“Well, I guess I saw them when they walked by me on the lower deck …”

  “I’m not talking about the lower deck now,” Judge Romley said. “I’m talking about the boat deck.”

  “No,” she admitted after a moment’s consideration, “I can’t identify the figures I saw on the upper deck.”

  “That,” Mason said, surrendering her glasses with a bow, “is all. Thank you very much, Miss Fell.”

  Scudder hesitated for a moment, then said, “That’s all.”

  Aileen Fell adjusted her glasses, glowered at Perry Mason, and, chin in the air, marched across the railed enclosure to take her seat in the courtroom.

  “Call your next witness, Mr. Scudder,” Judge Romley said.

  “Captain Joe Hanson.”

  Captain Hanson, big-bodied, heavily-muscled, clear-eyed, took the stand and regarded Perry Mason with steady gray eyes.

  “We will stipulate, to save time,” Mason said, “that this is the captain of the ship on which Carl Newberry, or Carl Moar, as the case may be, sailed from Honolulu; that he was at all times the captain of the vessel; that he is acquainted with Carl Moar, and will identify the photograph identified as that of Carl Moar by the previous witnesses as being that of the passenger who had taken passsage on his ship under the name of Carl Newberry, and who occupied cabin three twenty-one.”

  “Very well,” Scudder said. “Now then, Captain, can you tell us the condition of the weather on the night of the sixth, at approximately the hour of nine o’clock P.M.?”

  “It was blowing a gale from the so’west,” Captain Hanson said. “The rain was coming down in torrents. Visibility was very poor.”

  “What was the position of the ship at nine o’clock on that night?” Scudder asked.

  “We were just a-beam of the Farallon Islands.”

  “And you were within three miles of those islands?”

  “Yes, within a mile and a half.”

  “What about the sea?”

  “A heavy sea was running, hitting us on the starboard quarter. The vessel was rolling rather heavily.”

  “Had you taken any precautions to keep passengers from the decks?”

  “On the windward side, yes. However, it wasn’t rolling heavily enough so passengers couldn’t go out in roped-off areas on the lee side. All doors on the weather side had been locked, and the exposed portions of the lee decks were roped off.”

  “Shortly after nine o’clock, did you have occasion to go to the cabin of the defendant?”

  “I did.”

  “Who was present at the time?”

  “The Purser, the defendant, Mrs. Moar, Mr. Perry Mason, Miss Della Street, Miss Belle Newberry, the daughter of Mrs. Moar.”

  “Now then, at that time and place,” Scudder said, “did the defendant make any statement as to when she had last seen her husband?”

  “She did.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Just a moment, your Honor,” Mason said, getting to his feet, “the question is objected to as incompetent, irreleveant and immaterial, and no proper foundation laid.”

  Judge Romley stared over his glasses at Perry Mason. “I’m not certain I understand the objection, particularly the part about no proper foundation having been laid.”

  Mason said, “May it please the Court, it is necessary for the Prosecution to prove the corpus delicti, before there can be any testimony connecting the defendant with the commission of the crime. In other words, in this case, the Prosecution must prove, first, that Carl Newberry, or Carl Moar, as the case may be, is actually dead. Secondly, the Prosecution must prove that he met his death as the result of some criminal agency. When this is done, the Prosecution can then seek to connect the defendant with the crime. But until that has been done, there can be no testimony of confessions or admissions on the part of the defendant.

  “Now, in this case, the most that the Prosecution has been able to show is that a witness heard a shot and saw two figures standing some sixty feet away. She cannot identify those figures.”

  Scudder said, “Your Honor, if I may say just one word.”

  Judge Romley nodded permission.

  “This is merely a flimsy technicality,” Scudder said. “But I will meet Counsel on his own ground. Let us suppose that no one can testify that Mrs. Moar shot and killed Carl Moar, but someone did drag a man to the rail and throw him overboard. Now, I will show by Captain Hanson that the condition of the sea was such at that time that a man couldn’t live for ten minutes, even if he were a most expert swimmer in …”

  “But no one has testified that any man was thrown overboard,” Mason said.

