“You’re doing Roxy a great wrong, Sybil. She can’t control her emotions any more than anyone. Love comes and love goes. It isn’t something you can turn on and off whenever you want to, like a water faucet. You don’t have that much control of your emotions. But Roxy would never have done anything underhanded.”
“Oh no, oh no, not that little minx! Of course not! Certainly not! All right, I retained Mr. Mason. Now what?”
“I’m sorry,” Enright Harlan said coldly, and turned away.
“Wait a minute, Harlan,” Mason said, “Come back here.”
Harlan paused, looked over his shoulder.
“You don’t want to do a trick like that,” Mason told him. “You can’t add that handicap to the load your wife’s carrying. Newspaper reporters are watching you. If they see you turn away like this, they’ll—”
“Let the whole world see me turn away,” Harlan said and deliberately turned his back.
As he walked out of the courtroom, a couple of alert photographers, looking for a dramatic picture, snapped his angry features.
Mason moved around so that temporarily his body concealed Sybil Harlan’s face. “Don’t cry,” he said. “Remember, we’re playing poker. Chin up. Can you manage a smile?”
“Hell no,” she said. “I can’t keep from crying for over thirty seconds. Get that matron! Let me get out of here.”
Mason caught Della Street’s eye. “Go with her, Della. Get her out of here.”
“What are you going to do?” Della Street asked.
“Divert the attention of those reporters,” Mason said, striding after Enright Harlan.
Mason caught up with Harlan as the tight-lipped husband was waiting at the elevators.
“Harlan!” he called.
Harlan spun on his heel, looked coldly at Mason. “What is it this time?”
Mason, conscious of the reporters crowding him from behind, said, “You can’t get away with it that easy.”
“What do you mean?”
Mason said, “Your wife asked you a simple question. She’s entitled to an answer. How did that gun get out of your possession and up at the scene of the murder?”
Enright Harlan, thrown entirely off balance, said, “What the... what the hell are you trying to do?”
“As your wife’s lawyer, I’m trying to find out who killed George C. Lutts.”
“Then you’d better ask the person who killed him!”
“This question I’m asking you. You can’t keep walking out on it.”
The elevator came to a stop. Enright Harlan hesitated for a moment, then shouldered his way into the crowded elevator without a word.
Mason turned back toward the courtroom. Newspaper reporters blocked his way. “What about the gun, Mr. Mason? What were you insinuating? What’s cooking? Are Harlan and his wife at odds?”
Mason said, “I’m trying to find out about certain evidence, that’s all.”
“What about the gun? Why did you ask Harlan that question?”
“Because the district attorney says it’s his gun.”
“Well,” one of the reporters said, “his wife could have taken it.”
“And so could Harlan,” Mason said.
“Good Lord, he’s standing back of his wife. You don’t mean to insinuate that he—”
“He gave that gun to someone,” Mason said. “I’d like to find out who it was,” and pushed past the reporters. He met Della Street coming out of the courtroom, drew her to one side. “Everything under control?”
“Yes, she didn’t cry until after she got out of the courtroom.”
“Say anything?” Mason asked.
Della Street said, “She looked at me and said, ‘That’s what I get for underestimating an adversary. Let them kill me now.’ She was white and shaking.”
“All right,” Mason told her, “now we know what the district attorney’s case is and we can go to work.”
Chapter 11
Perry Mason pushed down on the foot throttle, sending his car whining up the steep grade. He brought it to a stop in front of the big three-storied house.
“You sit here, Della,” he said. “Shut the motor off. I’ll fire two shots. Press the horn button once if you hear one shot, twice if you hear two shots.
“After that, turn on the radio. I’ll fire two more shots. Give me the same signal.”
Della Street nodded.
Mason took a skeleton key from his pocket.
“Will the police frown on this procedure?” Della Street asked.
“What procedure?”
“The breaking and entry part, the skeleton key.”
Mason grinned. “I’m a stockholder in the company that owns the building. Even Hamilton Burger can’t find a loophole in that.”
“The police have finished searching the place?”
“Yes. They’ve been over it with a fine-toothed comb. They found one other bullet.”
“They did? When?”
“Late last night. It was embedded in the wall on the south side and had been fired from the fatal gun.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t know it myself until this morning.”
“Then there’s only one other bullet to be accounted for?”
“Yes. The two bullets from the Peters’ shells have now been found. The U.M.C. bullet is missing.”
“Those are blank cartridges you’re using?”
“That’s right.”
“Do they make the same amount of noise as the ones with bullets?”
“I hope so,” Mason said. “I don’t dare to shoot any bullets to find out. We’ll make a reasonable test.”
“What do you want to prove?”
“Whether my client is lying.”
“If she isn’t?”
“So much the better.”
“And if she is?”
“She’s still my client,” Mason said, and fitted his skeleton key to the lock in the door.
Mason climbed the first flight of stairs, looked around at the gloomy rooms, inhaled the musty air, then started up the second flight, paused midway up the flight to inspect the reddish-brown stain which had soaked into the wood, marking the place where the body of George C. Lutts had been resting when discovered by his startled son-in-law.
He climbed to the third floor, looked out of the window down the steep slope to the place where Roxy Claffin’s house gleamed in the sunlight, a vision of white stucco, red-tiled roof, blue-tiled swimming pool, walled patio, green shrubbery and velvet lawns, the well-kept luxury of the place standing in sharp contrast to the contractor’s unpainted board shack at the foot of the grade where the raw earth had been ripped away.
Mason stood with his back to the window. He raised a thirty-eight calibre revolver and pulled the trigger twice. The echoes of the explosion died away. From down below came the blast of an automobile horn. A second later there was another blast.
Mason waited for a full minute, then raised the gun and fired two more shots. This time there was no sound of the automobile horn.
Mason pushed the gun back in his pocket and descended the stairs.
“Okay?” Della Street asked.
“Okay,” he said. “How plainly did you hear them?”
“I heard the two plainly. After that, nothing.”
“Were you trying to listen for the second two?”
“When the radio was on, I tried to sit back, listening to the radio the way a person would.”
“How loud did you have it on?”
“Pretty loud. Not blasting my eardrums out, but good and loud just the same.”
“In other words, you were trying to give our client a break?”
“Well... I suppose I was.”
“We can’t do it that way,” Mason said. “We have to know the real facts.”
He got in beside Della Street, turned the radio on, adjusted the volume. “Leave it just like that, Della.”
Again Mason climbed the stairs, waited a minute and fired two shots. This time there were two blasts from the horn below. They were short, as though Della Street had been reluctant to press the horn button.