Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Long-Legged Models

Sgt. Holcomb stroked the angle of his jaw. “I don’t know why you did all this stuff, but you sure as hell did it. Now then, I’m telling you something else, wise guy. You aren’t in the clear on this thing yourself.”

“No?” Mason asked.

“No,” Holcomb said. “The best medical evidence we can get indicates that Casselman could have met his death at the time you were calling on him.”

“Meaning that I committed the murder?” Mason asked.

“Meaning that you could have committed the murder. I’ll say this for you, Mason, I don’t think you would have gone up there and murdered him in cold blood, but if he had made some threats, if he had started reaching for a gun, you could damn well have poked that gun in his guts and pulled the trigger.”

Mason smilingly shook his head. “You’ll have to do better than that, Sergeant. You’ll have to get something more than mere speculation to make a case. George Casselman was alive and well when I left him. I do know that he was expecting some mysterious visitor.”

“Stephanie Falkner,” Sgt. Holcomb said.

“Not Stephanie, Sergeant. Her appointment was later. This was someone who telephoned and was coming right up.”

“How do you know?”

“Casselman asked me to leave. He said he was expecting someone. He said there were complications.”

“And you left?”

“Yes.”

“And then went around to the back of the apartment so you could wait until a mysterious young woman came running down the service stairs and then you picked her up.”

“Did I do that?” Mason asked.

“You did exactly that,” Sgt. Holcomb said, “and that mysterious young woman, whoever she was, was the murderer. You’re trying to protect her. You knew that she was going to call on Casselman. She came running down the stairs and told you she’d killed Casselman. She shoved the murder weapon into your hand and asked you what she should do. You told her not to worry, that you’d dispose of the murder weapon in such a way that you’d mix the facts in the case all up.”

“Well,” Mason said, “it’s an interesting theory. I think you’re going to have a lot of trouble trying to prove it, Sergeant, because it happens to be incorrect.”

“We’ve got the proof,” Sgt. Holcomb said.

“Indeed,” Mason said.

“We have witnesses who saw you waiting out there in back, who saw you picking up this young woman and driving away with her. We have witnesses to the fact that you had the murder weapon in your possession, that you fired a shot from the murder weapon into the desk out there at Garvin’s used car lot.”

“And how are you going to prove it was the murder weapon?” Mason asked.

“By the bullet, you dope! Our ballistic expert can tell whether the bullet you fired out there came from the murder weapon. If it did, then it’s a fair inference that you got the murder weapon from this young woman who ran down the back stairs from Casselman’s apartment. On the other hand if it turns out that bullet was not fired from the murder weapon, then it proves you switched guns right there in Garvin’s office.”

“Well, well,” Mason said. “Under your reasoning I’m hooked either way.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“It seems unfair somehow,” Mason said sarcastically. “I can’t feel that it’s fair to say that if the bullet came from the murder weapon I’m guilty of switching evidence and that if the bullet didn’t come from the murder weapon I’m still guilty. It seems you’re a little biased in your thinking, Sergeant.”

Sgt. Holcomb said, “This is the same old razzle-dazzle. Every time we start working on a shooting case, you go drag in some extra guns and then start a sort of shell game trying to confuse the issues.”

“Anything wrong with that?” Mason asked.

“It’s illegal, that’s all.”

“Then I trust I’ll be charged with whatever crime I’ve committed.”

“You sure will in this case,” Holcomb promised. “This time we have you dead to rights. You went too far out on a limb this time.”

“You certainly credit me with a diabolical ingenuity,” Mason said.

“I’ve simply learned your technique,” Holcomb told him. “Now do you want to kick through and tell us what happened? Do you want to admit that that’s what you did?”

Mason shook his head.

“If you do,” Holcomb said, “and if you come clean, we may be able to give you the breaks. If you don’t, we’ll take the bullet we recovered from the wall out there at Garvin’s place, we’ll match it up with the gun you had in your possession, and so help me, we’ll crucify you. We’ll throw the book at you!”

Della Street coughed significantly.

“That,” Mason said, “would seem to be a very definite threat.”

“That is a very definite threat,” Holcomb told him.

“All right,” Mason said, “I understand the point you’ve made, and I can’t help you. All I can tell you is that I did not substitute any guns, that to the best of my knowledge the gun that young Garvin showed me out there, the gun which he took from the drawer of his desk is exactly the same gun that he took up to Stephanie Falkner’s apartment.”

“By saying that,” Sgt. Holcomb said, “you have made yourself an accessory after the fact. You’re concealing evidence. You’re acting the part of an accessory.”

Mason shook his head and said, “I’m sorry, Sergeant. I’m telling you the truth.”

“Okay, wise guy,” Sgt. Holcomb said. “You asked for it.”

He turned on his heel and walked out.

Mason waited until he was sure the Sergeant was out of the office, then turned to Della and said, “Della, did you go out and get that bullet?”

“Why, Chief,” she said, her eyes wide with surprise, “what in the world gave you any idea like that?”

“Did you? I gathered Holcomb was trying to scare me with a bluff.”

“If I had swiped that bullet as a souvenir, would it be serious?”

“It could be very serious.”

“Then if I had done it, and told you I had done it, that would put you in a very embarrassing position, would it not?”

Mason thought that over for a minute, then said, “Have it your own way, Della.”

“Thank you,” she said demurely.

Shortly after two-thirty Della Street entered Mason’s private office and said apprehensively, “Junior is out there.”

“Garvin?” Mason asked.

“That’s right.”

“He wants to see me?”

“He wants to see you very much indeed,” Della Street said.

“How is his disposition?”

“His disposition as indicated by his manner is very, very bad. He has chips on both shoulders. He wants to fight.”

“Then you’d better send him in right away,” Mason told her.

“Chief, let me have Paul Drake come down, or send a bodyguard, or...?”

Mason shook his head.

“Young Garvin is big and tough and strong,” she said. “You know what it would do to the case if there was a knock-down-drag-out fist fight right here in your office.”

“Send him in,” Mason said. “I think he’ll listen to reason.”

“He doesn’t act as though he would.”

“Send him in anyway,” Mason said, “and we’ll get it over with. If he sees Paul Drake here, he’ll know that I sent for him to act as bodyguard, and then he’ll feel that I’m afraid of him. That wouldn’t be good. Let’s have it out man to man and straight from the shoulder right now. I’ll see if I can clear up some things in Junior’s mind.”

“Well, here goes,” Della Street said, “but I don’t like it.”