  “Miss Fell saw …”

  Mason smiled as the trial deputy suddenly lapsed into silence.

  Judge Romley said, “This is a most peculiar situation, Counselor.”

  Mason said affably, “Isn’t it, your Honor?” and sat down.

  “I can reach it in another way,” Scudder said desperately. “Let me ask Captain Hanson a few more questions.”

  “Very well,” Judge Romley said. “Go ahead.”

  “What happened on that ship, so far as you know, of your own knowledge, shortly after nine o’clock in the evening of the sixth?” Scudder asked.

  “The operator telephoned the bridge that a man was overboard. I immediately took necessary steps to do everything in my power to find this man, and, if possible, rescue him. I swung the ship in a sharp turn back onto the course which we had been following. I threw over light flares and life buoys with light flares attached. I continued to search the water for more than an hour and a half, and then proceeded into San Francisco.”

  “Did you take steps to ascertain the identity of any person who might have been missing from the ship?”

  Captain Hanson scratched his head and said, “Well, we did and we didn’t.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, we started to call the roll,” Captain Hanson said. “We ordered all the passengers to their staterooms. Then this Miss Fell came to me and told me that it was …”

  “Never mind what some one told you, Captain,” Judge Romley interrupted, “just state what you did.”

  “Well,” Captain Hanson said, “before we’d checked all of the staterooms, we started checking on Mr. Newberry, or Moar, I suppose his real name is. We couldn’t find him, and we did find evidence that his wife …”

  “Never mind any of that evidence now,” Judge Romley interrupted. “What we are trying to do now is to prove the corpus delicti.”

  “Well,” the captain remarked patiently, “I don’t know what that is; all I know is what I did.”

  “Then you never did check all of the staterooms and all of the passengers against the passenger list?”

  “Not then,” Captain Hanson admitted.

  Scudder, desperately worried, said, “Your Honor, I have not concluded. I appreciate the position in which the Prosecution finds itself. It’s rather a unique position. I may say, of course, that as a Prosecutor, I have no sympathy with a criminal who seeks to hide behind a technicality …”

  “That will do,” Judge Romley interrupted. “You will confine your remarks to the proper subjects, Counselor. You know such remarks are improper.”

  “I beg the Court’s pardon,” Scudder said. “My feelings got the better of me. May I ask, if the Court please, that we have an adjournment until three o’clock this afternoon? There’s one more witness I hope to be able to produce at that time.”

  Judge Romley nodded. “The request is rather unusual, but the circumstances are equally unusual. The Court will take a recess until three o’clock this afternoon,” he said.

  Chapter 15

  Drake pushed his way through the spectators, to reach Mason’s side. “Okay, Perry,” he said, “I think we have something.”

  “On Della?” Mason asked.

  Drake nodded.

  Mason bent over the chair in which Mrs. Moar was sitting. “That,” he told her in a whisper, “just about blows up their case. Judge Romley doesn’t believe in binding defendants over when it will be impossible to obtain a conviction in the Superior Court. He’ll give you just as fair a hearing here as though you were on trial before a jury, and Aileen Fell’s testimony isn’t going to carry very much weight. All she saw was two figures struggling on the deck, and she saw them rather indistinctly.”

  Mrs. Moar squeezed his hand gratefully.

  “I have to run out on an important matter,” Mason said. “I’ll see you at three o’clock this afternoon.” He turned to Drake and said, “Okay, Paul, let’s go.”

  Belle Newberry grabbed his hand as Mason started to leave the courtroom. “You darling!” she exclaimed.

  Mason smiled down at her, patted her shoulder, and said, “You’ll have a chance to visit with your mother for a few minutes before the matron takes her back. I’ll see you later, Belle.”

  Drake had a car waiting in front of the courthouse.

  “All right,” Mason said eagerly, “what have you found, Paul?”

