“What other person?” Burger demanded.

  “Well,” Mason said, “if you are really searching for information I would suggest that you try matching the fingerprints on glass number one which contained the bourbon and Seven-Up with the fingerprints of Bill Emory, who was the driver of the car at the time of the theft, a man who, I understand, is generally my size and build, and then you might take the photograph which I have given you of the numbers of the five thousand dollars in currency of which the police had a list and see if the figures are in the handwriting of Bill Emory. As you have so aptly remarked, the list was one of the most confidential records in the entire FBI office, so confidential that they wouldn’t even trust you with a copy. Only one other person could possibly have had the copy and that was the thief who found the five thousand dollars in small currency tied in one bundle and who, learning that the police had the numbers of five thousand dollars in currency, assumed that this was the package of bills and so copied the numbers from the bills so as to make certain that he wouldn’t spend any of that money himself, but could plant some in the wallet of Colton Duvall, and in case the time ever became ripe to frame Arlene Duvall by leaving some of those bills in her possession.

  “And in the meantime the fallacious reasoning on the part of Jordan Ballard that Dr. Candler must have been mixed up in the case was due to the fact that Ballard failed to take into consideration the fact that Rose Rucker Travis, Dr. Candler’s office nurse, had an equal opportunity to abstract keys or other data from the pockets of patients while they were in the light cabinet taking a sweat bath. In that way she was able to get copies of the keys to the cash compartment in the truck and, since she was in the bank with Dr. Candler within an hour of the time the theft was perpetrated, then she had opportunity to take out the canceled checks and have them with her in a substitute package which had been carefully prepared in advance by an expert forger.

  “You’ll find incidentally that the boy friend of Helen Rucker, Mrs. Travis’ sister, is Thomas Sackett, who is also known as Howard Prim, who has a long record of expert forgeries and fraud.

  “And now,” Mason went on, addressing the district attorney conversationally, “speaking entirely as a witness, if you haven’t got enough there to solve the case I’ll try and answer any other question you wish to ask.”

  Hamilton Burger put his hands on the arms of the swivel counsel chair, raised himself to his feet, started to say something to Mason, shook his head as though to clear it, turned to the judge as though to say something, then abruptly sat down again.

  Judge Cody came to the district attorney’s rescue.

  “The Court,” he said, “will take a fifteen-minute recess.”

  Chapter 14

  Arlene Duvall, Paul Drake, Perry Mason, Della Street and Dr. Candler were seated around the big table in Mason’s law library.

  “I’m sorry that that diary was discovered by the police,” Perry Mason said. “You can see that Ballard was on the right trail but he had the wrong idea.”

  “Well, I never suspected Rose,” Dr. Candler said. “Of course, now it’s quite apparent. I was the official bank physician and many of the bank employees consulted me as their private physician. I had long been a believer in diathermy, physical therapy and sweat baths, keeping the pores of the skin open and… well, of course, I relied on Rose Travis as my head nurse to take care of the patients and give them their treatments. Naturally it was absurdly easy for her to go through the clothes of the patients and get duplicates of their keys, to have Thomas Sackett forge the seals that were used by the bank employees—when you stop to think of it it’s so perfectly obvious that the only wonder is no one ever thought of it before.”

  Mason said, “Ballard thought it through but only part way through. He became convinced that if Arlene started spending money in the form of cash that it would only be a question of time until someone would steal her trailer and plant the incriminating cash somewhere in the trailer where it could subsequently be found by the police. The only flaw in his reasoning was that he made the mistake so frequently made by professional as well as amateur detectives of making up his mind in advance as to who was guilty and then trying to fit the facts to suit the guilt of that particular person.

  “Evidently he had been cultivating Bill Emory in order to get certain information from Emory, and it wasn’t until after I had left and Emory had entered the picture that Ballard began to get the idea.”

  “How do you suppose he got it?” Paul Drake asked.

  “Evidently Emory was watching the house. When he saw me drive home with Ballard he kept the place under surveillance. He saw me go to the window and pull down the curtain and then raise it. He thought perhaps I was concealing those bills since he knew that he had delivered them to me.”

  “How did he deliver them?” Dr. Candler asked.

  “Sackett went to the costumers and got a messenger boy uniform. The attendant finally remembered that the uniform he had picked wouldn’t have fitted Sackett at all. It was for a much smaller, slim-waisted individual. It was probably a girl. That means that it was either Rose Travis or her sister dressed as a messenger.

  “It may be we’ll never know exactly what happened there at Ballard’s house, but Emory undoubtedly drove up right after I had left, parked his car in the driveway and went in to call on Ballard.

  “At about that time Arlene’s taxi drove up and the detective followed in Fraser’s car. Ballard went to the kitchen to mix a drink.

  “Emory, who had been watching the place and who had seen me at the window, didn’t make the mistake Burger made of thinking I was signaling someone. He suspected I was hiding something.

  “So he went to the window, lowered the shade and took out the two bills I had concealed. You can imagine his chagrin when he found that the two bills they had been at such pains to plant in my possession had been concealed before the service of the subpoena duces tecum.

  “Of course, they had arranged for that subpoena to be served—probably by an anonymous telephone tip to the police or the district attorney.

  “Evidently Ballard must have seen Emory taking the money out of the curtain. When Emory returned to the kitchen Ballard asked him questions. Emory saw that Ballard, who had been suspecting Dr. Candler, was finally getting on the right track, so Emory killed him in order to protect himself.”

  Arlene Duvall said, “And I thought the only reason they wanted to steal my trailer was to search for my diary. It seems they really wanted to plant that money where the police could find it later.”

  “Once again,” Mason said, “the greatest obstacle to any fair and impartial investigation is jumping to conclusions.”

  “But how did Bill Emory know… oh, I see, Ballard must have told him the number he had remembered on the one bill of the thousand-dollar denomination and—”

  “Exactly,” Mason interrupted. “So he decided that bill should be in my possession. He saw that I got it and then tipped off the district attorney anonymously that it would be a good plan to serve a subpoena duces tecum on me to turn over any money that Arlene Duvall had given me. And he included Ballard in that so that it wouldn’t sound like too much of a put-up job.”

  “Well,” Arlene Duvall said with a sigh, “I acted as bait for a year and a half before they finally walked into the trap that Mr. Ballard had set. It’s a shame that he couldn’t be here to enjoy it. Now I’m going to have to go back to work.”

  “Don’t be too certain,” Mason said. “Remember there’s a reward for recovery of the money. Your father will be released from prison and that reward will amount to a substantial sum. You’ll also have the car and the trailer. You may take another two or three months with your dad. It might not hurt him to have a little sunshine.”

  “Poor Dad,” she said. “He said there was never any sunlight in his cell,” and abruptly she began to cry.

  Gertie came into the office with a telegram. “It’s addressed to Arlene Duvall, care of Perry Mason,” she said.

  Mason handed the telegram to Arlene.

  She wiped the tears from her eyes, tore it open, read it, then smiled through her tears and passed the message to Mason.

  The message was sent from San Quentin prison. It said:

  just heard news over radio stop carry on arlene and we’ll begin life again together stop your loving dad.

  Mason turned to Della Street. “Call the press, Della,” he said, “and let them know that I am going to see to it that Arlene Duvall and her father get the reward money offered by the insurance company. That news will be on the radio broadcast this evening. We may as well give her dad something else to cheer him up.”

 

 

  Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Sunbather's Diary

 

 

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