Erie Gardner - The Case of the Lazy Lover

“Yes, sir.”

Mason said to Danvers, “As I understand the rule, Counselor, leading questions are permitted on direct examination when they are preliminary, merely; but I would suggest that if you don’t want me to object, you had better let the witness himself testify from here on.”

“My question was merely preliminary. I was trying to save time.”

“You could save more time if you gave all the testimony for this witness,” Mason said. “Time is important, but there are other matters more important.”

Danvers grinned and said, “I’m trying to save time, and you’re trying to save the defendant’s neck.”

“That will do, gentlemen,” Judge Colton said. “Please get on with the case, Mr. Danvers.”

“You’ve seen the witness, Fleetwood, who just testified?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When did you first see him?”

“Why, he came to my place Monday night.”

“About what time Monday?”

“Well, now, I can’t tell. It was after I’d gone to bed, and I woke up because the dog was barking. I never looked at the watch.”

“All right. What wakened you?”

“First I heard the dog bark, and then I thought I might have heard a car.”

“So you were awake, then, when Fleetwood came to the house?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what happened?”

“Well, the dog barked real loud and I knew someone was right out in the yard. Then I heard someone speak to the dog and then there was the sound of knuckles on the door.”

“The dog didn’t bite?”

“No. The dog doesn’t bite. He barks, and he runs up and smells people, and I don’t know what would happen if a person tried to do something he wasn’t supposed to do. But as long as a person is going directly to the house and knocking on the door, the dog just keeps on barking, and that’s all.”

“So you went to the door and let Fleetwood in?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, this man told me that he found himself wandering around, that he guessed he’d been in an automobile accident, that he didn’t know who he was and couldn’t remember anything about himself. So, naturally, I took him in.”

“Where did you put him?”

“Well, sir, I didn’t know anything at all about who he was, and thinking I might have heard a car motor stop down there made me kind of suspicious.”

“You didn’t say anything to this man about hearing the car stop?”

“No. I wasn’t even certain I had heard a car. I thought I might have — and the way the dog acted I thought a car had stopped.”

“Did the man tell you anything about having driven up in an automobile?”

“No. He said he just couldn’t remember a thing, that he just found himself walking along the road.”

“You knew that was a lie?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I thought the guy was hot.”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, it was a cold, drizzly night and I didn’t want to turn him out, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I had a spare room with a cot in it and some blankets were there. I told him that I ran a bachelor’s place, and that he’d have to get in a bed without sheets, just some blankets.”

“And what did he say?”

“He seemed tickled to death. So I put him in that room.”

“And then what?”

“And then,” Overbrook said with a grin, “I took Prince, that’s the dog, and put him in the living room, and I told Prince to watch him and keep him in there, and then I went back to bed and went to sleep. I knew that that fellow could never get out of that room without Prince nabbing him.”

“You feel absolutely certain that he didn’t leave the room after he once entered it?”

Overbrook grinned and said, “When I tell Prince to keep somebody in a place and to watch him, why you can gamble Prince is going to do it.”

“How big a dog is Prince?”

“He weighs about eighty-five pounds. He’s a lot of dog.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, then, the next day this man Mason came and there was a party with him, and a woman that said she was this man’s wife, and everything seemed to be all hunky-dory, so they had a grand family reunion with a lot of billing and cooing, and this woman seemed just crazy to get her husband away from there and that was okay by me.”

“In other words, you accepted everything at its face value?”

“I still thought the guy was hot,” Overbrook said, “but I wasn’t sticking my neck out.”

“So they went away?”

“That’s right.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well,” Overbrook said, “nothing happened, until the next morning.”

“And then?”

“Well, about daylight the next morning I began doing a lot of thinking. I remembered noticing Fleetwood’s tracks and I thought I’d see if I couldn’t back-track him a ways.”

“Now this was Wednesday morning?”

“That’s right.”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, I started out and picked up Fleetwood’s tracks, and then I back-tracked him. I was careful not to step in his tracks. I just walked along...”

“On this diagram,” Danvers interrupted, “there’s a line of dots which are labeled FLEETWOOD’S TRACKS TO THE HOUSE.”

“That’s right. Those are his tracks.”

“And another line of dots going in an opposite direction labeled OVERBROOK’S TRACKS FOLLOWING FLEETWOOD’S TRAIL.”

“That’s right.”

“And those are your tracks?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now those tracks follow along parallel with the tracks left by Fleetwood?”

“Yes, sir. I back-tracked him down to where the car had stopped, and I started to circle around and then all of a sudden I seen these tracks where a woman had jumped out of the automobile and run back to the highway, and then I looked and saw a woman’s tracks coming back again from the highway and getting in the automobile apparently to drive it off. So I knew I’d better call the officers. It looked like a woman had been shut up in the luggage compartment.”

“So then what did you do?”

“Well, I kept right on walking to the hard ground without looking around any. You can see where these tracks of mine circle right up into the high ground up here. I have a farm road up there that runs out to my grain field.”

“A farm service road?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what did you do?”

“I walked up to that road and went back to the house and kept thinking things over; so then I took my tractor and trailer and loaded on a lot of scrap lumber, so people could get out there without messing things up any, and put the lumber down.”

“How did you put it down?”

“Why the way a person would put down lumber so as to save tracks that way. I’d put down a board and then walk out along that board and put down another board and then walk out along that board and put down another board until I had boards all the way out to where the car had stopped, and then I walked back along the boards, got in my tractor and drove back to my house, got my jalopy out of the shed and drove in to where there was a telephone. I called the sheriff and told him that I’d been putting up a man that said he had amnesia and I thought he might be hot and that I’d tracked him out to where he’d parked his automobile and, sure enough, I’d found there’d been a woman in the back end of the car and she’d jumped out and run down to the highway, and then after a while apparently she’d sneaked back and picked up the car and driven off.”

“At that time had you heard of Allred’s death?”

“No, sir. I hadn’t.”

“Cross-examine,” Danvers said.

Mason smiled reassuringly at the witness.

“So Fleetwood came to your place on Monday night and was there until sometime Tuesday?”