Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Lonely Heiress

“You know that’s my thumbprint,” Endicott shouted.

Mason smiled and said, “It’s not your thumbprint, Mr. Endicott. That thumbprint is the thumbprint of your brother, Mr. Palmer E. Endicott. And I’m going to ask Mr. Palmer Endicott to come forward. Come right forward and be sworn, Mr. Endicott, you... Stop him!”

Palmer Endicott, who had been edging toward the door, suddenly bolted from the courtroom.

Paul Drake, standing in the door, stepped forward and tackled the running man. The pair of them crashed to the floor of the corridor, with Paul Drake holding Endicott in a firm grip, the little man kicking and squirming, throwing his arms around in an attempt to pummel Drake’s face.

Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom.

Mason, seated in his office, grinned across at Della Street, said, “Della, I think this calls for a celebration. The Ice Follies are here this week. Get four of the best seats available, and make arrangements for a table at our favorite night club.”

Della Street moved toward, the telephone.

She had just completed the call when Paul Drake’s code knock sounded on the door.

Della Street opened the door.

Drake came into the office, assumed his favorite position in the big leather chair, scratched his head, and said, “How the hell you do it is beyond me!”

Mason grinned. “A murder case is simply a jigsaw puzzle, a lot of things to be put together. If you have the right solution, all of the parts fit into the picture. If some of the parts don’t seem to fit, it’s a pretty good indication you haven’t the right solution.”

Della Street said, “You’re stepping out tonight, Paul. You and Marilyn Marlow, the Chief and I are going to see the Ice Follies and then make a little whoopee at a nitery.”

“Okay by me,” Drake said. “She’s a pretty good-looking kid, that girl!”

“Unfortunately, Della,” Mason said, “you’re jumping at conclusions.”

“You told me a table for four,” Della Street said, puzzled.

“It isn’t Paul Drake we’re taking. Kenneth Barstow will be the fourth in the party.”

“Well, I like that!” Drake exclaimed.

“I really like it,” Della said. “I was becoming somewhat concerned over the turn events were taking. You should have seen the Chief’s face when Judge Osborn announced that the case against Marilyn Marlow was dismissed.”

“What about his face?” Drake asked. “An expression of relief?”

“Expression of relief, fiddlesticks!” Della Street exclaimed. “An expression of lipstick! You’d have thought he was Marilyn Marlow’s Prince Charming.”

“Beating Kenneth Barstow’s time?” Drake asked.

“It begins to look like it,” Della said, smiling. “Of course, the poor girl was hysterical. And then again, when you come right down to it, the affection between Marilyn Marlow and Kenneth Barstow has so far been one-sided.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Drake said. “Barstow fell for her like a ton of bricks. He was biting his fingernails clear down to the knuckles when it looked as though they had her booked for a one-way trip to San Quentin.”

“Anyway,” Della Street told him, “you should be willing to forego an evening at the Ice Follies in order to give one of your operatives a break.”

“It might mollify me,” Drake said, “if Perry would tell me how he knew what happened.”

Mason said, “The thumbprint was the payoff.”

“How did you know it was Palmer Endicott’s fingerprint? I thought Ralph had pretty well established that it was his print.”

Mason said, “Palmer Endicott is clever, don’t make any mistake about that. Apparently he was the one who engineered the whole thing. Let’s just look at the evidence for a second:

“Rose Keeling’s fountain pen had a soft point. She shaded the lines in her signature and she shaded the lines in the writing on the check. But Ralph Endicott was able to show me a clear carbon copy of a letter she had written in pen and ink to Marilyn Marlow. Her soft-pointed fountain pen couldn’t possibly have made such a carbon copy. That letter had been written with a ball-point pen. You realize, of course, that these ball-point pens use a different type of ink from that used by the fountain pen. The fingerprint on the back of the check was one which had been made with ink from a ball-point pen.

“Ralph Endicott said it was his fingerprint. Apparently Ralph Endicott had had the only contact with Marilyn Marlow. Palmer wasn’t supposed to know her at all. Ralph Endicott had a perfect alibi. Palmer Endicott apparently had none. Therefore, once it appeared that Palmer Endicott had left a thumbprint on the check, the whole case was cracked wide open.

“The significance of that fingerprint hadn’t occurred to any of them until I went out to the Endicott house and Ralph Endicott told me his story of what had happened, a purely synthetic concoction of fact and fiction blended into the story the Endicotts had decided to tell. Then I called attention to the fingerprint on the check, and, of course, Ralph Endicott had to insist it was his.

“I asked him to verify that statement.

“Ralph Endicott wasn’t a fast thinker. He didn’t see any way out of that predicament. Probably he would have tried to become indignant at the thought of my doubting his word and asked me to leave the house. That, however, would have been rather a transparent subterfuge.

“Palmer Endicott was a fast thinker. He realized instantly that the fingerprint on the check must have been the fingerprint of his right thumb, so he gave Ralph Endicott the cue right under my nose, and did it so cleverly that for the moment he fooled me.

“Palmer Endicott insisted that Ralph stamp his fingerprints on a piece of paper and give the paper to me, and Palmer Endicott went into the next room to get a sheet of paper and an ink pad. He brought the sheet of paper back and showed it to us casually, so that we could see that it was blank. But, of course, when he held the sheet of paper, he was holding it with his right thumb and forefinger, and he had inked his right thumb before he picked up the piece of paper. Therefore, when he laid it down, the imprint of his right thumb was on the paper.

“I don’t think Ralph Endicott understood what was up, but in order to stall along, he went over to the table to go through the motions of making his fingerprints, hoping that before he gave them to me some idea would occur to him and to one of the others, so that they wouldn’t have to submit to fingerprints for my examination.

“When Ralph Endicott got over to the table, he found not a blank piece of paper, but a piece of paper with Palmer Endicott’s right thumbprint on it and immediately realized what had happened. He knew then that he was safe, so he made the imprints of the four fingers of his right hand and of all five fingers of his left hand, and then brought the paper over to me. I compared the fingerprints with those on the check and saw that the print on the check was a right thumbprint which coincided with the right thumbprint on the sheet of paper which had been handed me, and naturally assumed it was Ralph Endicott’s print. In the meantime, Palmer, under the guise of mixing a drink for us, had gone out toward the kitchen, where he had a chance to wash all trace of ink from his right thumb.”

“My God,” Drake said, “that was clever!”

“You bet it was clever,” Mason agreed. “Palmer Endicott is clever. He had to ad lib that whole performance, and he did some mighty fast, accurate thinking.

“Once I figured out the riddle of that thumbprint,” Mason went on, “the rest of it was easy. Rose Keeling was a nurse. One would hardly expect her to carry a bank account that had an idle balance of over a thousand dollars. But if the statements contained in that letter she wrote Marilyn Marlow and those made by the Endicotts had been true, her bank account would have shown a rather substantial balance for some time prior to the time the letter had been written.”