Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Reluctant Model

“I am, for a fact,” Mason admitted, “but there’s something about the way Durant is acting that bothers me.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll be darned if I know,” Mason said. “It’s in his manner — his attitude — something about the way he approached us. Did you ever hear of the famous jewelry bunco game that put so many jewelers out of business?”

“No,” Della said, her voice showing her interest.

Mason said, “A personable young man goes into a jewelry store at four-thirty Friday afternoon after the banks have closed. He tells a very plausible story. He picks the leading jeweler in a small town. He wants to get a very fine diamond as an engagement ring. He is going to propose that night. He’s happy and impulsive and he has the best of credit references and the jeweler finally sells him a fifteen-hundred-dollar diamond ring and takes the man’s check drawn on a city bank.”

“Then what?” Della Street asked. “You mean the check is no good?”

“No, no,” Mason said. “The check is as good as gold. That’s the catch in the thing.”

“I don’t get it,” Della Street said.

“The next day,” Mason said, “the fellow goes to a pawnshop and wants to pawn the ring for two hundred dollars. The ring is worth about seven hundred and fifty wholesale. The pawnbroker becomes suspicious and notifies the police. The police come and interview the man and ask him where he got the ring and he tells them that he bought it at the jewelry store. So they check with the jeweler and the jeweler says, ‘Sure enough. The fellow bought the ring and paid for it with a check,’ but of course he’s now completely satisfied he’s the victim of a bad-check artist and tells the police to hold the fellow as a swindler.

“The police hold him until Monday morning when the jeweler can get in touch with the city bank and present the check. Then, to his consternation, he finds the check is good as gold.

“The young man tells a story of having purchased the ring, of having proposed to the woman of his choice only to be given a flat rebuff, so he has no use for the ring and every time he looks at it he becomes nauseated with thoughts of his frustrated love affair.

“He says he was too proud to go back to the jeweler and admit to him that he had been turned down. He wanted to get rid of the ring and was willing to take anything he could get on it, so he went to this pawnshop and asked if they’d give him two hundred dollars for the ring.

“Then in order to make the thing absolutely ironclad he gives the name of the girl to whom he had proposed. The police interview the girl and she confirms his story in every detail. He had been courting her and she had liked him but didn’t consider he was really in love with her. She thought he was just escorting her around and thought it was just a friendship. So when the fellow came to her with the diamond ring and proposed, he had been drinking a little bit and, what with one thing and another, she decided he wasn’t the sort of person she wanted as a husband and turned him down flat.

“So the fellow is angry over his arrest and goes to a lawyer and files suit for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ damages against the jeweler who had him arrested and held in jail over the weekend. He claims his reputation has been damaged and he’s going to insist on collecting damages for false arrest.”

“Does he do it?” Della Street asked.

“No, he doesn’t do it,” Mason said. “That’s the payoff. He offers to let the jeweler off the hook if the jeweler will let him keep the diamond ring and give him anywhere from two to fifteen thousand dollars in cash, depending on how frightened the jeweler is.

“So the guy makes his settlement and doesn’t have anything to do until next Friday when he pulls the same gag on another country jeweler somewhere, always picking one who’s reasonably prosperous, who’s afraid of litigation and who simply couldn’t stand to have a big judgment outstanding.”

“But surely there isn’t anything like that in this case,” Della Street said.

“I don’t know,” Mason said. “There’s something about the whole thing that bothers me. — All the time that man, Durant, was talking to me I had the idea he was putting on an act. He was... well, he wasn’t really trying to accomplish anything, he was being deliberately obnoxious and he was laying the foundation for some kind of a racket. He wasn’t sincere.”

“How can you tell?” Della Street asked.

“I’m darned if I know,” Mason said, “but it’s something that any lawyer can tell after he’s cross-examined enough witnesses. You listen to a man’s story, you watch his actions, his mannerisms, you listen to his voice, you watch his facial expressions and — well, you just know, that’s all.

“It’s something that’s difficult to describe, but you’ve seen motion pictures where the director has tried to milk too much out of a situation, where he’s had the actors overacting just a little, and all of a sudden you get the realization that the whole thing is phoney, that it’s just a lot of actors mugging in front of a camera.

“On the other hand, you see some movies where the actors are doing a good job, the director is after the right effect, and you get the illusion of reality. It’s as though you were looking through a window at real genuine action that is taking place before your eyes.”

“Well, of course,” Della Street said, “I’ve had that experience. Unfortunately it isn’t as frequent as I’d like.”

“I know,” Mason said. “That’s because different people have a different threshold of credulity. The average person looks at action which has been photographed and thinks the action is real. A lawyer or someone who has been working with a lawyer, like you, becomes more skeptical, and the faintest overacting, the faintest attempt to milk a situation past a critical point and you suddenly revolt. The subconscious mind refuses to accept the story, the conscious mind enters the picture with the realization that the whole thing is phoney. They’re suddenly just a bunch of actors and actresses reciting a script with background scenery that was cooked up in a studio and there isn’t the faintest illusion of reality — there’s nothing except irritation and annoyance with yourself for wasting perfectly good time sitting there watching a lousy show.”

“And you think Durant put on a lousy show?” Della Street asked.

Mason said, “He didn’t impress me as putting on the right kind of an act as far as sincerity was concerned. He was trying to accomplish something when he was talking to me. He was acting and it wasn’t an act that went across.”

“But with Maxine’s affidavit she can’t back out on her testimony,” Della Street said.

“She could of course vanish,” Mason said. “Suppose Otto Olney gets ready to try his lawsuit and can’t find Maxine. Suppose Durant indignantly denies that he ever said the Feteet was spurious. Suppose he claims that Olney’s suit has discredited him as an expert, that the resulting publicity has irreparably damaged him — damn it, Della, I’ve just got a feeling, an intuitive feeling predicated on that guy’s phoney performance, that I’ve led with my chin somewhere along the line.”

“ You haven’t,” Della Street said.

“The hell I haven’t,” Mason said. “I’m the one that suggested to Rankin that he get Olney to file suit. I’m the one that told Olney’s attorneys about how it should be handled.

“Olney is vulnerable to the extent that every rich man is vulnerable. A case comes up in front of a jury. Durant is the young, ambitious art dealer trying to get ahead. He makes a pathetic picture in front of a jury. Olney, the big contractor, filed suit against Durant, without first calling on Durant and giving him an opportunity to explain. The first thing Durant knew, out of a clear sky he sees himself blasted in the press as a phoney, a man who has branded a painting as spurious. Actually, he claims, he never said any such thing, and if Otto Olney had taken the trouble to investigate instead of breaking into the front page of the newspapers, he would have learned that the whole thing was a mistake on the part of the woman he was relying on as a witness.”