Erle Gardner - The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink

“Yes, sir.”

“How do you know?”

“I had seen her come in and I hadn’t seen her leave.”

“When did she come in?”

“About half an hour before Mr. Mason did.”

“And the defendant Morris Alburg, was he in the hotel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When did he come in?”

“About an hour before Mr. Mason arrived.”

“You’re certain of your identifications?”

“Very certain.”

Hamilton Burger turned to Mason and said, “Do you care to cross-examine this witness?”

“I think I do,” Mason said.

He pushed back his chair, arose, and faced the young man, whose blue, watery eyes made a valiant attempt to meet his, then shifted away, only to return, and again slither away.

Mason stood holding his eyes steadily on the witness.

Once more the witness made an attempt to meet Mason’s eyes, but, after less than a second, he averted his own eyes and shifted his position uneasily on the witness stand.

“How long have you been employed at the Keymont Hotel?”

“Three years.”

“Where did you work before that?”

“Various places.”

“Can you name them?”

“I sold goods on a commission.”

“What sort of goods?”

“Novelties.”

“Can you remember the name of the firm?”

“No. It was a fly-by-night outfit.”

“Did you ever serve in the Armed Forces?”

“No.”

“Have you ever held any other salaried position for as long as three years?”

“No.”

“You had two weeks’ vacation each year as a part of your compensation as night clerk?”

“No.”

“No vacations?”

“No vacations.”

“You worked there regularly, every night?”

“Well, there was once I was sent to Mexico City on business. It wasn’t really a vacation. It was a change.”

“What sort of business?”

“To collect a sum of money.”

“That was owed to the hotel?”

“Yes.”

“You collected the money?”

“I got a promissory note and was advised that would be satisfactory. The management wired me to that effect.”

“How long were you gone?”

“Almost a month. It was a difficult piece of work. There were a lot of angles.”

“For what was the money due?”

“I don’t know.”

“When was this?”

“About a year ago.”

“Exactly what date did you leave? Do you remember?”

“Certainly I remember. I left on a night plane on the seventeenth of — No, if you want to be technical it was on September eighteenth of last year.”

“Just how do you fix the date?”

“If you worked in the Keymont Hotel you wouldn’t have any trouble remembering when you had a free trip to Mexico City. The manager called me in and told me about this deal and said someone had to be on the ground who could handle the thing. He gave me money, told me to go up to my room, pack a suitcase and get to the airport.”

“What time was this?”

“Shortly before midnight, on the seventeenth.”

“The plane left at what time?”

“Right around one-thirty in the morning — the eighteenth.”

“A through plane?”

“No, I changed in El Paso, and if you want all the details, I sat next to a beautiful blonde who gave me the eye and then got sleepy when she found out I was leaving the plane at El Paso. From El Paso down I sat next to a woman who had been eating garlic, who had a kid that was airsick.”

The courtroom broke into laughter.

Mason didn’t even smile.

“There were some difficulties attendant upon your job in Mexico City?”

“Lots.”

“But it was a vacation?”

“It was a change.”

“Have you ever tried to leave the Keymont Hotel and secure employment with any other hotel?”

“Oh, Your Honor,” Hamilton Burger said. “There’s no reason why this witness should be ripped to pieces with all the details of his past life. Let Counsel confine his cross-examination to things that have been asked on direct examination.”

Judge Lennox said, “It seems to me that there is something unusual about the background here, and I am not going to limit Counsel’s cross-examination. The objection is overruled.”

“Have you?” Mason asked.

The witness tried to meet Mason’s eyes and failed. “No,” he said in a low voice.

“Have you,” Mason asked, “ever been convicted of a felony?”

The witness started to get up from the witness chair, then stopped and settled back down.

“Oh, Your Honor,” Hamilton Burger said, “this is so plainly a shot in the dark. This is an attempt to smear the reputation of a witness whose only fault has been that he has testified against Mr. Mason’s clients.”

“I think, myself, the question, under the circumstances, is rather brutal,” Judge Lennox said. “However, it is a perfectly permissible question. It’s one of the grounds of impeaching a witness, and obviously the question has been met with no forthright denial. Therefore I will have to overrule the objection, somewhat against my wishes.”

“Have you,” Mason asked, “ever been convicted of a felony?”

“Yes.”

“What was it? Where did you serve time?”

“I served time in San Quentin for armed robbery. Now you know the whole thing. Go ahead and ruin me. Rip me up the back if you want to.”

Mason studied the young man for a moment, then moved his chair around the end of the counsel table, sat down, and in a tone of genuine interest said, “I don’t think I want to, Mr. Hoxie. I think perhaps we may use this as a point of beginning rather than a point of ending. Did your employers know you had been convicted of a felony?”

“Why do you suppose I was holding down a second-rate job in a third-rate hotel?” Hoxie demanded angrily.

“You’re positive of your identifications of the witnesses?” Mason asked.

“Completely positive. I have a knack of never forgetting a face. Once I have seen a person and placed him I never forget him — which is why my services presumably are of some value to the hotel.”

“When were you convicted, Frank?”

“Ten years ago.”

“And you served how long?”

“Five years.”

“And then what?”

“Then I had four or five different jobs, and something was always happening. My record would come up and I’d be thrown out.”

“Then what?”

“Then I was picked up on suspicion. Not because of anything I had done but purely because of my record. I was put in a police show-up box and I knew it meant the loss of another job. I was pretty sore about the whole thing.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

“A police sergeant came to me after one of these show-ups. He sympathized with me and told me he knew how I felt. He said that he had a friend who managed the Keymont Hotel. He said it was a place that had been in trouble with the police and the manager would therefore know just how I felt, and the trouble I was having. This police officer knew I had a great talent for remembering people and he knew the Keymont Hotel was looking for a night clerk because he’d been instrumental in sending the one who had just been employed there to prison.

“He told me he’d had to threaten to close the hotel for good, and this new manager had promised to do his best to keep the place within the law. The police officer advised me to go to this new manager, to tell him all about myself. He said that the only thing for me to do was to get a job where the employer knew all about my past history so I’d have a real chance to make good. He suggested that I go there and tell them frankly my entire history, and he warned me that if I didn’t want to try to go straight I wasn’t to apply for the job because the place had a bad reputation and the Vice Squad was watching it.”