“You have taken it on yourself to disregard just about every bit of advice I’ve given you so far, and to try to substitute your own judgment in place of mine. Now you’re in a jam.”

  “But I had to see Cassel,” she said. “Don’t you understand, Mr. Mason? You can’t afford to take chances with a blackmailer. You say that you don’t pay them and all that, but you know as well as I do that that’s a high-risk game.

  “I didn’t want you to fight with this man and take a chance on doing something that would wreck Edgar’s life. … And, of course, at that time I thought Edgar would recover.”

  “The way you planned it,” Mason said, “would have been the high-risk game. You don’t get rid of a blackmailer by paying him off. That simply makes him more eager. It postpones the time of the next bite for a few weeks or perhaps a few months, but eventually the blackmailer is always back. He regards his hold on his victim as a certain capital asset, just like owning a government bond or having money in the bank.”

  She shook her head. “I know that’s what lawyers always say but you can’t be sure. You don’t know what he wanted. You don’t know what his hold on Edgar was. It may have been something that … well, something that I could have protected him on.”

  “In what way?”

  “By paying off, I could have had negatives and prints of pictures and all that.”

  “Negatives,” Mason said, “can be duplicated. Pictures can be copied. When you take the word of a blackmailer that you’re getting evidence, you’re trusting the integrity of the blackmailer and, for the most part, that’s a mighty poor risk.”

  The lawyer pressed a bell button, signaling that the interview was over.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” she asked.

  “That,” Mason said, “depends upon many things. But I can tell you one thing, if you start talking, if you try to explain your actions, if you start confiding in the police, you’re either going to walk into the gas chamber or spend the better part of your life in the confines of a prison.”

  “Can’t I be released on bail or something?”

  Mason shook his head.

  A deputy slid open the door. “All finished?” he asked.

  “All finished,” Mason said. He turned and waved a reassuring hand to Diana Douglas.

  14

  ON HIS return to his office, Mason sent for Paul Drake.

  “How does it look?” Della Street asked.

  Mason shook his head. “The little fool!”

  “What’s she done now?”

  “Lied to me. Used her judgment in place of mine. Probably left a back trail that the police can follow, but still thinks she’s the smart little mastermind that can get away with it.”

  Drake’s knock sounded on the door and Mason nodded to Della.

  She opened the door.

  “What is it this time?” Drake asked.

  “I’m afraid,” Mason said, “this is an end to your well-cooked restaurant meals, Paul. I’m afraid you’re going back to sitting at the desk during long hours and eating soggy hamburgers which have been sent in from the drive-in on the next corner.”

  “What now?” Drake asked.

  Mason said, “Diana Douglas.”

  “What’s she done now?”

  “I don’t know,” Mason said.

  “Well, if you don’t, I don’t know who would.”

  Mason said, “I can tell you what the police think she did. The police think she went to the Tallmeyer Apartments on Thursday afternoon, that she went up to the ninth floor, had a conference with Moray Cassel, that Moray Cassel was trying to blackmail her, or perhaps her brother.”

  “But she paid off?” Drake asked.

  “She paid off with a twenty-two-caliber revolver, shooting a particularly powerful brand of twenty-two cartridge.”

  “And they recovered the bullet?” Drake asked.

  “Probably.”

  “Striations?”

  Mason shrugged his shoulders.

  “How many times? I mean, how many shots?”

  “One, as I understand the facts,” Mason said. “The man lived perhaps for some time, but he was unconscious and was unable to move. There was considerable hemorrhage.”

  “How do they know it’s a twenty-two caliber?”

  “Well,” Mason said, “I’ll amend that. They say it’s a small caliber. I think probably they mean by that it’s a twenty-two caliber. And the police claim that when little Miss Mastermind opened her purse and pulled out the gun she inadvertently jerked her BankAmerica credit card out.”

  “Which the police have?”

  “Which the police have.”

  “And she claims the shooting was in self defense, or what?”

  “She doesn’t claim. She’s silent.”

  “Anybody see her go into the apartment?” Drake asked.

  “I don’t know. She may have left a back trail that can be followed and proven. I’m only telling you what the police claim at the moment. The police claim that her BankAmerica credit card fell out of her purse on the floor without being noticed.”

  “Fingerprints?” Drake asked.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Mason said.

  Drake regarded him shrewdly. “A good possibility they do have fingerprints?”

  “Could be.”

  “And you want me to find out?”

  Mason said, “I want you to find out everything you can about the case, Paul. And particularly I want to find out about the victim, Moray Cassel.”

  “Personal habits, friends, contacts?” Drake asked.

  “Everything,” Mason said. “Paul, I sized that man up as some sort of a pimp. He’s the sort who is making a living out of women or off of women some way and he’s trying to disguise the rotten part underneath by a well-groomed exterior.

  “Now, I’m particularly anxious to find out about his woman.”

  “Woman, singular?” Drake asked.

