“That’s right. Yes, sir. There were two telephones within a few inches of each other on the telephone table. Experiments proved that one was connected with the red network—the one which you see on the right here—and the other with the green network.”

  “Exactly. Now let’s consider one other possibility. It would have been readily possible for the occupant of stateroom Number One to have called any station on either the green or the red network?”

  “Yes, sir. Provided he used the proper telephone in each instance.”

  “Exactly,” Mason said. “Now then, wouldn’t it have been possible for an electrician to have removed the insulation from these lines and hooked up a wire which would, at least temporarily, have consolidated the two systems?”

  The witness frowned. “I see what you mean,” he said, “but I don’t think it could have been done.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, if it could have been done, it stands to reason the owner would have installed the system that way in the first place. As I get it, he wanted to have sixteen telephone outlets but he couldn’t do that on the systems which he could secure and install. He had a maximum of eight outlets on each. So he …”

  “Never mind what he had in mind,” Mason said, “or what you think he had in mind. What I am asking you now is whether it wouldn’t have been possible to have removed the insulation from one of these lines on the green, bridged across to the lines on the red, and temporarily at least, joined the two systems.”

  “Well, you have complicating factors there. The telephone in itself is simple but there’s the question of call arrangement. You see there’s a selective bell service by which you can call any one of the eight stations, and that’s the thing that really complicates the installation of this system. I’m not enough of an electrician to know what would happen if you bridged the two. I would say offhand that you’d get your calls all mixed up. Your calling system would be thrown completely out of kilter.”

  “You don’t know whether it could be done or could not be done?”

  “No, sir. I do not. I won’t say positively. I don’t think that it …”

  “But you don’t know?” Mason interrupted.

  “No, sir. I don’t.”

  “And you don’t actually know the reason for the two systems having been installed. It is only your assumption that the facilities were installed in this way as a matter of convenience.”

  “I know what Parker Benton told me.”

  “Exactly,” Mason said, “but you also know you’re not supposed to testify to hearsay.”

  “That’s right. Yes, sir.”

  “So you yourself don’t know.”

  Adams shook his head and said, “I myself don’t know.”

  “That’s all,” Mason said.

  The district attorney called Parker Benton as his next witness.

  Following the usual preliminary questions, Hamilton Burger asked the witness, “Mr. Benton, did you know Scott Shelby in his lifetime?”

  “I did.”

  “Where is Mr. Shelby now?”

  “He is dead.”

  “You are certain?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You saw his body?”

  “I did. Yes, sir.”

  “Where?”

  “At the morgue.”

  “And did you identify that body?”

  “I did. Yes, sir.”

  “You had seen Mr. Shelby in his lifetime?”

  “I had. Yes, sir.”

  “There can be no question about your identification?”

  “No, sir. None.”

  “And you identified that body in the presence of officers and of an autopsy surgeon?”

  “I did. Yes, sir.”

  “A Mr. Robert P. Noxie was also present?”

  “The ballistics expert. Yes, sir.”

  “And did you give a firearm to the officers sometime prior to the time you viewed this body?”

  “I did. Yes, sir.”

  “What was the description of that firearm?”

  “A .38 caliber Colt Police Positive.”

  “Was there a number stamped on that gun?”

  “There was. Yes, sir.”

  “What is it?”

  “One-four-five-eight-one.”

  “Where did you obtain that gun, Mr. Benton?”

  “It was given to me by Marion Shelby, the defendant in this action.”

  “And under what circumstances did she give it to you?”

  “It was on my yacht.”

  “Did she make any statement to you at the time the gun was given to you?”

  “She did.”

  “What was it?”

  “Just a moment, Your Honor,” Mason said, “I object on the ground that this is incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial, that no proper foundation has been laid.”

  “You refer to the corpus delicti?” the judge asked.

  “Exactly,” Mason said. “The evidence so far shows that Scott Shelby is dead. There is no evidence indicating that he was murdered. There is no evidence indicating that he met his death by other than purely natural means. It is a well-known principle of law that the corpus delicti must be established before any declaration of the defendant can be admitted in evidence, and that the declarations themselves cannot prove the corpus delicti.”

  “Of course, as to that last point,” Judge Maxwell ruled, “there are certain qualifications, if not exceptions. However, it would appear that the district attorney has it within his power to produce the proof in a conventional and orderly manner; so I will sustain the objection as to what the defendant may or may not have said until after the corpus delicti has been more conclusively established.”

  “Very well,” Hamilton Burger said, yielding to the ruling of the court with somewhat bad grace. “This will necessitate my putting the witness on the stand twice.”

  “That is not a fatal objection,” Judge Maxwell said calmly. “There is no reason why it can’t be done.”

  “Very well,” Hamilton Burger said. “You did receive this weapon from the defendant?”

  “I did. Yes, sir.”

  “And what did you do with it?”

