Erle Gardner - Case of the Beautiful Beggar

“I can’t see where there’s anything to be gained by staying here,” Mason said, looking at the unhappy and frustrated Dr. Baxter. “Particularly, since we’re all due in court this afternoon... I take it Dr. Baxter has been subpoenaed?”

“If he isn’t, he will be,” Dr. Alma snapped. “I’ll see to that.”

“Now, just a minute, just a minute,” Dr. Baxter said. “I can’t be running around going to court. I am shorthanded as it is and—”

“I know,” Dr. Alma said with mock sympathy. “I have the same thing happen from time to time myself. They subpoena me to come to court and I lose a day at the office. It’s one of the duties of the profession , eh, Doctor? ”

Mason moved to the door, led Drake to one side. “You have the car that has the telephone in it?” the lawyer asked.

Drake nodded.

“All right,” Mason said, “put men on the job. I want everybody you can pick up put under twenty four hour surveillance.”

“What do you mean ‘everybody’?”

“Exeter, Finchley, Mrs. Finchley, Dr. Baxter here — and stick around and see if you can get any clue as to how Horace Shelby left here.”

Drake nodded.

Mason said, “I have a hunch someone pulled a fast one. I noticed yesterday that there were two signs asking for help to run the place. Those signs have now been taken down. That means that someone applied for a job last night and got the job — probably a night job. See if you can find out anything about that person because that could well have been a plant — someone that Borden Finchley put in here to get Horace Shelby out of sight so that Dr. Alma couldn’t examine him.

“If you can get a line on that person — in case some person was hired last night — spare no expense to get all the information possible.”

Drake nodded. “Will do. It’s going to cost money.”

“Let it cost money,” Mason said. “We’re in a fight and we’re going for the jugular.”

Promptly at two o’clock. Judge Ballinger took his place on the bench.

“This is the time heretofore fixed for a continued hearing in the matter of a conservator for the estate of Horace Shelby.

“I see that Dr. Grantland Alma, the physician appointed by the Court to examine Horace Shelby, is in court. Dr. Alma is the Court’s own witness, and the Court would like to have you come forward and be sworn, Doctor.”

Darwin Melrose was on his feet.

“If the Court please,” he said, “before Dr. Alma is examined, I would like to make a statement to the court.”

“What is it?” Judge Ballinger asked.

“Mr. Perry Mason, attorney for Daphne Shelby, has used a device to circumvent the Court’s order appointing a conservator for the estate and preventing Horace Shelby from being imposed upon by shrewd and designing persons.

“He has so manipulated things that fifty thousand dollars of the money in the estate has been turned over to Daphne Shelby, no blood relative of Horace Shelby and the very person from whom Horace Shelby was supposed to be protected by Court order.”

“How did he do that?” Judge Ballinger asked. “Didn’t you serve a copy of the Court’s order on the bank?”

“If the Court will remember,” Melrose said, “I had special orders made for the bank — orders which turned every penny of the account in Shelby’s name to Borden Finchley, as conservator.”

“Didn’t the bank do it?” Judge Ballinger asked.

“The bank did it.”

“Then how did Mason get possession of fifty thousand dollars of that money?”

“Not of that money, but of other monies.”

“Covered in the order?” Judge Ballinger asked.

“Well,” Melrose said, and hesitated.

“Go on,” Judge Ballinger snapped.

“They were not covered in that specific order — not by the letter of the order they were, however, covered by the spirit of the order.”

“Well, before we go into that, let’s find out how incompetent Horace Shelby is,” Judge Ballinger said. “I know how busy Dr. Alma is. I know that this is his busy time of the afternoon when he has an office full of patients and I would like to have him on the stand now, have him examined and cross-examined and then permit him to return to his office.”

Judge Ballinger turned to Dr. Alma, leaving Darwin Melrose uncomfortably aware that the initiative had been taken from him.

“Did you see Horace Shelby, Doctor?” Judge Ballinger asked.

“I did not.”

“Why not?”

“He was no longer at the so called sanitarium and rest home.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did this happen?”

“Again, I don’t know. I have my own idea from certain thongs I discovered.”

“What things?”

“This so called sanitarium is nothing but a rest home. It is under the management of a man who uses the title of a doctor but is, in my opinion, completely inexperienced in psychiatric medicine.

“We found evidence that Horace Shelby had been strapped to a bed — perhaps ever since he had been placed in the institution. We found that the institution keeps no charts on patients, no hospital records. In my opinion, it is a very poor place to keep a person who is quite evidently being held against his will.

“I tried to find out whether Mr. Shelby had, in some way, made an escape by himself or whether he had been removed by people in the institution who wanted to keep me from examining him.

“In connection with my inquiries, I received a very remarkable statement from the man who manages the institution. He said that, in his opinion, Mr. Shelby had contrived to effect an unaided escape.

“I asked him if that meant that this man, who was claimed incompetent to handle his own affairs and who had to be strapped into a bed to restrain him, had sufficient intelligence and ingenuity to get hold of a knife to cut the straps, to dress, to make his escape unseen from the institution without sufficient funds to summon a taxicab or even to pay fare on a bus, and vanish so that he couldn’t be found. I pointed out that there was no other construction which could be placed upon his statement.”

“If the Court please,” Darwin Melrose interposed, his face red, “I respectfully insist that this is not proper testimony from a psychiatrist, even if he has been appointed by the Court. He is giving conclusions, not from an examination of the patient but from surmises which he made as to the actual meaning of Dr. Baxter’s statement that the patient had escaped.”

Judge Ballinger frowned, thoughtfully. “A very logical interpretation, certainly,” he said... “Does anyone know where Horace Shelby is at the present time? And I am asking this question particularly of counsel. I intend to hold counsel responsible for the actions of their clients in this matter.”

Melrose said, “I want to assure the Court that I have no idea where Horace Shelby is, and my client, Borden Finchley, and his wife, Elinor Finchley, have assured me that they have no information and Ralph Exeter, who has been visiting in the house with them, tells me that he has no information.

“I understand, however, that Daphne Shelby, the young woman who tried to establish relationship, is absent from her hotel that messages have been unclaimed and, despite the fact she knew that this hearing had been continued to this hour, she is not present. And I feel further that her counsel doesn’t know where she is.”

Judge Ballinger frowned. “Mr. Mason?” he asked.

Mason got to his feet slowly, turned as he heard the door open and said, without changing his expression by so much as the flicker of an eyelash, “Since Daphne Shelby has just walked into court, I suggest that she can speak for herself.”