“We’ll not try to connect it up for the present,” Kittering said, scowling across at Perry Mason.

  “Very well, the objection is well taken and is sustained.”

  “Did you go back for the dishes?” Kittering asked.

  “Yes, that’s right. I went back about quarter of an hour before I was scheduled to go off duty.”

  “That would be ten-forty-five.”

  “Just about. They hadn’t called, so I went back.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “The door was slightly open. I don’t know who was in the bedroom. The door was closed. My dishes were empty and stacked on the tray. There was nothing for me to hesitate over. I’d had my tip, and, gosh, I don’t know . . . I had an idea maybe there was a jane in there. Well, you know what I mean—well, anyway, that he didn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “Do you know whether anyone was in the bedroom?”

  “I think so, yeah. I think I heard someone in there. There was a jane’s handkerchief—I mean a woman’s handkerchief on the side of the table right by the napkin.”

  “How do you know it was a woman’s handkerchief?” Kittering asked.

  “I smelled it,” Baker announced, and once more a ripple of merriment ran across the courtroom.

  “So what did you do?”

  “I took the tray with the dishes, and beat it.”

  “Did you lock the door behind you?”

  “I pulled it shut. I think the spring lock was caught back so that the door didn’t lock, but I ain’t absolutely certain about that. I know I closed the door. If they didn’t want it locked, that was their business. If they did, they could lock it.”

  “Now, are you certain as to the time?”

  “Absolutely. We’ve got an electric clock down there, and I figured Conway—Milicant—might get sore if I didn’t get the grub up to him in time. So I noticed particularly the time when the order came in, and kept hurrying the cook up to get it out. You know, in a joint like that—I mean in a restaurant of that size—a waiter can’t take food out until he catches a slack time. We really ain’t equipped to handle much room service like that. The cook gets the stuff going, and then, in case you’re rushed, he keeps it in the hot oven until you get a chance to break away. That keeps the dishes hot, and the food hot. And you’d be surprised how much difference a hot dish makes, particularly when you cover it with a napkin and tablecloth.”

  “And what time did you return for the dishes?”

  “Almost exactly quarter ’til eleven. I’d waited for a slack time—maybe sort of put it off. Then I almost forgot ’em. It was fifteen minutes before my quitting time, so I beat it up there fast.”

  “And you are positive as to the time you delivered the food?”

  “Absolutely. I left right around eight minutes past eight. I got up there at eight-ten on the dot. I’ll bet that doesn’t miss it ten seconds either way.”

  “And this was an electric clock in the restaurant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cross-examine.” Kittering tossed the remark across to Perry Mason as though daring him to try to rattle this witness.

  “Those electric clocks are always right?” Mason asked.

  “Sure, that’s why they put them in.”

  “Except when the power is temporarily interrupted?”

  “Well, that sometimes happens,” the young man admitted.

  “In this instance, how do you know that there hadn’t been a temporary interruption in power?”

  “There’s a place on the clock that shows a signal when that happens.”

  “And did you notice that place particularly?”

  “Well, not particularly, but . . . Shucks, if it had been anything to notice, I’d have noticed it. I always go by that in telling the time.”

  “But nevertheless you may have been mistaken?”

  “Not one chance in ten thousand.”

  “Then there is one chance in ten thousand that you were mistaken?” Mason asked.

  “Well, if you want to play a ten thousand to one shot,” Baker said, “you’re welcome to. I don’t. Twenty to one is my limit.”

  Again the courtroom stirred with a comment of whisper and suppressed laughter.

  “Now when you returned to get these dishes, no one said anything to you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You gathered the impression there were people in the bedroom?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Did you think one of those persons was Serle?”

  “That handkerchief didn’t smell like it.”

  “And you say the dishes were empty?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Nothing left?”

  “Clean as a bone.”

  “The men must have been hungry then?”

  “Well, in taking a dinner out that way, you can’t carry too much. You can’t carry soup, and water, and all that stuff. You’re lucky to pile the grub on the dishes, and get it there while it’s still warm. People don’t eat as much in a restaurant as they think they do. That’s because we bring them crackers and butter and go off and leave them for a while, and they munch on crackers. Then after a while, we bring them soup, and then we leave them alone, then bring them bread and butter. They don’t start eating the main order until anywhere from ten to twenty minutes after they sit down, sometimes half an hour. It depends on the crowd.”

  “You mean you can’t wait on them as rapidly when there’s a crowd?”

  “No,” the witness said, “that’s when we do wait on them. When there’s a crowd, it means the restaurant is losing money every time anyone finds the joint filled and goes away. So we always try to shovel the grub into the customers so we can clear out the tables. When business is slack, restaurants figure it’s a poor ad to look barren and deserted with just one or two people eating. So then we stall the customers along, and hold them just as long as we dare. That way people coming along the streets look in through the windows, and see a pretty fair crowd, and figure it’s a good place to eat.”

  “In other words,” Mason said with a grin, “regardless of our own convenience, we customers are held as living advertisements when we enter a restaurant during the slack time.”

  “Well, customers make swell window dressing if that’s what you mean,” Baker said.

