Mason sighed, put the gun in his pocket and descended the stairs. He found Della Street sitting in the automobile, tears in her eyes.
Mason patted her shoulder. “Don’t take it too hard, Della. I had to know... that’s all.”
“I like her, Chief.”
“So do I, but we can’t control the facts.”
“Will the police make this experiment?”
“After she tells her story. You couldn’t hear the shots when the radio was loud?”
“No.”
“Would you have heard these last two if you hadn’t been listening for them?”
She wiped her eyes. “I’d like to say no, Chief, but that won’t help her. Yes, they came in very clearly.
“Of course,” Della Street pointed out, “she may say she was listening to some programme that was real noisy.”
Mason nodded without enthusiasm. “I’m not going to put any words in her mouth, Della. I’m just going to ask her.”
“The radio wasn’t left turned on when you and Doxey drove up?”
“No. She says she shut it off when she went in the house.”
“Where’s the car now?” Della Street asked. “A lot might depend on what station the radio indicator was on.”
“The police have the car. They’re making a belated search for fingerprints.”
“Finding any?”
“They’re not telling.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Now,” Mason said, “I think we’re ready to talk with Mrs. Doxey. I want to find out how it happened she told Mrs. Claffin about Sybil Harlan having retained me to throw a monkey wrench in the machinery.”
“That was a mean thing to do,” Della Street said, “right when Mrs. Harlan thought her husband was going to stand back of her, right when she thought Mrs. Claffin had been put in her place.”
Mason nodded.
“Chief, suppose Mrs. Harlan is telling the truth. Someone must have been concealed in that house, waiting for Lutts. After all, you know, Lutts was a pretty smooth operator, and there undoubtedly were people who didn’t like him.”
“Let’s look at the sheer mechanics of the thing,” Mason said. “The murderer fired at least two shots; one of them went into Lutts’ chest at a distance of about eighteen to twenty inches, the other one missed him and went into the wall. What would be the sequence of those shots?”
“What do you mean?”
Mason said, “After having shot Lutts in the heart at a distance of eighteen to twenty inches, the murderer would hardly have fired a second shot into the wall just for practice.”
She nodded.
“Therefore,” Mason said, “we have to assume the first shot was fired at Lutts and it missed him.”
Again Della Street nodded.
“So,” Mason said, “we try to reconstruct the conditions under which that first shot was fired. In all probability, Lutts had his back turned.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I think it’s logical. I don’t think his murderer would have pulled a gun, aimed and fired, if Lutts had been standing facing the murderer.”
“Well, he certainly was facing the murderer when the second shot was fired.”
“Exactly,” Mason said. “Which indicates that the first shot was fired when he had his back turned. Then that shot was a miss. Lutts must have whirled at the sound of the shot. He saw the murderer standing there, holding a gun. He could have done either one of two things. He could have tried to run away or he could have charged toward the murderer. Apparently he charged.”
“How can you tell?”
“Either he charged toward the murderer or the murderer charged toward him,” Mason said. “The first shot wouldn’t have been a miss at twenty inches. Therefore, the distance between the murderer and the victim must have been shortened materially between the time the first shot was fired and the time the second shot was fired.”
“That’s right,” Della Street said.
“So either Lutts was charging the murderer or the murderer was charging Lutts. Now then, at eighteen to twenty inches — and mind you, that’s twenty inches from the end of the gun to the chest of the victim — Lutts would have been trying to do something to protect himself.”
Mason took a tape measure from his pocket, said, “Get out, will you, Della? I want to try an experiment. Here, hold the gun.”
“It’s empty?”
“It’s empty. It was only loaded with blanks in the first place.”
Della Street took the gun.
“Point it at me.”
She pointed the gun.
“Now stretch it out just as far as you can reach with your hand.”
She pushed the gun out at arm’s length. Mason took a steel tape measure from his pocket, measured off twenty inches.
“See what I mean?” he said. “At this distance, I’d be knocking the gun out of your hand.”
“Unless I jerked my hand out of the way.”
“That would be pretty hard to do with a gun. Now, hold the gun closer to you.”
She crooked her elbow slightly.
“Closer,” Mason said. “Hold the gun right up against your body. Lower it to your hip. Remember, the course of the fatal bullet was upward. The murderer shot from the hip.”
She put the gun up against her hip. Mason measured off twenty inches from the gun to his chest.
“At this distance,” he said, “I could break your jaw before you could pull the trigger.”
“You might break my jaw and I might pull the trigger at the same time.”
“That,” Mason said, “is the thought I’m trying to explore.”
“So what do we do now?”
“So now,” Mason said, “we go talk with Mrs. Herbert Doxey. But first we telephone Paul Drake and find out which one of the possible suspects knew nothing about shooting a gun. Our murderer, whoever he was, must have missed that first shot at a distance of hardly more than ten feet.”
Chapter 12
Mason stopped his car in front of the California type bungalow, opened the door of the car.
“Hold it,” Della Street said. “I’m coming across to your side.” She slid from the right side across under the steering wheel, with a tantalizing flash of shapely legs, and then was standing on the sidewalk, shaking her skirts down and placing her purse under her arm as she walked up to the door with Perry Mason.
Mason rang the doorbell.
The woman who answered it was red-haired, blue eyed, about thirty, with high cheekbones and a mouth which, despite an attempt to change the lines with lipstick, remained a thin straight line.
“Good afternoon.”
“Mrs. Doxey?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Perry Mason.”
“I thought you were. I’ve seen your picture.”
“This is Miss Street, my secretary. May we come in for a moment?”
“Herbert isn’t here.”
“I wanted to talk with you.”
“I’m rather upset these days, Mr. Mason. The—”
“I don’t want to intrude on your grief,” Mason said, “but I consider it rather important.”
“It isn’t only my grief, it’s my housekeeping. I’ve let things go pretty much. Come in.”
She led the way into a comfortable, spacious living-room.
Mason looked around at the artistic furnishings appreciatively.
“It’s big,” she said. “Too big for just us two, now that Daddy is gone. I don’t know what we’ll do. He lived with us, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” Mason said.
“Sit down, please.”
After they were seated Mason said, “I’ll come directly to the point, Mrs. Doxey.”
“That’s what I like people to do.”
“You and your father were very close?”