Dorothy Fenner walked over to the screen as one in a daze, then suddenly jerked to starded attention. “Why, you’re…”
“Perry Mason,” Mason interrupted. “And very pleased to meet you, Miss Fenner.”
“Why, what I mean is that you’re..
“Perry Mason,” the lawyer interrupted, significantly, “Oh,” she said, and sat down as though her legs were buckling.
The matron smiled, patted her back reassuringly, said, “How’s everything, Mr. Mason?”
“Fine,” Mason told her.
“Let me know when you’re ready,” the matron said, and withdrew out of earshot.
Dorothy Fenner raised her head and surveyed Mason through the screen with incredulous eyes.
She looked back over her shoulder to make certain no one was within earshot and then said in a low voice, “Why … why didn’t you tell me?”
Mason said, “Can’t you appreciate my position? You were committing an illegal act”
“What are you going to do now?”
“The first thing I’m going to do,” Mason said, “is get you out on bail, but I want to know exactly what happened.”
She said, “I guess I was a little fool, Mr. Mason. I didn’t do what you told me to. I had a bear by the tail, but I wasn’t ready to go to George Alder. I thought I’d talk with Pete Cadiz about finding the bottle. I wanted time to think things over.”
“So what did you do?”
She said, “I concealed that bottle where I thought it would never be found.”
“Where?”
“In the fresh-water tank on my yacht. I unscrewed the cleaning plug on the drinking water tank and put the bottle inside.”
“Then what?”
“Then I went ashore to take the interurban for town, feeling very satisfied with myself.”
“You have an automobile?”
“No. My one extravagance is the yacht. I love yachting. On the whole it costs me a lot less to keep this yacht than it would a car, and …”
“Okay,” Mason interrupted, “what happened?”
She said, “I stopped in at a little restaurant for breakfast yesterday morning, read the papers, and learned about what Alder was saying. That someone had broken into his house and taken fifty thousand dollars in gems and—well, suddenly I realized that he had me. He’d been smart enough not to say anything at all about losing the bottle with the letter in it, but simply claimed that I’d broken in in order to steal jewels. And, of course, like a little simp, not intending to get caught in any such mess, I had left myself wide open. And then I realized that you were my only hope because you—of course I didn’t know who you were at the time—could swear I hadn’t taken any jewels from the house.”
“So what did you do?” Mason asked.
“Well,” she said, “at that late date I decided to follow your advice. I went back to the yacht, deciding that I’d get this bottle with the letter and …”
“You’d put the letter back into the bottle?”
“Yes. Just the way I found it. Corked and alL”
“All right, what happened?”
“Well, when I went back to the yacht the bottle was gone. I was absolutely thunderstruck. I couldn’t believe it possible. I searched and searched, and then I pumped every blessed bit of water out of that water tank and looked in it with the flashlight. That bottle simply had disappeared.”
Mason said, “You’re dealing with a shrewd individual, Dorothy. He knew who had the bottle. He simply waited until you had gone ashore, and then he went aboard and started searching the yacht. Evidently he’s a pretty good yachtsman and as such figured out the places where something like that could be hidden. So now he has the bottle and the letter and has enough evidence against you so he can convict you of breaking into his house. Is that right?”
“I guess so, yes … I… I suppose I must have left fingerprints. Like a ninny I didn’t wear gloves … Oh, what a mess it is.”
Mason nodded.
“Well,” she said, “there’s one thing. You-can back up my story and now we can tell the truth. Oh, I’m so relieved, so glad to see you, Mr. Mason. I wondered how I was ever going to get in touch with the only man in the world who could show that I hadn’t taken those jewels …”
“Take it easy,” Mason said. “You can’t handle it that way.”
“Why not?”
“Because if we tell that story now, it’s going to look like an attempt to fabricate evidence so we can try and build up a case against Alder. Everyone will laugh at us for not thinking up a better lie than that.
“Furthermore, when I put myself in the position of being interested in the letter that was in that bottle, and then letting you take it and put it in the water tank where someone could come and steal it, and all we can show is a typewritten copy of what we claim the letter was … No, my dear, I’m afraid we can’t do that.”
“Then what can we do?”
Mason grinned, and said, “Ever hear the story about the American who went to the foreign country and got into trouble with one of the slick businessmen there?”
“No, what about it?”
Mason said, “It’s a legal classic. The businessman sued the American for a large sum of money which he claimed he had loaned the American with which to start a business venture. The American went to a lawyer, complained bitterly, and wanted to go on the stand and swear that it was a complete falsehood.
“The attorney carefully listened to the American’s story, smiled benignly, and said he would fix things all up.
“Imagine the American’s surprise when the case came up in the foreign court. The businessman got on the stand and swore that he had loaned the American this sum of money and then called five witnesses two of them swore that they had seen the money loaned to the American, and three of them testified that the American had told them about having borrowed the money from this foreign businessman and hoped to be able to pay it back out of profits.”
“What happened?” she asked, interested.
“The American’s lawyer didn’t even cross-examine the witness, and the American almost had a fit,” Mason said. “His lawyer explained to him that in this country it was rather easy to get witnesses to commit perjury for a reasonable consideration. The American saw ruination staring him in the face. Then it came his turn to put on his defense and his lawyer urbanely called seven witnesses, each of whom stated that he knew that the American had borrowed money from this businessman, but that he had been present in the room when the American had paid it back, every cent of it”
A wan smile twisted her lips. “And what’s the moral of that story, Mr. Mason?”
“It isn’t a moral, it’s an ‘immoral,’” Mason told her. “It means that there are times when you have to fight the devil with fire.”
“So what do we do?”
“At the moment it’s what we don’t do. We don’t go rushing into court and say anything about the bottle. We don’t show the copy of the letter that we made. I do wish we’d had a camera so that we could have photographed that document. Then we’d have been in an entirely different position. But we didn’t have, so there you are, or rather, here you are.”
“But, Mr. Mason, don’t you see what he’s done? He’s— why, if we let him get away with that, if he can put us in that position, I’ve lost my evidence, I can’t ever say anything about it later on, and—and, good Lord, I did break into his house and he could have me convicted of a felony and..,”
“You leave it to me,” Mason said. “I’m not too certain but what your friend, George S. Alder, may get something of a shock when he learns that I’m going to represent you. Keep a stiff upper lip, Dorothy, and you may be out of here by dinnertime.”
“By dinnertime, Mr. Mason? Why, even if a judge made an order admitting me to bail, my financial resources are…”