When a telephone had been brought into the room and connected, Mason used his credit card, saying, “This is a credit-card call. I want to talk with Franklin Gage at this number in San Francisco.”

  Mason took Drake’s notebook and read the number of Franklin Gage’s residence.

  “It’s a person-to-person call. No one else if he’s out.”

  The lawyer drummed with the fingers of his right hand while he held the telephone to his ear. “Let’s hope we’re in luck,” he said.

  A moment later he heard the suave voice of Franklin Gage on the telephone.

  “This is Perry Mason, the lawyer,” Mason said. “I take it that you are somewhat interested in this case against Diana Douglas, who is working for you … for your company, that is.”

  “Well, in a way,” Gage said cautiously. “It depends upon what you want.”

  “Has an audit been completed of the cash shortage of your import company?”

  “Yes, it has.”

  “Would you mind telling me what it shows?”

  “In round figures,” Gage said, “it shows a shortage of ten thousand dollars.”

  Mason said, “Would you be willing to do something which might prevent a miscarriage of justice, Mr. Gage?”

  “What?”

  “I would like to see that Joyce Baffin is present in court tomorrow morning when the case against Diana Douglas is called up.”

  “Well, of course, if you want to pay her expenses down and back,” Gage said, “I would give her a leave of absence.”

  “It’s not that,” Mason said. “She might not want to come.”

  “Well, I certainly can’t force her to come.”

  Mason said, “She has been in your employ for some time?”

  “Yes, all of the secretaries have been with us for quite some time. We don’t have a turnover with help, Mr. Mason. Our business is highly specialized, and after we have trained a young woman to perform competent secretarial duties we try to keep her.”

  Mason said, “The reason I am calling you personally, Mr. Gage, is that it is tremendously important that Joyce Baffin be here. I can’t begin to tell you how vital it may be. I am going to ask that you and your nephew, Homer Gage, come down to Los Angeles to the trial, that you personally get in touch with Joyce Baffin tonight and tell her that it is highly important that the three of you come down.”

  “The three of us!” Gage echoed.

  “Exactly,” Mason said. “I have reason to believe that if you ask her to come down by herself she might not come. She might even skip out. And, if only one of you is coming with her, she might again become suspicious. But if both you and your nephew are coming down ostensibly to see what you can do to help Diana Douglas—”

  “If she’s guilty, she’s not entitled to any help,” Gage interrupted sternly.

  “But suppose she isn’t guilty? You’ve had a chance to study the young woman. You’ve had a chance to know something of her loyalty. Do you think that she’s the type of a woman who would commit a murder?”

  “Well, of course,” Gage said cautiously, “you never know what a person will do when they’re hard pressed, and she always tried to protect her brother, but—Do you feel this is really important, Mr. Mason?”

  “I feel that it is highly important. I feel that it is vital,” Mason said.

  There was silence at the other end of the line.

  “If you can do exactly as I suggested,” Mason said, “I feel that it will be possible to eliminate certain questions which might otherwise come up in court.”

  “What sort of questions?”

  “Oh, about the Escobar Import and Export Company, the nature of its business, the large amount of cash that it keeps on hand, and all of those things that are business details which you might not care to have your competitors know about.”

  “Very well,” Gage said quickly, “if I can have your assurance that you feel this will keep the business affairs of our company out of evidence, Mr. Mason, and if you assure me that it is vital to the case of your client, Homer and I will do our best to induce Joyce to come with us, and I feel that we can be successful. … Where and when do we meet you?”

  “You take a plane tonight,” Mason said, “so you will be sure to get in. You go to a hotel. All you have to do is to ring up the Drake Detective Agency and Paul Drake will send a car to escort you to the courtroom tomorrow morning, see that you are given admission, and properly seated.”

  “The Drake Detective Agency,” Gage said.

  “That’s right,” Mason said, and gave him Paul Drake’s number.

  “Very well. We’ll do it.”

  “I can depend on you?” Mason asked.

  “You have my word,” Franklin Gage said with dignity.

  “That’s good enough for me,” Mason told him, and hung up the telephone.

  “Now, what the hell?” Drake asked.

  Mason picked up the cocktail glass, drained it, and smiled. “I think,” he said, “I’m beginning to see daylight. … A shortage of ten thousand dollars.”

  “The original figure was twenty thousand,” Drake said.

  Mason nodded. “Remember, however, that when Franklin Gage entered the office he said that he had been working on a business deal and had taken ten thousand dollars out, that the deal had fallen through and he was in the process of replacing the ten thousand dollars in the cash drawer.”

  “I don’t get it,” Drake said.

  “If we can get those people in court tomorrow morning perhaps we’ll get lucky,” Mason said.

  “But you assured them that those business matters wouldn’t come out.”

  “I think they won’t,” Mason told him. “Now then, I’m going to have another cocktail and then we’re going to order one of these fabulous Italian dinners and relax while we eat it.”

  17

  RALPH GURLOCK FLOYD arose with something of a flourish when the case of the People vs. Diana Douglas was called.

  “I think, if the Court please, we can rest the prosecution’s case.”

