Serle’s eyes stared at Mason in speechless fear.
Mason said, “You’ll have to try and do better on your next murder, Serle. When you scraped the plates down the garbage chute, you made a fatal error in neglecting to remember that it is customary to leave bones on the plates.”
Mason smiled affably at Judge Knox, and said, “It is the contention of the defense that when Alden Leeds arrived at the apartment, Hogarty was dead. It is, I presume, true that Milicant was really Hogarty. He had been blackmailing this defendant, and it was only natural, although perhaps not legally proper, for the defendant to try and regain possession of papers which he knew were in possession of the dead man, papers which would make public the very disclosures he had sought to suppress. And so the defendant searched the apartment — which accounts for his fingerprints. He made a frantic effort to find those papers.”
“But,” Kittering countered, jumping to his feet, “those papers were papers which connected him with the attempted murder of Bill Hogarty, with the stealing of his property, and...”
“Oh, no,” Mason said with a smile. “Those papers related to an entirely different matter. The defendant found them, thank you. They have been destroyed.”
And Mason sat down.
Serle yelled, “It’s a lie!”
Kittering said, “Your Honor, I object to...”
Mason whirled to face Kittering, “If you were a little more interested in finding the real criminal, and a little less in trying to convict an innocent man, merely because you have started to prosecute him, you’d be cooperating with me in this thing instead of opposing me... When the first check was given to Hogarty, the bank had to cash it, but, thinking it might be blackmail, they wrote down the numbers on the bills. Serle got those bills after the murder of Hogarty. I think you’ll find them in his possession right now.”
Judge Knox said, “This court is going to take a twenty-minute recess. We...”
He broke off as Serle, shouting, “I refuse to stand for this persecution,” streaked across the courtroom and through the door of the judge’s chambers.
Judge Knox shouted at the deputy sheriff, who had Leeds in charge, “Get him! Get him! Don’t sit there like a fool!”
The deputy sheriff sprinted into action.
Mason scratched a match on the sole of his shoe, and lit a cigarette.
Della Street squeezed his wrist enthusiastically. “Chief,” she said, “I could dance a jig on the judge’s bench.”
“Take it easy, “he told her. “Be nonchalant. Light a cigarette. Remember people are watching you. Act on the assumption that you can pull a rabbit out of the hat any time any place. How about a cigarette?”
“Give me the one you’re smoking, Chief,” she said. “I couldn’t light a cigarette to save my life. Why did you make that crack about Alden Leeds finding Hogarty dead, and then searching the apartment?”
“Because I wanted to explain his fingerprints,” Mason said, “and I wanted to give Emily Milicant a tip on the Hogarty angle. I...”
He broke off as Kittering came storming over to their table.
Kittering, his voice so indignant that he could hardly talk, sputtered, “What the devil do you mean... You’ll be disbarred for this.”
“For what?” Mason asked.
Kittering pointed an indignant finger at Gertrude Lade. “That girl ” he stormed. “She was no more in the restaurant than I was! One of my investigators tells me she’s in your office, working at the switchboard.”
“That’s right,” Mason observed, calmly exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke.
“You can’t pull that stuff and get away with it,” Kittering stormed.
“Why not?”
Kittering said, “Because it’s illegal; it’s unethical; it’s... I believe it’s a contempt of court. I’m going to see Judge Knox, and tell him the whole contemptible scheme.”
Kittering strode away in the direction of the judge’s chambers. Mason continued to smoke calmly and placidly.
“Chief,” Della Street said in a half whisper, “don’t you suppose Judge Knox will figure it is a contempt of court?”
“I don’t give a damn what he figures,” Mason said, elevating his heels to the seat of an adjoining chair. “I hope he does. It’s time we had a showdown. It’s getting so that any time we don’t follow the conventional methods of solving a case, somebody wants to haul us up before the Grievance Committee of the Bar Association. To hell with them! It’s time they learned where they get off.”
“But, Chief,” she said, “this was...”
Mason interrupted her to nod his head toward where the two deputies, who had escorted Emily Milicant into the room, were engaged in a low-pitched conversation with Alden Leeds.
“Look at them,” he said. “They’re pulling the same old tactics. They’re telling Leeds that Emily Milicant has confessed to everything, and that there’s no use trying to hold out any longer. They think they have the right to pull any of this third degree stuff, that if we do it, we’re shysters. To hell with that stuff. I...”
He broke off as Judge Knox, his face grave, appeared at the door of his chambers and spoke to the bailiff. The bailiff crossed over to Mason, and said, “The judge wants to see you in his chambers immediately, Mr. Mason.”
Mason ground out his cigarette, and said, “Wait here, Della If anyone asks you anything clam up on them. Don’t talk, and above all don’t try to explain.”
Mason strolled on into the judge’s chambers, heedless of the babble of excited voices which filled the courtroom, of the curious eyes which followed him.
Judge Knox said, “Mr. Mason, Mr. Kittering has made a charge of such gravity that I feel I should call on you for an explanation before taking any steps. If this charge is true, it is perhaps not only a contempt of the court, but a flagrant violation of professional ethics.”
Mason seated himself comfortably, crossed his legs, and said, “It’s true.”
“You mean that this young woman was planted in the courtroom for this purpose, that she is an employee of yours, and was not at the restaurant?”
“That’s right,” Mason said, and then added, after a moment, “There’s been a lot of loose talk around here about what constitutes professional ethics. I’m glad to have a showdown.”
“You won’t be so glad if the court considers it contempt,” Judge Knox said grimly.
Mason said, “It’s about time the courts realized that they’re agencies for the administration of justice. They’re instruments of the people. They’re here, not to unwind red tape, but to administer justice. I’ll admit my cross-examination was irregular, but what’s wrong with it? I asked Gertrude Lade to stand up. She stood up. I asked Serle if he didn’t remember this young woman as having been at the table next to him. If he’d been telling the truth, he could have said, ‘no,’ that she couldn’t have been there because he wasn’t at the table, and that was all there was to it.”
“But you had this young woman swear she was there,” Kittering protested.
“I had her do nothing of the sort,” Mason said, glancing contemptuously at the excited deputy. “In the first place, she wasn’t under oath. In the second place, all she said was, ‘That’s him.” Obviously, it was. He’s never claimed to be anyone else. I could point at Judge Knox, and yell, ‘That’s him.’ It wouldn’t be a falsehood. He is him. He’s he, if you want to be grammatical.”
“I don’t agree with you,” Kittering said.
“All right,” Mason said. “We’ll debate the point. You take the side that he isn’t he. I’ll say he is. Now, what proof have you to offer?”
“That isn’t what I meant,” Kittering said.