Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Long-Legged Models

“And suppose we don’t talk?” Mason asked.

“Then you’d both be sorry.”

Burger said, “I’m going to ask you, Garvin, if you went to a shoe shop at 918 Mowbray Street and had a pair of rubber heels put on a pair of new shoes about three weeks ago?”

“Answer that,” Mason said.

“I did,” Garvin admitted.

“I’m going to show you a pair of shoes and ask you if those are the shoes on which you had those rubber heels installed?”

Burger opened a drawer in his desk, took out a pair of shoes, and handed them to Garvin.

“Where did you get those?” Garvin asked with some surprise.

“Never mind,” Burger said. “Are those yours?”

Garvin looked them over. There were several peculiar bluish stains on the sole of one of the shoes.

“Yes,” he said.

“For your information,” Burger went on, “those shoes have been given a benzidine test for blood. Those purplish stains you see are where there was a reaction indicating the presence of blood on that left shoe. Now in view of that, do you have any statement you want to make as to how that blood got on that shoe?”

“I don’t think I care to make any statement on that at this time,” Garvin said.

“All right,” Hamilton Burger said with ponderous patience, “I’m now going to show you a color photograph,” and handed it to Mason.

“Look that over carefully, Mason,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”

Mason said, “I see a footprint.”

“Look it over carefully.”

Mason studied the photograph.

Hamilton Burger said, “If you study that photograph carefully, you will see something quite plainly which you could only barely detect on the black and white photograph, but which nevertheless is shown here. It’s another footprint, the print of a woman’s shoe directly under the print of Homer Garvin’s shoe. You can see the imprint of the heel plate on the very tip of the heel.

“Now then, Garvin, I’m asking you if you didn’t go out to George Casselman’s apartment after he had been killed, knowing he had been killed, for the purpose of leaving evidence there that would confuse the issues. I am asking if you didn’t deliberately step in the puddle of blood and then place your own footprint over this Woman’s footprint with the deliberate intention of obliterating and concealing that footprint?”

“Just a moment,” Mason said, “as I understand it, that would be a crime.”

“Permit me to congratulate you upon your knowledge of the law,” Burger said sarcastically.

“Under those circumstances, I advise my client to refuse to answer the question,” Mason said.

Burger took a deep breath, “Garvin, I am going to show you a fingerprint which was recovered from the knob of the back door. I may further state that someone had evidently wiped the knob of that back door clean of fingerprints. There was only one fingerprint on it, and that was a very plain, legible fingerprint of the ball of a thumb which had obviously been deliberately placed in the exact center of the knob after the surface had been wiped clean of any other fingerprints.

“That thumb print is yours, Garvin. There can be no mistake about it. I am going to ask you the circumstances under which you made that print on the doorknob?”

“Just a minute,” Mason said, “if your contention is correct, and if Garvin was the one who wiped off the doorknob and then left his fingerprint on it, he would be guilty of a crime?”

“He would be guilty of a crime,” Hamilton Burger said.

“Then I advise him not to answer,” Mason said.

Hamilton Burger turned to Mason. “You yourself made an elaborate switch so you could juggle the murder weapon around in this case, Mason. I’m going to give you one chance to come clean. I want you to tell how that murder weapon came into your possession.”

“And if I tell you the truth, you won’t prosecute me?”

Hamilton Burger thought that over, looked at Mason with suppressed hatred in his eyes. “I’m trying to be fair about this thing, Mason. I’m not going to come out and make a lot of specific promises, but what you say now will greatly affect the attitude of the District Attorney’s office.”

Mason said, “I went out to Homer Garvin, Jr.’s place. I asked him if he had a gun. He gave me a gun. I discharged the gun so that the bullet ploughed a furrow in Garvin’s desk. I took Garvin, Jr. to Stephanie Falkner’s apartment. He gave her the gun. Now I’ve told you the truth. What are you going to do?”

“I know that you switched guns out there, and that because of that switch young Garvin acted as your cat’s-paw and took the murder weapon up to Stephanie Falkner.”

Mason turned to his client. “There you are, Homer,” he said. “That’s a pretty good indication of what his promises are worth. If you tell him something that doesn’t conform to his cockeyed theory of the case he says it can’t be the truth. He’ll only believe the things he wants to hear.”

Burger pushed back his chair, started to get to his feet, thought better of it, settled back again in the chair.

Tragg said, “May I ask a question, Mr. District Attorney?”

“Sure, go ahead. Ask all you want,” Burger said.

Tragg said, “Mason, do I have your personal assurance, man-to-man, that you did not substitute any gun out there at young Garvin’s place?”

“You have that assurance,” Mason told him.

Tragg turned back to Hamilton Burger. “I tell you, Burger, there’s something about this whole thing that is a lot deeper than we think at the present time. I personally can’t conceive of any reason why Mason would have substituted weapons. I personally want to carry on this investigation on the theory that a weapon wasn’t substituted, and that the gun Garvin, Jr., took out of his desk was the murder weapon.”

“It couldn’t have been,” Hamilton Burger said flatly.

Lt. Tragg snapped, “Don’t be silly!” then corrected himself quickly. “There are certain things about this case which don’t fit together. Mason would have had no possible incentive for—”

“That’ll do,” Burger interrupted. “Watch yourself, Lieutenant. We’re here to get information, not to give it. And I prefer to carry on our own arguments in privacy, not where Mr. Perry Mason can drink everything in with the idea that he can capitalize on the things we don’t know.”

Mason arose. “I take it then, the interview is at an end?” he said. “My client has refused to answer any more questions. I have answered your questions fully and frankly. I have given you every bit of information I could without violating my professional duty to safeguard the confidences of a client.”

Hamilton Burger jerked a contemptuous thumb. “There’s the door,” he said.

“How about Garvin?”

Burger jerked his thumb upward. “Your client,” he said, “is going to spend quite a little time in a hotel at the expense of the taxpayers.”

“Gentlemen,” Mason said, “I wish you a very good evening. Garvin, my instructions to you are to make no statement of any sort.”

Hamilton Burger picked up the telephone, said to someone at the other end of the line, “Okay, send in the newspaper reporters.”

Mason took the elevator down to the curb, caught a cab back to his office.

Della Street, waiting apprehensively, said, “How did it go, Chief?”

Mason shook his head. “There’s something in this case I don’t understand as yet.”

“How about the police?”

“There’s a lot in the case they don’t understand.”

“And what about Homer Garvin?”

“Garvin,” Mason said, “is going to be charged with being an accessory after the fact, and I’m afraid they’ve got the deadwood on him.”