Erle Gardner - The Case of the Substitute Face

“I didn’t come here to argue,” Dail said. “I appreciate I’m in an embarrassing predicament if Mrs. Moar cares to take advantage of it.”

“She does,” Mason told him conversationally.

“You mean she’s going to sue me?”

“Exactly.”

“Well,” Dail said, “if you want to get technical about it. Mason, I didn’t accuse her of anything, I accused her husband, who is now dead.”

“You said, however, that the money which was found in her possession was money which had been embezzled from the Products Refining Company. It now appears that your relative was responsible for that embezzlement. Moar was innocent.”

“Then why the devil did Moar leave in the way he did?” Dail asked.

Mason shrugged his shoulders.

“You’re not making this particularly easy for me,” Dail said.

“Did you expect that I would?” Mason inquired.

“I thought that you’d be reasonable.”

“I always try to be reasonable.”

“Look here,” Dail blurted, “I don’t want to have it publicly known that Rooney embezzled that money. Under the peculiar circumstances, it would hurt my prestige with the stockholders of the company. I have, therefore, arranged to cover the shortage.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Mason said.

“The financial structure of the Products Refining Company is such that... Well, it’s rather complicated.”

“I understand.”

“If Mrs. Newberry filed any action against me, and alleged in her complaint that there actually had been a embezzlement by the auditor... Well, Mason, I want to settle.”

“On what basis?” Mason asked.

Dail said, “I don’t think there’s been any great damage done to Mrs. Moar’s case, but if I should assume the responsibility of underwriting your fees, that should be more than a fair settlement.”

Mason smiled. “My fees come high.”

“I was afraid they would,” Dail admitted.

“How high are you prepared to go?” Mason asked.

“Shall we say five thousand dollars?” Dail asked.

“I’ll take the matter up with my client,” Mason said.

“Can you give me a prompt answer?”

Mason said, “I feel quite certain my client’s answer will be that she wouldn’t consider a cent less than ten thousand dollars.”

“As your fees?” Dail asked, raising his eyebrows.

Mason said, “Oh, say five thousand dollars for my fees, and five thousand to give her funds with which to cover additional expenses.”

“She’s not exactly impoverished,” Dail pointed out.

“Thanks to the circumstances and to your newspaper interview, Daile, the Prosecution is holding all of her funds as evidence.”

Dail abruptly arose and started toward the door. Half way there, he stopped and turned to Mason. “Ten thousand is too much,” he said.

Mason said, “Evidently, Mr. Dail, you were aware of Moar’s identity when I first approached you to ask about your attitude in the event of a restitution. I further understand, from a remark made by Mr. Rooney, that detectives would have met the ship and arrested Mr. Moar at the gangplank, under circumstances which would have been exceedingly humiliating both to Mrs. Moar and her daughter. Taking all that into consideration, I think ten thousand dollars is exceedingly reasonable. In case you consider it unreasonable, you might take into consideration how promptly any promise you could have made me would have been broken.”

“That’s the thing I can’t understand,” Dail said. “Why the devil did Moar offer to return twenty thousand dollars if he hadn’t embezzled the money?”

“He made no such offer,” Mason said.

Dail walked across to the door, opened it and paused on the threshold to say to Mason, “Understand this, Mr. Mason, when we were on the ship we were dealing at arm’s length. I was under no obligation to you to disclose that I knew Newberry’s real identity.”

“Exactly,” Mason said, “and at the present time, we are still dealing at arm’s length.”

Dail said, “All right, you have me. Fix up an agreement.” He stepped out into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind him.

Della Street regarded Mason’s grinning countenance with anxious eyes. “When you come right down to it, Chief, why did Moar want to return any money?”

“He didn’t. Mrs. Moar did.”

“Well, why did she want to?”

“She thought he’d embezzled it.”

“Do you think she really thought that?”

Della turned to stare out of the window, her eyes focused on the gray, low-flung clouds which sent a drizzle of cold moisture trickling down the windowpanes. Abruptly, she turned back to Perry Mason. “Chief,” she said, “you’re clever when it comes to figuring evidence. You’re usually good when you figure character. But there are some things about this woman I don’t think you’ve taken into consideration.”

“What?” Mason asked.

“She’s attractive,” Della Street said, “and you can see by the way she throws her personality around that she’s been accustomed to rely on it. A woman who uses her charm to get the things she wants out of life becomes dangerous when she reaches the late thirties and early forties. I’m telling you, Chief, that woman is shrewd, clever and designing. She trapped Moar into marriage, not because she cared anything about him, but because she wanted a home for her daughter and a veneer of respectability for herself. Moar was sufficiently unsophisticated to be easy. You never did hear Moar’s side of this thing. Now you never will. It’s my opinion that if you’d ever heard Moar’s story, you’d have an entirely different slant on the whole thing. I think Belle realized that when she wanted you to talk with her father, and I think Mrs. Moar realized it and was willing to do absolutely anything to keep you apart.”

Mason, studying her patiently, said, “Go ahead, Della. Tell me the rest of it.”

“You’ve now established that Moar didn’t embezzle from the Products Refining Company,” Della Street said.

“It still doesn’t account for where he got the money,” Mason pointed out.

“What makes you think he had any money?” she asked.

“Well,” Mason said, “an assistant accountant doesn’t suddenly give up a job and start traveling around the world without having something to use for cash, and a man who has eighteen thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars in cash in a chamois-skin money belt...”

“Wait a minute. Chief,” she interrupted. “How do you know he had that?”

“Why...” Mason said, “the captain counted it in my presence. He...” He stopped abruptly, to stare at Della Street. “Go on,” he said, “spill it.”

“ I haven’t anything to spill,” she said, “only I’m trying to point out that all the facts you have in this case came from Mrs. Moar. Suppose she was the one who had the sudden influx of wealth? Suppose she gave the money to her husband to finance the trip to Honolulu. Suppose she talked him into quitting his job. Suppose she was the one who suggested that it would make it much easier for Belle if they changed their names from Moar to Newberry.”

“Wait a minute,” Mason interrupted. “How about that money belt?”

“Can’t you see,” Della Street said, “she never intended to let her husband reach shore alive. She intended to make his death look like suicide. Until you told her differently, she didn’t realize that the life insurance policy wouldn’t pay on suicide. When she did realize it, it was too late. She had to go through with the plan. If her husband had apparently committed suicide, later on she could have “found” the money belt. The fact that he’d removed the money belt and placed it under the mattress would have been perfectly consistent with his going up on deck to commit suicide. All Mrs. Moar had to do was to swear she hadn’t been on deck with him. She might have made it stick if it hadn’t been for Miss Fell’s testimony and the search the captain made of her stateroom closet.”