was an apologetic knock at the door. Tragg frowned, said, “I don’t want to be disturbed.”
The door opened a crack.
“Skip it,” Tragg said over his shoulder. “I’m busy. I don’t want to be disturbed.”
A man’s voice said, “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I’m a deputy sheriff and these papers have to be served right now.”
“I don’t want to have any... oh, all right, I’ll take them.”
The deputy sheriff walked into the room, holding papers in his hand. He said, “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. You understand it’s all in the nature of a duty. We have to do it and this lawyer is burning my tail.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Writ of habeas corpus for Marilyn Marlow,” the deputy sheriff said, “ordering that she be brought into court day after tomorrow at two o’clock and in the meantime that, unless there is some charge filed against her, she be released in the sum of twenty-five hundred dollars bail. Perry Mason is downstairs depositing twenty-five hundred dollars in cash with the bail clerk. He’ll be up here with a receipt in a matter of seconds.”
“Thanks for telling me,” Tragg said. “Get out.”
The deputy sheriff left the room, pulled the door shut behind him.
“This isn’t going to get you anywhere,” Tragg said irritably. “These are the tactics lawyers use when they have guilty clients.”
Marilyn Marlow said nothing.
“Now then,” Tragg said, “suppose you tell me a little more about why you really went to see Rose Keeling, and...”
Knuckles sounded on the door and then the door opened and Perry Mason said, “I’m sorry, Tragg. That’s all.”
“You get the hell out of here,” Tragg said. “This is my private office. I...”
“Stay here till you rot!” Mason said. “Come on, Miss Marlow, you’re leaving.”
“The hell she is,” Tragg said.
“The hell she isn’t,” Mason told him. “She’s released on bail on habeas corpus. Here’s the bail receipt and you have a writ of habeas corpus served on you, stating that she is to be released on bail.”
“Unless she’s charged with something,” Tragg said.
“Go ahead and charge her,” Mason said. “Put any charge against her and I’ll have bail.”
“Suppose I charge her with murder?”
“Then I won’t have bail,” Mason said, “because I can’t get it.”
“All right, you crowd my hand and I’ll charge her with murder.”
“Phooey!” Mason said. “If you charge her with murder, then you’ve laid an egg that you can’t hatch.”
Tragg said, “You push me and I will.”
“Go ahead. I’m pushing you. I’m representing Miss Marlow. She’s been released on habeas corpus. She’s going with me. There’s an officer here to see that the court order is carried out. The order specifically states that she is to be released from custody, pending a hearing on the habeas corpus, upon giving bail in the sum of twenty-five hundred dollars. That bail has been put up in cash and I have here a receipt from the bail clerk. Come on, Miss Marlow.”
Marilyn arose from the chair. She thought for a moment that her knees would buckle and she would pitch forward on her face. But she took a deep breath and started walking, expecting every moment to hear a blast from Lieutenant Tragg.