  “Well, let’s say women, plural,” Mason said, “because the guy may have more than one of them. … And, of course, anything you can find out about the police case is something I want to know.”

  “How soon do you want to know?”

  “At once. Relay information just as soon as you can get it.”

  “Costs?” Drake asked.

  Mason said, “I think I can get costs out of my client, Paul, but I’m going to share the expense on this one, and if necessary I’ll carry the whole load.”

  Drake raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  Mason said, by way of explanation, “This case slipped up on my blind side, Paul. I gave a client the wrong advice right at the start.”

  “Forget it!” Drake said. “You never made a legal mistake in your life.”

  “I didn’t make a mistake in advising her in regard to the law,” Mason said, “but I made a mistake in letting her stick her neck way, way out; and then, notwithstanding the fact that I had been warned about her tendency to disregard a lawyer’s advice and do things on her own, I let her out of my sight during the most critical period of all.”

  “When was that?” Drake asked.

  “Confidentially,” Mason said, “it was probably the time Moray Cassel was being murdered.”

  “Okay,” Drake said, heaving himself to his feet, “we’ll give you the usual trade discount and go to work, Perry.”

  15

  JUDGE CHARLES JEROME ELLIOTT looked down from the bench and said, “This is the time fixed for the preliminary hearing in the case of People versus Diana Douglas, charged with the murder of one Moray Cassel. The defendant is in court and is represented by counsel?”

  Mason arose. “I am representing the defendant, if the Court please.”

  Judge Elliott nodded. “And the prosecution?” he asked.

  Ralph Gurlock Floyd arose. “I am the trial deputy who will handle the prosecution, Your Honor.”

  “Very well,” Judge Elliott said. “Now, I want to make a statement to both counsel. I am well aware of the fact that in the past counsel for the defense has made spectacular courtroom scenes in connection with preliminary hearings. I don’t approve of trying a case at a preliminary hearing.

  “The object of a preliminary hearing is to try to find whether there is a crime which has been committed and if there is reasonable ground to connect the defendant with that crime. In that event the defendant is bound over to the Superior Court for trial before a jury.

  “Now then, gentlemen, I am not going to test the credibility of witnesses in this Court. I am going to take the evidence at its face value. Once it has been established that a crime has been committed and once evidence has been introduced tending to show the defendant is connected with that crime, this Court is going to make an order binding the defendant over regardless of how much evidence there may be in favor of the defendant.

  “In other words, I am not going to try to decide the weight of the evidence or the preponderance of the evidence. Of course, it is understood that in the event the defendant can introduce evidence completely destroying the prosecution’s case the situation will be different. But you gentlemen will understand that the chances of that are quite remote.

  “Now that we understand the situation, you may go ahead, Mr. Prosecutor; put on your case.”

  Ralph Gurlock Floyd, a dedicated prosecutor, who had been responsible for more death-penalty verdicts than any prosecutor in the state, and was proud of it, apparently felt that this prosecution of a preliminary hearing was somewhat beneath his dignity. But, having been assigned by Hamilton Burger, the District Attorney, to prosecute the case, he went about it with the savage, vindictiveness which was so characteristic of his courtroom manner.

  His first witness was a chambermaid at the Tallmeyer Apartments.

  “Did you,” he asked, “know Moray Cassel in his lifetime?”

  “I did.”

  “When did you last see him alive?”

  “On Tuesday, the tenth of this month.”

  “At what time?”

  “At about four o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “When did you next see him?”

  “On the evening of Sunday, the fifteenth.”

  “Was he alive?”

  “He was dead.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I notified the manager of the apartment house, who notified the police.”

  “Cross-examine,” Floyd snapped.

  “No questions,” Mason said.

  A police officer was called as a witness, then a deputy coroner. A diagram was introduced showing the position of the body on the bed as of 9 P.M. on Sunday, the fifteenth, when the body was discovered and the position of the various articles of furniture in the apartment.

  Floyd next called William Ardley, the police officer who testified to searching the apartment for significant clues.

  “What did you find?”

  “I found a BankAmerica credit card issued to one Diana Douglas of San Francisco.”

  “What did you do with that card?”

  “I marked it for identification by punching two small holes in it in certain places which I selected.”

  “I show you what purports to be a credit card from the Bank of America and ask you if you have seen that before.”

  “That is the identical credit card.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “The card is the same and the pin holes are in the exact location that I placed them.”

  “Cross-examine,” Floyd said.

  “No questions,” Mason announced cheerfully.

  Floyd regarded him thoughtfully, then put a fingerprint technician on the stand who testified to finding quite a few latent fingerprints in the apartment. Some of them were the fingerprints of the decedent. Some of them were the fingerprints of the maid who cleaned the apartment twice a week.

  “Any other fingerprints?” Floyd asked.

  “There were some we couldn’t identify.”

  “Any others that you could?”

  “Yes, sir. Two of them.”

  “Where were they?”

