Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Sleepwalker's Niece

She faced the butler, said, “What is it, Arthur?”

“Beg pardon,” he said, “but the sideboard drawer—I can’t get the top drawer open. It seems to be locked.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, then, after a moment, “are you sure you looked all around for the key, Arthur?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did you look in the little brass bowl over to the right of the pitcher?”

“No, ma’am, I didn’t look there.”

“Well, let’s go look. It must be around there somewhere.” She gave Mason a meaning glance, started walking rapidly. Mason fell into step at her side and the butler followed, a deferential pace or two in the rear. At the sideboard, she tried the drawer, said, “It’s locked all right,” and then started looking around on the top of the sideboard, her hands fluttering swiftly about various places. “It must be here somewhere, Arthur,” she said, in the tone of a magician handing out a line of “patter” by which the attention of an audience is kept from his hands. “The key was in the drawer yesterday, I know. Someone must have inadvertently locked the drawer and placed the key somewhere nearby. It’s inconceivable that anyone would have carried it away. There can’t be anything in that drawer which… Why, here it is! It was right under the fold of this throw.”

The butler watched her as she fitted the key to the drawer and turned the lock. “I’m sorry that I bothered you,” he said. “I couldn’t find it. I thought perhaps you knew where it was.

She turned the lock, pulled the drawer open, suddenly gasped, and stood staring downward at a plushlined receptacle for a carving set. A smoothfinished black hornhandled fork glittered in its hollowed receptacle, but the place which should have held the carving knife was empty. She glanced significantly at Perry Mason, her eyes dark with panic. Then she said, “Just what was it you wanted, Arthur?”

“I’ll get it, Miss Edna, it’s quite all right. I just wanted the drawer opened.” He took out some salt dishes, and closed the drawer.

Edna Hammer raised her eyes to Perry Mason, then slipping her hand under his elbow, gripped his forearm and said, “Do come back out in the patio. I love it out there in the early morning.”

“What time are you going to have breakfast?” Mason asked. “I think we should go up and arouse Dr. Kelton.”

“Oh, we sort of singleshot on breakfast. We have it whenever we get up.”

“Nevertheless,” Mason said significantly, “I think Dr. Kelton would appreciate it if we called him.”

“Oh, I see,” she exclaimed quickly. “Yes, yes, you’re quite right. Let’s call Dr. Kelton.”

They walked toward the stairs. She said in a low voice, “I didn’t get you for a minute. You want to look in Uncle’s room?”

“We might as well.”

“I can’t understand it. You don’t suppose there’s any possibility… that…”

As her voice trailed away into silence, Mason said, “You didn’t look in the drawer last night before we locked it.”

“Nnnno,” she said, “I didn’t, but the knife must have been there.”

“Well,” Mason said, “we’ll see what we’ll see.”

She ran up the stairs ahead of him, her feet fairly flying up the treads, but when she had approached the door to her uncle’s bedroom she hung back and said, “Somehow, I’m afraid of what we’re going to find here.”

“Has the room been made up yet?” Mason asked.

“No, the housekeeper won’t start making beds until around nine o’clock.”

Mason opened the door. She entered the bedroom a step or two behind him. Mason, looking around him, said, “Everything seems to be in order—no corpses stacked in the corners or under the bed.”

“Please don’t try to keep my spirits up, Mr. Mason. I’ve got to be brave. It’s under the pillow, if it’s anywhere. That’s where it was the other morning. You look, I don’t dare.”

Mason walked to the bed, lifted the pillow. Under the pillow was a long, blackhandled carving knife. The blade was discolored with sinister reddish stains.

Mason dropped the pillow, jumped backwards and clapped his hand over Edna Hammer’s mouth. “Shut up,” he said, stifling the screams she had been about to emit. “Use your head. Let’s find out what we’re up against before we spread an alarm.”

“But the knife!” she half screamed as he lowered his hand from her lips. “It’s all bbbbloody! You can see what’s hhhhappened. Oh, I’m so ffffrightened!”

“Forget it,” Mason told her. “Having hysterics isn’t going to help. Let’s get busy and find out where we stand. Come on.”

He strode out into the corridor, walked down to the door of his room, tried it, found it locked, banged on it, and, after a moment, heard the sound of heavy steps, the clicking of a bolt, and Dr. Kelton, his face covered with lather, a shaving brush held in his right hand, said, “I’m already up, if that’s what you came for. The smell of broiling bacon filters through that window and…”

“That,” Mason told him, “isn’t what we came for. Get the lather off your face and come in here. You don’t need to put on a shirt, just come the way you are.”

Dr. Kelton stared steadily at Mason for a moment, then went to the washstand, splashed water on his face, wiped off the lather with a towel, and, still drying his face and hands, accompanied them across the corridor to Peter Kent’s room. Mason raised the pillow. Dr. Kelton leaned over to stare at the bloody blade, so eloquent in its silent accusation. Kelton gave a low whistle.

“It’ll be Maddox,” Edna Hammer said, her voice hysterical. “You know how Uncle Pete felt toward him. He went to bed last night with that thought in his mind… Oh, hurry, let’s go to his room at once! Perhaps he isn’t dead—just wounded. If Uncle Pete was groping about in the dark… perhaps he…” She broke off with a quick, gasping intake of her breath.

Mason nodded, turned toward the door. “Lead the way,” he ordered.

She led them down the corridor, down a flight of stairs, into a corridor on the opposite wing of the house. She paused in front of a door, raised her hand to knock and said, “Oh, no, I forgot Maddox changed rooms with Uncle Phil. Maddox is over here.”

“Who’s Uncle Phil?” Dr. Kelton asked.

“Philip Rease, Uncle Pete’s halfbrother. He’s something of a crank. He thought there was a draught across his bed and asked Maddox to change rooms with him last night.”

She moved down to another door, knocked gently and, when there was no answer, glanced apprehensively at Perry Mason and slowly reached for the door knob. “Wait a minute,” Mason said; “perhaps I’d better do this.” He pushed her gently to one side, twisted the knob and opened the door. The room was on the north side of the corridor. French doors opened onto a cemented porch some eighteen inches above the patio. Drapes were drawn across these windows so that the morning light filtered into the room, disclosing indistinctly a motionless object lying on the bed. Mason stepped forward and said over his shoulder to Dr. Kelton, “Be careful you don’t touch anything, Doctor.”

Edna Hammer came forward a doubtful step or two then walking rapidly to Perry Mason’s side, clung to his arm. Mason bent over the bed. Abruptly the figure below him stirred. Mason jumped back. Frank Maddox, sitting up in bed, stared at them with wide eyes, then, as his surprise gave way to indignation, he demanded, “What the devil’s the meaning of this?”

Mason said, “We came to call you for breakfast.”

“You’ve got a crust,” Maddox said, “invading the privacy of my room this way. What the devil are you trying to do? If you’ve been through any of my private papers, I’ll have you arrested. I might have known that Kent would resort to any underhanded tactics. He poses as a bighearted, magnanimous individual, but it’s all pose with him. Dig below the surface, and you’ll find out just what a damn skunk he is.”