Erle Gardner: The Case of the Drowning Duck

Mason said crisply, “Yes. We’ll leave right away. I’ll go down and look your place over. I want to see something of your background. I want to see a little more of your daughter and of Marvin Adams. I take it he’ll be there.”

“Yes. And I have two other guests, a Mr. and Mrs. Burr. I trust they won’t disturb you.”

“If they do, I’ll move out... Della, telephone Paul Drake at the Drake Detective Agency. Tell him to hop in a car and start for El Templo at once.”

Witherspoon said, “I’ll find my daughter and...”

He broke off as he heard the sound of running steps, the lilt of a woman’s laughter; then the youngsters came pellmell up the steps, and were starting across the veranda, when they saw the trio at the table.

“Come on,” Lois Witherspoon called to her companion. “You’ve got to meet the famous lawyer.”

She was wearing a playsuit which showed the girlish contours of her figure, an expanse of sun-tanned skin which would have resulted in a call for the police twenty years earlier. The young man with her wore shorts and a thin blouse. He was beaded with perspiration, a dark-haired, dark-eyed, intense young man with long, tapering fingers, nervous gestures, and a thin, sensitive face which seemed, somehow, older than Mason had expected. It was a face that mirrored a sensitive mind, a mind that was capable of great suffering, one that a great shock might unbalance.

Lois Witherspoon performed quick introductions. She said, “We’ve had three sets of fast tennis, and I do mean fast! My skin has a date with lots of cold water and soapsuds.” She turned to Perry Mason and said, almost defiantly, “But I wanted you to look us over, perspiration and all, because — because I didn’t want you to think we were running away.”

Mason smiled. “I don’t think you two would run away from anything.”

“I hope not,” she said.

Marvin Adams was suddenly very sober. “There’s no percentage in running away from things, war, fighting, or — anything else.”

“Away from death,” Lois added quickly, “or—” meeting her father’s eyes — “away from life.”

Witherspoon got heavily to his feet. “Mr. Mason and his secretary are going back with us,” he said to Lois, and then to Mason, “I’ll go and make arrangements to check out. If it’s all right with you, I’ll have your bill added to mine, and then you won’t need to bother with it.”

Mason nodded, but his eyes remained on Marvin Adams and did not follow John L. Witherspoon through the door into the lobby.

“So you don’t believe in running away?” Mason asked.

“No, sir.”

“Nor do I,” Lois said. “Do you, Mr. Mason?”

The question made Della Street smile, and that smile was Lois Witherspoon’s only answer.

Marvin Adams wiped his forehead and laughed. “I don’t want to run, anyway. I want to dive. I’m as wet as a drowning duck.”

Della Street said, half jokingly, “You have to be careful of what you say in front of a lawyer. He might get you on a witness stand and say, ‘Young man, didn’t you claim that ducks drown?’”

Lois laughed. “It’s a favorite expression of his ever since his physics professor performed a classroom experiment. Down at the ranch a few nights ago, Roland Burr, one of the guests, called him on it. Tell them what you did, Marvin.”

The young man seemed uncomfortable. “I was trying to show off. I saw Mr. Burr was getting ready to call me on it. Shucks, I was away out of line.”

“Not a bit of it,” Lois defended. “Mr. Burr was actually insulting. I jumped up, ran out, and got a little duck, and Marvin actually drowned it — and he didn’t even touch it. Of course, he took it out in time to keep it from really drowning.”

“Made a duck drown?” Della Street exclaimed.

“Right in front of all the guests,” Lois boasted. “You should have seen Mr. Burr’s face.”

“How on earth did you do it?” Della asked.

Marvin quite apparently wanted to get away. “It wasn’t anything. Just one of the more recent chemical discoveries. It’s nothing but a spectacular trick. I put a few drops of one of the detergents in the water. If you folks will excuse me, I’ll go shower. I’m awfully glad to have met you, Mr. Mason. I hope I see you again.”

Lois grabbed his arm. “All right, come on.”

“Just a minute,” Mason said to Lois. “Was your father there?”

“When?” she asked.

“When the duck was drowned.”

“He wasn’t drowned. Marvin took him out of the water after he’d sunk far enough to prove his point, wiped him off, and... pardon me, I guess I’m digressing. No. Father wasn’t there.”

Mason nodded, said, “Thanks.”

“Why did you ask?”

“Oh, nothing. It might be as well not to mention it. I think he’s a bit sensitive about using live things in laboratory experiments.”

She looked at Mason curiously for a moment, then said, “All right, we won’t breathe a word of it. The drowning duck will be a secret. Come on, Marvin.”

Della Street watched them walk across the porch, saw Marvin Adams hold the door open for Lois Witherspoon. She didn’t speak until after the door had gently closed; then she said to Perry Mason, “They’re very much in love. Why were you wondering about whether Mr. Witherspoon had seen the performance of the drowning duck or might hear about it?”

Mason replied, “Because I think Witherspoon might have been biased enough to see in it, not the experiment of a youngster interested in science, but the sadistic cruelty of the son of a murderer. Witherspoon’s in a dangerous frame of mind. He’s trying to judge another man — and he’s terribly biased. It’s a situation that’s loaded with emotional dynamite.”

It was quite evident that John L. Witherspoon was proud of his house, just as he was proud of his horses, of his car, of his daughter, and of his financial and social position. Strongly possessive, he threw about everything which came within the sphere of his influence an aura of prideful ownership.

His house was a huge structure built on the western edge of the valley. Off to the south was the black slope of Cinder Butte. From the front windows could be seen the waste of desert which rimmed the fertile stretch of the irrigated Red River Valley. East of the house were green irrigated acres. Far to the west were jagged mountains of piled-up boulders.

John L. Witherspoon proudly escorted Mason and Della Street around the building, showing them the tennis courts, the swimming pool, the fertile acres of irrigated land, the ’dobe-walled enclosure within which the Mexican servants and laborers lived.

Long purple shadows creeping outward from the base of the high mountains slipped silently across the sandy slopes, flowed gently down across the irrigated acres.

“Well,” Witherspoon demanded, “what do you think about it?”

“Marvelous,” Mason said.

Witherspoon turned and saw that the lawyer was looking out across the valley at the purple mountains. “No, no. I mean my place here, the house, my crops, my ...”

“I think we’re wasting a hell of a lot of valuable time,” Mason said.

He turned abruptly and strode back to the house where Della Street found him at dinner time closeted in his room, poring once more over the transcript of that old murder case.

“Dinner in a little over thirty minutes, Chief,” she said. “Our host says he’s sending in some cocktails. Paul Drake has just telephoned from El Templo that he’s on his way out.”

Mason closed the volume of typewritten transcript.

“Where can we put this stuff, Della?”

“There’s a writing desk out here in your sitting room. It’s Mission type, good and strong. It’ll be a nice place for you to work.”