Erle Gardner: The Case of the Haunted Husband

“Why?” Mason asked, seizing the opening. “To keep from committing yourself by some inadvertent statement?”

“No. To keep from saying something you can misconstrue and throw back at me later on.”

“I am not that bad.”

“Your detective was. He threw me out of my stride for a whole half day. What do you want?”

“You are carrying your own car insurance?”

“Yes — if it is any of your business, which it isn’t.”

“It makes some difference — this accident.”

“How?”

“Your legal liability; whether the automobile was being used with your consent, express or implied.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Nevertheless, you can appreciate the legal difference.”

“All right, it makes a legal difference. So what?”

“And,” Mason went on, “if the person who was driving that car happened to be an agent of yours...”

“I don’t have any agents.”

“That is what the layman occasionally thinks, but if you ask a man to take your car and run down to the post office to mail a letter, he becomes your agent so far as that trip is concerned.”

“I see. Good point. Glad you told me. I shall remember that. What else?”

Mason said, “And if you sent a man to San Francisco to do something for you in your car, he would automatically become your agent for that purpose.”

“So what?”

“And if he had an accident while he was driving the car, you would be responsible just as though you were driving the car yourself.”

“All right, you are leading up to something. Go ahead. What is it?”

Mason said, “I am an attorney, Mr. Homan. I am representing Stephane Claire. I am interested in unearthing any bit of evidence which would clear her of the charge of negligent homicide.”

“That is obvious.”

“Now then, you are interested in minimizing your legal liability. If someone actually stole the automobile, that is one thing. If someone was driving it with your permission, that is another and if the person who was driving it was actually your agent, that is something else. You are naturally interested in the interpretation of the evidence which will give you the least financial liability.”

“That is obvious.”

“Therefore, our interests are adverse.”

“Naturally. I knew that before you ever got here. Tell me something new.”

Mason said, meaningly, “It has occurred to me, Mr. Homan, that you might be penny-wise and pound-foolish.”

“How?”

“In an attempt to avoid a few thousand dollars in legal liability, you might expose yourself to a flank attack.”

“By whom?”

“By me.”

Homan’s brown eyes stared at Mason long and searchingly from behind the horn-rimmed spectacles. “Go on,” he said, after a few moments. “What is the rest of it?”

Mason said, “I want to prove that Stephane Claire wasn’t driving your car. In order to do that, I want to prove who was driving it. And in order to do that, I have to pry into your private affairs. When I pry, I make a good job of it.”

“Is this blackmail?”

“A warning.”

“It is finished?”

“No. I am just starting.”

Homan shifted his position in his swivel chair. “I am afraid,” he said, “this is going to be even worse than I thought,” and started drumming nervously on the edge of the desk with short, stubby, but well-manicured fingers. A diamond ring on his right hand caught the light and glinted in scintillating brilliance as he moved his hand.

Mason said, “Obviously, it would be most to my advantage to prove that the car was being operated by some agent of yours.”

“You think I am lying about the car being stolen?”

Mason said, “When I am representing a client, I like to assume that anyone who tells a story that is opposed to the facts as related by the client is falsifying.”

“Can’t blame you for that. That is business. Go ahead.”

“Now then,” Mason said, leaning forward and suddenly pointing his finger directly at Homan, “if there is any reason why you don’t want the facts about Mr. Spinney brought out, it will be to your advantage to say so right now.”

Homan’s face didn’t change expression by so much as the flicker of an eyelash. “Who is Spinney?”

“A gentleman in San Francisco.”

“Don’t know him. Therefore, I don’t care what facts you bring out.”

“And if you don’t want anything known about a waitress in a New Orleans cafeteria, now would be a good time to say so.”

“Threatening me with women?”

“With a woman.”

“Go ahead. Bring them all in. What the hell do I care? I am a bachelor. Everyone says I am a philanderer and a libertine. I don’t pretend to be anything else. You can’t hurt me by digging up a hundred women. Nothing hurts a man unless he gets caught. People don’t feel that you are being caught when you stand right out in the open and...”

“You misunderstand me,” Mason said. “I am not referring to some woman with whom you might have been intimate.”

“What about her then?”

“Some woman who perhaps was remaining true to a man whom she hadn’t seen in some time, some woman whom that man wanted to remain in New Orleans because he didn’t want her to know where he was or what he was doing.”

“Why?” Homan barked.

“Because,” Mason said, “he wanted her to get a divorce.”

“Why?”

“Probably because he’d become prosperous and wanted to marry someone else.”

Homan’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You have got a good idea there, Mason. I think you could develop it. Probably do something with it. Human interest. Self-sacrifice. Drama. All that. Keep your woman meek and good, but don’t overdo it or you will make her a sap. Go ahead, develop it.”

“I intend to.”

Homan waved his jeweled hand, suddenly laughed. “Scenario stuff,” he said. “Pardon me, Mason, I have so many writers come in with ideas, toss them at me, and ask me what I think of them that I get so I look at everything from that angle. For a moment I thought you were asking me about an original. This sounded like a good idea for a scenario.”

“I am talking facts.”

“Facts that don’t mean anything to me. Got anything else?”

Mason said, “Yes. You are going to have to go on the witness stand and tell your story. Any falsification will be perjury. Perhaps when you first heard about this, you thought you could keep yourself out of it by telling your story to the police and then going back to work. That’s out. You can’t do it. You are trying to rush a young woman to jail. If I can catch you in perjury I will try to send you to jail. Do I make myself clear?”

Homan said, “Sit still for a minute. I want to think that last one over.”

Mason sat motionless, watching Homan. The producer stared down at the top of his desk. There was no expression on his face, no motion save the nervous drumming of the fingers of his right hand.

Abruptly the drumming stopped. Homan looked up, said to Mason, “My story stands. I am telling the truth. There is nothing you can do about it. I have told the police the facts. I am sorry about the Claire girl. I am not certain she stole the automobile. I think somebody else stole it first. I don’t give a damn about you, Mason. I could get sympathetic about that girl if I put my mind on it. Lying there in the hospital, injured, scarred perhaps, no funds, no job, few friends, facing a trial when she gets well, newspaper notoriety. It is a tough break. I could see the human side of it, the drama, the tragedy. I can’t afford to think of it. Right now, my studio is paying me to concentrate on the problem of a man who has fallen in love with a woman who, unfortunately, is married to someone else. Her husband won’t let her go. He is hanging on. The intimacy develops, then suddenly the husband catches them. The cruel gloating, the malice, the... What I am concerned with, Mason, is what that would do to a woman’s character. Forcing her to live a lie. Forcing her to...”