Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Duplicate Daughter

“All right,” Mason said. “Go on, tell me what happened.”

“I’m... I’m protecting someone; someone I love very much.”

“Who?” Mason asked.

Gilman shook his head.

“Who?” Mason asked.

“All right,” Gilman blurted, “I’m protecting a member of my family.”

“That’s a little better,” Mason said. “Now perhaps we can do something. Tell me what happened.”

“I was eating breakfast,” Gilman said. “I knew that Vera Martel was trying to find out something about the family.”

“How did you know that?”

“I’ll come to that in a minute.”

“All right,” Mason said. “What happened at breakfast?”

“I saw Vera Martel hurry down the driveway and enter Nancy’s darkroom.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

“I was absolutely thunderstruck,” Gilman said, “to think that she would come to my house. I knew then that the situation was very desperate, that there was something in the nature of a pay-off that was taking place.

“I intended to go down the driveway and have a showdown with Vera Martel.

“Now, this is important, Mr. Mason, and you must remember it. In order to keep from arousing Muriell’s suspicions I didn’t dare to sit there just looking out the window. I had to be pretending to read my paper, so I can’t swear to exactly what happened. I was looking at the paper part of the time.”

“Go on.”

“I got Muriell out in the kitchen cooking and I got up quietly from the table, dropped the paper on the floor and was about to tiptoe out of the front door when I looked out of the window and saw...”

“Yes,” Mason said.

“I saw a member of my family running from the workshop with a face that was indicative of panic.”

“Who was it?” Mason asked.

Gilman shook his head. “I’ll never tell even you that, Mason, because I know that if you take my case you’re going to try to save my bacon, and as an ethical lawyer you’ll save it at the expense of anyone whom you think is guilty.”

“All right,” Mason said, “we’ll let it go at that for a while. You saw a member of your family coming out of the workshop. So then what happened?”

“Then I hurried out of the front door. I ran on tiptoe along the cement driveway. I opened the door to the darkroom and hurried across the darkroom to the door to the workshop. I opened that and at what I saw nearly fainted.”

“What did you see?”

“There was a pool of crimson on the floor which at first I took to be blood. There was a broken chair. There was money all over the floor of the workshop — hundred-dollar bills just scattered everywhere.”

“All right, go on,” Mason said. “What did you do?”

“I dropped my napkin, I guess. I just stood there. Then I saw that the pool of red I had thought was blood was actually red enamel which was leaking from the loose cap of a can of red enamel which had been knocked off the workbench. I went over and picked up the can and put it back on the shelf right side up. Then I realized what must have happened.”

“What must have happened?” Mason asked.

“This member of my family had gone out with a lot of money in hundred-dollar bills to pay for blackmail and... well, Vera Martel had raised the ante and there had been violence.”

“So what did you do? Did you ask this member of the family about it?”

“I did not,” Gilman said. “I ran and jumped in my car and started the motor and started looking for Vera Martel. I knew she couldn’t have gone far. I circled the block, then I cruised around the various streets and I couldn’t find her, but I did find her car parked within a half a block of the house.”

“How did you know it was her car?”

“It had a Nevada license on it.”

“How did you know it was her car?” Mason asked.

“It... all right, I’ll tell you the rest of it. Roger Calhoun did hire Vera Martel to find out something about a scandal in the family. My secretary, Matilda Norman, who has been with me for some time and is intensely loyal, found out about it from Roger’s secretary when a few words came in over the intercom before Calhoun realized it was open. For your information, Roger Calhoun’s secretary, Miss Colfax, hates his guts, but she has to play up to him because she’s drawing about twice the ordinary salary. However, she found out enough to know that Roger had Vera Martel in there and was going to pay her money to find out something about the family and she knew that Vera Martel came from Nevada.”

“So what?”

“So she came and told Matilda Norman, and Tillie told me.”

“And you,” Mason asked, “busted in on Calhoun and Vera Martel and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing?”

“That’s what I should have done,” Gilman said. “I’m afraid I did the wrong thing.”

“What did you do?”

“I wanted to find out more about what was going on, so I went down to the parking lot and looked around for cars with a Nevada license. I found one and I really gave it the works. I found keys in a key container in the lock and looked in the key container and found an identifying tag of Vera Martel with a Las Vegas address.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

“There was some modeling clay in my car. I went over to it, took out the clay and made an impression of the keys in the key container.”

“What did you do that for?” Mason asked.

“I simply don’t know,” Gilman said. “I just wanted to find out everything I could. I was in a panic at the idea that some scandal might be uncovered in connection with my family.

“I’ve known for a long time that there might have been something a little irregular — that is, a little premature about the birth of Glamis, but... that wouldn’t have been enough. It had to be something in addition to that, and I wanted to find out what it was.”

“So you got the idea that while Vera Martel was available you’d make duplicate keys and go over and search her office?”

Gilman hesitated a moment, then nodded.

“You certainly have stuck your neck in a noose,” Mason said. “Is that what you were doing last night?”

“Yes.”

“What did you find?”

“I found that somebody had beat me to it,” Gilman blurted. “The office was a wreck. Papers were scattered all over the floor. You couldn’t find anything in the filing case in any kind of order. All of the papers had been mixed up. Someone had pulled everything out and just thrown them helter-skelter on the floor.”

“Did you have sense enough to wear gloves?” Mason asked.

The look of dismay on Gilman’s face was Mason’s answer.

“All right,” Mason said. “You probably left fingerprints all over the place. You’ve given them the most perfect first-degree murder case Hamilton Burger ever had. There’s only one peculiar thing about all this and that is that I am halfway inclined to believe you... Now, what did you do when you finished cruising around yesterday morning looking for Vera Martel? You say you found her car parked within half a block of your place. What did you do with your car?”

“I drove to the place where I usually take the bus and parked my car on the side street.”

“That’s how far from your house?”

“About four blocks.”

“All right. You left the car there. Then what did you do?”

“I didn’t know what to do, Mr. Mason. I was in a daze. I took a bus for the office, but I never went there. I walked around for some time, then I decided to go home and have a showdown with my family. So I got on the bus and went back almost to my house, and then suddenly realized that I had that appointment with you and that I had better go and see you, that I could dump the whole thing in your lap. So I got off the bus, caught another bus back and came up to your office to keep my appointment.