Erle Gardner - The Case of the Borrowed Brunette

“Yes. Tell them everything — except this: you remember that I didn’t make any suggestions to you about not having Eva Martell sign the register. I just told you I wanted her to have a room where—”

“Yes, I remember that. Not putting her on the register was my own idea.”

“Okay,” Mason said. “Tell it the way it happened, and good luck to you!”

A few moments later, when Mae Bagley had had time to enter the room, Mason sauntered in.

Mae Bagley was whispering something to Gulling, and a moment later Gulling whisked her out of the room. The witnesses were kept waiting in hostile silence for a matter of some ten minutes. Then Gulling, looking triumphant, marched through the anteroom to the Grand Jury room and returned almost immediately. “Mr. Perry Mason,” he said.

Mason entered the Grand Jury room.

“Mr. Mason,” Gulling said, “you are called as a witness. The Grand Jury is investigating certain matters in connection with the murder of Robert Hines and with developments arising therefrom. I consider it only fair to tell you that you may be indicted yourself as an accessory or an accomplice to certain crimes. You are, of course, aware of your legal rights. You don’t have to answer any question that might incriminate you; on the other hand, any failure to answer a pertinent question will be considered a contempt.”

Mason settled himself in the witness chair and smiled frostily at Gulling. “Go right ahead, Mr. Gulling. Turn on your heat.”

“I’m not calling for any privileged communication between you and your clients, Mr. Mason, but I am asking specifically whether, after you had learned of the murder of Robert Hines, you did not conceal Eva Martell from the police. Whether you didn’t meet her at the streetcar stop nearest her apartment, put her in your automobile, and take her to a rooming house conducted by Mae Bagley, who is a former client of yours?”

Mason crossed his legs and nodded. “Why, certainly.”

“What!” Gulling shouted.

“Certainly I did,” Mason said. “Except that your entire premise is incorrect. I wasn’t hiding her from the police.”

“Who were you hiding her from?”

“Newspaper reporters,” Mason said promptly. “You know how it is. Those chaps have a way of ferreting people out and getting interviews from them.”

“But you did go to Mae Bagley’s rooming house with this young woman, and you did tell Mae Bagley you wanted her buried where no one could find her?”

“That’s exactly right,” Mason said.

“Where no one could find her?”

“Right.”

“No one?”

“Right again.”

“Don’t you understand that includes the police, Mr. Mason?”

“The police had already finished with her,” Mason smiled. “They’d taken her statement and let her go.”

“But they wanted her again shortly afterward.”

“Well,” Mason said, “I naturally can’t be expected to read the minds of the police. As I understand it, the charge the Grand Jury is investigating on this point relates to my intention. I am telling you what my intention was. If you want to make anything else out of it, you’ll have to do some proving!”

“The next morning you knew she was wanted by the police because I told you so.”

“You certainly did,” Mason said. “You also told me that I had until twelve o’clock to get her here. I told her to be sure and be at police headquarters and surrender before twelve o’clock. That discharged my responsibility, Mr. Gulling.”

“No, it didn’t. You didn’t get her here by twelve o’clock.”

“Isn’t that rather technical? A cruising radio car picked her up.”

“In a taxicab — which she said she was using to go to police headquarters. But she couldn’t prove it!”

“Come, come, Mr. Gulling,” Mason said, smiling affably. “You’re confusing your cart and your horse. That’s a matter for you to take up with Eva Martell. My only connection with it was that I told her to be up here by twelve o’clock. Even, however, if she had disregarded my advice and made a dash out of the state by airplane, I’d still be in the clear.”

Gulling, recognizing the force of Mason’s argument, said coldly, “We’ll pass that for the moment. There’s also the question of your being an accessory after the fact of the crime of murder.”

“Oh, that,” Mason said casually.

“Yes, that!” Gulling snapped.

“Of course if you want to talk about the murder, this is going to be rather long drawn out. The defendants in the murder case are being tried in a preliminary hearing before Judge Lindale. But, if you’re really interested in finding out something about that murder, you might ask some questions of your witness Arthur Clovis out there.”

“Clovis?” the foreman of the Grand Jury asked. “Isn’t he to be questioned?”

Gulling replied, “Just on the question of the numbers on the bills, for the purpose of identification.”

“You might,” said Mason, “get Clovis to tell you how it happened that he had a key to the Siglet Manor apartment in his possession, and why he was so anxious to get rid of that key, and—”

A deputy sheriff entered the room and said to Gulling, “This message to Mr. Mason has to be delivered immediately.”

Gulling’s face flushed. “Don’t interrupt these proceedings to give messages to the witness. You should know better than that.”

“But they said this was—”

“I don’t care what they said. The Grand Jury is interrogating Mr. Mason.”

Seeing the slip of paper in the deputy’s hand, Mason extended his own hand, said, “Since the interruption has already been made, I’ll take the message,” and coolly clamped his fingers about the folded paper before Gulling could object.

Mason unfolded the paper. The message was in Della Street’s handwriting.

Drake just phoned. It’s all a mistake about the key. It is to a Siglet Manor apartment, but not to Helen Reedley’s — it’s to Carlotta Tipton’s.

Apparently Arthur Clovis used to live there in that apartment at the Siglet Manor. After he and Helen fell for each other, she thought it would be safer for him to live somewhere else, so he moved out and Carlotta Tipton moved in. Gosh, I’m sorry! — Della.

Mason crumpled the sheet and slipped it into his pocket.

“If you’re quite ready to answer questions,” Gulling said, “and can take enough of your valuable time to comply with the requirements of the law, Mr. Mason... ”

“What do you want to know?” Mason asked. “What were you going to say about Arthur Clovis?” the foreman asked.

“Just that he had a key to the Siglet Manor Apartments,” Mason said. “He used to live there.”

“Well, isn’t it natural for him to have a key, if he failed to surrender it when he moved?”

“I just wanted you to know that he had a key to the apartment house in which the body was found.”

“You don’t claim he had anything to do with the murder?”

“Heavens, no! I just wanted you to know the facts.”

“I don’t see what, that fact has to do with it,” Gulling said. “You don’t claim that it was a key to the apartment where the murdered man was found, do you?”

“No, no,” Mason said. “Nothing like that. It’s a key to an apartment now occupied by a Carlotta Tipton, I believe. You might check on that.”

“We know all about her,” Gulling said.

“Girl friend of the dead man,” Mason commented, his tone still casual. “She was quite jealous. Followed him when he went up to meet his death.”

“How’s that?” the foreman asked.

Mason looked at Gulling in surprise. “I thought you’d told him about that.”