She blinked back tears. “Damn you,” she said.

  “I’m simply pointing things out to you,” Mason said.

  “You don’t have to drag my family into it.”

  “You’d be the one who was dragging your family into it,” the lawyer told her. “You and Doug Hepner were working a racket. I don’t know how much of it was handled for the reward, how much of it was blackmail, but you had a system of signals, When Doug wanted someone blackmailed he’d make himself agreeable until he had them hooked for a week-end trip somewhere. Then he’d telephone you and give you the name and address. You’d show up and be Hepner’s wife, sort of a complicated badger game. You’d threaten to name the woman as a correspondent and …”

  “No, no,” she said, “it was nothing like that. I didn’t sink that low.”

  “All right,” Mason told her, “what was it?”

  She struck a match and lit a cigarette with trembling hands. “I got teamed up with Doug when I went to Europe as a secretary for one of the Governmental agencies. I served a trick over there and came back. I thought I was smart. I smuggled in a little jewelry—not too much, just what I could afford. It got past the Customs all right but it didn’t get past Hepner.”

  “How did he know about it?” Mason asked.

  “I suppose I talked too much. I talked to another girl who had been with me over there. She was my closest friend, but she fell head over heels in love with Hepner on the boat, and babbled everything she knew.

  “Well, one thing led to another and I became Doug’s partner.”

  “Also his mistress?” Mason asked.

  “What do you think?”

  “Go ahead,” Mason said.

  “Doug was clever, unbelievably clever. He had a magnetic personality and he could insinuate his way into anyone’s good graces. We worked a great racket. He’d travel back and forth to Europe. He’d get enough information lined up to keep going for quite a while in between trips.”

  “On smuggling?” Mason asked.

  “The smuggling was the small end of it,” she said. “The blackmail was the big end. Doug would get a line on gems that had been smuggled. He’d turn in enough to the Customs for his twenty-percent take to give himself a standing and an apparent occupation. The rest of the time it was blackmail.”

  “Who did the blackmail?”

  “I did.”

  “Goon.”

  “I had an apartment in Salt Lake. Over the telephone I’d pose as Doug’s mother. When he had someone ready to be picked he’d get them out on a week-end trip. Obviously I had to know just as soon as they got started. Well, Doug would telephone me, but he did it in such a way that he always put the girl on a spot. He’d call me as his mother. He’d introduce the girl over the telephone and would say something out of a clear sky that indicated he was intending to marry the girl.

  “You know how that would make a girl feel. She was starting out on a week-end trip and then it would appear that the guy’s intentions were honorable and he was thinking of marrying her … well, that was my cue. While Doug and the girl were away I’d take the first plane and get into the girl’s apartment. I’d really go through it and, believe me, I know how to search. If there was anything in the apartment I found it. If it was very valuable I appropriated it. The girl couldn’t afford to make a complaint, but if it was run-of-the-mine stuff then I’d show up later on as a Customs agent. I’d state that I was very sorry but that we had traced the gems and that it was going to be necessary to swear out a warrant for arrest and things of that sort.

  “Quite naturally the girl would turn to Doug for advice and he’d act as intermediary and finally suggest that I could be bought off. Well, you know what that meant. There wasn’t any end to it.”

  “But what about Eleanor?” Mason asked. “Had she or her family been smuggling?”

  “If they had, I didn’t find anything when I searched their apartment.”

  “I don’t get it. Doug seems to have been in love with Eleanor and was planning to marry her. And he has you search her apartment?”

  “You don’t get the sketch. Doug wasn’t really in love with Eleanor and never had any intention of marrying her. But he was working on something big, something that was really terrific. He was on the trail of a regular professional smuggling ring. And he needed her help. He was just stringing her along.”

  “Did he know who was in it?”

  “Certainly we knew who was in it.”

  “Who?”

  “Suzanne Granger.”

  “Go on,” Mason said. “Tell me the rest of it.”

  “Well, Doug needed somebody that he could use, someone who had a definite background. It was a deal that he couldn’t use me on, or at least he said he couldn’t.”

  “You doubted that?”

  She said, “There had been many women in Doug Hepner’s life. Eleanor was just another leaf on the tree, and when the leaves begin to fall you don’t count each individual leaf. You simply rake them up in a pile and cart them away or burn them.”

  “You’re bitter,” Mason said.

  “Of course I’m bitter.”

  “At Eleanor?”

  “It wasn’t her fault. Doug started playing her in the routine way, or at least that’s what he made me think. He started out with her on a week end when her whole family was to be away, telephoned from Indio and…”

  “And you went to search their place?”

  “Yes. I had to watch my chance. I got in and searched the whole place. I drew a blank. I went back to Salt Lake. I didn’t hear from Doug for a week. Then he got in touch with me. He said he had been working on a big deal.

  “I don’t think he’d really fallen for Eleanor. He was on something big and he was playing square on the financial end. He was going to give me my cut. At least I think he was.”

  “Go on,” Mason said.