  “I turned it over to the officers and obtained a receipt from them for it.”

  “Would you recognize that weapon if you saw it again?”

  “I would. Yes, sir.”

  “I hand you a .38 caliber Colt Police Positive and ask you if that is the weapon.”

  “It is. Yes, sir.”

  “That’s all for the time being. I will ask you to step down and will recall you later on. Are there any questions, Mr. Mason?”

  “None,” Mason said. “Not at this time. I will reserve my cross-examination.”

  Hamilton Burger hesitated, then said suddenly, “I’m going to ask one or two more questions in order to pave the way for the evidence that will be introduced.”

  “No objection,” Mason said. “That is, to your asking additional questions. I may object to the questions themselves.”

  Burger said, “Mr. Benton, there was a yachting party aboard your yacht the night of the … the night the defendant gave you this gun? The evening of the twelfth?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Will you describe the occasion of that yachting party, please?”

  Parker Benton said, “I was buying some property from a Jane Keller, an island. The deal was in escrow and I understood the escrow was on the point of being completed when I was advised there was an unrecorded oil lease outstanding on the property and that Mr. Shelby claimed some rights under this oil lease.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Frankly, I was rather anxious to secure the property. While I had paid what I thought was a very generous price, I would have gone a little higher if I had had to do so.”

  “So you approached Mr. Shelby?”

  “I did. Yes, sir. I suggested that Mr. Shelby and the owner of the property, Jane Keller, her brother-in-law who is acting as her adviser, a Mrs. Martha Stanhope and a Marjorie Stanhope, the sister and niece of Mrs. Keller respectively, and who seemed to be interested in the deal, and Mr. Mason who was acting as attorney for Jane Keller, and Mr. Mason’s secretary, Miss Della Street, have a conference aboard my yacht. My wife was also present and Mr. Shelby brought his wife, the defendant in this action.”

  “You cruised up the river to the approximate location of this island?”

  “About five hundred yards below the island. Fog had settled down and I was a little afraid to go right on in to the island.”

  “You anchored downstream from the island?”

  “I did. Yes, sir.”

  “In what depth of water?”

  “Twenty-two feet.”

  “And there was a current?”

  “Yes. There’s a channel of the river at this place, a channel which goes past the island. It is not the main channel of the river, but it is a well-defined navigable channel. That was one of the reasons I was interested in the island. There was a fairly deep water anchorage on the south shore of the island.”

  “Now, without going into details, was there generally some discussion on the yacht that night in regard to this oil lease?”

  “There was. That was the evening of the twelfth. I had thought that I might get everyone together, give them a good dinner, get them over their antagonism to each other, and see if the case couldn’t be compromised.”

  “And that was the general background of this gathering on the yacht?”

  “It was. Yes, sir.”

  “I think that’s all.”

  “Just a moment, on that last phase,” Mason said. “I have a question to ask.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “There was some discussion with Mr. Shelby about the conditions under which he would be willing to relinquish his oil lease?”

  “There was. Yes, sir.”

  “A question of money being involved?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And a discussion of amounts?”

  “That’s right. Yes, sir.”

  “And did Mr. Shelby at that time make some statement in regard to an interest in the property being owned by a Miss Ellen Cushing?”

  “That’s incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial,” the district attorney objected. “It’s not proper cross-examination.”

  “I think it’s very proper,” Mason said. “You have asked him about the circumstances and about the conversation which took place.”

  “Not about the specific conversation, only general questions as to the field covered by the conversation generally.”

  “I could have objected to questions concerning the general conversation,” Mason said, “on the ground that answers to such questions embodied the conclusion of the witness and not the best evidence. However, to save time I didn’t do so; but the fact remains that so far as the scope of this cross-examination is concerned, it is exactly the same as though you had asked for specific conversations in the words of the participants. And it is an elementary rule of cross-examination that when a part of a conversation is introduced in evidence on direct examination, the cross-examiner has the right to bring it all in.”

  “The objection will be overruled,” Judge Maxwell said.

  “Answer the question,” Mason said.

  “Yes,” Parker Benton said readily enough, “Mr. Shelby stated that Ellen Cushing, a real estate agent, had acquired a one-half interest in and to this lease. Subsequently I discovered that …”

  “Never mind what you discovered subsequently,” Burger interrupted irritably. “Confine yourself to the conversation. Answer counsel’s questions and stop when you are finished.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That,” Mason said, “is all.”

  “That’s all, Mr. Benton. Call your next witness, Mr. Burger,” the judge said.

  “My next witness will be Dr. Horace Stirling.”

  Dr. Stirling took the stand, qualified as an expert physician and surgeon, stated that he had been present when Parker Benton identified a body as that of Scott Shelby and that he had performed an autopsy on that body.

  “Did you determine the cause of death?”

  “I did, yes sir.”

  “What was the cause of death?”

  “A bullet.”

  “Where did you find that bullet?”

