“Sometimes I feel she is alive and very close, but sometimes I feel she is dead and very close. It is a puzzle. She had trouble with her mind before she died, and when a friend whom she trusted betrayed her confidence it was a great shock.

  “But we talk about me too much. It is better to talk about you. You have many talents, you have things for which others may well envy you, but you are in great danger—no?”

  “No,” Mason said, smiling.

  “Oh, but I think you are. I think even now there are … but you perhaps do not wish to have your fortune told—no?”

  Mason threw back his head and laughed. “Your salesmanship is charming. Certainly I wish my fortune told.”

  She took his hand, held it for a moment.

  Suddenly Frink coughed warningly, caught Mason’s eye and gestured.

  Mason looked up to see two men, broad-shouldered, wary in their bearing, yet aggressively important, enter the restaurant.

  The Mexican woman who ran the place came to them cordially, then, as she saw the unmistakable stamp of official importance on their faces, the smile froze on her lips.

  One of the men said something in a low voice.

  The woman pointed toward the booth.

  The two men walked over, one of them pulled back his coat, showed his star. “All right, Carmen,” he said, “that’s enough. Get your things on. You’re coming with us. Someone wants to ask you questions.”

  He looked impersonally at Mason, said, “Sorry to interrupt your party, Mister,” and put his hand on Carmen’s shoulder.

  “Let’s get going, Carmen,” he said.

  “But I do not understand … ”

  “Never mind, come on.”

  The woman who ran the place was solicitous. “Please, Carmen, queek,” she said, and then broke into a rattle of Spanish, which galvanized Carmen into action.

  “Well,” Mason said as the men escorted Carmen to a car, “it was good while it lasted. I’ll call Paul Drake and see if he knows about this angle.”

  He went to the phone booth, dialed Drake’s number and when he had the detective on the line said, “They just picked Carmen up, Paul. Know anything about it?”

  “I don’t know, Perry, but I think the authorities have that letter in the bottle and they’re intending to launch an investigation. However, I have some other news. Did Carmen tell your fortune?”

  “Yes.”

  “How was it?”

  “She’s good, Paul—a natural psychic.”

  “Was it a good fortune?”

  “What there was of it. She was interrupted.”

  “If it was good,” Drake said, “she’s a rotten psychic. The word has just been passed that the sheriff has a dead-open-and-shut case against Dorothy Fenner and that he’s prepared to prove you were the accomplice who waited for her in the canoe when she tried to steal evidence from George Alder’s house Saturday night.”

  Chapter 14

  “The peremptory challenge is with the defendant,” Judge Garey said.

  Perry Mason, on his feet, bowed urbanely. “We are thoroughly satisfied with this jury, Your Honor.”

  Judge Garey glanced at the prosecutor.

  Claud Gloster, district attorney, made a gesture, a sweeping inclusive gesture of approval. “Swear the jury.”

  Judge Garey said, “The clerk will swear the jury.”

  The jury of seven men and five women arose, held up their right hands and were sworn to try the issues well and faithfully in the case of the People of the State of California on the one hand and Dorothy Fenner on the other.

  Claud Gloster, as prosecutor, made a very brief opening statement in which he stated merely that he expected to prove the defendant, Dorothy Fenner, with malice aforethought, had murdered George S. Alder at his house at the beach on a place known as Alder Island; that death had been caused by gunshot; that the bullet had penetrated the neck, severed a main artery and shattered the spine. The victim had dropped in his tracks.

  The victim had been expecting the defendant to call on him. He had locked up the dog which had been his inseparable companion for the past few months so that the defendant could come to the house without fear of the dog. The defendant had killed him with one shot from a .38 caliber revolver, fled out of the back door to the beach where she had left a canoe or some small boat, had rowed out to her own yacht, tied the boat to the yacht, changed her clothes, gone to the landing pier, and returned to her apartment.

  It was a very sketchy opening speech. At the end of it, the prosecutor sat down. Mason waived his opening speech at that time and the district attorney called his first witness.

  The autopsy surgeon testified with a bristling of technical language to the fact of death and the cause of death.

  Claud Gloster, a careful, logical, dangerous courtroom antagonist, was careful to ask just the right questions to bring out the points he wanted and then stop.

  “Do you,” he asked, turning to Mason courteously, “wish to cross-examine the witness, Mr. Mason?”

  “Just a question,” Mason said.

  “Go right ahead.”

  “Thank you. Doctor, when you examined the body, you determined the cause of death?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have mentioned that the wound was caused by a .38 caliber bullet?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That bullet was recovered then?”

  “No, sir, the bullet was not recovered.”

  “How, then, do you know the caliber?”

  “From the size of the wound in part, in part by deduction from the fact that the gun which fired the fatal bullet was lying under the body.”

  “If you didn’t find the fatal bullet, how do you know this gun which was found under the body was the weapon which fired the fatal bullet?”

  “Because it had been recently discharged, because there was no other place where the bullet could have gone, and because the gun was a .38 caliber.”

