“None whatever,” Mason interrupted. “Go there as soon as possible. You’ll find the occupant will be very courteous as soon as you identify yourself. The pipe has been reconnected. See what you can find out.”

  “I take it I am to bring cameras and take pictures?”

  “Bring cameras, floodlights, microscopes, the works.”

  “Okay,” Hadley said, “anything else?”

  “Don’t let anybody on the outside know what you’re doing,” Mason said. “The man in the unit is all right.”

  “Okay,” Hadley told him, “I’ll start getting things together right now. I’ll be there early in the afternoon.”

  “Don’t arouse suspicions,” Mason warned.

  “Shucks, I’ll be a tourist from the country,” Hadley promised, “a regular shutterbug.”

  Mason hung up, said to Della Street, “Now, I’m going down and see Daphne and see what kind of a night she had.”

  “The poor kid,” Della Street said.

  “Well, it depends upon how you look at it,” Mason told her. “You have to admit she pulled a fast one getting her uncle to take that adjoining room and then pulling that sleep medicine gag.”

  “I suppose they’ll use that against her,” Della Street said.

  “Oh, sure, Tragg fished every last pellet out of the stomach contents.”

  The lawyer chuckled. “I can’t get over remembering the squawk she made when she hit that cold water in the bathtub, thinking it was going to be lukewarm.”

  Mason left the office, went to the detention ward and muttered expressions of sympathy as a bedraggled Daphne Shelby, who had quite evidently passed a sleepless night, was brought into the consulting room.

  “Pretty rough, Daphne?” Mason asked.

  She started to cry but then caught herself, threw her head back defiantly and said, “It’s rough, but I can take it.”

  Mason said, “Somehow it seems impossible to impress upon you that you should play fair with your lawyer.”

  “What have I done now?”

  “It’s what you haven’t done. You forgot to tell me about your Uncle Horace having been registered in the hotel in that room right next to yours—720—and the fact that you had been in there talking with him which was the reason you didn’t hear me when I first knocked on the door of your room.”

  “Mr. Mason,” she said, “let’s have one understanding. I’m going to be fair and play fair with you except for one thing. I’m not going to tell you anything that might hurt Uncle Horace.”

  “You know by this time he isn’t related to you?”

  “I can’t help it, I have a feeling for him. I’ve been like a daughter to him. I’ve watched over him and guarded him, and now he’s an old man and he’s sick and I’m going to protect him in every way that I can.”

  “Do the officers know anything about his being in the adjoining room?” Mason asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then you haven’t told them?”

  “Heavens, no!”

  “Their questions haven’t indicated that they have any idea he was there?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know that he was driving Ralph Exeter’s car?”

  She looked him defiantly in the eyes, took a long breath, and said, “No!”

  “All right,” Mason said, “we’re playing games, Daphne. You’re playing games with me to protect your uncle. Now, I’m going to tell you something. I’m representing you. I’m going to try and get you acquitted on this murder charge.

  “I’m not representing your uncle. I’m not representing anyone except you. I’m going to try every legal and ethical strategy that I know of to get you acquitted. That’s my duty. Do you understand that?” .

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  “You’re going to have to stay here for a while,” Mason said.

  “I’ll get accustomed to it.”

  Mason got up to go.

  Suddenly her hand was on his arm. “Please, Mr. Mason, I can take it. I’m young. I’m resilient. I can stand it but if Uncle Horace got in one of these places, if he had bars over the windows and guards and cells and things of that sort, he’d go absolutely crazy.”

  Mason smiled down at her. “Daphne,” he said, “I’m protecting you. A lawyer doesn’t have room for more than one allegiance. You’ll have to get accustomed to that.”

  “And,” she said, “I’m protecting Uncle Horace. You’ll have to get accustomed to that.”

  Mason grinned. “I’ve learned to accustom myself to that,” he said, and then added, “the hard way.”

