Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Reluctant Model

“Would you do it in this case?” Drake asked.

Mason, pacing the floor, said, “That’s what I’m trying to determine, Paul. I’m faced with a responsibility that I wish I didn’t have to assume — but I’m toying with the idea right now.”

Mason went over to sit at the table, hardly eating, exploring the edges of the food with his fork, his manner preoccupied, his eyes fixed on the tablecloth.

Abruptly he pushed his plate away and got up from his chair. “I’m going to do it,” he said.

“Do what?”

“Put her on the stand.”

Della Street started to say something, then caught herself.

“It’s potential legal suicide,” Mason said. “If it doesn’t work, I’ll be branded from one end of the country to the other as having made the biggest boo-boo of the year, but I’m going to do it.

“I can’t get that damned picture into evidence any other way and I have to get it in before something happens to it.”

“What could happen to it?” Drake asked

“Lots of things,” Mason said. “It could disappear, it could be stolen, it could just plain be destroyed. And this man, Goring Gilbert, could just plain vanish into thin air. Who the hell’s going to worry about what becomes of a beatnik painter?”

The lawyer said, “Come on, Paul. You can get caught up on your eating sometime this evening. Right now you’re going to get subpoenas served on Olney, his wife, Howell, Rankin, and the watchmen at the yacht club.”

“Why the watchmen?” Drake asked.

“I want to know when the duplicate painting was made.”

“Can you get all this in — all this properly admitted as evidence?”

“I don’t know,” Mason said. “I can sure as hell try. One thing is certain. I can have that picture so tied up that nothing is going to happen to it. I’ll have it as an exhibit in court.”

“The false Feteet?” Della Street asked.

Mason nodded. “Let’s go, Paul.”

Promptly at one-thirty, as Judge Madison took the bench, Thomas Dexter sprang his bombshell. “I would like to recall Matilda Pender,” he said.

The young woman returned to the stand.

“There is one more thing I want to ask you about,” Dexter said. “You saw the defendant and she seemed nervous. She was near the telephone in the telephone booth, apparently waiting for—”

“Never mind the apparently,” Mason said, “let’s have the facts. We’ll let the conclusions speak for themselves.”

“All right,” Dexter said, “I have here a diagram of the bus terminal, showing the telephone booths, the lockers, the ticket window, the location of the rest rooms and the waiting room. Also showing the doors for loading and unloading passengers. Now, will you please point out the spot on this diagram where you saw the defendant? First, however, let me ask you to orient yourself on the diagram and tell me whether or not that correctly delineates the floor plan of the premises.”

“Yes, sir. It does.”

“All right,” Dexter said, “now let’s get the defendant located as of the night of the thirteenth.”

The witness placed a pencil on the sketch.

“At about this point?” Dexter asked.

“Yes.”

“You saw her here for how long?”

“She was either there in that spot or near that spot for at least fifteen minutes that I’m certain of.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then she was in the phone booth.”

“I notice that a rack of lockers is right near the phone booths.”

“Yes, they’re just behind them.”

“I’m going to ask you if you know where Locker twenty-three W is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where?”

“It is the third one from the top in this diagram.”

“Do you know a man by the name of Fulton — Frankline Fulton?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you see him either on the fourteenth or fifteenth?”

“It was the fifteenth.”

“And where did you see him, and under what circumstances?”

“I monitor the lockers at the terminal,” she said. “Whenever one of them is unopened for twenty-four hours we check the contents, and in accordance with a notice given the public to that effect, the contents are removed to the office and the locker is placed back in operation.”

“And how is that done?”

“Every time a coin is inserted in the locker so as to activate it,” the witness said, “it registers on the master counter at the top of the locker. Every night before I go off work, I go through the lockers and make a list of the numbers that are shown on the master register at the top. I then compare each of these numbers with the numbers which were on the master register during the preceding twenty-four hours. Whenever I find one that is the same, I take my key and remove the entire lock.”

“You don’t simply open the locker?”

“Not in that sense of the word. We take off the lock which is on there, the lock with the master register — everything. We then take whatever is in the locker out of the locker itself, put it in dead storage in the office, and put the locker back in service with a new lock and register.”

“Now, on the fifteenth, did you have occasion to do that with one of these lockers?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What locker was that?”

“This locker with the number you mentioned — twenty-three W.”

“And when you took the master lock off and opened it, what did you find?”

“We found a gun.”

“Now, who was with you at the time?”

“No one at that time, but I called the police, and Frankline Fulton came right out. I believe he is a sergeant.”

“He’s a member of the metropolitan police?”

“That’s my understanding, yes.”

“And at his suggestion, did you make any mark on this gun so that you would know it again?”

“Yes. We both put identifying marks on it.”

“I now hand you a Hi-Standard Sentinel twenty-two caliber revolver which has previously been introduced in evidence in this case as People’s Exhibit G. I ask you to look at that gun carefully and tell me if you have ever seen it before.”

The witness took the gun, turned it over in her hands, and said, “Yes. That’s the gun we found in the locker.”

“And that was the locker near which you had seen the defendant on the evening of the thirteenth?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Cross-examine,” Dexter said.

“You didn’t see the defendant open that locker, did you?” Mason asked.

“No.”

“Did the police dust that locker for fingerprints?”

“Yes.”

“Was anything said to you about them?”

“Only that they found several they couldn’t identify.”

Mason smiled. “Thank you, that’s all.”

“Call Agnes H. Newton,” Dexter said.

Agnes Newton had evidently spent the morning at a beauty parlor. She had selected her clothes with the hope that she would be photographed on the witness stand, and she came forward with the manner of an opera star making her entrance on the stage.

“Hold up your right hand and be sworn,” the clerk said. “Then give me your name and address.”

The woman complied.

“Miss Newton or Mrs. Newton?”

“Mrs.,” she said. “I am a widow.”

“Very well, just take the stand.”

Dexter said, “You live in the same apartment house as that in which the defendant lives?”

“I do.”

“Directing your attention to the thirteenth of this month, did you see the defendant at any time during the evening?”

“I did.”

“And where did you see the defendant?”

“She was just going out of the door of her apartment — and I saw her all the way to the stairs.

“Now, I’d better explain that,” the witness went on glibly. “You see, she lives on the third floor and she usually uses the elevator when she goes and comes. This time she didn’t use the elevator. She was in such a hurry that—”