“Yes, sir.”

  “All right. What was it?”

  “It was a case involving the shooting of a Negro. I have forgotten his name. It occurred about—it was around two years ago.”

  “All right. We’ll consider for the sake of the argument that that comes within the province of my question. Now, what other ones?”

  “Well, I—you say within two years?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t remember any others within two years.”

  “Within four years?”

  The doctor said, “I think there was one other—I can’t remember.”

  “So when you say that you have seen dozens of them, that is somewhat of an exaggeration?”

  “Well, perhaps it may have been. I don’t know.”

  “But a wound of that nature is rather unusual?”

  “Well, naturally it’s distinctive.”

  “And it can be caused by a glancing bullet?”

  “Yes. If you want it that way.”

  “It’s not the way I want it, Doctor. I’m simply trying to find out the cause of this peculiar condition.”

  “It could be caused by a glancing bullet, but I don’t see what difference that makes.”

  “It makes this difference,” Mason said. “In one instance the fatal wound would indicate a person must have deliberately aimed at the decedent, whereas in the other instance the aim might just as deliberately have been at some other mark; but owing to a fortuitous circumstance, such as the glancing of a bullet, the bullet aimed in a different direction, still penetrated the body of the decedent.”

  “I’m not going to argue that with you,” the doctor said.

  Hamilton Burger said with a frosty smile, “Thank you, Doctor. I think that when counsel comes to argue that theory to the jury, he will find some very peculiar legal stumbling blocks which will prevent him from cheating justice with any such …”

  “That will do,” Judge Maxwell snapped. “The jurors will disregard any interchange of personalities between counsel. Are there any further questions of this witness?”

  “No questions,” Hamilton Burger said.

  “I have no further questions, Your Honor,” Mason said.

  “Very well. The witness will be excused and at this time the Court will take a ten-minute recess during which the jurors are admonished not to discuss the case among themselves, permit it to be discussed in their presence, or to form or express any opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the accused.”

  Chapter 20

  Detaching themselves from the crowd of spectators, Mason, Della Street, and Paul Drake went into a whispered huddle over their cigarettes in the crowded hallway.

  Drake said, “Perry, you’ve always been the one to take the lead, the one to give me advice, and the one to be right. Now I’m going to reverse the role. I’m going to give you advice. This is the time to bail out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. We’re stuck. You’re defending a guilty client, and the minute her guilt is ascertained you’re left wide open to that suit by Ellen Cushing. Right now I think we can make some kind of a settlement and get out from under.”

  “You can’t get out from under when you’re representing a client,” Mason said.

  “Perry, she’s guilty as hell.”

  “I still don’t think she is.”

  “How do you account for that bullet having been found in the man’s spinal cord?”

  Mason drew thoughtfully on his cigarette. “I don’t account for it, Paul—yet.”

  “And you never will,” Drake said. “You know just as well as I do, Perry Mason, the way that composite photograph showed up, there is absolutely no chance on earth of faking the thing. That bullet was fired from that revolver.”

  Mason nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, it was fired from the revolver, all right.”

  Drake said, “All right. You’re doing a swell job of cross-examining those witnesses. It looks right now as though you’re holding your own. But after a while people will quit thinking about the courtroom gymnastics and get down to brass tacks. Here was the woman lying there asleep, according to her story, with the gun on the dresser. The telephone rings and her husband says he’s in the bow of the boat. Now obviously he couldn’t have been in the bow of the boat and still have talked to her over that telephone. So that’s a lie right there.”

  “Perhaps a lie on the part of the husband.”

  “All right. A lie on the part of the husband,” Drake said. “But try to sell that to the jury. It was the wife who saw that telephone up in the bow when Parker Benton was showing them around. She immediately decided that she could use that telephone in her business. She had her murder planned, all carefully arranged, and all she wanted was an opportunity to put it into effect.”

  Mason said impatiently, “Even if she is guilty, I can’t quit.”

  “Perhaps you can’t quit, but you can get out from under. The D.A. may be willing to let you plead to second-degree murder. Then we can settle with Ellen Cushing. You go on past this point and you’ll be in a fight with everyone concerned. You won’t be able to cop a plea. Ellen Cushing will go ahead with her suit for damages and we’ll both be stuck.”

  Mason said nothing but smoked in silent concentration.

  Drake went on, “According to her own story, she saw her husband, apparently struggling with someone. He fell overboard and she heard the sound of a shot. She looked down in the water, recognized him. He was moving. He called her name, then he was swept back by the current under the overhang of the ship.

  “Now, you know just as well as I do, Perry, that with a bullet smashing into the spinal cord between the first and second cervical vertebrae, there’d be an instant paralysis. The man never moved from the minute that bullet hit him.”

  Della Street said, “Look, Paul, couldn’t some murderer have been waiting in the water, some murderer who was a good swimmer?”

  Drake was grinning now. “All right, Della. What gun did the murderer use in shooting him?”

  “Why … Let me see …”

  Drake grinned. “Let you see is right! The murderer must have used the gun that was in the hand of the defendant!”