  Mason returned to his office to find that Paul Drake had a significant report. A Nevada car had been registered at the Northern Lights Motel. The owner had registered as Harvey Miles of Carson City, but the car registered in the name of Stanley Freer of Las Vegas.

  “Get a rundown?” Mason asked.

  “On Freer, yes,” Drake said. “Miles seems to be simply a name, but Freer is a collector.”

  “A collector?”

  “Yes. They use him when some tin-horn tries to squirm out of paying a gambling debt.”

  “Methods?” Mason asked.

  “Since gambling debts are illegal in most states,” Drake said, “the methods used by Freer are reported to be illegal—but highly successful.

  “Now, if Exeter owed a gambling debt and Freer called on him and perhaps told him Horace Shelby was hiding in Unit 21 at the Northern Lights, it’s a cinch Exeter would have gone there to try a shakedown.

  “At least that’s the way I figure it.”

  Mason was thoughtfully silent. At length he said, “That figures, Paul. Some men from Nevada were watching the sanitarium. They were anxious to talk with the doctor the Court appointed.

  “That means the gamblers were getting tired of waiting, and it also means they were very much on the job.

  “They could have discovered when Horace Shelby left the place and where he went. Then they told Exeter they weren’t going to wait for Shelby to die, that it was up to Exeter to get the money or else.

  “Then a “collector” would have tagged along to see what Exeter was doing—and if Exeter bungled the job, that collector might have lowered the boom on him.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Drake agreed. “Those collectors are willing to write a debt off every once in a while in order to throw a scare into the pigeons. If word gets around a man who gets too delinquent in payments doesn’t stay healthy, it helps with collections everywhere.

  “Usually, however, they get some muscle men to give a guy a beating first.” ·

  Mason thought the situation over. “A jury might buy that theory, Paul. I might even buy it myself.”

  Chapter 16

  Marvin Mosher, one of the leading trial deputies of the district attorney’s office, addressed Judge Linden Kyle, who had just taken the bench.

  “May I make an opening statement, if the Court please?”

  “It is not usual at a preliminary hearing,” Judge Kyle said.

  “I understand, Your Honor, but the purpose of a preliminary opening statement is so that the Court may understand the purpose of the testimony which is being elicited and coordinate that testimony into the whole picture.”

  “We have no objection,” Mason said.

  “Go ahead,” Judge Kyle said, “but I suggest you be brief. A trial judge becomes rather adept at coordinating testimony.”

  “Very well,” Mosher announced, “I will present the matter in a very brief summary.”

  “The defendant, Daphne Shelby, thought until a few days ago that she was the niece of Horace Shelby, a man of some seventy-five years of age.

  “She had acted as this man’s niece and, as the evidence will show, had ingratiated herself with him and was on the point of using that relationship to secure a very material financial advantage.

  “It was at this point Shelby’s half brother, Borden Finchley, and his wife, Elinor, accompanied by a friend, came to call on Horace Shelby. They were shocked at what they found, the extent to which this young woman had ingratiated herself and the extent to which Horace Shelby had become dependent upon her.”

  “Now, just a minute,” Judge Kyle interrupted, “you say that the defendant thought she was the niece of Horace Shelby?”

  “That is correct, Your Honor. I am coming-to that, if the Court will bear with me.”

  “Go right ahead. The Court is interested in this.”

  “The Finchleys suggested that the defendant take a three month vacation, that they would take care of Horace Shelby while she was gone and take charge of the household affairs. The defendant was quite rundown, and, in fairness to her, we should state that she had been very solicitous in her care of the man with whom she was living as a niece, a very devoted niece.

  “The defendant was given ample funds to take a trip to the Orient on shipboard. She was to be gone three months.

  “While she was gone, the Finchleys learned not only that Horace Shelby intended to make her the sole beneficiary under his will, but that he had been giving the defendant large sums of money and was preparing to give her even larger sums of money.”

  “What do you mean, large sums of money?” Judge Kyle asked.