  “That’s what I mean,” Mason told him affably. “Thank you.”

  “The next witness,” Kittering announced, “will be William Bitner.”

  Bitner proved to be a handwriting and fingerprint expert who qualified himself as an expert in his profession, and started the long routine of introducing exhibits, photographs of latent fingerprints found upon doorknobs, bureau drawers, table tops, glassware.

  Time droned on endlessly while the tedious process of identifying each photograph went on. Then when the photograph had been introduced, handed to counsel for inspection, and received as an exhibit, it was necessary to wait while the court made the necessary identification; and then the process went on again. Kittering, with a mind which reveled in detail, paused to make sure that the exhibits were properly numbered in numerical order.

  When he had finished with some forty-two exhibits, he started exploding his bombshell, a bombshell which was legally powerful, yet which lacked dramatic force because of the long, drawn-out manner in which the details had been dragged through the record. “I show you a card containing ten fingerprints, and ask you who took the imprint of those fingerprints,” Kittering said.

  “I did,” the witness answered.

  “When did you take them?”

  “Three days ago.”

  “Where did you take them?”

  “In the county jail.”

  “And what are they?”

  “Those are ink impressions made from the ten fingers of the defendant in this case. Those fingerprints are grouped into pairs in accordance with the accepted practice, and reduced to a fraction. That is, a number, representing certain figures used for classification, appears in the numerator, and another number, similarly taken, in the denominator.”

  “Now then, I will direct your attention to People’s Exhibit C, and ask you if on this exhibit appears a fingerprint similar in any way to any of the ten prints shown on this card.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where?”

  “Here, to the side of the bureau drawer. You will note the prints of the middle finger of the right hand. I have here an enlarged copy of that print, together with an enlarged copy of the print of the middle finger of the defendant’s right hand. I detected twenty-three points of similarity.”

  “Will you please explain to the court these points of similarity.”

  And so the afternoon droned on with the state remorselessly piling up an avalanche of fingerprint evidence against the defendant, with Alden Leeds sitting erect and dignified, without so much as batting an eyelash, Perry Mason and Della Street, fighting against the sheer fatigue of inaction, yet with nothing to which they could object, listening to the legal bricks being dropped into place in a wall which was designed to cut off all hope of the defendant’s escape.

  At length, the hour came for the afternoon adjournment.

  “How much longer will you be with this line of evidence, Mr. Deputy District Attorney?” Judge Knox asked.

  “Probably all day tomorrow, Your Honor.”

  “Very well, court will reconvene at ten o’clock. In the meantime, the prisoner is remanded to the custody of the sheriff.”

  As court adjourned, Mason moved over to place a reassuring hand on Alden Leeds’ shoulder. His face, which was turned toward the courtroom, was wreathed in a confident smile, but the low-pitched words which came from his lips, and were only audible to the ears of the defendant, were far from reassuring. “It looks as though you’d been holding out on me,” Mason said.

  Leeds faced him calmly. “I am not a young man,” he said. “I have but little to gain from an acquittal in this case, and less to lose from a conviction. I didn’t realize that I had left fingerprints in that apartment. I did not kill John Milicant. He . . . We can prove he was alive and well when I left.”

  Mason’s eyes narrowed. “We can produce evidence to that effect,” he said, his lips still smiling reassuringly, “but that’s no sign a jury is going to believe it. One thing is certain. The judge is going to bind you over on a charge of first degree murder.”

  “I had anticipated that,” Leeds admitted quietly.

  “We hadn’t,” Mason observed. “We would have if you’d told us about these fingerprints.”

  “I didn’t know about them.”

  “You knew you’d searched that apartment.”

  Leeds said nothing.

  Mason, smiling broadly, patted him on the shoulder as a deputy sheriff approached.

  “Okay, Leeds,” he said, loudly. “Things are looking fine. They don’t have a ghost of a chance of pinning this on you. Get a good night’s sleep now, and leave the worry to us.”

  Out in the corridor, Della Street fell into step with Perry Mason. “Those fingerprints,” she said, “don’t look so good, do they, Chief?”

  “I’d more or less discounted them in advance,” he said. “I figured that Leeds must have been the one to search that apartment, although he said he hadn’t. What I was mainly counting on was that he’d been too smart to leave fingerprints. Apparently, he was in too much of a hurry to be careful.”

  “What,” she asked, “would happen if tomorrow they show that his fingerprints are on the handle of the knife?”

  Mason shrugged his shoulders. “Let’s not worry about that in advance. He’s in bad enough right now. Let’s go to the office and see if Drake has uncovered anything.”

  12

  AT THE office Mason found a letter addressed to him in feminine handwriting on the stationery of the Border City Hotel at Yuma. The letter read simply:—

  DEAR MR. MASON:

  I am a seamstress soliciting work by mail. If you have any sewing which I could do, or if there are any tears or holes which seem hopeless, you will find I am quite skillful, and I will deeply appreciate having an opportunity to show you what I can do. Simply address Mrs. J. B. Beems at the Border City Hotel, Yuma, Arizona.

