Erle Gardner - Case of the Beautiful Beggar

“Why?”

“Because the place will be filled up,” Mason said. “The only vacancy will be Unit 21. The police have removed the body, photographed the room, and by this time have released it for rental.

“If your man checks in now, he’ll get Unit 21.

“Now then, have another man use his official I.D. card and go to the motel early in the morning. Have him ask to see the registration cards and have him get the numbers of all cars with Nevada license plates.

“Run down these registrations, if there are any, and run a preliminary check on the owners, who they are, what they do.”

“Will do,” Drake said. “How about letting me drive awhile? It’s a long way home.”

“Wait another half an hour,” Mason said, “I’m jittery as a cat in a thunderstorm and I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.”

“That,” Della Street announced in a tone of finality to the detective, “is an invitation to us to keep quiet.”

A rather exhausted Della Street entered the office at ten o’clock the next morning to find Perry Mason already on the job.

“Perry!” she exclaimed in surprise. “How long have you been here?”

“About half an hour,” Mason said, grinning. “Get any sleep?”

“Just exactly half enough,” Della Street said. “Man, how I hated to get up.”

“Things are moving,” Mason said. “Paul Drake’s man from San Diego telephoned. Horace Shelby has crossed the border, gone through Tijuana and is on his way to Ensenada. Apparently, he doesn’t have the faintest idea that anyone is following him, and he’s breezing along as happy as a lark, driving faster and with more assurance. But he’s no longer in the Massachusetts car.”

“He isn’t?”

“No, he parked that one in San Diego, purchased a used car for cash at one of the car lots which was open early in the morning.”

“What about Daphne?”

Mason grew serious. “They don’t have a thing in the world against her,” he said, “but the district attorney’s office has had a complete report from the police, has read a lot of unwarranted meaning into the evidence and wants to try her. They think they’ve got a case.”

“What do you think?”

Mason closed his right eye in a wink, said, “I’m playing both ends against the middle, but I’m only representing Daphne, not anyone else. No matter what she wants me to do, I’m protecting her interests.”

“What have you done?”

“Demanded a preliminary hearing,” Mason said.

“Do they have enough evidence to bind her over?”

“They think so. They are absolutely convinced that Ralph Exeter was in that motel unit after Horace Shelby had left, that Daphne bought the Chinese food for him, and that Daphne and Exeter are the two who ate the food.”

“In which case, she gave him the barbiturates?” Della Street asked.

Mason nodded.

“How do they know Horace Shelby wasn’t there?”

“They’ve found the taxi driver that Paul Drake uncovered.”

“Do we have anything new?”

“Drake’s man is already planted in Unit 21 at the motel.”

“Any trouble?” she asked.

“None whatever. Now, Della, we’ve had some dealings with Bill Hadley, the physicist detective.”

“The one who specializes in automobile accidents?”

Mason nodded. “He knows metallurgy and all that stuff and can tell how fast cars were going because of the degree of impact and all that. I just have an idea that he might take a look at that disconnected gas pipe and come up with some answers the police don’t have as yet.

“They’ve accepted the gas pipe as just one of those things, but actually you don’t disconnect a gas pipe with your fingers. It takes tools, and regardless of what the police may think at the present time, no jury is going to feel that a girl like Daphne would have been carrying a bunch of tools with her to disconnect gas pipes.”

Della Street’s face lit up. “Why, that’s a thought,” she said. “That had never occurred to me.”

“I don’t think it’s occurred to Hamilton Burger, the district attorney,” Mason said, grinning.

“Get Bill Hadley on the telephone.”

A few moments later when Della Street had the physicist on the line, Mason said, “Bill, you’ve worked for me in a few automobile accident cases. This time I want you to work in a murder case. Get over to the Northern Lights Motel get into Unit 21. A murder was committed there — at least the police think it was a murder. A gas pipe was disconnected and a man who had been put to sleep with barbiturates was asphyxiated.”

“What do you want me to do?” Hadley asked.

“Find out what happened,” Mason said.

“Am I supposed to be clairvoyant or something?”

Mason said, “Take a look at that gas pipe. You don’t disconnect a gas pipe with fingers.”

“Can I get in?” Hadley asked. “Do I have to show any authority or—”

“None whatever,” Mason interrupted. “Go there as soon as possible. You’ll find the occupant will be very courteous as soon as you identify yourself. The pipe has been reconnected. See what you can find out.”

“I take it I am to bring cameras and take pictures?”

“Bring cameras, floodlights, microscopes, the works.”

“Okay,” Hadley said, “anything else?”

“Don’t let anybody on the outside know what you’re doing,” Mason said. “The man in the unit is all right.”

“Okay,” Hadley told him, “I’ll start getting things together right now. I’ll be there early in the afternoon.”

“Don’t arouse suspicions,” Mason warned.

“Shucks, I’ll be a tourist from the country,” Hadley promised, “a regular shutterbug.”

Mason hung up, said to Della Street, “Now, I’m going down and see Daphne and see what kind of a night she had.”

“The poor kid,” Della Street said.

“Well, it depends upon how you look at it,” Mason told her. “You have to admit she pulled a fast one getting her uncle to take that adjoining room and then pulling that sleep medicine gag.”

“I suppose they’ll use that against her,” Della Street said.

“Oh, sure, Tragg fished every last pellet out of the stomach contents.”

The lawyer chuckled. “I can’t get over remembering the squawk she made when she hit that cold water in the bathtub, thinking it was going to be lukewarm.”

Mason left the office, went to the detention ward and muttered expressions of sympathy as a bedraggled Daphne Shelby, who had quite evidently passed a sleepless night, was brought into the consulting room by the matron.

Mason said, “Somehow it seems impossible to impress upon you that you should play fair with your lawyer.”

“What have I done now?”

“It’s what you haven’t done. You forgot to tell me about your Uncle Horace having been registered in the hotel in that room right next to yours — 720 — and the fact that you had been in there talking with him which was the reason you didn’t hear me when I first knocked on the door of your room.”

“Mr. Mason,” she said, “let’s have one understanding. I’m going to be fair and play fair with you except for one thing. I’m not going to tell you anything that might hurt Uncle Horace.”

“You know by this time he isn’t related to you?”

“I can’t help it, I have a feeling for him. I’ve been like a daughter to him. I’ve watched over him and guarded him, and now he’s an old man and he’s sick and I’m going to protect him in every way that I can.”

“Do the officers know anything about his being in the adjoining room?” Mason asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”