Judge Elliott hesitated, then said, “That may go out. The witness can state whether the purse was distorted.”

  “The purse was distorted by some object which had been thrust into the purse, an object so long that the purse was out of shape.”

  “Cross-examine,” Floyd said.

  “Did you,” Mason asked, “ever pick the defendant out of a line-up?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t see her from the time you talked with her at the ticket counter until you went into the courtroom today?”

  “I identified her picture.”

  “But you didn’t pick her out of a line-up?”

  “I did not. That wasn’t at all necessary, Mr. Mason. After the manner in which my attention had been attracted to the defendant, I would have picked her out anywhere.”

  “That’s all,” Mason said.

  Floyd put on his next witness with an air of triumph. He was a middle-aged individual who gave his occupation as part of a crew who cleaned up airplanes for the United Airlines.

  “Are you familiar with the plane which left the Los Angeles Airport Terminal at eight o’clock on the evening of Thursday, the twelfth of this month, and arrived in San Francisco approximately an hour later?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you clean that plane?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you find anything unusual?”

  “I did.”

  “What was it?”

  “It was a gun.”

  “Where was that gun found?”

  “The gun had been concealed in an opening underneath a pile of towels in one of the lavatories. I may state that these towels are placed in piles in the containers and are replenished from time to time. On this particular occasion I wanted to get at one of the connections for the plumbing, and in order to do that I had to remove the towels and insert my hand in the opening in the back of the towels. When I did that I felt some foreign object in there and drew it out, and it was this gun.”

  “Did you take any steps to identify the gun?”

  “I took it to my supervisor.”

  “And what did the supervisor do?”

  “He notified the police and, at the request of the police, we took down the statistics on the weapon.”

  “What were the statistics?”

  “This was a twenty-two caliber single-action revolver, having a nine-and-three-eighth-inch barrel and a wooden handle. On the gun was stamped Ruger twenty-two, with the words single six, the number, one-three-nine-five-seven-three and the name of the manufacturer, Sturm—S-T-U-R-M—Ruger—R-U-G-E-R—and Company, Southport, Connecticut. The initials E.D. had been carved in the handle.”

  “I’ll show you a gun and ask you if that is the gun that you found.”

  Floyd came forward and handed the witness the gun.

  Diana Douglas’ hand clutched Mason’s leg, the fingers digging in so hard that the lawyer surreptitiously lowered his own hand to loosen her grip.

  Diana’s face was tense, tight-lipped and chalky.

  The witness turned the gun over in his fingers, nodded, and said, “This is the gun.”

  “What was the condition of the gun when you found it?”

  “It was fully loaded except for one shell which had been discharged.”

  “This is a single-action gun, and, in other words, it has to be cocked and then the trigger pulled. It isn’t the so-called self-cocking gun?”

  “No, sir, it is what is known as a single-action gun.”

  “Cross-examine,” Floyd said.

  “You have no idea how long the gun had been in that receptacle?” Mason asked.

  “No, sir. I know when I found it, that’s all.”

  “Thank you,” Mason said, “no further questions.”

  Floyd introduced in evidence the sales register of the Sacramento Sporting Dealers, Inc., showing that the Ruger gun in question had been sold five years earlier to Edgar Douglas.

  His next witness was a young woman who identified herself as a hostess on the eight o’clock plane to San Francisco on the night of Thursday, the twelfth. She had noticed Diana, observed that she was a passenger, had observed the peculiar shape of the cloth purse she was carrying when she boarded the plane. She stated that Diana was carrying a sort of overnight bag as well as the cloth purse, and when Diana went to the lavatory she noticed that she carried both the overnight bag and the purse with her, which the stewardess thought was rather peculiar. Aside from that, however, she could contribute no evidence. She hadn’t paid any particular attention to the purse after Diana had been in the lavatory.

  Then Floyd pulled his trump witness, the ballistics expert who stated that the fatal bullet which had killed Moray Cassel had come from the gun which had been registered in the name of Edgar Douglas.

  This expert was followed by the manager of the San Francisco apartment house, who stated that after the automobile accident which had rendered Edgar Douglas unconscious and had resulted in his going to the hospital, his sister, the defendant, had been given a key to her brother’s apartment and had been in and out, straightening things up.

  Next Floyd introduced the doorman at the Tallmeyer Apartments. He had, he admitted, not seen the defendant when she entered the apartments, but he had seen her when she left; he noticed she had been carrying a black type of overnight bag and a black cloth purse. The purse was stretched to the limit by some rigid object which was within it. He had noticed the purse particularly.

  Floyd introduced a purse which was identified as the property of the defendant and asked the doorman if he recognized the purse. The doorman answered in the affirmative. It was either that purse or one that was an exact duplicate of it.

  Judge Elliott glanced at the clock and cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, it is nearing the hour of adjournment and it would certainly seem there is no use in prolonging this inquiry further. There is undoubtedly evidence that a crime has been committed and an abundance of evidence connecting the defendant with the crime. In fact, the Court has been rather surprised at the amount of detailed evidence put on by the prosecution.”