  Mason took out his notebook, made a note of the address, thought for a moment, and then touched a match to the letter.

  Della Street, who had gone down to Drake’s office to notify him that Mason was back, came in with the detective in tow. “Hi, Paul,” Mason said. “What’s new?”

  Drake jackknifed himself into a characteristic pose in the big chair, and said, “I’ve located Inez Colton.”

  “Where?” Mason asked.

  “At the Ellery Arms Apartments,” Drake said. “She’s used henna on her hair and is going under an assumed name, but I don’t know what name, or the number of her apartment. I was afraid to make any inquiries without consulting you, for fear she’d get wise and take another powder. You see, Perry, I can’t put a tail on her because we have no one who knows her personally, and no one to put the finger on her. We simply have a description to go on.”

  “How did you ever locate her?” Mason asked.

  “Simple,” Drake said. “Like all other good gags, it’s been used before, but it’s one of the things people seldom think of. I figured she’d try to change her appearance. Walking out on her job that way indicated it. I managed to find out who her favorite hairdresser was, and an operative, posing as a friend and doing a lot of talking, got the information out of the hairdresser—at least that much information. Women hate to have strange hairdressers do a dye job.”

  Mason pushed his hands down deep into his pockets. “I wish we had a little more on her before we make the contact,” he said.

  Drake said, “I can help on that too, Perry. You can prove that Jason Carrel is her boy friend all right.”

  Mason’s eyes lit up. “That smug liar,” he said. “He had the crust to get on the witness stand and swear absolutely that there had never been any conversation among the relatives about what it would mean to them financially if they could keep Alden Leeds from marrying or making a will. He adopted the position that he was radiating sweetness and light. He just wanted to help his poor, dear uncle, and that was all he thought about.”

  “What did he say about Inez Colton?” Drake asked.

  “Swore he didn’t know her.”

  Drake grinned and produced a photostatic copy of a traffic ticket. “All right,” he said. “Let him try this on his piano. Here’s a traffic ticket showing a violation of the parking law—car parked between the hours of two A.M. and four A.M. The license number is that of Jason Carrel’s automobile, and after the citation was issued, a cute little trick showed up at the traffic department and paid the fine. Her name was Inez Colton. She wanted a receipt showing that the fine had been paid in cash. That’s rather unusual. The bail clerk made a notation on the traffic ticket. When I had him look it up, he found the receipt stub showing payment by this Colton baby.”

  “This was the night of the murder?” Mason asked, excitedly.

  “No, no,” Drake said. “This was two weeks before the murder. I had a tip the car sometimes stood out in front of the apartment house until the small hours of the morning. So I went up and checked through the traffic violations on the off-chance I might find something. I did.”

  Mason said gleefully, “Hot dog! Wait until I slap him in the face with that and ask him how it happens that Inez Colton is paying the fines on his traffic citations. He claimed he didn’t know anything about her, had never seen her in his life.”

  Mason pocketed the photostatic copy, and said, “Let’s eat, and then go call on Miss Colton, and see what she has to say. Della, you can take a shorthand notebook. Work as inconspicuously as possible, take down every word of the conversation.”

  Della Street said, “Gosh, I’m too excited to eat.”

  “Let’s go to the Home Kitchen Cafe,” Mason said. “We can get a good square meal there.”

  “Expense account?” Drake asked.

  “Expense account,” Mason said.

  At the Home Kitchen Cafe, they were waited on by the same waitress who had waited on Mason at lunch the day he had interviewed Serle. “Heard anything from Hazel?” the lawyer asked.

  “Not a word,” she said. “No one’s heard anything.”

  “Come on,” Drake said. “Let’s order.”

  Della picked up her menu. The waitress said, “If you like the daily special, I’d recommend it—unless you want a short order.”

  “Let’s see,” Della said, studying the menu. “What’s today?”

  “Friday,” Drake snorted. “What a gal!”

  “Friday,” Della said. “Well, I’ll take the fish special.”

  Mason looked at his menu. “The roast lamb, for me,” he said to the waitress.

  “Same here,” Drake told her.

  “Do you,” Mason asked of Paul Drake, “have a correspondent in Yuma?”

  Drake nodded. “There’s an agency there that will take over.”

  Mason took a pencil from his pocket, turned the menu over, and wrote on the back of it, “Mrs. J. B. Beems, Border City Hotel, Yuma, Arizona.” He slid it across to the detective, and said, “Don’t repeat this out loud, Paul. Just remember the name and address. I want a damn clever operative put on that party.”

  Drake read the name on the menu. “I can,” he said, “get someone on the job down there by telephone, and then can send down a clever woman operative to take over in the morning. She’s sixty-five, white haired, motherly, and could talk blood out of a turnip.—Well, what I mean is, listen blood out of a turnip. You know the type, Perry.”

  Mason said, “That would be swell.”

  The waitress appeared with large bowls of steaming soup, and Mason, folding the menu so she couldn’t see the name on the back, shoved it down into his pocket.

  They ate hurriedly and for the most part in silence. When they had finished, Drake said, “Gosh, Perry, I don’t know why any man would want to get married when restaurants serve meals like this.”