Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Long-Legged Models

Eva Elliott started to cry. “He promised to have me as his entertainer when the new motel went up. He lied. He couldn’t make good. He promised me a floor show...”

The door of the courtroom opened. Marie Barlow, quite evidently in the last stages of pregnancy, carrying a paper package in her hand, moved with slow, measured steps down the aisle of the courtroom.

Judge Decker looked at her. The jurors looked, and spectators turned to look.

Marie Barlow approached the mahogany rail which divided the counsel tables from the courtroom, extended the paper parcel toward Perry Mason.

Mason took the parcel in his hand, turned to the witness.

Slowly, dramatically, he tore the paper from the package and brought out the bloodstained towels.

“Eva,” he said, “after you shot George Casselman you wiped off some of the blood with towels and put those towels in your purse. You concealed them in the back of a filing cabinet in Mr. Garvin’s office. Then you substituted the Safe Gun, which you had used in the killing, for the Holster Gun which you took from Mr. Garvin’s holster while Mr. Garvin was in the shower. You put the Holster Gun back in the safe, didn’t you?”

Eva Elliott got to her feet, then sank back into the witness chair. “I did it in self-defense,” she sobbed. “When I found out about what he had done, I... I...”

“Now just a minute! Just a minute!” Hamilton Burger shouted. “This whole matter now has the appearance of being a well-rehearsed, carefully-staged attempt to stampede the jurors.”

Mason resumed his seat at the counsel table and grinned at Hamilton Burger.

“That’s all, Mr. Burger,” he said. “Rest your case, if you dare do so. The defense will put on no evidence.”

“You have no further questions of this witness?” Judge Decker asked incredulously.

“None, Your Honor,” Mason said.

Hamilton Burger sat indecisively for a minute. “I would like to ask the Court for a thirty-minute recess,” he said. “It may be that the prosecution will...”

“Do you have any questions of this witness?” Judge Decker asked.

“No, Your Honor.”

Judge Decker glanced at Perry Mason. “Does the defense oppose the motion for a thirty-minute recess made by the District Attorney?”

“The defense opposes the motion,” Mason said. “The defense does not intend to put on any evidence, and we would like to start the argument so that we can go to the jury this afternoon.”

“Very well,” Judge Decker said. “Proceed with your case, Mr. Prosecutor.”

“That is all of our case. We had already rested.”

“The defense does not intend to put on any evidence,” Perry Mason said.

Judge Decker looked down at Eva Elliott. “Despite the fact that it is highly irregular, the Court is not satisfied to have the matter disposed of in this manner. Miss Elliott, did you kill George Casselman?”

“I shot him,” she said. “I took the gun out of Mr. Garvin’s safe to use as a bluff, to frighten him. Then he tried to choke me. He was trying to break my neck. Everything was going black, and I heard something go boom... and then I could breathe again.”

“And with what gun did you try to bluff him?”

“The gun I had taken from Mr. Garvin’s safe earlier that afternoon.”

“And what did you do with that gun?”

“I put it in Mr. Garvin’s shoulder holster while he was taking his shower. Then I put the other gun which had been in his shoulder holster in his safe.”

Judge Decker gave the matter frowning consideration. “The Court is going to take a sixty-minute recess of its own motion,” he said. “In view of the fact that this witness is one called by the prosecution, it would seem that the prosecution is bound by her testimony.”

“Your Honor,” Hamilton Burger said, “we don’t want to be bound by the testimony of this witness until we can find out what happened during the noon hour, what inducements were made to this witness, what theatrical flimflam was arranged with those so-called bloodstained towels.”

“The Court is not interested in your feelings in the matter,” Judge Decker said. “The Court is interested in administering justice. This is a most peculiar situation. The Court will take an adjournment for one hour. At the end of that time, the Court will again entertain a motion to instruct the jury to return a verdict of acquittal in the case pending against this defendant.”

Perry Mason, Della Street, Homer Garvin, Paul Drake, and Stephanie Falkner sat grouped about the table in Mason’s law library. A bottle of whisky, a siphon of soda, a big jar of ice cubes and glasses were on the table.

Mason said to Stephanie Falkner, “You should have told me.”

“I wasn’t going to tell anyone, Mr. Mason. I saw Homer as he drove away from George Casselman’s apartment house. He didn’t see me. Later on, when he gave me that gun and I found there was an exploded cartridge in it, I felt I knew what had happened. Then when you arranged to have Junior give me a gun so that in case the police asked me to produce the gun they are calling the Holster Gun, the one that had been given me by Homer Garvin, I could give them the Junior Gun which his son had given me. I thought I would be smart in substituting guns, so that the police would find the murder weapon just where Junior would be forced to testify he had left the Junior Gun which he had given me. The Junior Gun I snatched from the table as soon as you folks left my apartment, and dropped it into a sack of flour in the kitchen. Later on I took it out of the flour sack, walked over to an adjacent lot where they were building a house and pushed the gun down into some wet cement that had just been poured into forms.”

Homer Garvin said, “I didn’t know you had seen me there at that apartment house, Stephanie. I went up to tell Casselman that I wanted a showdown. He told me he had an important appointment in ten minutes and that he simply couldn’t see me. Eva Elliott must have been in there at the time. I told him I’d be back at eleven o’clock, and that I was going to call for a showdown.”

Mason said, “Eva Elliott must have been the one who telephoned while I was in conference with Casselman, and said she was coming right up. It was that which disturbed him. He asked for a two-minute delay. That shows she was phoning from a nearby phone. I went out the front door and watched the front of the apartment house, but didn’t see anyone come in. The fact that I knew someone was coming in, but didn’t see anyone arrive, should have warned me that the person who entered the apartment must have gone up by the back stairs.”

“Well, we know the whole story now,” Garvin said. “She went in the back door. Casselman had persuaded her to put through checks on phony bills. He had promised her top billing in a floor show in the new motel. He’d promised her television contracts. She was willing to do anything to get in that floor show as the top actress. She wasn’t the victim of her lack of secretarial experience. She was deliberately getting money for Casselman. Then she found out, somehow, he was double-crossing her.”

Stephanie said, “A woman held the outer door open for me. I went up to Casselman’s apartment and rang the bell. No one answered. I tried the knob of the door. The door was unlocked. I opened it and went in. George Casselman was lying there dead. I... I didn’t know what to do. I suddenly realized I’d stepped in the pool of blood and then I became panic-stricken. I went into the bathroom and tried to wash the blood off my shoe. I had knelt over him to see if he was dead, and there was blood on my hands. I washed and washed and washed, and then I went down the back stairs.