  “The last amount, the one which triggered the action on the part of the Finchleys, was a check for one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “For how much?” Judge Kyle asked.

  “A hundred and twenty five thousand dollars.”

  “Was this woman his niece?”

  “She was not Your Honor. She was a complete stranger to the blood. She was the daughter of Horace Shelby’s former housekeeper, a daughter by an affair which had taken place at the other end of the continent.

  “I will state in the defendant’s favor, however, that she in good faith, thought Horace Shelby was her uncle. He had led her so to believe.”

  “And the mother?” Judge Kyle asked.

  “Her mother had passed away a relatively short time ago. She had been Horace Shelby’s housekeeper for some twenty years.

  “The Finchleys found that Horace Shelby had deteriorated mentally, that he had exaggerated ideas as to what he considered his duty toward the defendant, that the defendant was carrying on a course which could well strip this rather elderly man of every cent he had in the world. And when the Finchleys found that Horace Shelby was giving this young woman a check for a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars, they went to court and asked that a conservator be appointed.”

  “That is quite understandable,” Judge Kyle said, looking curiously at Daphne.

  “When Daphne returned from the Orient,” Mosher went on, “and found that the fortune that she expected to inherit within a short time was being placed beyond her grasp, she became furious. Horace Shelby, at the time, had been placed in a sanitarium for treatment.

  “Daphne Shelby secured employment in that institution, using an assumed name and taking a job as a domestic for just long enough to surreptitiously aid Horace Shelby in making an escape. She took him to a motel known as the Northern Lights Motel. She placed him in Unit 21.

  “From that day on, if the Court please, none of the real relatives of Horace Shelby have seen him or heard from him. The police were and are unable to find him. Horace Shelby,, with the connivance of this defendant, vanished into thin air after making a will leaving everything to this defendant. He may well be dead…

  “Moreover, and by the use of an ingenious fraud perpetrated upon the Court, and despite the appointment of a conservator, the defendant managed to get her hands on fifty thousand dollars of Horace Shelby’s funds.

  “The decedent, Bosley Cameron, alias Ralph Exeter, was a friend of the Finchleys, and as such, familiar with the facts. It appears that in some way Exeter traced Horace Shelby to the Northern Lights Motel. The evidence will indicate that the defendant lured Exeter into the room occupied by Horace Shelby at a time shortly after Horace Shelby had left the place.

  “The defendant went to a nearby Chinese restaurant, secured food in containers and, using the bottom of a glass toothbrush container as a pestle, and a tumbler in the motel as a mortar, ground up sleeping pills which had been given her to take on her trip in case she became unduly nervous. “She placed this barbiturate in the food which was given Exeter, and after Exeter became unconscious, left him in the motel after first deliberately unscrewing the gas feed pipe which went to a vented heating appliance in the unit.

  “Exeter’s body was found when a neighboring tenant smelled gas. He was quite dead. Death had apparently been due to the gas, but he had first been rendered unconscious by the barbiturate.

  “This young woman then went to the Hollander-Heath Hotel, and when officers traced her there, hurriedly swallowed some barbiturates of the same brand as those which had been administered to Ralph Exeter, telling the officers a concocted story about how some chocolate she had taken had been poisoned.

  “The obvious purpose of this was to lead the officers to believe that some third person had administered the poison to Ralph Exeter.

  “Now. I would like to state to the Court that the reason this case is being prosecuted at this time is because of recent decisions of our higher courts aimed at protecting the innocent, but which unduly complicate the duties of a prosecutor and of the police.

  “This young woman has refused to co-operate with us. She has refused to answer questions without her attorney being present. Her attorney has advised her to make no statement in regard to certain key matters, and, as a result, we are left with no alternative but to marshal the evidence that we have and present our case to the Court.

  “We wish to call the Court’s attention to a matter which is, of course, elemental. At this time we only need to show that a crime has been committed and to show reasonable grounds for believing that the defendant perpetrated the crime. In that event, the Court is duty bound to hold the defendant for trial in the higher court.”

