Erle Gardner: The Case of the Borrowed Brunette

“About Gulling’s finding your wallet with the money and the ‘code’ letter in it?”

“Not exactly,” Mason said. “I pulled that on him, but of course it was obviously a trap. I had meant it to be a dramatic courtroom gesture, in case he started an argument about the other wallet. The law provides that found property must be turned in within a ‘reasonable’ time, and I wanted to show what Gulling’s idea of a ‘reasonable’ time was. Also, I knew he would waste a lot of energy trying to decipher the ‘code’ in the letter I had Della write by hand — really the only kind of code that can never in the world be deciphered.”

“What kind is that?” Drake asked.

“A coded message that has no meaning,” Mason replied with a grin. “But after they had Reedley’s confession, I was in a beautiful position to teach Gulling some law.”

“How do you mean?”

“Reedley admitted that he had put his own money in the wallet and tossed it on the floor. And because the money already there was in tens and twenties only, and Reedley wanted to have it all in bills of high denomination, he put that money in his pocket and replaced it with bills of his own before he tossed the wallet on the floor. Therefore, when Adelle Winters picked it up, she wasn’t ‘finding’ anything within the meaning of the law.”

“What was she doing?” Della Street asked.

“Taking possession of property that had been abandoned,” Mason said. “There’s quite a distinction in law between lost property and abandoned property. When Reedley tossed his own money on the floor, he had abandoned it.

“When property has been lost, the owner retains title but is deemed to have parted with the property accidentally. When property has been abandoned, it is deemed to have returned to the public domain, and the first person who takes it into his possession is entitled to retain not only the property itself but the title to it.

“Gulling is shrewd and keen, but he isn’t a fast thinker. He got his feet wet trying to nail me as an accomplice on the purse business before I sprang my point. After I had sprung it, he recognized its logic, and that put him in a rather sorry light.”

“And what was finally done with the money?” Drake asked.

“I told Adelle Winters I’d take fifteen hundred dollars as a fee, and she could keep the other sixteen hundred as a souvenir,” Mason said. “And when I left, the Grand Jury were having a lot of fun. They all crowded around me, patted me on the back, and shook hands, and Gulling’s blood pressure ran up to two hundred and fifty!

“But this case has been too darn close for comfort. Gosh, Paul, here we were with the solution of the whole case fairly dangling in front of our eyes, and we couldn’t see it simply because we let that damn prejudiced assistant district attorney pick the time when he thought the murder must have been committed, and let him sell us on the idea. If I hadn’t suddenly started questioning the basic fact of the time element, we’d have been in a sweet mess.

“At that, next time I run across anyone who is borrowing a brunette, I’m going to let him keep her!”