  Mason scowled thoughtfully.

  “The unfortunate part of that theory from our standpoint,” Drake said, “is that Marion Shelby was the only one who had the gun.”

  “After a while she gave it to Parker Benton and then Parker Benton gave it to the officers,” Della Street interpolated.

  “That was long after the murder,” Drake said.

  Della Street met Drake’s eyes. “How do you know?” she asked.

  Mason pinched out his cigarette, said, “Wait a minute, Della. I think you’ve got something there!”

  Drake said sarcastically, “Go ahead and be a sap! You mean Shelby was hiding under the bow and …”

  “Or under the stern,” Mason said. “There’s an overhang there.”

  “Nuts!” Drake exclaimed.

  “Court!” a bailiff shouted.

  Instantly spectators began crowding through the doors in a milling stream of humanity.

  “Court … Jury … Counsel!” the bailiff shouted.

  Mason whirled and walked rapidly toward the door of the courtroom. Drake, almost running to keep up, said, “Perry, don’t be foolish. There isn’t any theory you can take in front of a jury. Let’s bail out while the bailing is good.”

  “I’ll talk it over with you tonight.”

  “Tonight will be too late. They’re going to put Ellen Cushing on the stand. If you antagonize her, she never will settle. For the love of Mike, Perry, handle her with gloves.”

  Mason pushed his way through the door of the courtroom, walked rapidly down the aisle, and took his place at the counsel table just as Judge Maxwell entered the courtroom, waited for silence, and then said, “The jury are all present, gentlemen. The defendant is in court. Mr. District Attorney, call your next witness.”

  “Ellen Bedson Cushing,” the district attorney said, “who is now Ellen Cushing Lacey.”

  Ellen Cushing Lacey, chin up, eyes sparkling in anticipation of the battle of wits which was to come, took the witness stand. She had evidently spent considerable time in a beauty parlor and chosen her wearing apparel with great care. Even Mason was forced to admit to himself that she was a well proportioned, vivacious, fully matured woman who knew her way around and who was going to make a devastating impression on that jury.

  She held up her right hand and was sworn. She seated herself in the chair on the witness stand, crossed her legs, made the conventional gesture of pulling her skirt down over her knees, fidgeted slightly as though to get herself established in a comfortable position, then looked at the district attorney and smiled.

  The district attorney hurried through the preliminary questions, then began to bring out the relationship, the fact that Scott Shelby had an office in the same building, that he had first taken notice of the witness some six months earlier, that he had gradually taken more and more notice, that he had begun to throw little things her way, opportunities to make commissions, business tips, and then finally had come the matter of the oil lease.

  “You bought that oil lease?” the district attorney asked.

  She turned and faced the jury, said, “Frankly, I did.”

  “Why?”

  She said, “I’m going to tell you the truth. I knew that there was a sale pending. I felt absolutely certain that the lease hadn’t been taken into consideration by the purchaser and I thought there would be an opportunity to get a very good cash settlement.”

  “Did you tell Mr. Shelby that?”

  “I did not.”

  “Why?”

  She said, “I knew Mr. Shelby was a married man and I knew he was taking an interest in me. I knew there wasn’t anything platonic about that interest, and I knew he was using the little things he was throwing my way as bait for a proposition that would be made afterwards. I didn’t feel that I owed Mr. Shelby anything. He was a businessman and I was a businesswoman. I had to make my living and he had to make his. He offered me this oil lease thinking it was absolutely valueless.”

  “And you bought it?”

  “I bought it.”

  “What did you pay for it?”

  She smiled archly and said, “The consideration was purely nominal. In fact, Mr. Shelby considered it as so much wastepaper. He told me that if I wanted to make the back payments to reinstate it I could have it.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I drew up an assignment and a declaration of trust, had Shelby sign it, then got a man to act as my agent, and in the name of Scott Shelby make a tender of five hundred dollars to Jane Keller.”

  “You were willing to gamble five hundred dollars … ?”

  She smiled and said, “I didn’t even have to gamble five hundred dollars. I knew very well that Jane Keller couldn’t afford to take it. If she had taken the money, she would have laid herself wide open on that sale. I was playing it safe all the way along the line.”

  “Were you in love with Mr. Shelby?”

  “I certainly was not.”

  “Was Mr. Shelby in love with you?”

  “He was not. He was looking on me purely as a possible biological adventure. I was in love at the time.”

  “With your present husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go on,” the district attorney said. “Tell us what happened after that.”

  Mason shifted his eyes from the witness to study the faces of the jurors. There could be no doubt that this was making a tremendous impression, that anything she said was destined to dominate the whole case. She was attractive enough, lively enough, and sophisticated enough to appeal to these jurors. There were whimsical smiles on the faces of some of the older men on the jury, smiles that showed a sympathetic understanding and a certain admiration. Ellen Cushing Lacey wasn’t avoiding the issue. She was putting the cards fairly on the table. She was a business woman, and a playboy had been trying to get himself in solid by giving her little tips, small commissions, an oil lease which he thought was absolutely worthless. Ellen had taken it all in her stride. She had kept her head, had played the game knowing exactly what was at stake and very coolly and calmly intending to win.

