Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Velvet Claws

She screamed.

“All right. That’s exactly what’s coming to you if you don’t tell me the God’s truth.”

Her face was white, her lips pale and quivering, and her eyes dark with panic.

“I’m ttttelling you the truth,” she said.

He shook his head. “Listen,” he told her, “you’ve got to learn to be frank and to come clean if we’re going to get you out of this jam. Now you know, and I know, that that message about the shoes was just a stall. It was a code that you had, meaning that Harrison Burke wanted you to get in touch with him. Just the same way you gave me a code to tell the maid when I wanted to get in touch with you.”

She was still shaken and white. Dumbly she nodded her head.

“All right,” said Mason, “now tell me what happened. Harrison Burke sent that message to you. He wanted you to get in touch with him. Then you told him that you would meet him some place, and you put on your things and went out. Is that right?”

“No,” she said, “he came to the house.”

“He did what?”

“It’s a fact,” she went on. “I told him not to, but he came anyway. He wanted to talk with me, and I told him that I wouldn’t, that I couldn’t see him. So he came to the house. You had told him that George was the owner of Spicy Bits. At first he wouldn’t believe it. Finally he did. Then he wanted to talk with George. He thought that he could explain to George. He was willing to do anything in order to keep Spicy Bits from going ahead with its attack.”

“You didn’t know he was coming?” he asked.

“No.”

There was a moment’s silence.

Then she said, “How did you know?”

“Know what?”

“About the shoes being the code he used.”

“Oh, he told me,” said Mason.

“And then the housekeeper told you about the message?” she asked. “I wonder if she told the police.”

Mason shook his head, and smiled.

“No,” he said, “she didn’t tell the police and she didn’t tell me. That was just a little bluff I resorted to in order to get you to give me the real facts. I knew that you must have seen Harrison Burke some time last night, and I knew that he was the kind that would be trying to get in touch with you. When he’s worried, he wants some one to share his worry with him. So I figured that he must have left that message with the maid.”

She looked hurt.

“Do you think that’s a nice way to treat me?” she asked. “Do you think that’s being fair with me?”

He grinned.

“What a sweet angel you are to sit around and talk to a man about playing fair.”

She pouted. “I don’t like that,” she said.

“I didn’t think you would,” he told her. “There’s going to be lots about this you don’t like before we get done. So Harrison Burke came to the house, did he?”

“Yes,” she said in a weak voice.

“All right, what happened?”

“He kept insisting that he wanted to see George. I told him that it would be suicidal even to go near George. He said that he wouldn’t mention my name at all. He thought that if he could go to George and explain the circumstances to him, and tell him that he was willing to do anything after he was elected George would order Frank Locke to lay off the publicity.”

“All right,” said Mason, “now we are getting someplace. He wanted to go see your husband, and you tried to keep him from doing it. Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Why,” he asked, “did you want to keep him from doing it?”

She said slowly, “I was afraid that he would mention my name.”

“Did he?” asked Mason.

“I don’t know,” she said, and then suddenly added: “That is, of course not, he didn’t see George at all. He talked with me, and I convinced him that he mustn’t talk with George. And then he left the house.”

Perry Mason chuckled. “You thought of that trap just a little bit too late, young lady. So you don’t know whether or not he mentioned your name to George, eh?”

She said sullenly: “I told you he didn’t see him.”

“Yes,” he said, “I know, but the fact is that he did see him. He went upstairs to his study and talked with him.”

“How do you know?”

“Because,” he said, “I’ve got a theory about this thing, and I want to run it down. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what happened.”

“What did happen?” she asked.

He grinned at her.

“You know what happened,” he told her.

“No, no,” she said, “what was it that happened?”

His voice was a steady, expressionless monotone. “So Harrison Burke went upstairs and talked with your husband,” he droned. “How long was he up there?”

“I don’t know. Not over fifteen minutes.”

“That’s better. And you didn’t see him after he came down?”

“No.”

“Now, as a matter of fact,” he inquired, “was there a shot fired while Harrison Burke was up there, and then did he run down the stairs, and out of the house without saying anything to you?”

She shook her head emphatically. “No,” she said, “Burke left before my husband was shot.”

“How long before?”

“I don’t know, perhaps fifteen minutes. Perhaps longer. Perhaps not quite so long.”

“And now,” he pointed out, “Harrison Burke can’t be found.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. He can’t be found. He doesn’t answer his telephone. He isn’t at his residence.”

“How do you know?”

“I kept trying to get him on the telephone, and I sent detectives out to his residence.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I knew he was going to be implicated in the shooting.”

She widened her eyes again. “How could that be?” she asked. “Nobody knows that he was out at the house except us. And of course we wouldn’t tell, because that would make the situation that much worse for everybody. He left before the other man came, who fired the shot.”

Perry Mason held her eyes in a steady gaze. “It was his gun that fired the shot,” he said, slowly.

She stared at him, her eyes startled.

“What makes you say that?” she asked.

“Because,” he told her, “there was a number on the gun. That number can be traced from the factory to the wholesaler, from the wholesaler to the retailer, and from the retailer to the man who bought the gun. It was a fellow named Pete Mitchell, who lives at thirteen twentytwo West Sixtyninth Street, and was a close friend of Harrison Burke’s. The police are rounding up Mitchell, and when they get him, he’ll have to explain what he did with the gun. That is, that he gave it to Burke.”

She put a hand to her throat.

“How can they trace guns like that?”

“There’s a record kept of everything.”

“I knew that we should have done something with that gun,” she said almost hysterically.

He said, “Yes, and then you would have put your head in the noose. You’ve got yourself to think of. Your own position in this is none too pretty. You want to save Burke, of course, if you can. But the thing that I’m trying to bring out is that if Burke did the thing, you’d better come clean and tell me. Then, if we can keep Burke out of it, we will. But I don’t want you to get in the position where they build up a case against you, while you’re trying to shield Burke.”

She started to pace the floor, twisting her handkerchief in her fingers.

“Oh, my God!” she said. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

“I don’t know whether or not it’s ever occurred to you,” he said, “but there’s a penalty for being an accessory after the fact, or for compounding a felony. Now, we don’t either one of us want to get in that position. What we want to do is to find out who did this thing, and find it out before the police do. I don’t want them to frame a murder charge on you, and I don’t want them to frame one on me. If Burke is guilty, the thing to do is to get in touch with Burke, and get him to surrender himself, and rush the case through to a trial before the District Attorney’s office can get too much evidence. I’m going to take steps to see that Locke keeps quiet, and call off this blackmail article in Spicy Bits.”