Erle Gardner - The Case of the Troubled Trustee

"I had already telephoned for the police while they were struggling in the bedroom. The woman in the adjoining apartment had been screaming for the police; and just a few minutes after Kerry left, and while Fred was getting himself together and trying to get to his feet, the police came and asked a lot of questions about what had happened.

"Fred told his story. But he lied, Mr. Mason. He lied about several things. My opinion of him went down when I heard the way he told the police what had happened."

"Did the police believe him?"

"At first, I think they did. Then they asked him to describe Kerry, and when he told them how tall he was and how much he weighed and how old he was and they looked at Fred Hedley standing over six feet and broad-shouldered, one of the officers said to Fred, 'Well, you wouldn't have had any trouble if you'd landed that first punch.'

"And Fred walked right into the trap and said, 'You can say that again. The shifty little pipsqueak ducked that punch and slammed me in the stomach so hard it knocked the wind out of me. Then he was climbing all over me while I was half paralyzed from the solar plexus punch.'

"Then the officer grinned and said, 'So you really did start the fight? It was you that took the first punch.'"

"And then?" Mason asked.

"Then the officers told him he'd brought it on himself and refused to give him a warrant for Kerry's arrest."

Mason said, "Tell me a little more about what Hedley was talking about-what he wanted."

"What he wanted was an endowment for this art center of his."

"What is it-an art gallery, a school, or what?" Mason asked.

"Oh, it varies from time to time. It's one of his rather nebulous ideas. And yet, in some ways, it isn't so nebulous. What he wants is to encourage artists to start a whole new school."

"A new school?"

"Well, more along the lines of a branch of modern art. Something that's a cross between the so-called modernistic school and the primitive school, interpretive art."

"He's quite definite in his ideas as to what he wants?"

"Well, as to what he wants, but not exactly how he intends to go about getting what he wants.

"Mainly he thinks that art is decadent; that color photography has made pictorial art, in the conventional sense, passe; that the so-called modernistic school is, at times, too lacking in the proper subject matter. So what he wants is to get people to paint things the way they see them, particularly portraits."

"He paints, himself?"

"Only vague outlines illustrating his technique."

"Do you have some of his paintings?"

"Not here, but- Well, he goes in for portraits. He.encourages students to paint them with exaggerated facial characteristics.

"If you went to a conventional portrait painter, he'd smooth out all of your lines, and- Not that there are any lines, of course, I'm just talking figuratively-and soften the whole contour of the features so that you would be better looking.

"Hedley doesn't believe in that. He wants it done just the other way around. He emphasizes the predominant features. His paintings are something like colored cartoons. As he says, he paints the character rather than the flesh."

"And he wants you to endow that school of art?"

"Yes, to have it take its rightful place as the modern type of portrait painting"

"Do you think he could ever sell portraits of that sort?"

"Who knows? After the vogue catches on, he probably could. But that's why he needs to have an endowment, just to get started. You see, people probably wouldn't pose for their portraits-that is, not for that kind of a portrait.. - unless it became stylish."

"I can readily understand that much," Mason said.

She hurried on. "His first subjects would be prominent men that he'd get from the newspapers. You see very good pen-and-ink, black-and-white cartoons, but what he wants to do is to make something that is almost a cartoon-not quite. It stops just short of being a cartoon but it would be in color and would be beautifully done."

"Does he have the ability and technique to do it beautifully?"

"Not now. He wants to develop. Really, Mr. Mason, I don't know why you started cross-examining me about Fred Hedley."

"Because I'm trying to get certain facts and I want to have those facts straight. Now, when Hedley talks about an endowment, he really means he wants to give financial aid to certain aspiring artists who can't make a living otherwise. Is that right?"

"I guess so, yes."

"And he's an aspiring artist who can't make a living?"

"He may be the founder of a whole new school of painting."

"And he intends to subsidize himself?"

"He says he'd be untrue to his art if he didn't."

"With your money?"

"Of course. What other money would he have?"

"That's a good question," Mason said.

"Well, of course, he despises moneygrubbing."

"All right," Mason said, "the police are going to question you."

"But I can't understand how anything like that could have happened. I mean, how Kerry could have taken the gun."

"He had plenty of opportunity," Mason said, "but if we're going to save Dutton's neck, we've got to find out how it happened. Unless, of course, Dutton killed him."

"Do you think he did, Mr. Mason?"

"He's my client," Mason said with a wry smile. And then after a moment, "Thank you very much for your co-operation, Miss Ellis."

Paul Drake sat in Mason's office with a notebook balanced on his knee and said, "Our men have uncovered a lot of stuff. None of it is going to help."

"Go on," Mason said, "give me the facts."

"Well, Rodger Palmer was a great believer in the Steer Ridge Oil stock, but he hated Jarvis Reader, the head of the company.

"I don't know whether you noticed it or not, Perry, but there's a lot of similarity in the appearance of the two men. Reader is perhaps a few years younger, but both men were two-fisted oil men who had worked as roughnecks, who believed in direct action but who had ideas that were diametrically opposed.

"Palmer believed in developing a company working along proven structures, taking a chance on wildcatting after scientific exploration of the structures indicated there was a reasonable chance.

"Jarvis Reader is a plunger. He wants to be a big shot, the bigger the better. He made his money, not by operating oil wells but by selling stock, paying himself a fancy salary and making his reports to the stockholders look good by tying up huge blocks of acreage.

"Now, of course, you can't tie up acreage like that in really good oil country, and the Steer Ridge Oil Company was going steadily downhill until it had that lucky strike.

"Reader is a flashy dresser, a big spender, regards himself as the big executive type, has a twin-motored airplane at his beck and call and is always the big shot.

"After Rodger Palmer got out of the company, he had periods of pretty lean living. He hung around cheap hotels. Sometimes he would be in rooming houses where shady characters lived. Once he was even questioned by the police in connection with the nylon stocking strangling of a prostitute. He had been in the rooming house at the time, but fortunately had an alibi. He had been talking with the clerk at the time the actual murder must have been committed.

"But that gives you a general idea of the guy's background. His clothes were seedy, he was pretty much discredited in the oil game.

"Then he started calling on stockholders in the Steer Ridge Company, telling them that they were being bilked, and he put up a pretty convincing argument. I understand a group of stockholders, who controlled a large block of the stock, gave him money to try and get proxies so that Reader could be ousted.