Erle Gardner - The Case of the Lame Canary

“You are one of the officers who discovered the body of this man who is at present lying in the undertaking parlors?”

“Yes, sir, I and my partner, Jack Moore, were cruising up this road, making a cut-off from the ocean boulevard to get over to the Conejo route, when I happened to notice that some branches had been freshly broken from one of the scrub oaks just down the hill from the edge of the road. We stopped the car, investigated, and found where some heavy object had crashed down through the trees. We worked our way down the ledge, and then came to an abrupt drop of about sixty or seventy feet. We could see a car lying upside-down in the bottom of this canyon. It took us almost half an hour to work our way down to it. This man was pinned underneath the car. The top had caved in, and the back of the front seat had crushed his head like an egg shell. He had been dead for some time. The body already showed evidences of decomposition. It had been lying for two days in the hot sun.”

“What did you do?”

“We notified the coroner, obtained a wrecking outfit, first raised the body to the road, and then brought up the machine.”

“Were you present when representatives of the district attorney’s office tested the steering wheel of the automobile for fingerprints?”

“I was.”

“What did they find?”

“There were no fingerprints on the steering wheel.”

“Were you present when the pockets of the dead man’s clothes were emptied?”

“I was.”

“I show you an assortment of articles and ask you if you can identify them,” the coroner said. He took from his safe a black leather hand bag, took from this hand bag a towel and spread out a miscellaneous assortment. The officer checked them over carefully, nodded his head, and said, “Yes, these were the things which were in the pockets of the dead man’s clothes. There was nothing else in the clothes.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“Yes.”

“Now, what can you tell us of the automobile which was lying there, wrecked, in the bottom of the canyon?”

“It was a stolen automobile. It had been stolen at six-thirty on the afternoon of the thirteenth; was reported about an hour later, and wasn’t seen again until it was found in the bottom of this canyon.”

“I think that’s all,” the coroner said. “Are there any questions?”

Mason slowly got to his feet.

“You have some questions, Mr. Mason?”

Mason said, “I have some questions to ask of this witness. But, in the meantime, I am wondering if the coroner has forgotten his promise to Mr. Weyman. Mr. Weyman is evidently a very sick man and I think that he should be put on the stand at the present time, if he is to be called at all. In fact, I think the evidence in this case is very plain, and it seems to me there is no reason to call Mr. Weyman. I suggest that Mr. Weyman be excused.”

“No,” the coroner said, “Mr. Weyman is here, and there’s no reason why he can’t testify.”

“But he’s a sick man,” Mason insisted.

“He hasn’t a physician’s certificate to prove it,” the coroner pointed out. “If he was too sick to attend, he could have had his physician certify to that fact.”

“Well, it’s very evident he’s ill,” Mason said. “Look at the man’s bandaged countenance. He certainly wouldn’t go around with his face swathed like that unless he was ill — here, I have a suggestion. There’s a doctor sitting right next to him. Let Dr. Wallace make an examination of the infected area and give a certificate. I don’t think a man in that condition should be a witness.”

Dr. Wallace looked questioningly at the coroner. The coroner stared steadily at Perry Mason. Then Scanlon said, “Very well, Doctor, you make an examination.”

Dr. Wallace reached over, deftly tore off a strip of adhesive tape, took one end of the bandage in his fingers, and started to untwist it.

Weyman swung his left fist. The blow caught Dr. Wallace full on the jaw, snapping his head back. But the doctor’s fingers still held the end of the bandage.

Weyman started climbing over the back of the seat. The coroner yelled, “Stop that man!” and someone grabbed his legs. Weyman kicked out desperately. Dr. Wallace, recovering himself somewhat, grabbed at the collar of the man’s coat with his left hand. His right pulled at the bandage. Suddenly, the entire bandage slid from Weyman’s face, to lump around his neck, and Dr. Wallace, staring at the man’s features, jumped back to stare with wide, startled eyes. “Good God!” he exclaimed.

“ That’s the dead man!”

Pandemonium broke loose in the crowded room.

Perry Mason turned to Rodney Cuff, made a little deprecatory gesture and said, “And there, Counselor, is your murder case!”

The entire end of the room where Weyman was struggling to escape became a seething mass of spectators. The coroner abandoned any attempt to secure order. The jurors themselves surged from their seats and joined in the melee. Perry Mason looked at his wrist watch, grinned at Coroner Scanlon, and said, “Thanks, Coroner, for the co-operation. I have fifty-seven minutes within which to go to my office, pick up my passport, and catch my boat for Honolulu, the Orient, Bali, Singapore, and wayplaces.”

Perry Mason’s powerful roadster roared into pulsating speed, as the car swept down the road from Los Angeles to Wilmington.

“Well,” he grinned, looking at his watch, “we can just about make it — with luck. But we’ll be starting out with just the clothes we stand in. We won’t have any baggage aboard. It’s a shame all that new baggage of yours is going to be wasted.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t,” Della Street said. “Our baggage is all aboard.”

“It’s what?” Mason asked. “You mean—”

“Keep your eyes on the road,” she warned.

“What’s the catch?” Mason asked.

“No catch at all,” she told him. “You told me to fill that baggage with bricks, old shoes, or anything else. I saw no reason why I should do that, so, instead, I filled it with all my personal belongings. When I took it out of the apartment house I didn’t tell the transfer man to take it to the Trader’s Transfer Company, but told him to take it directly to the President Monroe. Just so Sergeant Holcomb thought it had gone to Trader’s Transfer Company was all that was necessary. And as for your baggage, I hired a valet to go out to your flat, pack up what you needed and ship it. I thought you’d neglect to do it.”

“Good girl,” Mason said, “I should have known you’d think of all the things I forgot— And so Holcomb thought the baggage was at Trader’s. I’m a little rusty about what happened after that because I was stacking the cards to have the inquest go the way I wanted it. What’s the lowdown?”

“Well,” she reported, “Sergeant Holcomb went tearing down to the Trader’s Transfer Company, hot on the trail of some baggage with the initials ‘D.M.’ on it. He found the baggage all right, and the more Trader tried to tell him it wasn’t mine, the more he thought Trader was in league with you. So he became pretty hostile and smashed open the baggage. He found a lot of property which had been surreptitiously moved from some of the buildings which had been fired by this gang of incendiaries. Of course, he didn’t know what it was at the time, but all of the fur coats and things made him suspicious. So he got in touch with the detective division and they identified the property in short order. So naturally, Sergeant Holcomb arrested me, and Judge Summerwaite signed the writ of habeas corpus and I got out just about the time Trader made some incriminating admissions.”