  “The bullet had struck the vertebrae.”

  “Where?”

  “Between the first and second cervical, or as they’re more specifically known, between the axis and the atlas. The bullet had penetrated the spinal cord and the odontoid process of the axis.”

  “Death had not been caused by drowning?”

  “Death had not been caused by drowning, no sir.”

  “You would say that the bullet wound was the cause of the death?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You recovered that bullet from the body?”

  “I did. Yes, sir.”

  “And what did you do with it?”

  “I identified it by scratching my initials on the base of the bullet and then turned it over to Robert P. Noxie, the ballistics expert.”

  “You may cross-examine,” Hamilton Burger said.

  Mason said, “As I understand it, Doctor, fracture dislocations of the axis and atlas frequently occur as the result of a trauma, associated with a fall from a height, a dive into shallow water or something of that sort.”

  “It can so occur, yes.”

  “Now, the mere fact that a bullet may have lodged in the spinal cord does not necessarily mean that there could not have been a fracture dislocation of the cervical vertebrae caused by a fall.”

  “In this case, there was no such fracture dislocation of the spinal cord. A backward luxation of the odontoid process of the axis in the cervical canal would be due to the tearing of the ligaments which held this bone in place, and I found no such tearing. On the other hand, I did find the bullet embedded in the spinal cord and lodged against the odontoid process of the axis. I therefore am of the opinion that death was due entirely to this bullet wound.”

  “Where had the bullet entered the body, Doctor?”

  “The man had been shot in the back of the neck.”

  “Were there any powder burns?”

  “There were no powder burns.”

  “Does this indicate anything in connection with the position of the weapon when the shot was fired?”

  “Ordinarily, powder marks are not found beyond two or three feet from the muzzle of the gun. When the weapon is held closer than that, we encounter powder marks, depending somewhat upon the condition of the weapon and the nature of the ammunition.”

  “The neck is rather a small target, is it not, Doctor?”

  “Comparatively small.”

  “So that if the weapon were held at some distance away, a person intending to commit deliberate murder would hardly have aimed at the neck.”

  “I am not qualified to state what a person would or would not do under those circumstances,” the doctor said with slow deliberation. “The person might have aimed at the head, shot low, and hit the neck, or, might have aimed at the back between the shoulders, shot high, and hit the neck. Or, the person might have aimed at the neck and hit the neck. I only know that I examined the body, that death was due to a bullet which had embedded itself in the spinal cord in a position which I indicated.”

  There was a faint rustling of surreptitious levity in the back of the courtroom as the doctor so neatly and determinedly avoided the trap Mason had tried to set.

  “The bullet had actually penetrated only a very short distance into the body then if it had lodged against the odontoid process of the axis and had been fired from a position directly behind the victim?”

  “It had penetrated far enough to cause death,” the doctor said dryly.

  This time, there was an audible titter.

  “There were no symptoms of death from drowning?”

  “None. There were evidences that the body had been in the water for some hours, but no evidence that death occurred from drowning. Permit me to repeat: Death occurred, as I have said several times before, from a bullet which had penetrated the spinal cord.”

  “Were there any other marks of violence on the body?” Mason asked.

  The doctor hesitated, glanced somewhat dubiously at the district attorney.

  Mason said, “Go on, answer the question.”

  “I think that is hardly proper cross-examination,” the district attorney ventured somewhat tentatively.

  “Overruled,” the judge snapped. “Answer the question.”

  The witness took a deep breath. “There was some evidence of a blow on the head,” he said. “I cannot give you a definite statement as to the severity of that blow or its possible consequences, because of the fact that it had evidently occurred at approximately the time of death. But, there had been a rather severe blow, on the head, a blow struck by some object which didn’t tear the skin, but did leave evidence of a distinct traumatic ecchymosis.”

  Mason leaned forward, “A blow such as might have been struck by a body falling into water from a height of several feet, Doctor?”

  “No. I would say not. A blow which was more sharply localized than that. A blow such as might have been made by a heavy blunt object with no sharp corners.”

  “A slung shot?” Mason asked.

  “Very similar to a blow of that nature. Yes.”

  Mason was plainly excited now, but, nevertheless, feeling his way carefully, well aware that he was confronted with a hostile witness of no inconsiderable ability and forensic experience. A witness who was now being called upon to testify to something which quite evidently failed to fit into the theory of the case as advanced by the district attorney.

  Mason said, “This blow, then, must have been struck by someone standing close to the decedent?”

  The doctor cleared his throat. “Conceding of course, that the blow was struck by someone.”

  “It was a blow?”

  “Definitely a blow.”

  “And a blow must be struck by someone. Must it not, Doctor?”

  “Not necessarily. The man could have fallen and struck his head on something.”

  “Such as what?” Mason asked.

  The doctor said, “If the man had fallen from a considerable height and had struck against a rope, the force of impact might have left a wound such as that which I discovered.”