  In a more brazen woman that would have been golddigging. In a less frank woman it would have been hypocrisy. In a woman who didn’t have the witness’s attractive personality it would have been selfish exploitation. But with Ellen Cushing Lacey’s trim figure, her ready smile, her alert manner, her undoubted individuality, what she had done was, in the minds of the jurors, simply outwitting a man whose interest in her had been purely selfish. The man had baited traps and she had stolen the bait without getting caught. It was a game which both parties played with their eyes open and Ellen had won.

  The jurors settled down in their chairs. Their eyes were tolerant, their lips smiling. They were going to enjoy this. Mason turned his attention back to the witness.

  The district attorney went on suavely asking questions which gave the woman on the stand an opportunity to present herself in the best possible light to the jurors. She had the gift of relating conversations so that the characteristics of the other persons were vividly portrayed. The jurors began to get a clear picture of Scott Shelby, a man who had been twice married, divorced, and then remarried, a man who was restless, a man who was quite frankly on the prowl, who regarded his domestic life as a mere convenience which entailed no perceptible obligations on his part. Because he was a man, however, he had entertained a fatuous idea of his own intellectual superiority in business, and while he undertook to play the part of the rich benefactor he was enough of a four-flusher so that the benefactions which he showered upon the recipient of his attentions were the husks of the business world, things from which all possible profit had already been squeezed, and Scott Shelby relied upon his glib-tongued salesmanship to make them seem attractive to the person to whom he gave them.

  Then Ellen Cushing Lacey went on to tell about how she had taken the oil lease, how she had discovered that obscure provision of the oil lease, and how she had injected that into the deal for the sale of the island, the interest that had been aroused, and Mr. Mason’s call to Scott Shelby asking for an interview.

  Then Scott Shelby had suddenly become a changed person. He had realized for the first time that the thing he had so generously offered to Ellen, in place of being merely an expired oil lease, was a property of great potential value. Then almost immediately he had begun to show himself in his true character. He had become greedy. He wanted to get the lease back. He had tried one excuse after another, but Ellen had been firm. At length they had settled on an understanding by which Ellen Cushing, the real estate agent, would appear in the matter only as a witness, at least at first, and negotiations looking to a compromise would be carried on by Scott Shelby, who would receive one quarter of whatever he was able to get.

  Shelby had at this point been kicking himself for letting a very profitable transaction slip through his fingers, and once his pocketbook was touched he had dropped his mask of the genial benefactor. He was a combination of the thwarted wolf and the outwitted sharpshooter.

  Hamilton Burger was shrewd enough to give the witness every opportunity to relate conversations which showed this drama unfolding before the jurors. Then he introduced in evidence the oil lease, the assignment, and the declaration of trust.

  “The purpose of these documents?” the Court asked, glancing down at Mason as though anticipating an objection.

  “The purpose is to show the motive on the part of the murderer.”

  “I don’t see exactly how this connects a motive with the defendant,” the Court said.

  Hamilton Burger said, “If the Court please, it shows the reason for this gathering aboard the yacht.”

  “I’m willing to agree with you there, Counselor, but what I am interested in is just how these documents and the testimony of this witness show a definite motive on the part of the defendant in the present case.”

  “Well, Your Honor,” Hamilton Burger said, “I think that it explains the background in the light of that which is to come out later on in testimony. It will explain the statements made by the defendant. Perhaps I should have introduced the statement of the defendant at this time. I think it is pertinent to take into consideration the atmosphere aboard that yacht, the tension, the hatreds.”

  “But why?”

  “Because it was against this background that the defendant felt that the time was right to strike. She had evidently contemplated this murder for some time and was awaiting only a favorable opportunity. It is the purpose of this testimony to show that such an opportunity existed and the extent of that opportunity, an opportunity which was, so to speak, made to order, an opportunity which the defendant could not afford to pass up and which she did not. Moreover, Your Honor, there is no objection from the defense.”

  Judge Maxwell looked over his glasses at Perry Mason. “There is no objection, Mr. Mason? Is that correct?”

  “That is correct,” Mason said. “Let’s get the facts before the jury. Let’s get the entire picture, I want the whole thing.”

  Hamilton Burger smirked. “That’s exactly what we want, Your Honor.”

  “Very well,” Judge Maxwell said crisply. “The documents will be received in evidence and marked as appropriate exhibits. Do you have many more questions of this witness, Mr. Burger? The Court notices that it’s approaching the hour of the afternoon adjournment.”

  “Just a few more questions, if the Court please, and then I will be finished.”

  “Very well, go ahead.”

  “Now you and counsel for the defense occupy adversary positions on a matter of considerable importance to you?”

  Judge Maxwell glanced down at the district attorney. “What is the object of that question?” he asked.

  “I merely want to show the bias of the witness.” 200

  “You mean that the witness is biased in favor of the defense?”

  “No, Your Honor. She might be biased against it.”