  Mosher sat down.

  Judge Kyle said, “If the proof bears out the statement, there is certainly no doubt that the Court should bind the defendant over for trial.

  “This Court has frequently announced that some of the recent decisions protecting the rights of defendants sometimes boomerang and force the authorities to take official action, whereas if the authorities had more time for a detailed investigation such formal action might have been spared.

  “However.” and here Judge Kyle smiled, “this Court has no authority to overrule decisions of our higher tribunals.” You may proceed with the case.”

  “May I make an opening statement?” Mason asked.

  “Why, yes, if you desire,” Judge Kyle said, “although this is entirely unusual.”

  Mason said, “The evidence will show that the Finchleys had for years taken no interest in Horace Shelby. When they learned, however, that Shelby had become comparatively wealthy, they came to visit him and on finding that Shelby had made a will, or intended to make a will leaving his property to the defendant, they hustled the defendant off to the Orient and in the three months that they had Horace Shelby under their control, exasperated him to such a point that the man was desperate.

  “Learning of their intentions to railroad him into a sanitarium, Shelby tried to get a substantial part of his fortune in the form of cash out from under the control of the Finchleys so that he would have some money with which to fight the case as he saw fit. He therefore asked the defendant to take charge of that money.

  “She tried to do so, but was prevented by an order of the Court appointing a conservator.

  “As to the fifty thousand dollars which the prosecutor would have the Court believe the defendant had secured by artifice and fraud, the money was secured legally and through my efforts. It was given to the defendant, and she, in turn, gave the bulk of that money to Horace Shelby so that he would be able to spend his own funds.

  “We expect to show that Ralph Exeter was a professional gambler indebted to other gamblers that the Finchleys were, in turn, indebted to him, and that Exeter was the driving force behind this situation, suggesting to-the Finchleys that they use their connection and relationship to Horace Shelby to raise immediate money.

  “We expect to show, at least by circumstantial evidence, that Ralph Exeter found where Horace Shelby was located that Exeter made demands upon him, offering to let Shelby keep his liberty in return for a substantial cash payment.

  “We expect to show that Shelby mashed up some sleeping pills which had been given him by the defendant, put them in food which was given Exeter for the sole purpose of enabling Shelby to escape from the clutches of his over-solicitous relatives.

  “It is our contention that after the defendant had left the motel after the departure of Horace Shelby, while Ralph Exeter was asleep in the room, someone disconnected the gas pipe and asphyxiated Exeter.”

  “You can prove this?” Judge Kyle asked. “We can prove it,” Mason said.

  Judge Kyle was thoughtful for a few moments, then said to Mosher, “Very well, put on your proof.”

  Mosher called witness after witness, building an ironclad case of circumstantial evidence.

  Dr. Tillman Baxter identified Daphne told of how she had applied for a job how she had enabled Horace Shelby to escape.

  He described Shelby’s condition in technical terms. He was, he explained, suffering from the first definite stage of senile dementia that the Court had appointed a doctor. Dr. Grantland Alma, to examine Horace Shelby that that examination was to have taken place on the afternoon of the day when Shelby had been spirited from his institution.

  Dr. Baxter said he had been looking forward to having his diagnosis confirmed by an independent psychiatrist, but that the action of the defendant in enabling Horace Shelby to escape had foreclosed any opportunity to learn of the man’s actual condition.

  Lieutenant Tragg told of finding Ralph Exeter, also known as Bosley Cameron, dead in the motel unit at the Northern Lights. He had found in the room a glass tumbler. In the glass tumbler was the glass container in which new toothbrushes are sold. This had been used as a pestle in grinding up pills which were identified as sleeping pills of a trade name known as Somniferone that these were the same pills which were subsequently taken by the defendant in the hotel at a time when her attorney visited her, apparently to warn her of the impending visit of the officers.