  “I certainly would think so,” Judge Elliott said. “In fact, I think this whole matter could have been disposed of yesterday afternoon. I take it there is no defense.”

  “Indeed there is a defense,” Mason said.

  “I want to repeat that this court is not interested in fishing expeditions, Mr. Mason. I am not going to preclude the defendant from putting on any legitimate defense, but it would seem virtually mathematical that there is no defense and can be no defense to the array of facts which have been marshaled this far by witnesses.”

  “If the Court please,” Mason said, “I would like to recall one of the officers for just one or two questions on further cross-examination.”

  “That’s irregular,” Floyd protested. “That motion should have been made earlier.”

  “Oh, come, come,” Judge Elliott said, “one thing is certain. I’m not going to preclude this defendant from an opportunity to cross-examine any witness of the prosecution. I take it, Mr. Mason, there’s some particular significance in connection with this?”

  “There is, Your Honor.”

  “Recall the witness,” Judge Elliott said.

  Mason motioned to the officer. “Take the stand,” he said. “Remember you’ve already been sworn. Now, you have the bag which has been identified as the cloth purse which the defendant had in her possession when the ticket seller at the airlines saw the gun in the purse, the same purse which the stewardess noticed on the airplane?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You have both the gun and the purse,” Mason said. “Now, have you tried putting the gun in the purse?”

  The officer smiled patronizingly. “Of course we have. It fits so snugly that the cloth is stretched tight and the purse is bulged out of shape. That’s why it was so noticeable.”

  “Please put the gun in the purse,” Mason said.

  The clerk handed the two exhibits to the officer. He took the purse, opened it, inserted the muzzle of the gun, then gradually worked the gun into the purse, explaining as he did so, “You can see what a snug fit it is and how it is necessary to twist the cloth of the purse so it fits over the grip of the gun, which, of course,” he added with a quick look of triumph at the Deputy District Attorney, “explains why the defendant lost the credit card out of the purse when she was taking the gun out.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “you have the gun in the purse now.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you can close the purse?”

  “Yes, you can barely close the purse, and,” the witness went on, “when you open the purse anyone who looks in it can see a part of the gun … the wooden butt of the weapon.”

  “Exactly,” Mason said. “Now, a gun has two outlines, the convex outline and a concave outline, does it not?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” the officer said.

  “Well,” Mason said, “a gun is made generally on a curve so that when you hold the butt of the gun in your hand in a shooting position the barrel of the gun is elevated so that you can aim down it.”

  “Oh, certainly, that’s right.”

  “And, by the same sign, when you turn the gun over, the position is reversed. That is what I would call the concave position.”

  “All right,” the officer said.

  “Now then,” Mason said, “you have put the gun in the purse in a concave position. Could you reverse that position and put it in a convex position?”

  “Not and close the purse,” the officer said. “The fit is too snug. In fact, I don’t know if you could even get the gun in the purse in what you refer to as the convex position.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “now, it’s taken you a little time to get the gun in the purse.”

  “It’s a snug fit,” the officer admitted.

  “Now, take it out,” Mason said. “Let’s see how fast you can take it out.”

  “What do you mean, how fast I can take it out?”

  Mason turned up his wrist and consulted the second hand of his wristwatch. “Let’s see exactly how long it takes you to take the gun out.”

  “Oh, I see,” the officer said, “one of those tests, uh?”

  He started pulling frantically at the gun in the purse, managed only to jam it tighter against the cloth. To get the gun out, it was necessary for him to take the top of the purse and start pulling the cloth back a fold at a time.

  “Five seconds,” Mason said.

  The officer fumbled frantically.

  “Ten seconds,” Mason said. “Twelve seconds. Now you have the gun out. Now, it is in an upside-down position. If you wanted to shoot it you’d have to turn it around in your hand. Please do so.”

  The officer shifted the gun rapidly in his hand.

  “Now, that is a single-action gun,” Mason went on. “It can’t be cocked and discharged by simply pulling the trigger. You have to pull back the hammer. Do that.”

  The officer did so.

  Mason smiled. “Do you think you could beat that time?”

  “Oh, sure, I could,” the officer said, “now that I know what you’re getting at I could beat it all to pieces.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “put the gun back in the purse, close the purse; then get ready, pull the gun out of the purse, turn it to a firing position, cock the hammer of the gun, and pull the trigger. Start when I say ‘ready’, and we’ll time it until the trigger clicks.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t see the object of this test, interesting as it may be,” Judge Elliott said.

  “It is simply this, Your Honor,” Mason said. “Moray Cassel, the victim, was shot in the forehead by one bullet. Moray Cassel was wearing a revolver in a shoulder holster at the time of his death. I understand that he habitually carried this weapon with him.

  “Is it reasonable to suppose that he stood there inactive while the defendant fumbled with her purse and—”

  “I see, I see,” Judge Elliott said. “Go ahead with the test.”

  Ralph Gurlock Floyd was on his feet. “We object, Your Honor. It’s not a fair test. It is not conducted in accordance with conditions as they existed at the time of the crime. How do we know that the defendant had the gun in what Mr. Mason calls a concave position in her purse when she entered Cassel’s apartment. She might have stood outside of the door and done all of the fumbling before Cassel oppened the door.

