“Yes.”

  “And you compared that card at that time with the fingerprints of Mrs. Stewart Bedford?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “That card was in your possession and under your control at that time?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Now, speaking for the moment as to this one card, exactly what did you do with that card after satisfying yourself the print was that of Mrs. Bedford? What did you do with it?”

  “I put it in the front of my dress.”

  “And then what?”

  “I was escorted by Sergeant Holcomb to the office of Hamilton Burger. Mr. Burger wanted to have me leave the prints with him. I refused to do so. At his suggestion, I signed my name on the back of each card. Then he signed his name and the date, so there could be no question of a substitution, so that I couldn’t substitute them, and so that no one else could.”

  “And that’s your signature and the date on the back of that card?”

  “It seems to be but … I’m not certain. May I examine these prints for a moment?”

  “Take all the time you want,” Judge Strouse said.

  Hamilton Burger said, “Your Honor, I feel that there should be some inquiry here. This is completely in accordance with the peculiar phenomena which always seem to occur in cases where Mr. Perry Mason is defense counsel.”

  “I resent that,” Perry Mason said. “I am simply trying to cross-examine this expert, this so-called expert, I may add.”

  Elsa Griffin looked up from the fingerprint classification to flash him a glance of venomous hatred.

  Judge Strouse said, “Counsel for both sides will return to their chairs at counsel tables. The witness will be given ample opportunity to make the comparison which she wishes.”

  Burger reluctantly lumbered back to his chair at the prosecution’s table and dropped into it.

  Mason walked back, sat down, locked his hands behind his head and, with elaborate unconcern, leaned back in the chair.

  Stewart Bedford tried to whisper to him, but Mason waved him back into silence.

  The witness proceeded to examine the cards, studying first one and then the other, counting ridges with a sharp-pointed pencil. The silence in the courtroom grew to a peak of tension.

  Suddenly Elsa Griffin threw the magnifying glass directly at Perry Mason. The glass hit the mahogany table, bounced against the lawyer’s chest. Elsa Griffin dropped all the fingerprint cards, put her hands to her eyes, and began to cry hysterically.

  Mason got to his feet.

  Judge Strouse said, “Just a moment. Counsel for both sides will remain seated. The Court wants to examine the witness. Miss Griffin, will you kindly regain your composure. The Court wishes to ask you certain questions.”

  She took her hands from her face, raised tearful eyes to the Court. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Do you now conclude that your print number sixteen is the same as the print which has been introduced in evidence, prosecution’s number thirty-seven—that both were made by the same finger?”

  She said, “It is, Your Honor, but it wasn’t. Last night it was the print of Mrs. Bedford. Somebody somewhere has mixed everything all up, and … and now I don’t know what I’m doing, or what I’m talking about.”

  “Well, there’s no reason to be hysterical about this, Miss Griffin,” Judge Strouse said. “You’re certain that this fingerprint number sixteen is the one that you took from the cottage?”

  She nodded. “It has to be … I … I know that it’s Mrs. Bedford’s fingerprint!”

  “There certainly can be no doubt about the authenticity of the Court Exhibit,” Judge Strouse said. “Now apparently, according to the testimony of the prosecution’s witness, the identity of these fingerprints simply means that the same woman who was in unit sixteen of the motel on April sixth was also in unit twelve of the motel on that same day, that this person also drove the rented automobile.”

  Elsa Griffin shook her head. “It isn’t so, Your Honor. It simply can’t be. It isn’t—” Again she lapsed into a storm of tears.

  Hamilton Burger said, “If the Court please, may I make a suggestion?”

  “What is it?” Judge Strouse asked coldly.

  Hamilton Burger said, “This witness seems to be emotionally upset. I suggest that she be withdrawn from the stand. I suggest that the four cards, each bearing her signature and the numbers fourteen, sixteen, nine, and twelve, be each stamped by the clerk for identification; that these cards then be given to the police fingerprint expert who is here in the witness room and who can very shortly give us an opinion as to the identity of those fingerprints. In the meantime, I wish to state to the Court that I am completely satisfied with the sincerity and integrity of this witness. I personally feel that there has been some trickery and substitution. I think that a deception and a fraud is being practiced on this court and in order to prove it I would ask to recall Morrison Brems, the manager of the motel, to the stand.”

