Erle Gardner - The Case of the Rolling Bones

Mason said, “There’s something Alden Leeds wanted to cover up. The documents were only the blackmailer’s card of introduction.”

“How do you figure that, Chief?”

“Because Leeds paid twenty thousand, and didn’t get possession of the documents .”

“Where does that put us, Chief?” she asked.

“Right on the end of the limb,” Mason said.

The bedroom door opened. Marcia Whittaker walked directly across to Perry Mason, holding a manila envelope in her hand. When she got within two steps of the lawyer, she slid the manila envelope behind her back, and held it across the curve of her hips.

Mason said sharply, “Don’t be like that!”

“I want to know,” she said, “exactly what I’m going to get.”

“A first-degree murder rap if you don’t watch your step,” he warned.

“You’ll promise me that Alden Leeds will stand back of me, that...”

“I promise you nothing.” Mason said. “I’ve gone too damn far already. Who do you think you are, to stand up there and ask me, will I do this and will I do that? You’re standing on a red-hot spot.” Mason pointed dramatically to the door. “Any minute the law may walk in through that door. If they find those papers on you, it means the gas chamber. And you want to know what I’m going to do for you! For one thing, I’m going to take those papers off your hands. That’s enough — too damn much.”

She whipped the envelope from behind her back, and literally pushed it into his hands.

Without looking at it, Mason dropped it into his inside coat pocket. “I’m not your lawyer,” he said. “I’m Alden Leeds’ lawyer. To the extent that you play ball with him, I’ll play ball with you. Try to slip anything over on him, and I’ll give you the works. Do you understand?”

She nodded. There were tears in her eyes.

“Listen,” Mason went on, “John Milicant was being shadowed. Private detectives kept a record of everyone who went to the sixth floor of that apartment. There’s an elevator indicator over the elevator shaft. There are two other apartments on the sixth floor. At least one of them is vacant. Everyone who took the elevator up to the sixth floor was clocked in and clocked out.”

“Who hired them?” she asked.

“I did,” Mason said.

“Then can’t you... ”

“Not a chance in the world,” Mason told her, “and I don’t even dare to try. There were two men and two women on the job working in relays. You try to hush up anything like that, and you wind up in a lot hotter water than when you started.”

“But what can I do?” she asked.

Mason said, “The apartment door was closed when you went in?”

“Yes, but I had a key to it.”

“There’s a spring lock on the door?”

“Yes.”

Mason said, “Give me your key.”

She crossed to the table where she had tossed her purse, opened it, took out a key and handed it to him. He dropped it in his pocket. “Forget that you ever had this,” he told her. “Now, what did you do when you came out? Did you pull the door shut?”

“No. I left it part way open — just an inch or two.”

“Why?”

“I was afraid that when the blow-off came, they might claim I’d been the last one in — and that I had a key. By leaving the door slightly ajar — someone else might come to see Louie, and push the door open, and find him, and be on a spot that would let me out.”

Mason said, “You’re a cold-blooded little devil, aren’t you?”

“Christ, no!” she said. “I’ve always been too much the other way, but I’ve learned to think for myself in a jam. You would too, if you had them hand you the deals they’ve handed me.”

Mason studied her with hard, watchful eyes. “You were wearing gloves?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Mason nodded toward the telephone. “Call the police. Tell them you had a date with Louie Conway at his apartment, that he was to wait for you there, that you pounded and hammered on the door, and he didn’t answer, that you know it isn’t a stand-up because he was going to marry you, and you were going away together.”

“If I just tell them that,” she said, “they’ll think I’m crazy.”

Mason said, “That’s what you want. Act crazy. Be hysterical over the telephone. Ask them to please send someone out to the apartment to make sure he’s all right. Tell them you’ve been trying to sleep, and couldn’t, that you knew he was afraid of something, that he’d been gambling, and he was afraid men were going to kidnap him. And don’t, under any circumstances, mention the name of Milicant.”

“But that won’t do any good,” she said.

“Don’t you see?” Mason told her. “They’ll make a record of that call and of your name and address. They’ll hand you a line and tell you they’ll have a radio car drop by for an inspection, that if you don’t hear from them, it’ll be all right.”

“And they won’t go?”

“Of course not. They can’t go around hammering on the apartment doors of all the men in the city who have stood up trollops on dates. In the morning when the thing breaks, that call will get you as much in the clear as you can get. With that call, they’ll never think of trying to check up on the airports.”

Her tear-reddened eyes blinked as she digested the lawyer’s advice.

“Then,” Mason went on, “when the law does come, you’ll have plenty of excuse for having had a sleepless night and putting on the weep act. Remember, you were to be married. The man’s sister has been trying to break up the match.”

“Should I bring her in?” she asked.

“Yes,” Mason said. “All the way. Don’t forget, Marcia, the records show you were in the apartment for eleven minutes.

“Get out of those clothes. Get into pajamas and litter this apartment with cigarette stubs. Have a drink of whiskey and leave the whiskey bottle and the glass out where the officers can find ’em. See that there are plenty of half-burnt cigarettes in the bedroom — not stubs, mind you, that would make you seem too calm. You want to register as having had one cigarette after another, with only a puff or two from each. Don’t have any make-up on your face. Let your hair string down. Lie in bed long enough and turn around often enough to get the sheets all rumpled. Go into the kitchen, mix salt into a glassful of water. Sprinkle the salt water on the pillow so it’ll be damp to the touch, but don’t overdo it.

“Can you go through with it?”

“Yes,” she said.

Mason took Della Street’s arm.

Marcia Whittaker stood at the head of the stairs, sobbing silently as she waited for the front door to slam before switching out the light.

On the cold pavement in front of the house, with the first streaks of dawn showing in the east, Della Street turned anxious eyes to Perry Mason. “Chief,” she asked, “aren’t we doing a lot for Alden Leeds?”

Mason grinned down at her. “I’ll say we are. Getting cold feet, Della?”

She snuggled her arm in his. “Be your age, you big oaf.”

They drove a dozen blocks before Mason found an all-night restaurant with a public telephone. He parked the car, went into the restaurant, and called Paul Drake’s office. When he heard the detective’s voice on the line, he said, “Okay, Paul. You can go home now,” and hung up.

Phyllis Leeds sat across from Mason in the big leather chair, her eyes darkened by apprehension and fear of what was to follow. Mason said, “There’s no way of breaking it gently, Miss Leeds, so brace yourself.”

“About Uncle Alden?” she asked.

“Not directly,” Mason said. “It’s about John Milicant. He was found in his apartment about an hour ago by a maid. He’d been murdered.”