“Actually, Mr. Mason, I can only testify as to the first one. As to the others, all I can say is that they look like records which I left on the machine. I have been informed that they were taken from the hotel room in which I had left my equipment.”
“That’s all,” Mason said. “No objection to the introduction of the records.”
“I assume you mean Record Number One?” Judge Lennox said.
“No, the whole batch,” Mason said. “A witness who is as truthful as this witness is quite likely to have an opinion I can trust. If he thinks these are the same records I’m willing to let them go in, subject to my right to object to any conversation that may be on those records as incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial, but the records themselves may be received in evidence.”
Judge Lennox smiled and said, “Well, that’s refreshing candor on the part of Counsel — and on the part of the witness. Very well, the records will be received as evidence.”
“Now, then, in regard to these records,” Hamilton Burger said, “there is a conversation in which the defendant, Dixie Dayton, states in so many words to Perry Mason that her co-defendant, Morris Alburg, is out murdering George Fayette. I want the Court to listen to that conversation. I want the Court to note that Mr. Mason accepted this information and did absolutely nothing about it. He did not communicate with the police. He did not...”
“Are you now trying to show that 7 am a conspirator?” Mason asked.
“You’ve criticized my methods of preparing a case,” Burger said. “I want the Court to realize exactly what happened.”
Mason said, “Then you’d better show it by evidence, not by a statement.”
“You don’t deny that this conversation is on this record, do you?”
“I deny that Dixie Dayton at any time told me her co-defendant, Morris Alburg, was planning to murder George Fayette.”
“But the record is right here. You can hear her voice.”
“How do you know it’s her voice?” Mason asked.
“I’m sure it is.”
“Then get on the stand and testify it is, and I’ll cross-examine you, and the judge can reach an opinion as to your assumption that it’s the same person.”
“I don’t have to do that,” Burger said. “I can do it another way.”
“Go ahead and do it, then.”
Burger said, “Miss Minerva Hamlin will be my next witness... Miss Hamlin, come forward and be sworn, please.”
Minerva Hamlin marched to the witness stand, her manner that of a young woman who is intent upon creating an impression of brisk competence.
Under Burger’s questioning, she testified with close-clipped, precise, well-articulated words, telling her story in a manner which unquestionably impressed Judge Lennox.
She described the emergency, the fact that she was called on to leave the switchboard and go at once to the Keymont Hotel, the arrangements that she made with Paul Drake by which she would flash an identification signal when the young woman in question started to leave the hotel, her acting the part of a maid in the hotel, and the time she spent watching room 721 in order to see who emerged from it.
“And finally,” Hamilton Burger asked, “someone did emerge from it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A man or woman?”
“A woman.”
“Did you have an opportunity to look at this woman?”
“That was what I was there for.”
“That is not exactly an answer to the question,” Hamilton Burger pointed out. “Did you...”
“Yes, I did.”
“You noticed her particularly?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you saw this woman emerge from room 721?”
“I did. Yes, sir.”
“Who was that woman?”
“Miss Dixie Dayton, one of the defendants in this case.”
“Will you please designate the woman.”
“The one I am pointing at.”
“The record doesn’t show the one that you’re pointing at. May I ask Miss Dayton, the defendant, to stand up?”
“Stand up,” Mason said.
Dixie Dayton stood up.
“Is that the woman?”
“That is the woman.”
“Let the record show,” Hamilton Burger said, “that the identification is that of the woman who stood up, and the woman who stood up is Dixie Dayton, one of the defendants in this case.
“What did you do when this woman left the room?” Burger asked.
“I followed her.”
“Where?”
“She took the elevator. The elevator went up. I ran up one flight of stairs. I was on the seventh floor, and there were only eight floors in the hotel. I therefore knew she couldn’t go up more than one floor. I felt that I could get up there almost as soon as the elevator.”
“And you did so?”
“Yes.”
“And where did this woman go?”
“She went to room 815, the room where the body of George Fayette was subsequently discovered by the police.”
“This same woman?” Burger asked.
“This same woman.”
“You’re positive?”
“Positive.”
“And who was that woman?”
“I have already told you.”
“I mean, who was the woman who went to this room 815?”
“The defendant, Dixie Dayton.”
“The same person who stood up? The same person you have previously identified?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Cross-examine,” Burger said to Perry Mason.
Minerva Hamlin turned to face Perry Mason with eyes that flashed antagonism, a manner that plainly showed she intended to give tit for tat, and that no adroit cross-examination was going to confuse her.
Mason’s attitude was that of an older brother asking an impulsive younger sister to confide in him.
“Miss Hamlin,” he said, “you didn’t know Dixie Dayton, did you?”
“I had never seen her until she stepped out of that room.”
“You didn’t know who she was at the time?”
“I saw her, I didn’t know her name, no.”
“And the police showed you a photograph of Dixie Dayton and asked you if that was the same woman, didn’t they?”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them it was.”
“Didn’t you tell them that you thought it looked like the same woman?”
“Well, if it was the same woman it would look like her, wouldn’t it?”
There was a ripple of merriment in the courtroom at her tart rejoinder.
“That,” Mason said, “is quite true. Since you ask me the question I’ll be only too glad to answer it, Miss Hamlin. You might pardon me also if I point out that if it had not been a photograph of Miss Dayton, that it still might have looked like her. Photographs are frequently confusing.”
“They don’t confuse me. I have a very keen eye.”
“And yet you couldn’t make an absolutely positive identification the first time you saw that photograph, could you?”
“Well, I told them — well, it depends on what you mean by ‘positive.’ ”
“Well,” Mason said smiling, “what do you mean by it?”
“When I’m positive, I’m positive.”
“So one would gather,” Mason said. “You weren’t quite as positive then as you are now.”
“Well, I’ve had a chance to see the woman herself since then. The photograph didn’t — well, it...”
“Do you mean it didn’t look like her?”
“No, it looked like her.”
“But you were still a little doubtful?”
“I wanted to be perfectly fair, Mr. Mason.”
“And you still do, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now,” Mason said, “when you first saw that photograph you couldn’t be absolutely positive. You weren’t positive. You said you thought it might be the same woman, but you couldn’t be certain.”