  Judge Strouse stroked his chin. “The jury will disregard the comments of the district attorney,” he said, “in regard to deception or fraud. This witness will be excused from the stand, the cards will be marked for identification by the clerk and then delivered to the fingerprint expert who has previously testified and who will be charged by the court with making a comparison and a report. Now in the meantime the witness Brems will come forward. You will be excused for the time being, Miss Griffin. Just leave the stand, if you will, and try to compose yourself.”

  The bailiff escorted the sobbing Elsa Griffin from the stand.

  Morrison Brems was brought into court.

  “I am now going to prove my point another way,” Hamilton Burger said. “Mr. Brems, you have already been sworn in this case. You talked with this so-called prowler who emerged from unit number twelve?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You saw that prowler leaving the cabin?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hamilton Burger said, “I am going to ask Mrs. Stewart G. Bedford, who is in court, to stand up and take off the heavy dark glasses with which she has effectively kept her identity concealed. I am going to ask her to walk across the courtroom in front of this witness.”

  “Object,” Bedford whispered frantically to Mason. “Object. Stop this! Don’t let him get away with it!”

  “Keep quiet,” Mason warned. “If we object now we’ll antagonize the jury. Let him go.”

  “Stand up, Mrs. Bedford,” Judge Strouse ordered.

  Mrs. Bedford got to her feet.

  “Will you kindly remove your glasses?”

  “This isn’t the proper way of making an identification,” Perry Mason said. “There should be a line-up, Your Honor, but we have no objection.”

  “Come inside the rail here, Mrs. Bedford, right through that gate,” Judge Strouse directed. “Now just walk the length of the courtroom, if you will, turn your face to the witness, and—”

  “That’s the one. That’s the one. That’s the woman!” Morrison Brems shouted, excitedly.

  Ann Roann Bedford stopped abruptly in her stride. She turned to face the witness. “You lie,” she said, her voice cold with venom.

  Judge Strouse banged his gavel. “There will be no comments except in response to questions asked by counsel,” he said. “You may return to your seat, Mrs. Bedford, and you will please refrain from making any comment. Proceed, Mr. Burger.”

  A grinning Hamilton Burger turned to Perry Mason and made an exaggerated bow. “And now, Mr. Mason,” he said, “you may cross-examine—to your heart’s content.”

  “Now just a moment, Mr. District Attorney,” Judge Strouse snapped. “That last comment was uncalled for; that is not proper conduct.”

  “I beg the Court’s pardon,” Hamilton Burger said, his face suffused with triumph. “I think, if the Court please, I can soon suggest to the Court what happened to the fingerprint evidence, but I’ll be very glad to hear Mr. Mason cross-examine this witness and see what can be done with his testimony. However, I do beg the Court’s pardon.”

  “Proceed with the cross-examination,” Judge Strouse said to Perry Mason.

  Perry Mason rose to his full height, faced Morrison Brems on the stand.

  “Have you ever been convicted of a felony, Mr. Brems?”

  The witness recoiled as though Mason had struck him.

  Hamilton Burger, on his feet, was shouting, “Your Honor, Your Honor! Counsel can’t do that! That’s misconduct! Unless he has some grounds to believe—”

  “You can always impeach a witness by showing he has been convicted of a felony,” Mason said as Hamilton Burger hesitated, sputtering in his rage.

  “Of course you can, of course you can,” Hamilton Burger yelled. “But you can’t ask questions like that where you haven’t anything on which to base such a charge. That’s misconduct! That’s—”

  “Suppose you let him answer the question,” Mason said, “and then—”

  “It’s misconduct! That’s unprofessional. That’s—”

  “I think,” Judge Strouse said, “the objection will be overruled. The witness will answer the question.”