  “I see. You know the fatal bullet was a .38 caliber because the gun was found beneath the body, and you know this weapon was the weapon used because it’s a .38 caliber. Is that right?”

  “It makes it sound absurd when you express it that way.”

  “Then express your deductions in some way so they won’t sound absurd.”

  “There was the size of the wound.”

  “Don’t you know a bullet always makes a smaller entrance wound than the caliber of the bullet?”

  “How can it make an entrance wound that is smaller than its diameter?”

  “Due to the elasticity of the skin.”

  “Well, this was a .38 caliber. I’m certain of it.”

  “But that part of your testimony about the gun being the fatal gun is pure deduction?”

  “It’s a matter of expert opinion.”

  “An expert opinion based on pure deduction, Doctor?”

  “Well—yes, if you want to put it that way.”

  “That’s all,” Mason said.

  A surveyor was sworn and maps of the premises were introduced. Then a police officer who testified that he was called to the scene of the crime because of a telephone call from a neighbor who had in turn been alarmed by the screams of one of the servants who had been to a movie and returned to find George Alder lying dead on the floor of the study. The officer described the premises as he had found them, stated that from the time he entered the premises he remained on duty, that he instructed others to telephone the sheriff and notify the coroner. The witness waited on the premises until the coroner arrived. He was present when photographs were taken and he identified a long series of photographs showing the body of the dead man and the condition of the premises at that time.

  “Cross-examine,” Gloster said, quite casually.

  “Now, the dog was shut up in an adjoining room?” Mason asked.

  “It wasn’t an adjoining room, it was sort of a—well, a closet with a ventilator in it and a window up near the top. The window was so high that the dog couldn’t reach it.”

  “Who let the dog out?”

  “Well, after reinforcements came, we—we all sort of let him out together.”

  “And what happened?”

  The officer said, “We tried to open the door a crack and then as he pushed his head out, slip a rope around his neck.”

  “Were you able to do so?”

  The officer grinned. “That dog was just like a bullet. We opened that door and the dog came out of there like a shot, jerked the rope out of the hands of the man who was trying to hold him, and went out of there like greased lightning.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “The last I saw of him, he was crossing the room and tearing down the side stairs, the rope whipping behind him.”

  “You ran out after him?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And where was he?”

  The witness grinned. “He was gone.”

  That sally brought laughter from the courtroom.

  “Do you know in which direction the dog went?”

  “Well, not from my personal knowledge, no, sir.”

  “He wasn’t visible in the yard?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You do know that he was not in the back yard?”

  “He ran around the side of the house apparently, and tried to get out to the street through the gate. I don’t know this, I can’t swear to it, because by the time I got around to the front of the house the servant who had run out of the front door had the rope and was holding him.”

  “Did the dog make any attempt to bite?”

  “The dog let this servant hold the rope.”

  “That was the same servant who had discovered the body?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And where is that dog now?”

  “Oh, Your Honor,” Gloster said, “that’s certainly not proper cross-examination. It’s far outside of the issues.”

  “Well, if the witness knows, he may tell,” the judge ruled. “I don’t see that it’s particularly important one way or the other, but I want to give counsel the greatest latitude in cross-examination.”

  “But, Your Honor, the question of where the dog is at the present time is certainly carrying an inquiry far afield,” Gloster said courteously. “I think that it is significant that the decedent locked the dog up in this closet so that the visitor whom he was expecting would not be annoyed by the dog. We expect to prove that that was somewhat a routine procedure. Whenever anyone was admitted to the house—any stranger, that is, the dog was either shut up or kept on leash. But where the dog is now, that’s certainly going far outside the issues.”

  Mason said with a smile, “Well, if it’s entirely immaterial why not let me know where the dog is?”

  “Because there’s no use cluttering up the record with a lot of extraneous matters.”

  “Well, just for my own information, tell me where the dog is.”

  Gloster shook his head.

  Judge Garey began to show signs of quick interest. “I think the defense is entitled to know,” he ruled.

  “Your Honor,” Gloster said desperately, “I want to keep the evidence within the issues and I want to keep the issues narrowed down to the question of who killed George S. Alder. If we get to bringing dogs into the case, and where the dogs are, and what the dogs are eating, and how the dogs feel, and whether the dogs are mourning, and … ”

  “He hasn’t asked anything about the dog’s diet. He’s asking where the dog is,” Judge Garey said, “and I think he’s entitled to know. Answer the question, Mr. Witness.”

  “I don’t know,” the officer said. “He was, I believe, taken out to some boarding kennel. That’s the last I heard of it.”

  “Do you know the name of the kennel, Mr. Gloster?” Judge Garey asked, his voice ominous.

  “No, Your Honor, I believe the sheriff had charge of the dog.”

  “Well, find out and let me know,” Judge Garey said. “I think we’re entitled to know where the dog is. Any further cross-examination, Mr. Mason?”