  Floyd said, “The prosecution is all too well aware of the reputation of defense counsel and wishes to leave no possible loophole.”

  “Well, it would seem that you have left no loophole,” Judge Elliott said, smiling. “I think, gentlemen, we can adjourn the hearing and bind the defendant over.”

  Mason arose. “If the Court please,” he said with respect but very firmly, “the defense may wish to put on some testimony.”

  “Why?” Judge Elliott asked.

  “Because I believe it is our right.”

  “You have a right to subpoena witnesses, that is true. But this Court is not called upon to judge the credibility of witnesses. This Court is not called upon to weigh questions of reasonable doubt. You certainly can’t claim that a prima facie case has not been established.”

  “The question of whether a prima facie case has been established,” Mason said, “depends upon the evidence at the conclusion of the case and any attempt to decide a case without giving the defendant a day in court would be—”

  “Oh, all right, all right,” Judge Elliott said impatiently. “We’ll continue the case until ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I want to warn counsel, however, that we have a busy calendar and the Court does not take kindly to fishing expeditions or attempts to try a case on the merits at a preliminary hearing. The Court warns counsel that this Court will not weigh the credibility of witnesses and that any question of conflicting facts will be determined in favor of the prosecution as far as this hearing is concerned. However, the Court will try to do nothing which will preclude the defendant from having a fair hearing on the merits before a jury in the Superior Court, at which time the credibility of witnesses can be raised and the doctrine of reasonable doubt will apply.

  “It is simply a case of differing procedures in different courts. Do you understand that, Mr. Mason?”

  “I understand it,” Mason said.

  “Very well. The case is adjourned until ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  Mason placed a reassuring hand on Diana’s shoulder. “Keep a stiff upper lip, Diana,” he said.

  “They’re going to bind me over to the Superior Court?”

  “Probably,” Mason said, “but I want to find out as much about the case as I can before the Court makes its order.”

  “And what happens when I get to the Superior Court?”

  “You are tried by a jury. You have the benefit of any reasonable doubt.”

  Mason bent forward to say in a low voice, “Where did you get that gun?”

  “Just as I told you, Mr. Mason. It was on the floor with blood on it. I took it in the bathroom and washed the blood off and then put the gun in my purse. I had a hard time getting it in, and I guess that’s when I lost the credit card.”

  “And you hid it in the airplane?”

  “Yes, I took out the towels and felt all around in the back of the towel compartment and found this little opening way in back. I thought they’d never find the gun in there.”

  Mason said, “Tell me—about the girls in the San Francisco office. Do you know who could have written that message to me?”

  “It might have been any one of them.”

  “It was written on an electric typewriter.”

  “All the typewriters are electric,” she said.

  “All right,” Mason told her, “keep a stiff upper lip. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  The lawyer picked up his briefcase and left the courtroom.

  16

  PERRY MASON, Della Street, and Paul Drake were huddled around a table in an Italian restaurant which was near the courthouse and where the proprietor was accustomed to devoting a small private dining room to the exclusive use of the trio.

  “Well,” Drake said, “it looks as if the judge has his mind made up, from all I could hear.”

  Mason nodded. “What have you found out, Paul?”

  “Not a whole lot,” Drake admitted, “a lot of detached bits of information. I don’t know whether they’ll do you any good. … As you, yourself, have remarked, your client is an awful liar.”

  “She is and she isn’t,” Mason said. “She lied to me because she wanted to save her brother’s reputation. She thought there was something that was hanging over his head, something that he’d pay five thousand dollars to eliminate. She wanted to carry out his wishes.

  “Therefore, she acted independently of my advice and she tried to deceive me, but when it came to a showdown I don’t think she did try to deceive me. At least, I think there’s a possibility she’s telling the truth.

  “That’s a duty that a lawyer owes to his client. Regardless of how many times he has been lied to in the past, he always has to keep the faith. He always has to believe that in the final showdown, the client is telling the truth and putting the cards face up on the table.”

  Drake said, “She can’t be telling the truth on this one, Perry. She went down there and tried to buy him off. She couldn’t do it and she killed him.”

  “What have you found out?” Mason asked, detouring the subject.

  “Well,” Drake said, “you probably had Moray Cassel pretty well pegged. The guy lived a mysterious life, and no one knows his real source of income or how much his income was.

  “This much I did find out. The man was always armed. He carried a thirty-eight-caliber, snubnosed revolver in a shoulder holster under his left armpit. His clothes were tailor-made, and for years the same tailor had been making his clothes and making them so that there was an extra bit of room under the left armpit so the bulge made by the gun wouldn’t be conspicuous.”

  “The deuce!” Mason said.

  Drake nodded.

  “And that gun was on him at the time his body was found?”

  “It must have been,” Drake said.

  Mason’s eyes narrowed. “Now, isn’t it interesting that the police described everything in the room, showed photographs of the body lying fully clothed on the bed with a bullet hole in the forehead, the blood all over the pillow and down on the floor, and no one said anything about the gun?”

  “Did you ask them?” Drake inquired.