  Drake said, “I don’t know, Perry. I don’t want to be the one to tell you. I’d rather you’d see for yourself.”

  “What the devil are you getting at?” Mason asked.

  Drake shook his head and said, “Get in, Perry. It won’t be long.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Over in Berkeley.”

  “Well then, let’s get started,” Mason snapped.

  The car dashed across Market Street and turned to the left, to speed down the boulevard leading to the bridge which crossed the bay.

  “Look here,” Mason said, “there are only three of us. If we’re going to have trouble with Eves—”

  “We’re not going to have any trouble with Eves,” Drake said. “He didn’t have anything to do with Della’s disappearance.”

  “How do you know?” Mason asked.

  “I’ll tell you more about it in a few minutes,” Drake said. “In the meantime, I think I know what was the trouble with Eves.”

  “Go ahead and spill it,” Mason said. “Or do you want to be mysterious about that, too.”

  “Now, take it easy, Perry,” the detective cautioned. “I’m just trying to be fair all around. You’ll understand my position when—”

  “Forget it,” the lawyer interrupted savagely. “Tell me what you can tell me and quit beating around the bush.”

  “Well, about Eves,” Drake said. “I think Eves was planning some sort of a big bunco game, and this murder knocked him out of it.”

  “Go ahead,” Mason told him impatiently.

  “Well, when I looked up Roger P. Cartman in Honolulu,” Drake said, “I found he’d been injured in an automobile accident, all right, and had suffered a broken neck. But that was three months ago. He was a wealthy visitor from the Mainland who was caught in a skidding car on the Pali, and—”

  Mason interrupted, to say to the driver, “For God’s sake, get some speed out of this bus. I’ll pay the fines.”

  The driver lurched the car into speed. Drake glanced apprehensively through the rearview mirror and said, “A car tagging along behind, Perry. It may be a prowl car.”

  “I don’t care if it is,” Mason said irritably. “I said I’ll pay the fines. You were talking about Eves and Cartman. What about him?”

  “Well,” Drake said, “Cartman had a lot of money. Doctors put a brace on him, which held his head absolutely rigid and he came over to the Mainland—”

  “I know that already,” Mason interrupted.

  “No, you don’t,” Drake said, “because Cartman came over to the Mainland six weeks ago.”

  “He did what!” Mason asked, staring at the detective.

  “Came over to the Mainland six weeks ago, and he came over on a clipper plane.”

  “Then why did he go back to Honolulu?” Mason asked.

  “He swears he didn’t,” Drake said.

  “You’ve talked with him?”

  “My operative located him in a private sanitarium. He says he’s been in the sanitarium ever since he arrived, and, what’s more, the nurses and doctors all swear he has.”

  “Then this wasn’t the real Cartman that Evelyn Whiting brought over?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what was the idea?” Mason asked.

  “Don’t you see,” Drake said, “it was some sort of a bunco game. Put one of those harnesses around a man’s head, put on a large pair of smoked goggles, and it’s just about the same as a mask. Cartman has money. He can’t move around, and he doesn’t care about publicity, so he’s been careful to keep his whereabouts from becoming generally known. His friends, however, his bankers and associates, knew all about his accident and knew he had to wear his head in a brace.

  “Eves wasn’t going to the Islands on his honeymoon. He sent Evelyn Whiting over there to pick up this ringer. She was to build up his identity on the ship, and also her identity as his nurse. Then, after they’d arrived on the Mainland, she and Eves were going to put through some major swindle. But the murder on the ship attracted too much attention, and they had decided to lie low until it blew over. Then, as an unfortunate coincidence, it happened that she knew Carl Moar, and he ran into her on deck and told her his troubles. Nothing could have upset her more. It was exactly what she didn’t want. Then when you discovered that she was a witness, traced her to that place of concealment and served that subpoena on her, she knew the jig was up.”

