Erle Gardner - The Case of the Half-Wakened Wife

“Who is this lawyer?” Mason asked.

Keller said, “It’s Attica of the firm of Attica, Hoxie and Meade.”

Drake whistled.

“Know him?” Keller asked Drake. “He’s a whiz.”

Drake said, “He’s a shyster. He’s the lawyer who’s representing Ellen Lacey in that suit against us.”

“Sure he is,” Keller said. “And look how clever he is. He gets his client swell publicity as...”

“He stinks,” Mason said.

“Now keep your shirt on, Mr. Mason. I shouldn’t have mentioned what he said about you butchering up the case, but anyway, I’m calling on you and appealing to your sense of decency and sportsmanship.”

“What do you want?” Mason asked.

“Now what happened was this,” Lawton Keller said, taking the cigar out of his mouth and gesturing with it. “This Scott Shelby was pretty much of a chaser. He was fooling around quite a bit, making passes at everybody. Well, that’s all right, you can’t blame him for that. After all, a man is only human. But this guy was pretty much of a rat. He kinda tried to blackmail his way. You know, he’d get something on someone or get them under obligations to him and then he’d strut his stuff. Get me?”

“Go on,” Mason said, “let’s hear the rest of it.”

“Well, on this night that they were on the yacht, his wife had just about got fed up with the whole business. She decided she was going to get a divorce, but you can’t get a divorce without evidence and naturally a fellow doesn’t drag his sweethearts into the family bedroom. So, she had to get up and go out looking for the evidence. Get me?”

“I get you,” Mason said dryly.

“Well, she woke up, hubby was gone. She sensed he was out on a philandering expedition. She saw the gun that was lying on the dresser and without thinking, she picked that up...”

“Let me finish for you,” Mason said ironically. “She ran out on deck, half crazed with jealousy and disappointment. She saw her shattered romance falling in pieces about her feet. The poor little woman was beside herself. She didn’t stop to think that she wasn’t properly clothed. She wasn’t thinking of anything. She couldn’t think in the sense that one intelligently correlates one’s acts. She had wakened, found her husband was gone, and still in that sleep-dazed half-wakened state, was running along the yacht looking for him, thinking perhaps that something had happened to him.”

“Now you’ve got it,” Lawton Keller said, with a trace of respect in his voice. “That’s exactly the situation. Hang it, you make it sound damn good!”

“And there in the bow of the boat she found her husband, in the close embrace of another woman. The other woman jumped up and ran, and as soon as she did so, the husband saw his wife, and, in an angry mood, reproached her, telling her that he didn’t want to have her snooping around, and demanding roughly to know what the hell she meant by following him.”

Lawton Keller nodded approvingly.

“The poor little woman was distraught. She was beside herself. She still wasn’t fully awake,” Mason went on, dramatically, “she was numb with the disillusionment of it all. She started to cry and then her husband got rough, grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around and kicked her, told her to get back down in the stateroom where she belonged and stay there. And then, that kick did something to her. It aroused her resentment. It wakened her thoroughly. She told him she wasn’t going to stand for it. She was going to get a divorce. And then, when he suddenly realized that she meant what she said, angry and in a frenzy of rage, he grabbed her and tried to throw her overboard.

“She struggled with him, tried to scream to him not to do that, but he had her by the throat and was throttling her. Then, just when she was on the point of losing her balance, she twisted and turned and fell and dragged her husband down with her. And, her husband stumbled over a rope, lost his balance, pitched overboard, and as he started to fall he grabbed her arm, trying to hold to her. The hand of that arm had the revolver in it; and just as she wrenched the arm from his grasp, she heard an explosion. She never did realize that the explosion was that of the gun that was in her own hand. She thought it was someone else who had fired the shot. It wasn’t until afterwards that she realized that the gun must have gone off, apparently of its own accord. Or, perhaps, the husband, clutching frantically, had grabbed the barrel of the gun and pulled it down so that the pressure of her finger against the trigger discharged it. And the proof of that is that the bullet struck against the smooth side of the trim yacht, and then, on a glance, struck the husband.

“The man killed himself, fired by his own rage, trapped by circumstances which would almost seem to have been set in motion by some higher power. It was not murder. It was not even self-defense. She didn’t kill him, this poor, half-wakened woman. The heel killed himself!”

Lawton Keller’s eyes were wide and awestruck. “Cripes,” he said, “you’re doing it even better than... You don’t need to get out of this case!”

“The hell I don’t,” Mason told him angrily, “I need to get out of the case, and you need to get the hell out of this office, beginning now.”

Mason came down off the desk, crossed over to Keller’s chair with two swift strides, grabbed the man’s coat collar and jerked him up out of the chair.

“Say,” Keller demanded in surprise, “what the hell’s got into you? Look, maybe we can do business after all. I was just interested in the little girl because...”

Della Street glanced questioningly at Mason.

Mason nodded.

Della Street opened the door.

Mason straightened his arm, leaned his weight against Keller and gave him the bum’s rush out of the office.

The man fell flat as he hit the corridor. Mason dusted off his hands, stepped back in the room. Della Street, acting as though the whole thing had been carefully rehearsed, closed the door and locked it.

Perry Mason finished dusting his hands, said, “And I guess that calls for a drink.”

He walked over and opened a locked drawer in a filing cabinet, pulled out a bottle of whisky and glasses.

Paul Drake was watching him with admiration. “Cripes, Perry, I never saw it done neater.”

“You mean throwing a rat out of the office?” Mason asked uncorking a bottle.

“Christ no!” Drake said. “The old hokum about the aggrieved wife. Why the hell don’t you stay in the case and get her off, Perry?”

Mason quit pouring the whisky. “Do you want to go out in the corridor?” he asked pointedly.

Drake grinned. “Have it your own way, Perry,” he said dryly. “Keep on pouring the drink. But, for a guy that the district attorney claims is always cutting corners, you certainly are a babe in the woods. Make mine a double one, and then I’m going to ring up Ellen Lacey’s lawyer and see how much kale it’s going to take to let me wriggle off the hook.”

Saturday morning Mason entered his office with his hat tilted back on his head, the old, carefree, boyish grin twisting his lips. “Hi Della, what’s new?”

She said, “The deposition of Ellen Cushing Lacey is set for ten o’clock, you remember?”

“Uh huh.”

“The court reporter will be here. There’s a notary public on this floor, who’s ready to come in and swear the witness any time we’re ready.”

“Heard anything from Paul Drake?”

“I’m afraid Paul had rather a bad night. He got hold of Attica on the phone, tried to sound the old shyster out about a figure for a compromise.”

“Get anywhere?”