Erle Gardner - The Case of the Drowning Duck

Witherspoon reached for the telephone.

Mason held up his hand. “Just a minute. Before you get Lois,” he said, “let’s talk about the duck. Now, as I understand it, you’ve already told the police that the duck came from your ranch.”

“Yes.”

“How did you know? Where was he branded?”

Witherspoon said, “Dammit, Mason, you and I can have trouble over that duck. Every time I start talking about it, you make these nasty, sneering wisecracks. You don’t brand ducks.”

“Why?” Mason asked.

“Hang it! Because you don’t need to.”

“You brand cattle, don’t you?” Mason inquired, indicating the wall back of the fireplace with a gesture of his hand.

“Yes, of course.”

“Why?”

“So you can tell them from your neighbor’s cattle.”

“Very interesting,” Mason said. “In China, where the families live on houseboats and raise ducks, I understand they dye the ducks different colors so they can be told apart.”

“What’s that got to do with this duck?”

“Simply this,” Mason said. “You yourself admit you have to put a brand on your steers so you can tell the difference between those and the steers of your neighbors. How, then, are you going to identify this duck as being yours, instead of one belonging to someone else?”

“You know damn well this was my duck.”

Mason said, “ I’m thinking of when you get up in front of a jury. It’s going to be rather embarrassing for you personally. You’ve stuck your neck out now. You’ll say, ‘Yes, this is my duck.’ The lawyer for the prosecution will say, ‘Cross-examine,’ and the lawyer for the defense will start asking questions. What is there about this duck that you identify?”

“Well, his color and size for one thing.”

“Oh,” Mason said. “And the lawyer for the defense will ask, ‘What’s distinctive about his color and size?’”

“Well, it’s that yellowish color which young ducklings have. And he’s just the same size as the other ducklings in the brood.”

“How many in the batch?”

“Eight or nine — I’m not certain which.”

“Which one of the eight or nine is this?”

“Don’t be silly. You can’t tell that.”

“So,” Mason said, smiling, “you yourself are admitting this duck looks exactly like eight or nine other ducks of similar size and color, which you have on your place.”

“Well, what of it?”

“And that you can’t tell which of the eight or nine it is.”

“Certainly not. We don’t give them names, or baptize them.”

“And, doubtless,” Mason went on smoothly, “in other parts of the valley there are other ranches that have ducks, and it is quite possible that there are several other ranches where the young ducklings are of exactly this size, age, color, and appearance?”

“I suppose so.”

“And, if those ducklings were all brought into your compound and mixed up with your ducklings, in the absence of some brand or other marking, you couldn’t tell which were yours?”

Witherspoon puffed away on his cigar silently, but the rapidity with which the puffs of smoke were being emitted indicated the nerve tension under which he was laboring.

“So you see,” Mason went on, “you’d cut rather a sorry figure when you endeavored to identify this duck.”

“The officer said there was something wrong with the duck when he came in,” Witherspoon said. “You should know something about that.”

“Yes,” Mason said, “the duck was partially submerged. But that’s not unusual. Ducks dive, you know.”

“The officer said it looked as though — looked as though — well, it looked as though the duck were drowning.”

Mason raised his eyebrows incredulously.

“Drowning?”

“That’s what the officer said.”

“Oh, well,” Mason said, his voice showing infinite and exaggerated relief, “there’s nothing to it then. You don’t need to worry in the least.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Then you can identify your duck. You won’t have any trouble,” Mason said.

“How?”

“Why,” Mason said, his smile patronizingly superior, “your duck is distinctive. If this is your duck, you have the only duck in the entire Red River Valley, probably the only duck in the world, that can’t swim.”

Witherspoon glowered at him. “Damn it. You know what I mean. Marvin is a chemist. He’d put something in the water.”

Mason raised his eyebrows. “There was something in the water, then?”

“Yes, of course, The duck was drowning.”

“Did it drown?”

“No. It recovered — and, I believe, started to swim.”

“Then it couldn’t have been something in the water that was making the duck drown.”

“Well, then it was something about the gas that disabled him. With the room cleared out, he started to swim.”

“I see — most interesting. By the way, you have a lot of guns here, Witherspoon. I take it you do quite a bit of hunting.”

Witherspoon said, “Yes,” in the voice of a man who doesn’t care particularly about having the subject of conversation changed.

“These heads are some that you’ve bagged?”

“Yes.”

“Some nice rifles there.”

“Yes.”

“I see you have some shotguns.”

“Yes.”

“And there are other shotguns, I take it, in those cases?”

“Yes.”

“Do some trapshooting occasionally?”

“Yes.”

“There are doves down here. You shoot those?”

“Well, not doves.”

“Do some duck hunting occasionally?”

“Quite frequently.”

“Good duck hunting around here?”

“Yes.”

“When you hit a duck in the air with the center part of the charge of shot, I presume it kills him instantly.”

For a moment, the glint of enthusiasm lighted Witherspoon’s eyes. “I’ll say it does! There’s nothing that gives you more satisfaction than to make a good clean kill. You take one of these twenty-gauge guns with a good heavy load, and when you hit the duck with the center of the string of shot, he never knows what struck him. One minute, he’s flying along, and the next minute, he’s crumpled — absolutely dead.”

“Falls down in the water quite frequently?” Mason asked.

“Yes.”

“And how do you get them off the bottom?” Mason asked. “Do you have some sort of a drag that you drag along the bottom?”

Witherspoon’s smile was exceedingly patronizing. “For a lawyer who is supposed to be so brilliant, Mr. Mason, you certainly are ignorant about things which are more or less common knowledge.”

Mason raised his eyebrows. “Indeed!”

“Ducks don’t sink. When they’re shot, they float on the surface of the water,” Witherspoon said.

“Is that so?”

“Yes.”

“Then, the fact that this duck was being overcome by gas wouldn’t make him sink,” Mason said. “That drowning condition which the officer referred to must have been something else.”

Witherspoon, realizing the trap into which he had been led, moved forward in his chair as though preparing to get to his feet. His face turned a dark shade of reddish-purple. “Dammit, Mason,” he said, “you...” He checked himself.

“Of course,” Mason went on suavely, “I was merely trying to point out to you the position in which you have placed yourself. Rather an embarrassing position, I should say. You identified a duck to the police. Doubtless, you’ve started the police on the trail of young Adams. Have you?”

“Well, I told them about the duck and told them Adams had had it last. Well, you can draw your own conclusions. Adams went up there, and he’s pretty apt to have been the person for whom Milter was fixing the hot buttered rum.”