  “Well, Doug said he could use Eleanor, that she could pose as a jealous neurotic. He thought that he could get her into the apartment next to Suzanne Granger.”

  “And then?”

  “Then Doug made his usual play for Suzanne. He got her to go to Las Vegas with him over a week end. He telephoned me from Barstow. I was on a plane within an hour of the time he telephoned. I went through that girl’s apartment and, believe me, I went through it. I thought, of course, she might be using her tubes of paint as a means of smuggling.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Not a thing.”

  Mason said, “It came out in testimony today that Ethel Belan saw Eleanor with a whole bunch of gems—at least that’s what she claimed.”

  She said, “I’m going to tell you something, Mr. Mason. No one else knows this. On the morning of the sixteenth Doug telephoned me. He was excited. He said, ‘They almost got me last night, but I’ve got the thing licked. It was a different setup from what I thought it was and it was so clever it had me fooled for a while. You’d never have guessed their hiding place. But I’ve got the stones now and if I can ever get out of here without being killed we’re going to be sitting pretty. This is a professional smuggling ring and your cut on this is going to run into big money.’”

  “He was excited?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he was evidently in the apartment house?”

  “He must have been right in Suzanne Granger’s apartment.”

  “And when was this?”

  “About ten o’clock in the morning of the sixteenth.”

  “But you’d searched Suzanne Granger’s apartment.”

  “I’d searched it Saturday and, believe me, I’d made a good job.”

  “How did you get in?”

  She said, “I’ve developed a technique for that.”

  “And what about this apartment you’re in now?”

  “This is my hideout here. I posed as a woman who was nursing a sick relative who wasn’t expected to live. I had a key to Doug’s apartment and he had a key to mine. Of course I didn’t dare use hotels.”

  “His apartment was searched,” Mason said hastily.

  “That’s what bothers me—and it frightens me.”

  “You didn’t search it?”

  “Heavens no. If he’d had the gems he’d have come to my apartment with them the first thing. I waited here for him all day and that night. When I finally found out his apartment had been searched I dashed back to Salt Lake, packed up everything in the apartment and waited to see if he’d call me there.

  “That’s when your call came in. I thought you were one of the gang teamed up with Suzanne Granger, so I played it straight and told you just what Suzanne could have told you. Then I hung up, threw my suitcases into my car and got out of there.”

  “Didn’t you think it was dangerous to come here?”

  “At first. Then I realized no one knew of this place. The rent was paid for three months so I decided to stay on. There was always the chance I’d get some clue as to what Doug had done with those gems. If I could be on the spot and get them I’d be sitting pretty. Otherwise …” She broke off with a little shrug of her shoulders.

  “Do you know who killed him?”

  “Eleanor killed him. I think she found out when he got the gems … I don’t know. All I know is that Doug had the gems before he was killed.”

  “And he was dealing with a professional smuggling ring?”

  “Yes. One that operated on a big scale.”

  “And Eleanor wasn’t in it?”

  “Heavens no. Eleanor was helping him. She had set the stage for spying on Suzanne Granger.”

  “And you knew that Doug Hepner had coached her to take the part of a jealous mistress, a woman who had used that approach to get herself into Ethel Belan’s apartment? You knew she had instructions to threaten to kill Doug Hepner to keep anyone else from having him?”

  She hesitated. “If I say that will it help the girl?”

  “It may result in her acquittal.”

  “And if I don’t admit that it may mean she gets convicted?”

  “Yes.”

  She paused, took a deep breath. “I don’t know that she isn’t guilty. I don’t have to say a thing.”

  Mason said, “There’ll be a terrific battle over whether I can get your testimony into the evidence. I think the judge will let it in. In any event, if you’ll tell the truth, I’ll try. The district attorney will claim it’s hearsay, not part of the res gestae and too remote.

  “However, before I can lay my plans I’ll have to know where you stand and I’d have to know the facts.”

  “I’d have to take the witness stand?”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t do it. You called the turn. I have a child—a daughter, eight years old. I don’t want newspaper notoriety. I can’t be cross-examined about my past.”

  Mason said, “You can’t let Eleanor walk into the gas chamber for a crime she didn’t commit.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not going to help you, Mr. Mason.”

  Mason’s face was as granite.

  “You’re going to help me,” he said. “You don’t have any choice in the matter. That’s why I served that subpoena on you.”

  She said bitterly, “You have lots of consideration for that Eleanor Corbin, who has a fortune back of her, but think of me. I’m leaving here with just what you see on the bed.”

  Mason said, “I’m sorry. The honest part of your business was one thing. The blackmail was something else. You’re going to have to begin over.”

  “On what?” she asked bitterly. “On what’s inside of this housecoat! That’s the only asset I have in the world, except a bus ticket to New Mexico, thirty dollars in cash, and…”

  “I thought you were taking a midnight plane,” Mason said.

  Her laugh was bitter. “My days of plane travel are over. I’m going by bus, but I didn’t think I had to tell the apartment manager that.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “now listen. I’m not making any promises but if we can get this case solved it might be that we could recover the gems that Doug Hepner told you about. It might be that we could break up that smuggling ring.”