  “This closet that the dog was in,” Mason said. “Did you say the closet had been specially built for the dog?”

  “No, sir, I didn’t. I think it had just been a closet that had had a ventilator put in it. You could see the dog had been kept in there at intervals—there was a bed, a pan of water, and the inside of the door was just scratched all to pieces where the dog had tried to get out when the murder was committed. He had torn a nail loose in his clawing.”

  “You noticed the torn claw?” Mason asked.

  “Not the torn claw, but you could see that it had been torn because there were three distinct, although faint, streaks of blood on the inside of the door where his paw had scratched along the wood, and a couple of bloody smudges on the closet floor. If you ask me, it was a crime to leave a dog in a room with a paneled door like that. A smooth piece of wood could have been fastened to the inside of the door and then the dog wouldn’t have torn his nails on the panels.”

  “But had he scratched on the door before?” Mason asked.

  “Well, to be fair to the owner, the scratches were all fresh. I presume that … I’m sorry, I forgot I can’t testify to an opinion.”

  “Go right ahead,” Mason told him. “I’m not objecting. You seem to have a more expert opinion than the experts.”

  The witness grinned. “Well, the scratches on the inside of the door were all fresh. I called the attention of the others to that after we’d opened the door and the dog had dashed out. Evidently he’d been well disciplined and accustomed to remaining in the closet but when he heard the shot fired and—well, I presume there’d been a quarrel and—well, anyway, that dog wanted out so bad he’d torn a nail on that rough paneling on the inside of the door. I’m a dog lover and it makes me sore when I see an animal abused.”

  “More than one claw torn loose?” Mason asked.

  “I’d say just one.”

  “And no scratches on the door that weren’t fresh?”

  “No, sir. Incidentally, I verified that from the servants, but I presume that wouldn’t be admissible as evidence now.”

  “In other words,” Mason said, “you were trying to prove at least to your own satisfaction that there’d been something of a quarrel immediately preceding the shooting. Is that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you did so?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then, since we’re dealing in theories, how did the murderer get possession of George Alder’s gun?”

  “It must have been lying on the desk … or, perhaps a young woman … ”

  “Oh, if the Court please” Claud Gloster protested.

  “All this certainly isn’t evidence,” Judge Garey ruled. “It’s pure speculation. Counsel is asking for it, but it’s not evidence.”

  “It’s just like all the rest of the case, Your Honor,” Mason said.

  “I think we’ll dispense with discussion, Mr. Mason.”

  “Very well, Your Honor.”

  “That’s all,” Gloster announced. “Now my next witness will be the sheriff of the county, Leonard C. Keddie.”

  Sheriff Keddie, a tall, rawboned, slow-speaking individual, duly sworn, settled himself on the witness stand and gave his name, age, and occupation.

  “You were called to the residence of George S. Alder on Alder Island on the night of August third?”

  “I was, yes, sir.”

  “And what did you find, Sheriff?”

  “Well, when I arrived there the others had already been there—they’d been there some little time. I organized the search, and started looking around. We found that a boat was missing from the landing—one of the small boats, and assumed that the murderer might have managed to escape in that. There was a burglar alarm on the wharf, but a person who knew the layout could switch that alarm off from the land side, so that it would be inoperative for about three minutes and then would go on again. I took charge of the phase of the investigation which had for its object the finding of that boat.”

  “And did you find it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where?”

  “Drifting in the bay.”

  “Can you point on this map, People’s Exhibit D-twelve, to show approximately where that boat was recovered?”

  “Yes, sir, I can. It was right about at this point where I will now make a cross in pencil.”

  “Now, were you present when that boat was recovered?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And did you notice anything peculiar about that boat?”

  “It had been freshly painted, a certain green color.”

  “Did you make any investigation of the yacht, the Kathy-Kay, owned by the defendant in this case?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And did you notice anything significant on that yacht?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What?”

  “A place where some green paint had been rubbed against the side of the yacht.”

  “And what did you do with that green paint, if anything?”

  “I saw that it was removed and taken to a chemical laboratory for a spectroscopic analysis in comparison with the paint on this light boat which we found drifting in the bay, and which we subsequently identified as having been the property of George S. Alder.”

  “What else did you do?” Gloster asked.

  “Well,” the sheriff drawled, “thinking that someone who’d jumped in that boat in a hurry might have dropped something—just on the off chance I got a waterglass and started looking around the bottom of the bay about where the little skiff had been tied up.”

  “And did you find anything?” Gloster asked, glancing triumphantly.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What?”

  “A woman’s purse.”

  “And where is that purse now?”

  “I have it with me,” the sheriff said.

  “Will you produce it, please?”

  The sheriff opened a bag and produced a heavy Manila envelope encrusted with red sealing wax and signatures.

  “It’s right here, all sealed up in this envelope.”

  “Now, did you make an inventory of the contents of this purse?”

  “I did, yes, sir.”

  “And where are the articles which were contained in the purse?”