“What happened after that?”

  “A car turned into the driveway. Mr Ferrell said, ‘Here comes my party now. If you’ll wait out in the kitchen, my dear … I hope you won’t be too uncomfortable. It won’t be long and then I’ll take you to the city and see that you have a place to stay and a job.’”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I started for the kitchen. Mr Ferrell peeked out of the window to look at the car, and then all of a sudden he came running out to the kitchen, his face white as a sheet.”

  “And then what?”

  “He said, ‘My heavens, it’s my wife! I didn’t know she knew anything about this place. Get out! Get out through the hack door. Get out there into the fields. Get out where she can’t find you. For God’s sake, hurry!’”

  “And what happened?”

  She said, “I didn’t know what to do. He unlocked the back door, opened it and almost pushed me out into the night.”

  “So what did you do?”

  She said, “I started to run, keeping the house between me and the automobile. It was dark, and I stumbled and fell over things, and then quit that blind panic of running, and started to walk. Then I suddenly remembered the little overnight bag that I always carry with me. I’d left it in Mr Ferrell’s automobile. I was afraid that his wife might search the automobile and find my bag.”

  “And you were afraid that would make trouble for Mr Ferrell?” Mason asked.

  “I was afraid it would make trouble for me! I had all of my clothes and things in there. I’ve practised packing so I can really carry a lot of things in a small space.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “So while she was in the house I simply doubled back around her car, went over to Mr Ferrell’s car, quietly opened the door and took out my little overnight bag. It was, of course, on top of everything – and believe me there was a lot of stuff piled in that automobile, a lot of camping stuff, it looked like – a sleeping bag, and duffle bags, and things like that.”

  “All right. You took out the overnight bag. Then what did you do?”

  “Then,” she said, “I started putting distance between me and that house. It wasn’t any part of my business to get mixed up in any domestic discord and I certainly didn’t intend to be named as a co-respondent in anyone’s divorce suit.”

  “Which direction did you go?”

  She gave a wry little smile and said, “I don’t even know that, myself. I started out to make a detour and circle back to the road. I wandered along for a ways and then blundered into a barbed wire fence. I managed to crawl under that fence and then the next thing I knew, I was in a lot of bushes, willow bushes, I guess they were. I wandered around and proceeded to get myself good and lost.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then,” she said, “I got in a panic. I guess I ran a little, I don’t know. I got all dishevelled and finally came to my senses and took stock of the situation. I decided that I’d wait until some car came along the highway. I thought I could hear that.”

  “Could you? Did you?”

  “Yes, I waited five minutes or so then I heard a car along the highway. It wasn’t anywhere near where I thought the highway should have been. I thought the highway was ahead of me, but this car was off to the left and behind me. I could tell from the sound the car was making that it was speeding along a highway, so I started to work my way over in that direction.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “By that time I realized I had made a little fool of myself and I took time to work my way carefully when I came to more willow bushes. It had been raining the night before and there were patches where the going was pretty soggy. I tried to avoid them and keep to the higher ground. I found that I was in sort of a stream bed and by keeping to the rounded gravel, I kept out of the mud. Every once in a while there were cars going by on the highway, so I kept my directions all right. Then I knew I was getting close to the highway and realized I must look pretty bad. So I stopped on some high ground and slipped off my skirt. I opened my overnight bag, took out a clothes brush and gave the skirt a good brushing. Then I brushed my shoes. My stockings had become pretty badly snagged. I got a fresh pair out of the bag and put them on there in the dark. Then I made up my face as best I could and put on a little lipstick and felt I’d made myself presentable.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then, working very, very cautiously so that I wouldn’t snag my stockings or get into any more brush, I went up to the highway and sat down. I had only been there a few minutes when I heard this car start up from what I thought at the time was a ranch house. I had absolutely no idea that I was so close to the house where I had left Mr Ferrell. I must have walked around in a big circle. I realize now that Mr Addison’s car actually had started from that house, but I most certainly didn’t realize it at the time.”

  “What about the shots?”

  “Honestly, when I heard those I thought it was a truck backfiring.”

  “When did you hear them?”

  “That was – oh, I don’t know, ten minutes or so before I got up to the highway.”

  “Didn’t you tell me you heard them just before you got to the highway?”

  “Well, that was just before, wasn’t it?”

  “As much as ten minutes?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Didn’t you tell me that …”

  She said desperately, “All right, I tried to protect myself as much as I could. I wanted to give myself as much of an alibi as possible. I certainly didn’t want anyone to think that I could have been anywhere around that house when the shots were fired, so I may have shaded the time a little bit.”

  “Quite a little bit?”

  “Well, perhaps.”

  “You don’t know how long Mr Addison’s car had been there at Ferrell’s house before you heard it drive out?”

  “No.”

  “And when you heard it moving along the dirt road, crossing the plank bridge and coming up the hill to the highway, you thought it was coming from an entirely different house?”