  “In that event she would have had the gun in her hand, ready to fire.”

  “Nevertheless,” Judge Elliott said, frowning thoughtfully, “it’s an interesting hypothesis and the Court is not going to preclude the defendant the opportunity to advance it. Go ahead, let’s make the test and take the time.”

  This time the officer, knowing what was required and working frantically, was able to cut the time down to approximately seven seconds.

  Judge Elliott, who had been watching the performance, said, “The Court gets it at about six seconds.”

  “Between six and seven seconds,” Mason said, “to the time of the click. However, that’s good enough.”

  “Your Honor,” Floyd protested, “this is absolutely meaningless. The defendant could have had the gun out of the purse, cocked and ready to shoot before pressing the buzzer so that Moray Cassel would have opened the door to find himself helpless.”

  “And what happened then?” Mason asked Floyd.

  “Don’t try to cross-examine me,” Floyd snapped.

  Mason said with a smile, “I will address my remarks to the Court. The idea of having the defendant ring the buzzer with a gun, loaded and cocked and ready to shoot, would necessitate that the decedent be shot while he was at the door. In place of that the decedent was shot at the far end of the apartment, either while he was standing by the bed or sitting on the bed, and he was shot from some distance since there is no powder tattoo around the edges of the wound.”

  “We’ll argue the case at the proper time,” Judge Elliott said. “You have made your point, Mr. Mason.”

  Floyd said. “The defendant could have had the drop on him and forced him back a step at a time.”

  “For what purpose?” Mason asked.

  “In order to intimidate him,” Floyd said. “Who else would have had her brother’s gun and—Oh, this is absurd, too absurd to even waste time on.”

  “Then why are you wasting it?” Mason asked.

  “Don’t try to question me,” Floyd shouted irritably.

  “I beg the Court’s pardon,” Mason said. “I was merely retorting to a retort.”

  Judge Elliott smiled. “Proceed with your case, Mr. Mason. Do you have any questions of this witness on further cross-examination?”

  “I have one or two more questions of this witness, if the Court please,” Mason said.

  He turned to the officer. “You made a careful examination of the apartment?”

  “I did. Several of us did.”

  “And you noticed the wardrobe of the decedent?”

  The officer smiled. “I certainly did.”

  “It was rather elaborate?”

  “That’s an understatement. It was very elaborate.”

  “And did you notice that the clothes were tailor-made?”

  “The outer garments, yes sir. The under garments were also, I think, custom-made, at least they were initialed.”

  “And in that collection of outer garments would you say that all of them were tailor-made?”

  “Yes, sir, all of them.”

  “All of them?”

  “All—Now, wait a minute. There was one overcoat in there that didn’t have a tailor’s label.”

  “And did you notice that overcoat, try it for size to see whether or not it would have fit the decedent?”

  “Well,” the officer said, “we didn’t try it on the decedent, if that’s what you mean.”

  “How long,” Mason asked, “would it take to have this coat brought into court?”

  “Oh, Your Honor,” Ralph Floyd said in the tone of voice of one whose patience has been taxed to the limit, “this is absurd, this approaches the ridiculous. I don’t know where this coat is. I suppose it’s somewhere in the coroner’s office. … The Court has said that it wouldn’t encourage fishing expeditions and if this isn’t a fishing expedition I don’t know one when I see it.”

  Judge Elliott started to nod his head, then frowned thoughtfully and glanced at Mason. “Do you care to make a statement, Mr. Mason?”

  “I care to make a statement,” Mason said. “I would like to have that coat brought into court. I think it is a vital clue in this case. I have one more question to ask of this witness and then I am finished with my cross-examination. I will start to put on the defendant’s case. The first witness will be Stella Grimes, a private detective. Before her testimony is finished, I think that coat should be in court. I also have subpoenaed the tailor who made all of Moray Cassel’s clothes, who will testify that this overcoat was not made by him and would not have fit Moray Cassel.”

  “Go ahead, finish your cross-examination of this witness,” Judge Elliott said, “and the Court will direct the prosecution to take steps to have the coat in question brought into court. … If this is a fishing expedition it is certainly using most unusual bait.

  “Go ahead, Mr. Mason.”

  Mason said, “You were present in the laboratory when the gun which was recovered from the airplane was tested and examined?”

  “Yes.”

  “For fingerprints?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were there any fingerprints you could find?”

  “Nothing that was identifiable. You must understand, Mr. Mason, that regardless of popular fiction stories, the finding of a fingerprint upon a gun—that is, an identifiable latent fingerprint—is not only the exception but it only happens once in a very great number of cases.”

  “I understand,” Mason said. “Now, there are other tests to which the gun was subjected.”

  “You mean the ballistic tests?”

  “No, I meant tests for blood.”

  The witness hesitated, then said, “Yes, there were tests for blood. There are very sensitive tests which show up blood even when the blood can’t be classified.”

  “The benzidine test?” Mason asked.