Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Lucky Legs

He paused for a moment, with his head bent forward, and the fingers of her hand made gentle pressure on the back of his.

"Well?" she asked.

"I walked in," he said. "Something looked a little fishy to me. There was a livingroom. There were hat, stick and gloves in the livingroom. I'd seen them through the keyhole before I walked in. It made me think some one was home."

"Why did you have to go in?" she asked.

"I wanted to get something on Patton," he said, "He didn't answer the door. I thought it might be a break for me."

"Go on," she told him.

"There wasn't anything in the livingroom," he said, "but when I went through the door into the bedroom, I found Patton lying on the floor, dead. He'd been stabbed with a bigbladed knife. It was a messy job."

"In what way?" she asked.

"He died instantly, all right," Mason told her, "but it was a big cut. It caught an artery right over the heart, and those things spurt, you know."

She fought back a spasm of horror from her face and said calmly, "Yes, I can imagine. Then what?"

"That was about all," he told her. "There was a blackjack lying in the other room. I haven't figured that one out yet."

"But, if he was killed with a knife," she said, "what was the blackjack there for?"

"That's what I can't figure," he told her. "There's something funny there."

"Did you notify the police?" she asked.

"That," he said, "is where the cards turned against me. I wiped my fingerprints off the doorknobs and started out. I knew that Paul Drake was going to come in about five minutes. I was going to let Drake be the one to discover the body. I had other things to do. I knew that Drake would notify the police.

"Just as I was leaving the apartment, I heard the slam of the elevator door, and voices. I heard a woman saying something about a girl having hysterics and gathered from what she said she was talking to a cop. I figured right away what must have happened. If I had been seen walking away from the apartment where the man was murdered, I'd have been in a hell of a fix. If I'd have stood my ground there and told the story of exactly what happened, I'd never have been believed. Not that they'd necessarily have accused me of the murder, but it would have looked as though one of my clients had committed the murder and had telephoned me, and that I had rushed up to suppress certain evidence, or something of that sort. You can see what a spot that would put me in. I figured that some of the people I had been paid to represent might be mixed up in it. After the cop had seen me coming out of the apartment, or standing at the door of the apartment as though I had just come out, I could never have represented any one charged with the murder, because the jury would have figured that my client must have been guilty and had given me a tipoff to what had happened."

"What did you do?" she asked, with quick interest. "You were in a spot."

"There was only one thing to do," he said, "the way I figured it. I had to think fast. I might have played it differently, I don't know. It was one of those times when a man has to make decisions and make them fast. I jerked a passkey out of my pocket and locked the door. It was a simple lock. Then, I pretended I didn't know there was a cop within a mile, and started banging on the door. The cop came around the corner in the corridor and saw me standing in front of the door and pounding on the panel. I jabbed my finger on the button a couple of times; then made a gesture of disgust and turned to walk away. Then I pretended to see the cop for the first time."

"Clever," she exclaimed.

"That part of it was all right," Perry Mason said judiciously, as though he had been commenting on the manner in which he had played a hand in a bridge game after the cards were all played. "But then, I made the mistake of my life."

"What?" she asked, her eyes slightly widened and staring steadily at his face.

"I underestimated the intelligence of J.R. Bradbury."

"Oh," she muttered, with a distinct feeling of relief, and then said, after a moment, "Has he any…?"

"You're damned right he has," Perry Mason said.

"I can say one thing about him," she said, "he has a roving eye and a youthful disposition. He was offering me a cigarette when you went out of the door, remember?"

"Yes."

"He leaned forward to give me a light."

"Did he try to kiss you?"

"No," she said slowly, "and that's the funny part of it. I thought he was going to. I still think he intended to try to, but something made him change his mind."

"What was it?"

"I don't know."

"Thinking perhaps you'd tell me?"

"No, I don't think it was that."

"What did he do?"

"He leaned close to me, held the match to the cigarette; then straightened, and walked to the other side of the office. He stood staring at me as though I had been a picture, or as though he had perhaps been trying to figure just where I'd fit into a picture. It was a peculiar stare. He was looking at me, and yet not looking at me."

"Then what?" Perry Mason asked.

"Then," she said, "he snapped out of it, laughed, and said he guessed he had better be going after the newspapers and the brief case."

"And he left?"

"Yes."

"By the way, what did he ever do with them?"

"He left them here."

"Did he say anything about the brief case when he went out?"

"No, that was what he telephoned about from the hotel."

"What did you do with them?"

She motioned toward the closet.

Perry Mason got up, walked to the closet, opened the door and took out a leather brief case and a pile of newspapers. He looked at the top newspaper. The heading showed that it was the Cloverdale Independent of an issue dated some two months earlier.

"Got a key to the closet?" asked Mason.

"Yes, it's on my key ring."

"Let's lock this closet door and keep it locked while we've got the stuff in here," Mason said.

"Should we have it in the safe?"

"I don't think it's that important, particularly. But just the same, I'd like to have it under lock and key."

She crossed to the closet door and fitted the key to the lock, and snapped the bolt into position.

"You still haven't told me," she reminded him, "about how you underestimated Bradbury's intelligence."

"I had seen a girl walking away from the place. I figured she was mixed up in the murder in some way. I didn't know just how. I didn't care particularly, unless the girl happened to be Marjorie Clune. But I wanted to make certain about it, so I telephoned Bradbury."

"And told him Patton was murdered?"

"Yes, and asked him about Marjorie Clune. I knew that if it had been Marjorie Clune that was leaving the apartment, I had to work fast and keep ahead of the police."

"But there wasn't anything else you could have done, was there?" she asked. "You had to find out about it, and find out what Bradbury wanted done."

"I guess so."

"I thought," she said, "there was something wrong. He acted so absolutely startled when you telephoned to him. I don't know what there was in what you said, but it seemed to knock him for a loop. I thought he was going to drop the telephone. He started breathing through his mouth, and his eyes got so big I could have knocked them off with a stick."

"Well," Mason said, "that's the situation in a nutshell."

"And how does that get you in bad?" she asked.

"It gets me in bad," he said, "because I don't dare let the cops know that I was in that room. If I should tell them the truth now, they'd probably suspect me of the murder. I've got to stand by my story of the locked door. On the other hand, that locked door may figure in the case quite prominently. A whole lot more prominently than I want."

"Well," she said, "isn't that up to the police to figure out?"