Erle Gardner - The Case of the Perjured Parrot

He climbed in behind the steering wheel, started the car, and drove slowly down the driveway which led from the cabin. Once or twice he stopped to look overhead in the branches of the pine tree. “That bluejay,” he said, laughing, “is still following us. I wonder if there isn’t something I could find to feed him.”

“There’s some peanut brittle in a bag in the glove compartment,” Della Street said. “You might break a peanut out of that.”

“Let’s try,” Mason said.

He opened the glove compartment, and Della pulled out a paper bag. “Here are a couple of loose peanuts in the bottom of the bag,” she told him, and poured them into Mason’s cupped hand.

He stood on the running board, held his hands up above his head so that the bluejay could see the shelled peanuts. The jay fluttered noisily from branch to branch, swooped down until he was almost even with Mason’s shoulder, then, becoming frightened at his own temerity, zoomed upward with a startled squawk. Twice he repeated this maneuver. The third time, he perched on Mason’s hand long enough to grab one of the peanuts in his beak before jumping up, to flutter into the branches of the tree overhead.

Mason, laughing, said, “Gosh, Della, I think I want to do this when I’m ready to retire. How nice it would be to have a cabin where you could make friends with...”

“What is it, Chief?” she asked, as he broke off abruptly.

Without answering her, Mason strode over to the pine tree in which the bluejay was perched. The jay, thinking he was being pursued, fled into the dark retreat of the forest, his startled squawk being superseded by cries of “Treason!” which merged into a more raucous and continuous vituperation of the man who had betrayed his confidence. Della Street, sliding across the seat, her feet pointed at the open door, gave herself impetus by a boost from the steering wheel, and slid to the ground with a quick flash of shapely legs. She ran across to where Mason was standing.

“What is it, Chief?”

Mason said, slowly, “That wire, Della.”

“What about it... I don’t see any... Oh, yes... Well, what is it, Chief?”

“I don’t know,” Mason said. “It isn’t an aerial, but you can see the way it’s been concealed. It runs along the branch of that limb and is taped to the upper side of it. Then it hits the tree trunk, runs along the tree trunk until it comes to that other limb, goes up through that, runs into this tree, then crosses over to that grove... Drive the car outside and park it on the highway, Della. I’m going to take a look.”

“What do you think it is, Chief?”

“It looks,” he told her, “as though someone had been tapping Fremont Sabin’s telephone.”

“Gosh, Chief!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t that something?”

He nodded, but said nothing. He was already walking along under the trees, following the course of the wire so cleverly concealed as to be invisible to any save the most alert observer.

Della Street parked the car on the highway, climbed through a fence, and took a short cut through the pine thicket to join him. A hundred yards away an unpainted cabin was so inconspicuous among the trees that it seemed as much a part of the scenery as the surrounding rocks.

“I think that’s the place we’re looking for,” Mason said, “but we’ll trace the wire and find out.”

“What do we do when we get there?” she asked.

“It depends,” Mason told her. “You’d better stay back, Della, so you can get the sheriff, if the party gets rough.”

“Let me stay with you, Chief,” she pleaded.

“No,” he told her. “Stay back there. If you hear any commotion, beat it for Sabin’s cabin as fast as you can, and bring the sheriff.”

Mason followed the wire to the place where it abruptly left the protection of the trees to loop itself around insulators just below the eaves of the unpainted cabin. At this point it had been arranged so that it looked very much like the aerial of a wireless set. Mason circled the cabin twice, keeping in the concealment of the dense shadows as much as possible.

Della Street, anxiously watching him from a point some fifty yards distant, moved slowly toward him.

“It’s all right,” he called to her. “We’re going to notify the sheriff.” He joined her and they walked back to the cabin where Fred Waner emerged apparently from nowhere to bar their way.

“I want to see the sheriff again,” Mason told him.

“All right. You wait here. I’ll tell the sheriff you’re here.”

Waner went to the door of the cabin and called the sheriff. A moment later Sheriff Barnes came out to see what was wanted. When he saw Mason, his face clouded with suspicion. “I thought you’d gone,” he said pointedly.

“I started,” Mason told him, “and came back. If you can step this way, Sheriff, I think I have something important to show you.”

Sergeant Holcomb came to the door of the cabin to stand just behind the sheriff. “What is it?” he asked.

“Something to show the sheriff,” Mason replied.

Sergeant Holcomb said grimly, “Mason, if this is a trap to distract our attention, I’ll...”

“I don’t care whether your attention’s distracted or not,” Mason interrupted. “I’m talking to the sheriff.”

Sergeant Holcomb said to Waner, “Waner, you stay here with Mr. Waid. Don’t let him leave. Don’t let anyone talk with him. Don’t let him touch anything. Do you understand?”

Waner nodded.

“You can count on my co-operation, Sergeant,” Waid said with cold formality. “After all, you know, I’m not a criminal. I’m trying to co-operate with you.”

“I understand that,” Holcomb said, “but whenever Perry Mason...”

“What do you have to show us, Mason?” Sheriff Barnes interrupted.

Mason said, “This way, please.”

He led the way down the road to where the wire had been tapped under the telephone line. Sergeant Holcomb and the sheriff followed along a few steps behind. “See that?” he asked, pointing upward.

“What?” the sheriff asked.

“That wire.”

“It’s a telephone wire,” Sergeant Holcomb snorted. “What the devil did you think it was, Mason?”

“I’m not talking about that wire,” Mason said. “I’m talking about the one which leads off from it. See where it goes through that pine tree where the needles come over and...”

“By George, you’re right!” the sheriff said. “There is a wire!”

“All right,” Mason said, “now that you see where the wire is cut in, I’ll show you where it runs to,” and he led the way over to where he could point out the unpainted cabin, concealed in the trees.

Sergeant Holcomb asked suspiciously, “How did you happen to notice that wire, Mason?”

“I was feeding a bluejay,” Mason said. “He took a peanut from my hand, then hopped up in that tree and sat on the limb which carries the wire.”

“I see,” Holcomb observed in a tone which showed his complete and utter disbelief, “and you just happened to see the wire while you were standing under the tree staring up at the bluejay to whom you’d just given a peanut. Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“You wanted to see how he’d digest the peanut, I suppose?”

“No, I had another peanut I was going to give him,” Mason said patiently. “I wanted him to come down and take it out of my hand.”

Sergeant Holcomb said to Sheriff Barnes, “I don’t know what his game is, but if Perry Mason is walking down the road feeding peanuts to bluejays, you can gamble there’s something back of it. He knew darn well that wire was there, all the time. Otherwise, he’d never have found it.”