  “Mr Mason, I’ll be frank with you. I thought I was at least a mile from the place where Mr Ferrell had left me.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Mason said, “throughout this entire episode, your first and only thought was of yourself, isn’t that right?”

  She let her eyes widen slightly. “Why, of course. Who else was I supposed to think of?”

  “And this story that you have concocted for us about the passionate wolf in the Lincoln sedan was a complete fabrication?”

  “Yes.”

  “Actually, you have the licence numbers of everyone with whom you took a ride on that day? Be careful now, young lady, because we can check up on every minute of your time.”

  “Yes,” she said, “you can check those licence numbers. They’ll all remember me.”

  “How much money did you make that day?”

  “About eighty dollars.”

  “Was that an average day?”

  “I do pretty well. Most of the time I make at least that much.”

  “That’s all,” Mason said, “I have no further questions.”

  “And I have none,” Hamilton Burger said.

  Judge Keetley said, “I think, under the circumstances, the Court will take a recess until tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. In the meantime I want every phase of this young woman’s story checked, and I suggest that the district attorney’s office and the police make a further investigation for the purpose of finding out what actually happened there at the scene of the crime, and I suggest that this witness has most certainly been guilty of perjury.”

  “Yes, Your Honour,” Hamilton Burger said, very much chastened.

  “Court is adjourned,” Judge Keetley said.

  Della Street came up to grab Mason’s arm. “Oh, Chief,” she said, “you were wonderful. Simply wonderful.”

  Paul Drake’s grinning countenance said, “Nice going, Perry.”

  “It’s a nice start,” Mason admitted, “and a lucky break. Thanks to the fact I had her mother’s story as an ace in the hole, I was able to ask as my first questions ones that appeared innocent and routine, but were actually the ones she couldn’t answer. If I’d tried the other questions first I’d have had the whole courtroom, including the judge, on my neck the minute I tried to sweat the truth out of her.”

  “What do we do now?” Drake asked.

  “Now,” Mason said, “we really go to work. And to start it off, Paul, you take that list of licence numbers, have your men get in touch with the car owners, and see how many of them were being blackmailed by Eric Hansell.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Perry Mason, pacing back and forth restlessly across his office, from time to time tossed comments over his shoulder.

  Della Street, seated at her secretarial desk, doodling idly with a pencil, making assortments of various circles, kept her eyes on the point of her pencil, her mind following Mason’s utterances.

  Paul Drake, having slid around sidewise in the big leather chair, his knees dangling over one overstuffed arm, the other supporting the small of his back, from time to time interposed a comment.

  Mason said almost irritably, “The damn case presents a complete, utter impossibility.” He walked back and forth four or five more times across the office, then went on, “Look at the evidence! Someone stood outside and shot through the window at Ferrell, hit him first shot, then whirled around and emptied the gun, apparently shooting into the air. Then he took the cartridges out of the chamber of the gun and threw the gun out into the river bed. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why not?” Drake asked. “The guy was dead.”

  “How did the murderer know he was dead?”

  “He’d taken a careful bead, shot him in the head, and saw him fall down.”

  “He might have grazed him,” Mason said. “I’m telling you, Paul, it takes a darn good shot to stand down on the ground and shoot up through a window and be absolutely certain of a head shot. And then the man must have entered the house, walked up to the room, turned out the light, then gone down and driven away. Now, a man wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, if he had taken a shot at Edgar Ferrell and was then going into the house, he’d have kept the gun with him. He’d have been holding it in readiness in case Ferrell had been only wounded and was preparing to put up a fight.”

  “Well, how do you know he didn’t?”

  “Because the evidence shows that the shots were all fired in rapid succession, not in a uniform rhythm but, nevertheless, all within a space of a few seconds. That’s why the shots sounded like a truck backfiring as it came along the road.”

  Drake said, “A really good shot, a really expert shot …”

  “And that narrows it right down to my client, John Racer Addison,” Mason said.

  “Hell,” Drake muttered. Perhaps the guy’s guilty.”

  Mason said nothing, kept on pacing the floor.

  Suddenly he whirled. “We’re all making the most asinine of all fundamental errors!”

  “What’s that, Chief?” Della Street asked.

  “We’re looking at the thing from the standpoint of the Prosecution. The Prosecution reconstructed the crime and we’re falling right in with their reconstruction. Let’s go back to first principles. Let me see those photographic exhibits, Della.”

  Della Street brought out the photographic exhibits.

  “Now go over to my library on forensic medicine and criminology and get me LeMoyne Snyder’s Homicide Investigation; get Legal Medicine and Toxicology by Gonzales, Vance and Helpern; and get me Modern Criminal Investigation by Soderman and O’Connell.”

  Della Street brought the books to Mason’s desk. Mason sat down and thumbed through the pages, pausing occasionally to drum with his fingertips on his desk.

  “I thought so,” he said at length.

  “What?” Drake asked.

  “I remember their stuff on bullet holes through glass – now, then, let’s do the thing I should have done right at the start. Let’s begin at the beginning instead of the place where the police tell us to begin.”

  “Where’s that?” Drake asked.

