Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Lucky Legs

Perry Mason ceased speaking.

Bradbury sneered.

"Would it be asking too much," he said, "for you to produce some evidence other than your own maggoty conclusions?"

Perry Mason's smile was cold and frosty.

"I saw Mamie the next morning," he said; "she told me about you having left the package. She mentioned that you always wore a brown suit. I remembered then that you had been wearing a brown suit that evening at the office. Yet, when I saw you in the hotel, you wore a tweed suit. You had rushed from my office to the hotel and changed your clothes. I wonder why. I wonder if it wasn't because there was blood on your brown suit. Of course, the stains wouldn't have shown very plainly by artificial light. But they were there, and you wanted to get rid of the suit. I have an idea that you may have had some trouble disposing of this suit. I think we'll find it concealed somewhere in your room in the hotel.

"Moreover, in order to carry out your plan, you had to have Doray leave the country. You wanted to throw him in a panic. You therefore had Eva Lamont call Dr. Doray at his hotel. She told him that she was Della Street, my secretary, and that I wanted him to leave the country.

"Dr. Doray left the hotel, but kept calling back for messages. He got Marjorie's message, called her, and she agreed to meet him in Summerville."

"Who's Eva Lamont?" asked O'Malley.

"The woman," Mason said, "that occupied Bradbury's suite in the Mapleton Hotel until yesterday. Then, with Bradbury's money, and under his instructions, she went to the Monmarte Hotel, registered as Vera Cutter, and gave Paul Drake information that implicated Doray in the case earlier than would otherwise have happened.

"When I called Bradbury at my office and told him of Patton's death, he almost had a fit, registering surprise. That's the fault of an amateur. He overdoes it. Surprise becomes consternation, and consternation becomes terror.

"Returning, however, to this Eva Lamont angle. Bradbury used her to involve Doray. Naturally, the blacker the case against Doray, the more willing Marjorie Clune would be to do anything in order to bring about Doray's acquittal.

"When Bradbury, listening in over the telephone this afternoon, heard me instruct Della Street to trace any telephone call which had been received by Marjorie Clune prior to her departure from Thelma Bell's apartment, he knew that I was getting on a hot trail. So he changed his plans immediately and ordered me to have Doray plead guilty and accept a life sentence. He wanted to do that because he realized I was commencing to get a slant on what was actually happening. And he tried then to convict Doray and to get me mixed into it in order to save his own skin.

"That, gentlemen, is my confession," Perry Mason said.

He strode across the room and sat down.

Bradbury faced the accusing eyes of Detective Sergeant O'Malley.

"A pack of lies," he said, "a pack of damn lies. Let him produce one bit of proof."

"I think," said Perry Mason, "that if you will have his room in the Mapleton Hotel searched, O'Malley, you'll find that suit of clothes. I think that if you will check his fingerprints with the fingerprints on the bloody knife, you'll find that they check. And, furthermore, just to show you what a liar he is, I dropped by his hotel this afternoon and paid his hotel bill. In paying it, I secured an itemized account of the telephone numbers that he had called. I have the list here. You will see from this list that he called Harcourt 63891 on the night of the murder. That he also called Grove 36921, which was the number of Dr. Doray, in the Midwick Hotel. You will also see that he was paying the bill on a suite of rooms until this morning; that the woman who occupied the other room was Eva Lamont. If you will rush your men to the Monmarte Hotel, you will find Eva Lamont registered under the name of Vera Cutter, and Paul Drake will identify her as the woman who gave him all of the information which enabled him to tip off the police to the evidence against Dr. Doray."

Perry Mason pulled the receipted hotel bill from his pocket, and handed it to Detective Sergeant O'Malley.

Mason turned to face Bradbury.

"I warned you, Bradbury," he said, "not to lie about that telephone call to Marjorie Clune. I told you that it would be a confession of guilt."

Bradbury stared at Perry Mason. His face had gone white as a sheet.

"Damn you," he said, in a low tone vibrant with hatred.

O'Malley nodded to Riker and Johnson.

"We're going to headquarters."

He turned to Della Street.

"Would you mind getting headquarters on the telephone?" he said. "I'm going to send some men out to pick up Eva Lamont and search Bradbury's room at the Mapleton Hotel."

Perry Mason bowed to O'Malley.

"Thank you, Sergeant," he said.

He turned to Bradbury and made a sweeping gesture.

"As you have so aptly remarked, Bradbury," he said, "we understand each other perfectly. We're both fighters. We use different weapons, that's all."

Newspaper reporters clustered about the doorway of Perry Mason's private office, grouped in a semicircle.

Newspaper photographers held cameras and flashlights. Perry Mason sat behind his desk in the big swivel chair; standing back of him, with warm eyes and smiling lips, was Della Street. Dr. Doray sat in the big leather chair. Marjorie Clune was perched on the arm of the chair.

"Can you get your heads a little closer?" asked one of the newspaper reporters of Marjorie Clune and Dr. Doray. "Bend down a little bit, Miss Clune, and, Doray, if you'll look up at her and smile a little…"

"I'm smiling," said Dr. Doray.

"That's a grin," the newspaper reporter told him. "What we want is something a little more wistful; you're too happy."

Marjorie Clune tilted her head.

Perry Mason watched the pair with an indulgent smile.

Flashlights suddenly illuminated the pair.

One of the reporters turned to Perry Mason.

"Would you mind telling us, Mr. Mason," he said, "when you first knew that Bradbury was guilty?"

"I first realized it," Perry Mason said slowly, "when I became convinced that Bradbury had been in communication with Marjorie Clune, some time after the murder and before midnight. I knew that Marjorie Clune couldn't have called him, because she didn't know where he was. Therefore, he must have called her. He couldn't have called her after she went to the Bostwick Hotel. Therefore, it must have been while she was at Thelma Bell's apartment. I wondered how he could possibly have known that she was at Thelma Bell's apartment. He must have gained that information before I had reported to him. The only way I could account for it was that he had seen the number on the slip of paper."

"So then you laid a trap for him?" asked the reporter.

"Not exactly," Perry Mason said, "but I began to put two and two together. I remembered that he had entered my office reading the latest Liberty, that Liberty had just appeared on the stand. He had picked it up at the cigar counter that evening. Subsequently, when the young lady at the cigar counter told me he had left a package with her and had purchased a magazine, I knew that he must have left the package when he came to my office that evening, yet he said nothing of it. I then commenced to check on other details, and realized, not only that he could have been guilty, but that it was almost certain that he was guilty. I wanted to find out what numbers he had been calling on the telephone; I couldn't figure how I could do this, until I remembered that the hotel kept a record of them; then it was simple."

"And how did you know that Eva Lamont figured in the case?" the reporter asked.

"Because," Perry Mason said, "the first telegram that I received in connection with the case was signed by Eva Lamont. It appears that Bradbury intended to use her to work through. Then he became afraid that she couldn't carry out his plans, so he kept her with him to use as an assistant in getting Doray implicated. She didn't know the true facts, of course; he only confided in her such facts as he wanted her to know. She did the things that he told her, she was rather clever at it, she obeyed his instructions implicitly, and she fooled Paul Drake. By using her, Bradbury was able to get the officers on Dr. Doray's trail much sooner than would otherwise have been the case."