  “Then why didn’t she obey the subpoena and be in court this morning?” Mason asked. “She can be fined for contempt of court—”

  “Because the swindle has gone so far they didn’t dare show up. Eves may have intended to let her testify in your behalf when he was talking with you yesterday. But after he studied the situation a bit, he realized how suicidal that would be, because it would be brought out in the trial that Evelyn Whiting had been escorting Roger P. Cartman; that Cartman had had his neck broken over on the Islands. The newspapers would mention it. Someone would see it who knew Roger P. Cartman was in a private sanitarium near Glendale. Then the fat would be in the fire. The police would investigate and quietly move in.”

  Mason narrowed his eyes, bringing into view a network of fine wrinkles at the corners, as he stared into space. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I see the sketch now. But I want Evelyn Whiting’s testimony. It’s the one thing I need to bust this case wide open.”

  “Well,” Drake said, “those are the facts. You can make a showing to the Court if you want to.”

  “I’d a lot rather locate Evelyn Whiting and force her to testify,” Mason said.

  “How did you know that the Fell woman would blow up?”

  “I’d noticed her in the dining room,” Mason said. “Whenever she wore an evening dress she left off her glasses. I’d noticed her rather particularly, because it seemed to me such an absurd gesture for a woman who had that wall of reserve thrown up around her, and who seemed to be so completely immune to emotion to sacrifice the comfort of her vision to make herself more attractive. I noticed from the way she walked that she seemed rather careful of putting her feet down, and had an idea she depended pretty strongly on her glasses. But she’s one of those opinionated persons who will cheerfully commit perjury rather than admit they’re wrong. And I knew that unless I had a photograph to show her and could definitely prove her custom of not wearing glasses with a dinner gown, she’d swear she had her glasses on that night.”

  “Just how much do you suppose she actually did see?”

  “She had a blurred conception of figures struggling. She heard shots but she didn’t see any gun, and she doesn’t know what gun fired the shots,” Mason said. “She’s opinionated, obstinate, and hates to lose an argument. She didn’t take the stand as a witness, but as an adversary. She was just dying to give me a ‘piece of her mind,’ and particularly anxious to show me that no smart lawyer was going to rattle her. We run up against witnesses like that every so often, both men and women, people who will do anything rather than admit the possibility they may have been mistaken. … Come on, Paul, tell me where we’re going. Have you found Della, or someone who knows where she is, or what?”

  “I’d prefer not to talk about it right now, Perry.”

  “She isn’t hurt?”

  “No, she’s all right.”

  “If she isn’t hurt physically,” Mason said, “something’s wrong with her mentally, Paul.”

  Drake remained silent.

  “Isn’t that true, Paul?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Mason said irritably, “Well, go ahead and be mysterious, then.”

  The lawyer turned from the detective to the driver.

  “Won’t this car make any better speed than this?”

  “I’m dong fifty right now, Mr. Mason.”

  “All right,” Mason told him, “do sixty.”

  Drake flashed a glance back through the window and said, “That sure is a prowl car, Perry. They’re dishing out jail sentences for doing sixty.”

  “I’ll take the responsibility,” Mason told the driver. “Go ahead and step on it.”

  They dashed through Berkeley, came to the outskirts, and the driver swung the car sharply to the left. He braked the car to a stop in front of a long line of cabins in an auto camp. A man jumped to the runningboard. “Okay?” Drake asked.

  “Okay,” the man said.

  “You show us the way,” Drake said.

  “Straight down here. The second cabin on the left.”

  The driver moved the car forward, then brought it to a stop in front of the second cabin.

  Drake said, “All right, Perry, she’s in that cabin.”

  Mason jerked the door open, pushed past the operative, twisted the knob of the cabin door, and banged it open.

  Della Street was seated in a wicker rocking chair, reading a magazine. She looked up with apprehensive eyes, then half-stifled a scream. “Chief!”

  Without a word, he crossed the room and opened his arms to her.

  “Chief,” she said, snuggling against him. “Oh, Chief! … Why did you have to do it?”

  “Do what?” Mason asked.

  “Hunt me out. … Now I’ll have to tell you. … I didn’t want to.”