Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Lonely Heiress

Mason said, “This man who is with you is a congenital liar. He’ll change his story just as soon as the full significance of it dawns on him.”

Caddo said, “You keep calling me a liar and I’ll push your teeth...”

“Shut up,” the radio officer said to him and then turned back to Mason. “What are you getting at?”

“Do you know me?” Mason asked.

“No.”

“I’m Perry Mason, the lawyer.”

“Let’s take a look at you,” the officer said. He pushed Mason over so that the beam of the flashlight shone fully on the lawyer’s face. “Damned if you ain’t,” he said.

“And this is Miss Street, my secretary.”

“All right, Mr. Mason. What are you doing here?”

“Trying to get in,” Mason said. “Apparently your watchman upstairs is sound asleep. I’ve been ringing the bell for — it must have been as much as ten minutes.”

“There isn’t any watchman upstairs.”

“What?”

“That’s right. This place is in my territory. We haven’t enough men to leave a watchman up there. I’m supposed to keep my eye on the place.”

“No wonder we couldn’t get any answer to our ring,” Mason said.

“He wasn’t ringing,” Caddo said angrily. “He’s been up there. He and his secretary opened the door and went up.”

“Opened the door!” Mason said.

“You heard me. That’s what I said.”

Mason laughed. “What makes you think we opened the door?”

“I saw you. I saw you go in!”

“You saw us go in? ”

“That’s right. You heard me.”

Mason laughed. “You saw us come up on the porch and ring the bell. You saw us in the same position that we’re in now.”

“No, I didn’t. I saw you get the door open and actually go inside.”

“Oh, no, you didn’t,” Mason said, and then, turning to the officer, observed, “See I told you he’d try to change his story as soon as he realized what the situation was.”

“I’m not changing my story. That’s what I said all along.”

“That’s what he told me,” the officer said, “that you two had gone in. He told me that the minute I picked him up at the restaurant where he’d been telephoning. He said that two people had gone in...”

“He surmised they’d gone in,” Mason interrupted.

“I saw you go in,” Caddo said.

Mason said condescendingly to the officer, “You see what happened. He saw us come up on the porch and assumed we were going in, so he tore off immediately to get to a telephone. Now that he realizes we didn’t go in and that he actually didn’t see us go in, he’s trying to make up a case.”

“I’m not doing any such thing.”

“I don’t think he is,” the officer said. “His story to me was that you’d gone in.”

“Don’t you get it?” Mason said. “He admitted here three times that just as soon as he saw us come up on the porch, he dashed off to a telephone."

“He did, at that,” the officer said dubiously.

“That isn’t what I meant,” Caddo said, raising his voice, “I meant that as soon as you came up on the porch I knew what you were going to do, and I got all ready to make a dash. You opened the door and the minute you did that, I...”

“See,” Mason said, laughing. “He’s trying to lie out of it. I told you he would.”

Caddo said, “I never said any such thing.”

“I think you did,” Mason said.

“I’ll leave it to the officer. I...”

Mason said, “Della, read just what Caddo did say.”

Della Street tilted her shorthand notebook so the light struck on the page and then read slowly:

“(Mr. Caddo): ‘I didn’t wait. The minute I saw you at that door, I knew it was going to happen, and I made a dash to the telephone.’

"(Mr. Mason): ‘I thought so.’

"(Mr. Caddo): ‘What’s wrong with that?’

"(Mr. Mason): ‘The minute you saw us coming up here to this door, you went dashing off to the nearest telephone.’

"(Mr. Caddo): ‘I’ve already told you that.’

"(Mr. Mason): ‘You certainly have. I want you to get the significance of that, officer. The minute he saw us come up here on the porch, he dashed to the telephone.’

"(Mr. Caddo): ‘Because I knew what you were trying to do. I knew you were going to get in here and plant some evidence on my wife. I’d had a suspicion all along that you’d do something like that. You... Hey, officer, that woman is taking this stuff down in shorthand.’ ”

“There you are, officer,” Mason said. “She took it down in shorthand, in black and white. That’s word for word what the man said.”

“I think it is!” the officer said. “I think she’s got it right.”

“Well, that wasn’t what I meant,” Caddo said. “I know they went in here. I saw them open the door.”

Mason laughed. “How did we get the door open?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it was unlatched, or perhaps you had a key.”

“Want to search me?” Mason asked, holding his arms out.

“Since you’ve given me the invitation, I’ll take a look,” the radio officer said.

He patted Mason’s figure first, looking for weapons, then felt each pocket. “You don’t seem to have anything except small stuff,” he said.

Mason started emptying his pockets on the porch, turning each one of his pockets wrong-side-out as it was emptied, putting the belongings in a small pile in the center of the light cast by the police car.

Suddenly a porch light clicked on. A woman’s voice, coming from a lower flat, shrill with fright, said, “I’ve telephoned for the police. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but...”

“We are the police,” the officer said, showing his badge.

“Well, I telephoned the police station and...”

“That’s all right. The police station knows I’m here,” the radio officer said, his eyes on the growing assortment of stuff that Mason was taking from his pockets.

“There you are,” Mason said, showing that each pocket had been turned wrong-side-out. “You don’t see any burglary tools there, do you?”

“Perhaps it was a key,” Caddo suggested.

“You don’t see any key.”

“His secretary has it!”

Mason said, “If there’s any doubt about that, you can take my secretary to Headquarters and we’ll have a police woman search her, officer. But...”

“Let me look in your purse,” the officer said to Della Street.

He opened Della Street’s purse, looked through the miscellaneous contents, pulled out a key ring, said, “What’s this key to?”

“My apartment.”

“And this key?”

“Perry Mason’s office.”

“And this one?”

“My garage key.”

“Don’t let her fool you,” Caddo warned. “How do you know that’s what they are? That key she says is to Mason’s office can well be something else. You...”

“I don’t care what it is,” the radio officer said, “unless it’s a key to this door. We’ll find out about that right now.”

One by one, he tried to fit the keys to the lock. None of the keys would slide in.

“Not even the same grooves,” the officer said. He returned the keys to Della’s purse, closed the purse and handed it to Della Street.

“She’s got it down her stocking top,” Caddo said. “How do you know...”

“Oh, shut up!” the officer told him. “You’ve been wrong on everything so far. What the hell are you trying to do, anyway?”

“I’m trying to see that...”

“You’ve been laying out here watching this apartment?”

“Yes.”

“All night?”

“All night.”

“That looks fishy to me, on the face of it,” the officer said.