  “Remember,” Mason warned, “you’re under oath. I’m asking you the direct question. Have you ever been convicted of a felony?”

  The witness who had been so sure of himself as he had regarded Mason a few short seconds earlier seemed to shrivel inside his clothes. He shifted his position uncomfortably. The courtroom silence became oppressive.

  “Have you?” Mason asked.

  “Yes,” Brems said.

  “How many times?”

  “Three.”

  “Did you ever use the alias of Harry Elston?”

  The witness again hesitated. “You’re under oath,” Mason reminded him, “and a handwriting expert is going to check your handwriting, so be careful what you say.”

  “I refuse to answer,” the witness said with a sudden desperate attempt at collecting himself. “I refuse to answer on the ground that to do so may incriminate me.”

  “And,” Mason went on, “on the seventh day of April of this year you called on your accomplice Grace Compton who had occupied unit sixteen at The Staylonger Motel on April sixth under the name of Mrs. S. G. Wilfred, and beat her up because she had been talking with me, didn’t you?

  “Now just a minute, Mr. Brems. Before you answer that question, remember that I had a private detective shadowing Miss Compton, shadowing the apartment house where she lived, noticing the people who went in and out of the apartment, and that I am at the present time in touch with Grace Compton in Acapulco. Now answer the question, did you or didn’t you?”

  “I refuse to answer,” the witness said, “on the ground that to do so might incriminate ne.”

  Mason turned to the judge, conscious of the open-mouthed jurors literally sitting on the edges of their chairs.

  “And now, Your Honor, I suggest that the Court take a recess until we can have an opinion of the police fingerprint expert on these fingerprints and so the police will have some opportunity to reinvestigate the murder.”

  Mason sat down.

  “In view of the situation,” Judge Strouse said, “Court will take a recess until two o’clock this afternoon.”

  21

  Stewart Bedford, Della Street, Paul Drake, and Mason sat in Mason’s office.

  Bedford rubbed his hands over his eyes. “Those damn newspaper photographers,” he said. “They’ve exploded so many flashbulbs in my face I’m completely blinded.”

  “You’ll get over it in an hour or so,” Mason told him. “But you’d better let Paul Drake drive you home.”

  “He won’t need to,” Bedford said. “My wife is on her way up here. Tell me, Mason, how the devil did you know what had happened?”

  “I had a few leads to work on,” Mason said. “Your story about the hit-and-run accident was of course something you thought up. Therefore, the blackmailers couldn’t have anticipated that. But the blackmailers did know that you were at The Staylonger Motel because of blackmail which had been levied because of your wife. In order to get a perfect case against you, they wanted to bring your wife into it. Therefore, Morrison Brems, apparently as the thoroughly respectable manager of the motel, stated that he had seen a prowler emerging from unit twelve.

  “When you and Grace Compton went out for lunch, Brems realized this was the logical time to drug the whisky, then kill Denham with your gun, loot the lock box which had been held in joint tenancy, and blame the crime on you with the motivation being your desire to stop a continuing blackmail of you and your wife.

  “For that reason, Brems wanted to direct suspicion to your wife. Elsa Griffin hadn’t fooled him any when she registered under an assumed name and juggled the figures of her license number. So Brems invented this mysterious prowler whom he said he had seen coming out of unit twelve. He gave an absolutely perfect and very detailed description of your wife, one that was so complete that almost anyone who knew her should have recognized her.”

  “But, look here, Mason, I picked that motel.”

  Mason grinned. “You thought you did. When you check back on the circumstances, you’ll realize that at a certain point the blonde told you the coast was clear and to pick any motel. The first one you passed after that was a shabby, second-rate motel. You didn’t want that and the blackmailers knew you wouldn’t.

  “The next one was The Staylonger and you picked that. If you hadn’t, the blonde would have steered you in there anyway. You picked it the same way the man from the audience picks out a card from the deck handed him by the stage magician.”

  “But what about those fingerprints? How did Elsa Griffin get so badly fooled?”

