Erle Gardner - Case of the Silent Partner

She went rapidly through the door to the reception hallway, started to run the last few steps, and opened the door. “What is it?” she asked.

“Who did the shooting just now?” Lieutenant Tragg asked, pushing his way into the hallway. “And is that Perry Mason’s car out there? Is he here?”

“Yes, he’s here.”

“Who did the shooting?”

“Why... er... was there shooting?”

“Didn’t you hear the shot?”

“Why, no. I can’t say that I did. I heard something that sounded like a backfire.”

Lieutenant Tragg made a sound which was midway between a sniff and a snort, and walked on into the living room. “Well, Mason,” he said, “ you certainly get around.”

“Travel,” Mason told him, “is broadening. As you doubtless know, this is Miss Faulkner. Lieutenant Tragg, Miss Faulkner. You’ll find that Miss Faulkner has excellent taste in Scotch whiskey, and, for your further information, I’m not representing her.”

Tragg stood staring down at Mason. “You’re not representing her?”

“No.”

“Then what the devil are you doing here?”

Mason said, “Paying a social call and sipping a very delightful whiskey and soda.”

“You fired that shot?”

“No.”

The lieutenant’s eyes moved rapidly around the room. He saw the hole in the plate-glass window, and walked across to examine it.

“For Heaven sakes,” Mildreth exclaimed. “It’s a bullet hole in the glass! Then it was a shot. Someone must have shot at me, Mr. Mason.”

“Through the window?” Tragg asked.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t hear it?”

“No. I heard your car coming up. That is, I guess it was your car, and I thought there was a backfire. I had no idea it was a shot.”

“I see,” Tragg observed calmly. “Then someone must have shot at you from outside.”

“Yes.”

“Well, let’s see. Here’s a hole in the drapes, and here’s a hole in the glass. That gives us the line taken by the bullet. Now, sighting along that line, you can see that — Here. Pull that drape to one side. Now you can see my car parked at the curb. The line runs just in front of the car.”

“That’s right, it does.”

“Then someone must have stood directly in front of my car and fired the shot. He must have been standing on stilts some fifteen feet high.”

“You didn’t shoot, did you?” she asked.

Tragg ignored the question. “Furthermore,” he said, “by the time you’ve had as much experience with bullets as I have, you’ll be able to tell the direction in which they’re going when they go through glass. And there’s the odor of smokeless powder in the room. I’m afraid, Miss Faulkner, that I’ll have to look around.”

“You can’t. I forbid you to do it.”

“Well, I’m going to just the same.”

“He can’t do it without a warrant, can he, Mr. Mason?”

Tragg said, “Mason isn’t representing you.”

“I know, but he can tell me that.”

Mason sipped his Scotch and soda, puffed placidly at his cigarette, and said nothing. Lieutenant Tragg said, “You know, Miss Faulkner, we’re going to quit playing horse right now, and get down to brass tacks. If you’ll tell me who fired that shot and what was done with the gun, I won’t take you down to police headquarters, have you searched, and have detectives come out and go through the house...

“Wait a minute. You must have been standing about here. You heard me coming in the car. You must have fired that shot just as I was bringing my car to a stop. Now, figuring the angle of that shot... I was ringing the doorbell. Well, the natural place for you to have concealed the gun would have been under the cushions of this davenport.”

He calmly walked over to the davenport and started raising the cushions.

“You can’t do that,” she said, grabbing his arm.

Tragg pushed her to one side. “Don’t act up, sister,” he warned, “or I’ll have the place crawling with cops inside of twenty minutes.”

“But you can’t. You... Oh...”

Tragg dropped to his knees, placed his head down close to the floor, peered under the davenport, and said, “Oh-oh!”

Mason heard the grind of a car motor coming up the steep incline of a cross street. He carefully pinched out his cigarette, dropped it in the ash tray, stretched, yawned, and said, “Well, if the lieutenant will pardon me...”

“The lieutenant won’t pardon you,” Tragg said, sliding his left arm under the davenport.

“Meaning you’re going to try to hold me?” Mason asked.

“Meaning I’m going to find out what you have to say about this before you go anywhere,” Tragg said.

The car was coming closer now.

Mason said, “Sergeant Holcomb never liked to have me present when he was trying to get a statement from a suspect. He always thought that I was a disturbing influence. Funny thing about me that way. When I’m in the room, I simply can’t keep from advising a person about constitutional rights, warning about traps, and so forth.”

Tragg said, “You win. Get the hell out of here.”

Mason smiled reassuringly at Mildreth Faulkner. “Be seeing you. Don’t bother to let me out. I know the way.”

As Mason turned from the living room into the corridor, Lieutenant Tragg said, “All right, Miss Faulkner. Tell me about the gun. Why did you fire it?”

“It was an accident.”

Mason opened the front door.

“Were you perhaps taking a shot at Mason, or was he trying to take the gun away from you, or...”

Mason gently closed the door behind him, and stepped out to the porch.

A coupe had stopped just behind Tragg’s sedan. A woman was getting out of it. Mason held up his hand, motioning for her to stop, and walked rapidly toward the car.

The woman said, in a rather flat voice, “What’s the matter? What’s...”

“You Mrs. Lawley?” Mason asked in an undertone.

“Yes. I’m Mildreth Faulkner’s sister. What’s...”

Mason said, “Get in your car, turn around, and drive back down the road until I catch up with you. Make it snappy. Be quiet about it. The police are in there, and...”

She caught her breath. “You’re Perry Mason, the lawyer?”

“Yes. Your sister wants me to represent you.”

“To represent me? For Heaven sakes, what for?”

“I don’t know,” Mason said, “but unless you want to be dragged down to police headquarters while they try to find out, you’d better turn that car around and get started.”

He walked over to his own car, switched on the engine, made an excessive amount of noise, backing, turning, clashing gears, and racing his motor. When Carlotta Lawley had her car safely turned around and was headed back down the grade, Mason snapped his car into gear, ran rapidly along behind her, and, some two hundred yards from the house, drove up alongside, and signaled her to stop.

“Were you,” he asked, “going home?”

“Why, I... you see, I...”

Mason said, “Don’t go home. Go to the Clearmount Hotel, register as Mrs. Charles X. Dunkurk of San Diego. Be sure you spell it D-u-n-k-u-r-k. Go to your room, get into bed and stay there. Don’t go out, don’t read the papers, don’t listen to the radio. Simply stay there until I come to see you, and that won’t be until sometime tomorrow — or rather later on today.”

“You mean I’ll have to wait there...”

“Yes,” Mason said. “I don’t want to attract attention by coming in to call on you at three or four o’clock in the morning. I have some work to do between now and the time I see you.”

“And you don’t want to talk with me now — to ask me any questions, to...”