Erle Gardner - The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe

“Criminal record?” Mason asked.

“No,” she said shortly.

“Sit down,” Mason told her, “and tell me about it.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“I think there is.”

“Tell you about what?” she asked defiantly. “If you want to know, I’m really and truly Pete Chennery’s wife. We’re legally married.”

“That,” Mason said, “makes it more conventional, even if less romantic.”

“Are you,” she asked, “going to keep on with that casual Wisecracking until you’ve drawn me out?”

“I think so,” Mason said. “I don’t know of any better way, do you?”

She settled back in a chair, crossed her knees, and said, “Where do you want me to begin?”

“At the beginning.”

“Pete and I,” she said, “had a fight.”

“Much of a fight?” Mason asked.

“Quite a little squabble,” she admitted.

“Over what?”

“Two blondes and a red-head.”

“That,” Mason told her, “should be grounds for a pretty good-sized battle.”

“It was.”

“So what happened?”

“I left him.”

“And then?”

“Met Aussie,” she said.

“With ideas in your head that you’d like to make your husband realize cheating was a game two could play at?”

She shook her head, started to say something, then caught herself, and was silent. “Don’t kid me,” Mason told her, “because you don’t need to.”

“How about your friend?” she asked, with a jerk of her head toward Drake.

“Like a dime bank,” Mason told her. “Things go in easy, but you have to break him to get them out.”

She studied the tips of her fingernails for a moment, then said, “All right, you win.”

“What,” Mason asked, after a moment, “have I won?”

She said, “Aussie was on a boat I took. I fell for him.”

“Hard?” Mason asked.

“So-so,” she admitted.

“And then what?”

“What do you want?”

“Everything.”

“Well,” she said after a moment, “Aussie had a way about him. He’d been places and done things. He had a genial way of taking life as a big adventure. It was all a game to him. I’d taken the cruise with a feeling of tragic frustration in my heart, a sense of tension, a feeling that I’d been wronged, that love was a mess, and marriage a mockery. I...”

“I don’t want all that,” Mason told her. “I’ve seen you and I’ve seen Cullens. I’ve seen the bitter side of married life as a lawyer sees it. You don’t need to give me all that.”

“What do I need to give you?”

“The gems.”

“Oh, those,” she said.

Mason smoked in silence. Then, after a moment, as she continued to study the tinted tips of her fingers with downcast eyes, Mason said, again, “Those.”

She raised her eyes to his. “Well,” she said, “I don’t know much about those myself.”

“Just what?” Mason asked.

“Of course,” she said, by way of explanation, “I wasn’t overly burdened with money. I had a little savings account. I ripped it wide open when I left Pete, to go out in the world and seek my fortune. I could have gone out and tried to get a job. Pete would have followed me then and begged me to forgive him. In the end, I’d have either had to give up my job and go back, in which event he’d have been the winner, or I’d have had to stay with the job and give up Pete, in which event I’d have been the loser.”

“You didn’t really intend to give him up, then?” Mason asked.

She said scornfully, “I thought you knew all about domestic tiffs.”

Mason grinned and said, “Go ahead.”

“So,” she said, “I decided to buy myself some sport clothes, take along my best formals and cocktail gowns, go on a cruise, and leave Pete to do the guessing.”

“And, of course,” Mason said, “you wanted him to know that you were enjoying yourself on the cruise.”

She smiled and said, “I sent him a picture postcard from Cartagena.”

“Anything else?” Mason asked.

“The steamship company,” she said, “put out a folder dealing with the romantic possibilities of the cruise — moonlight on the Placid waters of the Caribbean, gay bathing parties under the slanting cocoanut palms, pleasant evenings, beginning with dances in the dance pavilion, and winding up as couples sauntered out into the moonlight to look at the churned wake of the boat, while tropical breezes bathed them in a gentle caress. I simply gave my husband’s name as a possible customer, and suggested that they mail him folders.

“So, after having the folders on the one hand, and your postal on the other, he could draw his own conclusions, is that right?” Mason asked.

She nodded. “Go ahead,” Mason said.

“Well, naturally, I thought he’d be waiting at the gangplank when I returned. But, a day or two out of port, I realized that I’d been foolish. Pete would never do anything like that. He’s proud and haughty, and Southern.”

“With quite a temper?” Mason asked.

“Lots of it.”

“Jealous?”

“Yes.”

“So what?” Mason inquired.

“Well,” she said, “I’d gone so far I couldn’t surrender. I was going to be pretty short of cash when I landed. Having started out to play the game the way I did, I couldn’t possibly go to work, even if I could get a job. That would be a terrific come-down.”

“So what did you do?” Mason asked.

“I think Aussie sized up the situation pretty well,” she said. “Aussie was a shrewd judge of character. He’d done quite a bit of traveling and... well, he knew women.”

“Meaning that he knew you?”

“He knew women, yes.”

“Go ahead.”

“Aussie,” she said, “approached me with a proposition. He had some gems which he wanted to sell through a commission man. Aussie was a gem collector. Aussie explained it was like selling second-hand automobiles through classified ads. People sometimes hesitate to buy through a dealer, but if they think they can buy through a private party, they’ll show more interest, so auto dealers would arrange with people to stay home Sundays and exhibit second-hand automobiles as private cars and...”

“I know,” Mason interrupted, “and Aussie’s proposition was that you were to pose as the owner of certain gems?”

“Yes.”

“What were you to get out of it?”

“A salary and bonus,” she said, “and I was to be put up in style in an apartment. I was to be a sophisticated, dashing divorcee, a woman of the world who was young, attractive, and had outgrown the conventions.”

“Why the outgrown conventions?” Mason asked.

“So it would give me a reasonable excuse for flashing gems and wanting to dispose of them. Aussie said that people liked to think they were getting stones which had been lavishly bestowed on a careless sweetie who didn’t fully realize their value, who found herself temporarily cast off and in need of keeping up appearances.”

“Then Cullens really wanted you to be a front through which he could dispose of stones. Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“But these old-fashioned stones hardly seemed to fit into that picture,” Mason told her, interestedly.

“I think,” she said, “that was part of the build-up.”

“And what did they look like?”

She faced him then and said, “I don’t know. I never saw them. He told me he was taking them up to George Trent to be recut and put in modern settings.”

“And you were to sell them after that?”

“Mr. Trent, I believe, was to sell those. But I was to be in the background. If anyone made inquiries, I was to be the owner.”

“So Trent could get a better price for them?” Mason asked. She nodded. “But,” Mason said, “you rang up Trent on Monday morning, told him that you had a purchaser, that you’d decided not to...”