Erle Gardner - The Case of the Rolling Bones

“Now then, I will direct your attention to People’s Exhibit C, and ask you if on this exhibit appears a fingerprint similar in any way to any of the ten prints shown on this card.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where?”

“Here, to the side of the bureau drawer. You will note the prints of the middle finger of the right hand. I have here an enlarged copy of that print, together with an enlarged copy of the print of the middle finger of the defendant’s right hand. I detected twenty-three points of similarity.”

“Will you please explain to the court these points of similarity.”

And so the afternoon droned on with the state remorselessly piling up an avalanche of fingerprint evidence against the defendant, with Alden Leeds sitting erect and dignified, without so much as batting an eyelash, Perry Mason and Della Street, fighting against the sheer fatigue of inaction, yet with nothing to which they could object, listening to the legal bricks being dropped into place in a wall which was designed to cut off all hope of the defendant’s escape.

At length, the hour came for the afternoon adjournment.

“How much longer will you be with this line of evidence, Mr. Deputy District Attorney?” Judge Knox asked.

“Probably all day tomorrow, Your Honor.”

“Very well, court will reconvene at ten o’clock. In the meantime, the prisoner is remanded to the custody of the sheriff.”

As court adjourned, Mason moved over to place a reassuring hand on Alden Leeds’ shoulder. His face, which was turned toward the courtroom, was wreathed in a confident smile, but the low-pitched words which came from his lips, and were only audible to the ears of the defendant, were far from reassuring. “It looks as though you’d been holding out on me,” Mason said.

Leeds faced him calmly. “I am not a young man,” he said. “I have but little to gain from an acquittal in this case, and less to lose from a conviction. I didn’t realize that I had left fingerprints in that apartment. I did not kill John Milicant. He... We can prove he was alive and well when I left.”

Mason’s eyes narrowed. “We can produce evidence to that effect,” he said, his lips still smiling reassuringly, “but that’s no sign a jury is going to believe it. One thing is certain. The judge is going to bind you over on a charge of first degree murder.”

“I had anticipated that,” Leeds admitted quietly.

“We hadn’t,” Mason observed. “We would have if you’d told us about these fingerprints.”

“I didn’t know about them.”

“You knew you’d searched that apartment.”

Leeds said nothing.

Mason, smiling broadly, patted him on the shoulder as a deputy sheriff approached.

“Okay, Leeds,” he said, loudly. “Things are looking fine. They don’t have a ghost of a chance of pinning this on you. Get a good night’s sleep now, and leave the worry to us.”

Out in the corridor, Della Street fell into step with Perry Mason.

“Those fingerprints,” she said, “don’t look so good, do they, Chief?”

“I’d more or less discounted them in advance,” he said. “I figured that Leeds must have been the one to search that apartment, although he said he hadn’t. What I was mainly counting on was that he’d been too smart to leave fingerprints. Apparently, he was in too much of a hurry to be careful.”

“What,” she asked, “would happen if tomorrow they show that his fingerprints are on the handle of the knife?”

Mason shrugged his shoulders.

“Let’s not worry about that in advance. He’s in bad enough right now. Let’s go to the office and see if Drake has uncovered anything.”

At the office Mason found a letter addressed to him in feminine handwriting on the stationery of the Border City Hotel at Yuma. The letter read simply:

DEAR MR. MASON

I am a seamstress soliciting work by mail. If you have any sewing which I could do, or if there are any tears or holes which seem hopeless, you will find I am quite skillful, and I will deeply appreciate having an opportunity to show you what I can do. Simply address Mrs. J. B. Beems at the Border City Hotel, Yuma, Arizona.

Mason took out his notebook, made a note of the address, thought for a moment, and then touched a match to the letter.

Della Street, who had gone down to Drake’s office to notify him that Mason was back, came in with the detective in tow. “Hi, Paul,” Mason said. “What’s new?”

Drake jackknifed himself into a characteristic pose in the big chair, and said, “I’ve located Inez Colton.”

“Where?” Mason asked.

“At the Ellery Arms Apartments,” Drake said. “She’s used henna on her hair and is going under an assumed name, but I don’t know what name, or the number of her apartment. I was afraid to make any inquiries without consulting you, for fear she’d get wise and take another powder. You see, Perry, I can’t put a tail on her because we have no one who knows her personally, and no one to put the finger on her. We simply have a description to go on.”

“How did you ever locate her?” Mason asked.

“Simple,” Drake said. “Like all other good gags, it’s been used before, but it’s one of the things people seldom think of. I figured she’d try to change her appearance. Walking out on her job that way indicated it. I managed to find out who her favorite hairdresser was, and an operative, posing as a friend and doing a lot of talking, got the information out of the hairdresser — at least that much information.Women hate to have strange hairdressers do a dye job.”

Mason pushed his hands down deep into his pockets. “I wish we had a little more on her before we make the contact,” he said.

Drake said, “I can help on that too, Perry. You can prove that Jason Carrel is her boy friend all right.”

Mason’s eyes lit up. “That smug liar,” he said. “He had the crust to get on the witness stand and swear absolutely that there had never been any conversation among the relatives about what it would mean to them financially if they could keep Alden Leeds from marrying or making a will. He adopted the position that he was radiating sweetness and light. He just wanted to help his poor, dear uncle, and that was all he thought about.”

“What did he say about Inez Colton?” Drake asked.

“Swore he didn’t know her.”

Drake grinned and produced a photostatic copy of a traffic ticket.

“All right,” he said. “Let him try this on his piano. Here’s a traffic ticket showing a violation of the parking law — car parked between the hours of two A.M. and four A.M. The license number is that of Jason Carrel’s automobile, and after the citation was issued, a cute little trick showed up at the traffic department and paid the fine. Her name was Inez Colton. She wanted a receipt showing that the fine had been paid in cash. That’s rather unusual. The bail clerk made a notation on the traffic ticket. When I had him look it up, he found the receipt stub showing payment by this Colton baby.”

“This was the night of the murder?” Mason asked, excitedly.

“No, no,” Drake said. “This was two weeks before the murder. I had a tip the car sometimes stood out in front of the apartment house until the small hours of the morning. So I went up and checked through the traffic violations on the off-chance I might find something. I did.”

Mason said gleefully, “Hot dog! Wait until I slap him in the face with that and ask him how it happens that Inez Colton is paying the fines on his traffic citations. He claimed he didn’t know anything about her, had never seen her in his life.”

Mason pocketed the photostatic copy, and said, “Let’s eat, and then go call on Miss Colton, and see what she has to say. Della, you can take a shorthand notebook. Work as inconspicuously as possible, take down every word of the conversation.”