Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Velvet Claws

“Did you see anybody hanging around the front of the place?” asked Mason. “I’m not entirely certain that they didn’t shadow Della.”

“Nobody that I noticed.”

Mason waved his hand toward the woman who sat on the bed with her legs crossed.

“This is Eva Belter,” he said.

Drake grinned and looked at the legs.

“Yes,” he said, “I recognized her from a picture in the paper.”

Eva Belter took the handkerchief down from her eyes, and stared up at Drake. She smiled ingratiatingly.

Della Street snapped, “Even your tears weren’t genuine!”

Eva Belter turned and looked at her, her blue eyes suddenly grown hard.

Perry Mason whirled on Della. “Listen, Della,” he said, “I’m running this show.” He looked over at Paul Drake. “Did you bring the notebooks and pencils, Paul?”

The detective nodded.

Mason took the notebooks and pencils, and passed them over to Della Street.

“Can you move the table and take down what’s said, Della?” he asked.

“I can try,” she said in a choked voice.

“All right. Be sure and get what she says,” and he jerked his thumb in the direction of Eva Belter.

Eva Belter looked from one to the other. “What is it?” she asked. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to get the straight of this,” Mason told her.

“You want me here?” asked Paul Drake.

“Sure,” Mason told him. “You’re a witness.”

“You make me nervous,” said Eva Belter. “That’s the way they did last night. They had me in the District Attorney’s office, and they had people sitting there with notebooks and pencils. It makes me nervous to have people take down what I say.”

Mason smiled. “Yes, I should think it would. Did they ask you anything about the gun?”

Eva Belter widened her blue eyes in that stare of innocence which made her seem so young and helpless.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You know what I mean,” Mason persisted. “Did they ask anything about how you happened to have the gun?”

“How I happened to have the gun?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Mason. “Harrison Burke gave it to you, you know, and that’s the reason you had to telephone him—to tell him that it was his gun that had been used in the shooting.”

Della Street’s pencil was skipping rapidly over the page of the notebook.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eva Belter said with dignity.

“Oh, yes, you do,” Mason told her. “You telephoned Burke that there had been an accident or something, and that his gun had figured in it. He’d had the gun given him by a friend named Mitchell, and he drove right around and picked up Mitchell. The two of them ducked under cover.”

“Why,” she exclaimed, “I never heard of anything like that!”

“That line isn’t going to get you anywhere, live,” Mason told her, “because I saw Harrison Burke, and I have a statement signed by him.”

She stiffened in sudden consternation.

“You have a statement signed by him?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I thought you were representing me.”

“What’s wrong with representing you and having a statement from Burke?” he asked.

“Nothing, only he’s lying if he said that he ever gave me that gun. I never saw it in my life.”

“That makes it more simple,” Mason commented.

“What does?”

“You’ll see,” he told her. “Now let’s go back and clear up another point or two. When you got your purse it was in your husband’s desk. Do you remember that?”

“What do you mean?” she inquired in a low cautious voice.

“When I was there with you,” Mason said, “and you got your purse.”

“Oh, yes, I remember that! I’d put it in the desk earlier in the evening.”

“Fine,” said Mason. “Now, just between the four of us, who do you think was in the room with your husband when the shot was fired?”

She said, simply, “You were.”

“That’s fine,” Mason said without enthusiasm. “Now, your husband had been taking a bath just before the shot was fired.”

For the first time she seemed uneasy. “I don’t know about that. You were there. I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you know,” Mason insisted. “He was in the bath, and he got out and put a bathrobe around him, without even waiting to dry himself.”

“Did he?” she asked mechanically.

“You know he did, and the evidence shows he did. Now, how do you suppose that I got in to see him if he was in his bath?”

“Why, I guess the servant let you in, didn’t he?”

Mason smiled. “The servant doesn’t say so, does he?”

“Well, I don’t know. All I know is that I heard your voice.”

“You’d been out with Burke,” Mason said, slowly, “and you came in. You didn’t carry your purse with you while you were wearing your evening clothes, did you?”

“No, I didn’t have it with me then,” she said, and suddenly bit her lip.

Mason grinned at her.

“Then how,” he said, “did it get in your husband’s desk?”

“I don’t know.”

“You remember the receipts that I gave you for the amounts you paid on account of fees?” Mason asked.

She nodded her head.

“Where are they?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I’ve lost them.”

“That,” Mason said, “clinches it.”

“Clinches what?” she asked.

“The fact that you killed him. You won’t tell me what happened, so I’ll tell you what happened.

“You had been out with Burke. You came in, and Burke left you at the door. You went upstairs, and your husband heard you coming. He was in the bath at the time. He was in a towering rage. He jumped out of the bath, threw the robe around him, and called to you to come into his suite. You went in there and he showed you the two receipts that he’d found in your purse while you were out. They had my name on them. I’d been there and told him what it was that I was trying to keep out of Spicy Bits. He put two and two together, and knew who it was that I was representing right then.”

“Why I never heard of such a thing!” she said.

He grinned at her. “Oh, yes, you did! You knew that it was a showdown right then, and you shot him. He fell, and you rushed out of the place, but you played it pretty smooth at that. You dropped the gun on the floor, knowing that it could be traced to Harrison Burke and could never be traced any farther. You wanted to get Harrison Burke in it, so that he’d have to get you out. And you wanted to get me in it for the same reason. You went down and telephoned Burke and told him that something had happened, and that his gun would be found, that he’d better get out and lie low, and that his only hope was to keep sending me plenty of money so that I would go ahead with the case.

“Then you telephoned to me and got me to come out there. You told me that you recognized my voice as the voice of the man who was in the room with your husband because you wanted my help, and also because you wanted to fix it so that I couldn’t prove an alibi if you wanted to spring this business about recognizing my voice in the apartment.

“You figured that if you could drag me and Harrison Burke both into the mess, we’d get you out while we were getting ourselves out. You figured that I’d get busy and square the thing some way, with Burke’s money back of me, and the fact that I was in a jam to spur me on.

“You figured that you could pretend you didn’t realize just how much you had me in your power by saying that you recognized my voice as that of the man in the room with your husband.

“Also, you figured that if you got in a position where they commenced to put the screws on you, you’d switch the whole thing to me, and let Burke and me fight it out between us.”