  “One of them was in the bathroom on the mirror of the medicine chest. The other one was on a nightstand table by the side of the bed where the body was lying.”

  “Did you determine the identity of these fingerprints?”

  “We did, yes, sir. One of them is the middle finger of the defendant’s right hand. The other is the thumb of the defendant’s right hand.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “We have more than enough points of similarity and several unusual characteristics.”

  “Anything else in the bathroom?”

  “There was a towel with blood stains on it, a moist towel where someone had evidently washed—”

  “Objected to as conclusion of the witness,” Mason said.

  “Sustained,” Judge Elliott snapped.

  “A bloody towel,” the witness said.

  “You have that here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Produce it, please.”

  The witness produced a sealed paper bag, opened it, and took out a hand towel with the words TALLMEYER APARTMENTS embroidered in the corner. The towel was stained a faint rusty color.

  “We offer to introduce it in evidence as People’s Exhibit B,” Floyd said.

  “No objection,” Mason observed casually.

  “You photographed the latent fingerprints?” Floyd asked.

  “I did.”

  “Will you produce those photographs, please?”

  The photographs of the latent prints were produced and introduced in evidence. The prosecutor then introduced a whole series of photographs, showing the decedent on the bed with blood which had saturated the pillow, dripped down to the floor, and spread over the carpet.

  An autopsy surgeon was called as a witness. He testified that he had recovered the fatal bullet from the back of the skull; that the bullet was of a type known as a .22-caliber, long rifle bullet; that it had penetrated the forehead on the median line about two inches above the eyes; that there had been a very considerable hemorrhage.

  “When did death occur?” the prosecutor asked.

  “In my opinion, making all of the tests we could, death occurred sometime between two o’clock on the afternoon of Thursday, the twelfth and five o’clock in the morning on Saturday, the fourteenth.”

  “Was death instantaneous?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Unconsciousness immediately followed the shot, and there was probably no movement of the body. But, despite the fact the victim was unconscious, the heart continued to pump blood into the brain which accounted for the very extensive hemorrhage. Death may have resulted in a period of ten or fifteen minutes after the fatal shot, or it may have been an hour. I can’t tell.”

  “You say you recovered the fatal bullet?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “I delivered it to the ballistics expert in the presence of two witnesses.”

  “Could you determine the weapon from which that bullet had been fired?”

  “Not definitely at the moment. We knew that it must have been fired from one of several makes of guns and we rather suspected that it had been fired from a gun with a long barrel because of—”

  “Move to strike out what the witness rather suspected,” Mason said.

  “It will go out,” Judge Elliott ruled. “Stick to facts, Mr. Witness.”

  “Very well,” Floyd said with a triumphant smile. “We’ll withdraw this witness for the moment and put on other witnesses, then recall him. I will call Miss Smith, please.”

  Miss Smith turned out to be a neatly dressed young woman in her early thirties.

  “What is your occupation?”

  “I am employed at the ticket counter of United Airlines at the Los Angeles Terminal.”

  “Were you so employed on Thursday, the twelfth of this month?”

  “I was.”

  “I will ask you to look at the defendant and tell us if you have ever seen her before.”

  “Yes, sir, I have.”

  “Where?”

  “At the ticket counter on the evening of Thursday, the twelfth.”

  “At about what time?”

  “It was exactly six-forty P.M.”

  “Did you have a conversation with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was that conversation?”

  “She was very anxious to know if the plane which was due to leave at six twenty-seven had left on time or whether it would be possible for her to get aboard. I told her that the plane had left only about five minutes late, that she would have to wait approximately an hour and twenty minutes and take a flight leaving at eight o’clock.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She asked for a ticket to San Francisco.”

  “And then?” Floyd asked, his manner triumphant.

  “Then she produced her purse and said, ‘I’ll pay for it with a BankAmerica credit card.’ Then she raised her purse so I could briefly see it and suddenly dropped it down out of sight.”

  “You say, suddenly?”

  “Suddenly and self-consciously.”

  “Was there any reason for such action?”

  “She had a gun in her purse.”

  “What sort of a gun?”

  “A long-barreled gun with a wooden handle.”

  “When you say a gun, you mean a revolver?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Then she fumbled around in her purse, keeping it below the counter so I couldn’t see inside of it, and said, ‘Oh, I seem to have misplaced my BankAmericard.’ Then she thought for a moment and said, ‘Did Mr. Perry Mason, the lawyer, leave a ticket here for me?’

  “I told her that Mr. Mason had left two tickets which had been charged to his air-travel card. One ticket he had picked up, and the other one he had left to be picked up by Diana Douglas.

  “Her face showed relief and she said, ‘I am Diana Douglas. I’ll take the ticket, please.’ ”

  “So you gave her the ticket?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then she left and I made it a point to look at the purse she was carrying. The gun in it distorted the purse’s shape and—”

  “Move to strike out that it was the gun that had distorted the purse’s shape,” Mason said.