  “That bullet,” Mason said, “how do we know that it was fired by someone who stood out by the place where the automobile tracks ended and was fired through the window, killing Ferrell?”

  “How do we know it!” Drake said. “Because the evidence shows it, that’s why. You have the bullet hole in the glass lined up with the wound in Ferrell’s head, and the line points unmistakably to a place where a man would have been standing if he’d got out of that automobile.”

  Mason said, “That’s evidence, all right, Paul. It’s the same sort of evidence that goes back to the old story of the New England pie maker who baked a lot of mince pies and a lot of other pies. She wanted to keep the pies straight so she cut the initials, TM, in the pie crust of the mince, meaning ‘’Tis Mince,’ and TM in the crust of the other pies, meaning ‘’Tain’t Mince.’”

  Drake straightened up in the chair. “What the heck are you getting at?”

  Mason, studying the pictures of the glass windowpane, said, “Humph!”

  “What is it?” Drake asked.

  “Take a look here at Soderman and O’Connell on page 217,” Mason said. “Incidentally, Paul, there’s a darn fine book. You take these three books and you can come pretty close to covering the whole field of forensic criminology. Now, here on page 217 is a diagram showing glass fractures from bullet impact, illustrating the direction of the bullet. Now, remember that the officers, having cut out the glass to preserve it in court, didn’t take any steps to mark which side was the inside and which side was the outside of the pane, and when I asked them about it I received some sarcastic comment to the effect that one side of a pane of glass was about the same as another side. That’s all very true, but one side was in and the other side was out, and that’s the significant difference.”

  “Now, look at this photograph showing the body on the floor. That was taken before the pane of glass had been cut.”

  “But you can’t see anything there, no details,” Drake said.

  “You can see details that show a pattern of little cracks. Now, compare this photograph – there you are, Paul. See, this side has to be on the inside, otherwise that curve would have been pointed the other way.”

  Drake nodded.

  “But,” Mason said, “notice these pit marks, notice this type of cleavage, then compare them with that diagram in Soderman and O’Connell’s book. Paul, just as sure as you’re born, that bullet was fired from the inside of the room. It went through the glass and ended up where the automobile was standing on the ground below.”

  Drake came up out of his chair with a bound. “Let me see those pictures, Perry.”

  Drake and Della Street gathered around Mason, looking over his shoulder, studying the pictures.

  Drake gave a long, low whistle.

  Della Street said, “But, Chief, it’s all there in black and white. This has to be the inside of the window. You’ve got it!”

  “All right,” Mason said, “what have I got?”

  Drake and Della Street exchanged glances.

  Mason pushed back his chair, began walking slowly back and forth across the office floor. Finally he paused, turned to the other two and said, “All right, we’ve established that the bullet which went through that glass was fired from the inside of the room. If we assume that bullet was fired by Ferrell, we find ourselves again faced with an impossible situation.”

  “I don’t see why,” Drake said. “Ferrell was in that room. He looked out and saw someone standing by the automobile and that person was someone he was deathly afraid of. He was willing to shoot to kill.”

  Mason nodded glumly, said, “I follow you in all that, Paul, but then what? The claim of the Prosecution is that Ferrell was standing there in that lighted room, with the gasoline lantern back of him, furnishing plenty of illumination for the murderer to pull the trigger. The murderer could see in, but Ferrell couldn’t see out.

  “Now, then, under our reconstruction of the case, we are forced to face an entirely different set of facts. If we follow that theory to its logical conclusion, the light must have been turned off, not by the murderer, but by Edgar Ferrell himself. He couldn’t have seen well enough to shoot out of the room unless the light had been off.”

  “Okay,” Drake said, “it all fits in, Perry. Ferrell turned the light off.”

  “Then what happened?” Mason said.

  “Ferrell saw the man outside and fired a shot.”

  “And then,” Mason said glumly, “the man must have got inside and killed Ferrell with Ferrell’s gun, then four other shots must have been fired within a space of a few seconds. Now, how do you figure that one out?”

  Drake scratched the hair on his temples, glanced sheepishly at Della Street and said, “I don’t.”

  Mason said, “Well, there has to be an answer, and I’ve got to have it by the time court opens tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Mason, Della Street, and Paul Drake pushed their way through the crowd which overflowed Judge Keetley’s courtroom and milled about the corridor of the hall of justice.

  Newspaper reporters crowded around them, begging for a statement. Mason merely grinned, said, “Wait until court opens, boys.”

  One of the newsmen, pushing his way through to Mason’s side, said in a low voice, “Here’s a tip for you, Counsellor. Hamilton Burger is going to ask for a continuance.”

  “Thanks,” Mason said.

  They pushed on through the crowd. Drake said in a low voice to Mason, “Will you give them a continuance, Perry?”

  “I can’t, Paul,” Mason said. “I’ve got a bear by the tail. I don’t dare to let go. I don’t dare to slack up, and somehow, some way, I’ve got to keep myself in such a position that the audience thinks I’m dragging the bear.”