  Mason grinned. “I didn’t ask them. I wouldn’t have thought to have asked them about a gun, but I certainly should have thought to have asked them what was found in his pockets and whether anything significant was found in the room. … What about the source of income, Paul?”

  Drake shook his head. “The guy did everything with cash. He wore a money belt. There were four one-thousand-dollar bills in the money belt. He had a leather wallet that was pretty well crammed with hundred-dollar bills. As nearly as can be found out he had no bank account. He bought that Cadillac automobile and paid for it with cold, hard cash.”

  “Women?” Mason asked.

  “Women came to see him from time to time.”

  “The same woman or different women?”

  “Different.”

  “What did you find out about the note that was placed on the display case in San Francisco where I’d pick it up?”

  “The note was written on an electric typewriter,” Drake said. “They’re all electric typewriters, but this particular note, as nearly as I can determine, was written on the typewriter of Joyce Baffin.

  “For your information, Perry, if it’s worth anything, Joyce Baffin left the import-export office at noon, Thursday, pleading a terrific headache. She was, however, back on the job Friday morning, and Joyce was and is very popular with the officials and employees of the company and was at one time very friendly with Edgar Douglas. In fact, he had quite a crush on her. But so did lots of other people. Perhaps Franklin Gage, who is a widower, and Homer Gage, who has a predatory eye, would have liked to enjoy a closer relationship with Joyce Baffin.”

  Mason, sipping a cocktail, digested that information.

  Drake went on. “I have some more odds and ends of various bits of information. I spent quite a bit of time and a fair amount of money with the telephone operator at Tallmeyer Apartments. I found out that Moray Cassel put through a lot of telephone calls to a local number. I found that number was the apartment of one Irene Blodgett, twenty-seven, blond, Millsep Apartments, divorced, employed steadily during the daytime at the Underwood Importing Company. At night she’s something of a gadabout but never anything spectacular. Quiet, refined, good-looking, popular—I’ve got operatives working quietly on her, but if there’s anything phony she’s pretty well covered.

  “The only thing is that this Underwood Importing Company does have some dealing or has had dealings with the Escobar Import and Export Company.”

  Della Street, watching Mason’s face, said, “You have an idea, Chief?”

  “Just this,” Mason said. “At the time of his death, Moray Cassel was either standing by the bed or sitting on the edge of the bed. He was shot in the forehead by one shot from a high-powered, single-action, twenty-two-caliber revolver with a nine-and-three-eighth-inch barrel. The murderer must have been facing him.”

  “Well?” Drake asked. “What’s so peculiar about that? Diana Douglas went to call on the guy. She rang the bell. Cassel let her in. She tried to bargain with him, then he got tough with her. She knew at that time that blackmailers never quit. Once they get a hold on a victim they bleed him white. Diana was obsessed with the idea she had to protect her brother.”

  Mason held the stem of his cocktail glass, watching the liquid on the inside as he twisted the glass between his thumb and forefinger.

  “You got into Cassel’s apartment?” he asked the detective.

  “Sure, after the police were through with it. That seemed to take an awful long while. They went over the whole place dusting for fingerprints, testing for blood stains, and all that.”

  “What about the fellow’s wardrobe?” Mason asked. “Was he meticulous with his clothes as I thought?”

  “Boy, you’ve said it,” Drake replied. “It was a fairly large-sized apartment with lots of drawer space. The drawers were filled with monogrammed shirts. He even had monograms on his underwear, and the closet was pretty well filled with tailor-made clothes.”

  “You checked with his tailor?”

  “Sure. The tailor told me that Cassel always paid him in cash, seldom wore a suit over six months, and was very fastidious. And, of course, there was that bit about tailoring the suits so the bulge didn’t show where the revolver was carried under the left armpit.

  “The tailor got quite friendly with me, said that he always had an idea Cassel was a gangster of some sort, and was very certain that Cassel was cheating on the income tax. But, of course, it was none of the tailor’s business, and, believe me, the tailor loved to get that money in the form of cash. … I wouldn’t be too surprised, Perry, if perhaps the tailor didn’t do a little cheating on the income tax himself.”

  “What about overcoats?” Mason asked. “Were those tailor-made, too?”

  “Everything,” Drake said. “Now, wait a minute, Perry, there’s one exception. There was one overcoat in there that Cassel had evidently used for rough-and-tumble stuff when he was loading or unloading things in an automobile.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, it was an overcoat that wasn’t tailor-made and the labels had been cut out from both the neck and the breast pocket.”

  “The deuce you say,” Mason said. And then, after a while, “How did it fit, Paul?”

  “How should I know?” Drake asked. “The corpse was being dissected in the medical examiner’s office at the coroner’s by an autopsy surgeon. I couldn’t very well go in there and try on an overcoat. … He couldn’t have had it on since late spring. It had been hot for the whole week of the murder. … What difference does the one coat make?”

  Mason sat for a long moment in contemplative silence, then abruptly changed the subject. “You have the various telephone numbers of the personnel at the Escobar Import and Export Company?”

  Drake nodded.

  Mason said to Della Street, “See if you can get us a telephone, Della.”