  “And then you’d grab…”

  “No,” Mason told her, “that’s what I’m trying to tell you. That would be your cut.”

  She studied him with thoughtful eyes. “You’re dealing with a tough bunch,” she said.

  Mason said, “My secretary, Della Street, is going to come and get you. You’re going to a place where you’ll be safe. Tomorrow morning you’re going on the witness stand. If we recover those gems you get the reward. Then you promise me that you’re going to turn your back on blackmail and rackets and are going to be the kind of a mother that your child can be proud of.”

  She regarded him steadily for a moment, then got up and put her hand in his. “Is that all you want?” she asked.

  “That’s all I want,” Mason told her.

  Chapter 16

  Della Street was waiting for Mason when he entered the courtroom. She handed him a chamois skin bag containing the gems that had been taken from Eleanor’s cold cream.

  “Everything okay?” Mason asked.

  “Okay, Chief,” she said. “Sadie’s waiting down in the car. One of Paul Drake’s men is with her. When you want her, step to the window and flip your handkerchief. Drake’s man will be watching. He’ll bring her up.”

  Judge Moran took the bench and the bailiff pounded the court to order.

  Judge Moran said, “The Court has decided that under the present circumstances there is no reason for ordering the exhumation of the body of the decedent. However, the Court wishes to state that it is the duty of the coroner’s physician not only to determine the cause of death but to discover any contributing causes. Apparently there is no independent reason to believe that the puncture marks in the arm of the decedent were made by a hypodermic. So far we have merely a conjecture on the part of the autopsy surgeon. The present ruling of the Court is that an exhumation will not be ordered. If there should be any new evidence indicating independently the presence of morphia, or that the decedent had been held a prisoner against his will, the Court will again consider the matter.

  “Now as I understand it, counsel for the defense wished to ask additional questions on cross-examination of the witness Suzanne Granger.”

  “If the Court please,” Hamilton Burger said, “we are prepared to resist such a request on the part of defendant’s counsel. We have some authorities…”

  “What sort of authorities?” Judge Moran asked.

  “Authorities indicating that in a criminal action the defendant cannot cross-examine piecemeal, that he must conclude his cross-examination of a witness before the witness is excused from the stand.”

  “You don’t need to cite authorities to that point,” Judge Moran said. “The Court is quite familiar with them. However, Mr. District Attorney, in your search of the law did you also find a series of authorities holding that the trial judge is completely in charge of the order of proof and the examination of witnesses and is obligated to exercise his authority in the interests of justice?”

  “Well, of course, Your Honor,” Hamilton Burger conceded, “that is a general rule. However, in this case…”

  “In this case,” Judge Moran said firmly, “you put the witness Richey on the stand. You didn’t ask him about overhearing the conversation which Suzanne Granger had with the defendant. That matter was brought out afterward. Thereupon you put on the witness Richey for the second time. The Court granted you permission to do that. The Court feels that defendant’s request to interrogate Miss Granger in regard to the matters testified to by Richey is a reasonable request under the peculiar circumstances of this case—I repeat, Mr. District Attorney, under the peculiar circumstances of this case. The Court, therefore, orders Miss Granger to take the stand.”

  Suzanne Granger arose, started toward the witness stand and said, “I am very anxious, Your Honor, to take the witness stand. The district attorney refused to…”

  “Never mind that,” Judge Moran said. “You will take the witness stand. You have already been sworn. You are to be cross-examined by counsel for the defense. You will not volunteer any information. You will wait until questions are asked and then you will answer those questions, confining your answers to the subject matter called for by the question. In that way we will give the prosecution an opportunity to object to any improper questions.”

  Mason said, “You have heard Mr. Richey’s testimony?”

  “I did.”

  “You returned to your apartment on the fifteenth of August and found that it had been searched and that acts of vandalism had been committed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You complained to the management?”

  “I spoke to Mr. Richey about it.”

  “And what happened?”

  “He went to the apartment, surveyed the damage, ordered the janitor and the maids to clean up. He asked me if I wished to notify the police. I told him I did not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was satisfied that it was the work of…”

  “Now just a moment,” Hamilton Burger said. “I object, Your Honor, that this is not proper cross-examination, that the question is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial, that the reason the witness did not want to call the police is entirely outside the issues of this case, and that if she had in her own mind an idea as to what had happened or why it had happened the prosecution is certainly not bound by some thought the witness may have. The witness can be examined as to facts and not as to thoughts.”

  “I want to show bias and prejudice against the defendant in the case,” Mason said.

  “Very well, reframe your question,” Judge Moran said. “The objection to the present question is sustained.”

  “Did you,” Mason asked, “state to Mr. Richey that the vandalism was the work of Eleanor Hepner, or Eleanor Corbin as the case may be, who was spying on you in the adjoining apartment?”

  “Same objection,” Hamilton Burger said.

  “Overruled,” Judge Moran said. “Answer the question.”