Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Shapely Shadow

“Now then, I paid you for the trip, did I not?”

“That’s right.”

“Don’t you remember that I paid you in silver dollars? Don’t you remember that we had a conversation in which I asked you if you objected to being paid in silver dollars and you said the only thing you objected to being paid in was in I.O.U.’s or promissory notes?”

“That’s right. That, however, was the time you rode with me to the police station. You paid me this twenty-dollar bill when I took you from the airport to the railroad depot at Las Vegas.”

“And when did you first know that I had paid you this twenty-dollar bill?”

“Well, the police asked me the next day to look through my take of the night before and sure enough, I had this twenty-dollar bill — the one they wanted.”

“It was identified by the number?”

“That’s right.”

“But you didn’t look at the number when I gave you the bill, did you?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know that was the same twenty-dollar bill that I gave you?”

“It had to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it was that twenty-dollar bill.”

“What is there distinctive about it that you remember?”

“I remember I got it from you.”

“But how do you differentiate that twenty-dollar bill from any other twenty dollars?”

“It was the only one I had the next morning.”

“You mean I am the only one who gave you a twenty-dollar bill that night?”

“That’s right.”

“Think carefully,” Mason said, “didn’t anyone else give you a twenty-dollar bill?”

“No. This was the only one.”

“Now, let’s get this straight,” Mason said. “When I paid you that twenty-dollar bill, you didn’t pay any particular attention to it.”

“The deuce I didn’t,” the witness said. “It was a twenty-dollar bill and you told me to keep the change. Whenever a fare tells me to keep the change from a twenty-dollar bill, I remember it.”

“No, no,” Mason said, “what I am getting at is you didn’t look at the number when I gave you the bill.”

“No, I didn’t look at the number. I put it in my pocket.”

“Then how do you know this is the same twenty-dollar bill that I gave you?”

“Because it’s the only twenty-dollar bill I had in my pocket the next morning when the police asked me to check.”

“Now the second time,” Mason said, “I paid you in silver dollars.”

“That’s right. There’s no question about that. You went down to the police station. You started for the airport, then changed your mind and had me go to the police station. You gave me some silver dollars. You had me wait there.

“Then this woman came out of the police station, this older woman. You hustled her into the cab. She thought the cab was empty when she saw me coming.

“You got her in the cab and told me to step on it. The police ran to the door and tried to stop you when they saw that it wasn’t a vacant cab, but you told me to just keep right on going down the street.”

“So what did you do?” Mason asked.

“So I went on down the street until you told me to stop at a motel that had a sign of a vacancy on it. You folks went in there and started talking, and I went to a phone and called the police station and told them where you were.”

“And that phone call resulted in a police car coming out there to the motel?”

“I presume it did. The police came out and picked you up and told you they were going to take you down to the airport personally and see that you got out of town.”

“So this twenty dollars that I gave you had to be the first twenty dollars; that is, it had to be in payment of the first trip.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you all along.”

“That was the only twenty dollars you had in your pocket the next morning?”

“That’s right.”

“Now think carefully,” Mason said. “Didn’t you spend something during the evening of the fourth?”

The witness shook his head.

“Think,” Mason said.

“No, I... well, now wait a minute...”

“Yes, go on,” Mason said, as the witness hesitated.

“I... I bought myself a good dinner. I’d had a good evening and I thought I was entitled to a steak. I bought a steak. I think I paid for that with a ten-dollar bill.”

“It could have been a twenty?”

“No, I think it was a ten.”

“Now, after I went to the airport, what did you do?”

“I was there at this motel and the little lady that you’d picked up at the police station was there at the motel.”

“And what happened?”

“She wanted me to take her to the Double Take Casino, and I took her there.”

“She paid you?”

“Of course she paid me. I was running a taxicab.”

“And how did she pay you?”

“In money,” the cabdriver said angrily.

“What I am trying to get at,” Mason said, “is whether she paid you the exact amount, or whether she gave you a bill and you had to make change.”

“She gave me — I don’t remember. She may have had the exact change. I think she gave me some one-dollar bills. I’m not sure.”

“Couldn’t she have given you this twenty-dollar bill?”

“I tell you,” the witness said, “I only had the one twenty-dollar bill in my pocket. I remember you gave me a twenty-dollar bill and told me to keep it. The next morning the police asked me to look through my pockets for twenty-dollar bills and to give them the numbers of the bills. I had this one bill in my pocket and I gave them the number and they had me write my initials on it and took the bill and gave me two tens in place of it.”

“Now, if this woman who was at the motel, whose name, by the way, is Mrs. Theilman, had given you a twenty-dollar bill when you took her to the casino and you had given her change for that bill, and then when you had a steak that night you had paid for it with one of the twenty-dollar bills you had in your pocket, it is possible that this bill could have been given you by Mrs. Theilman. Isn’t that right?”

The witness said, “Sure, that’s right. And if John D. Rockefeller had given me a million dollars, I’d have been a millionaire.”

The courtroom broke into laughter.

Judge Seymour tapped his pencil. “There is no occasion for levity,” he said.

“If the Court please,” Mason said, “I ask the indulgence of the Court in connection with this cross-examination. I feel that as a matter of ethics an attorney should not take the stand, and if he is forced to take the stand, he should then not argue the case to the jury. Because I wish to avoid taking the stand myself, I am trying to clear this matter up by a detailed cross-examination.”

Judge Seymour nodded, said, “You may proceed, Mr. Mason. The Court appreciates your position and I think there is no reason to make any further explanation in the presence of the jury. Proceed with your cross-examination.”

“I would like an answer to my question,” Mason said.

“If your fare to the casino had given you a twenty-dollar bill, isn’t it possible that you could have spent the twenty-dollar bill I gave you when you got your steak dinner?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“Will you say it’s impossible?”

“All right,” the witness said, “I’ll say it’s impossible. She didn’t give me any twenty-dollar bill. That was the only twenty-dollar bill I had the next morning.”

“It may have been the only twenty-dollar bill you had the next morning,” Mason said, “but you can’t swear you didn’t spend twenty dollars when you paid for your steak dinner, can you?”

“I don’t think I did.”

“Can you swear that you didn’t?”