  “Elsa,” Mason said, “was the first one to swallow the story of Morrison Brems. She fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. As soon as she heard the description of that woman, she became absolutely convinced that your wife had been down there at the motel. She felt certain that, if that had been the case, your wife must have been the one who killed Binney Denham. She wasn’t going to say anything unless it appeared your safety was jeopardized.

  “I sent her back down to unit twelve in order to get latent fingerprints. She was down there for hours. She had plenty of time not only to get the latent fingerprints, but to compare them as she took them. That is, she compared them with her own prints and when she did she found, to her chagrin, that she hadn’t been able to lift a single fingerprint which hadn’t been made by her. Yet she was absolutely certain in her own mind that your wife had been down there at the cabin. What she did was thoroughly logical under the circumstances. She was completely loyal to you. She had no loyalty and little affection for your wife. In spite of your instructions she had preserved those fingerprints which had been lifted from the back of the cocktail tray, so after she left the motel she drove to her apartment, got those prints, put numbers on the cards that fitted them in with the prints she was surrendering, and turned the whole batch in to me.

  “She knew absolutely then that by the time her fingerprints had been eliminated there would be four prints of your wife left. She didn’t intend to do anything about it unless the situation got desperate. Then she intended to use those prints to save you from being convicted.

  “I will admit that there was a period when I myself was pretty much concerned about it. Elsa, of course, thought that your wife had worn gloves while she was in the cabin and so hadn’t left any fingerprints. I thought that your wife was the one who had been in the cabin until I became fully convinced that she hadn’t been.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “Then,” Mason said, “it was very simple. I had fingerprints lifted from Grace Compton’s apartment. I placed four of the best of those in my safe. I put the same numbers on the cards that Elsa had put on her cards.”

  Paul Drake shook his head. “You pulled a fast one there, Perry. They can sure get you for that.”

  “Get me for what?” Mason asked.

  “Substituting evidence.”

  “I didn’t substitute any evidence.”

  “There’s a law on that,” Drake said.

  “Sure there is,” Mason said, “but I didn’t substitute any evidence. I told Della Street to get me fourteen, sixteen, twelve, and nine from the safe. That’s what she did. Of course, I can’t help it if there were two sets of cards with numbers on them, and if Della got the wrong set. That wasn’t a substitution. Of course, if Elsa Griffin had asked me if those were the prints she had given me, then I would have had to acknowledge that they weren’t, or else have been guilty of deceiving the witness and concealing evidence, but she didn’t ask me that question. Neither did she really compare the prints. Since she knew these prints she had given me belonged to Mrs. Bedford she simply pretended to make a comparison, then she grabbed the prints and made for the door, where she had arranged to have Sergeant Holcomb waiting. Under the circumstances, I wasn’t required to volunteer any information.”

  “But how the devil did you know?” Bedford asked.

  Mason said, “It was quite simple. I knew that your wife hadn’t left any fingerprints in the cabin because I knew she hadn’t been there. Since the description given by Morrison Brems was so completely realistic down to the last detail and fitted your wife so exactly, I knew that Morrison Brems was lying. We all knew that Binney Denham had some hidden accomplice in the background. That is, we felt he did. After Grace Compton had been beaten up because she had talked with me, I knew there must be another accomplice. Who then could that accomplice be?

  “The most logical person was Morrison Brems. Binney Denham wanted to pull his blackmailing stunts at a friendly motel where he was in partnership with the manager. You’ll probably find that this motel was one of their big sources of income. Morrison Brems ran that motel. When people whose manner looked a little bit surreptitious registered there, Morrison Brems made it a point to check their baggage and their registration and find out who they were. Then the information was relayed to Binney Denham and that’s where a lot of Denham’s blackmail material came from.

  “They made the mistake of trying to gild the lily. They were so anxious to see that your wife was brought into it that they described her as having been down there. The police hadn’t connected up the description, but Brems certainly intended to see that they did before the case was over. Elsa Griffin connected it up as soon as she heard it, and kept pestering you to get after me to find the woman who had been down there. When I didn’t move fast enough to suit her, she decided to bring in the fingerprints.