Erle Gardner - Case of the Beautiful Beggar

“Then you haven’t told them?”

“Heavens, no!”

“Their questions haven’t indicated that they have any idea he was there?”

“No.”

“Did you know that he was driving Ralph Exeter’s car?”

She looked him defiantly in the eyes, took a long breath, and said, “No!”

“All right,” Mason said, “we’re playing games, Daphne. You’re playing games with me to protect your uncle. Now, I’m going to tell you something. I’m representing you. I’m going to try and get you acquitted on this murder charge.

“I’m not representing your uncle. I’m not representing anyone except you. I’m going to try every legal and ethical strategy that I know of to get you acquitted. That’s my duty. Do you understand that?”.

“Yes, I guess so.”

“You’re going to have to stay here for a while,” Mason said.

“I’ll get accustomed to it.”

Mason got up to go.

Suddenly her hand was on his arm. “Please, Mr. Mason, I can take it. I’m young. I’m resilient. I can stand it but if Uncle Horace got in one of these places, if he had bars over the windows and guards and cells and things of that sort, he’d go absolutely crazy.”

Mason smiled down at her. “Daphne,” he said, “I’m protecting you. A lawyer doesn’t have room for more than one allegiance. You’ll have to get accustomed to that.”

“And,” she said, “I’m protecting Uncle Horace. You’ll have to get accustomed to that .”

Mason grinned. “I’ve learned to accustom myself to that,” he said, and then added, “the hard way.”

Mason returned to his office to find that Paul Drake had a significant report. A Nevada car had been registered at the Northern Lights Motel. The owner had registered as Harvey Miles of Carson City, but the car registered in the name of Stanley Freer of Las Vegas.

“Get a rundown?” Mason asked.

“On Freer, yes,” Drake said. “Miles seems to be simply a name, but Freer is a collector.”

“A collector?”

“Yes. They use him when some tin-horn tries to squirm out of paying a gambling debt.”

“Methods?” Mason asked.

“Since gambling debts are illegal in most states,” Drake said, “the methods used by Freer are reported to be illegal — but highly successful.

“Now, if Exeter owed a gambling debt and Freer called on him and perhaps told him Horace Shelby was hiding in Unit 21 at the Northern Lights, it’s a cinch Exeter would have gone there to try a shakedown.

“At least that’s the way I figure it.”

Mason was thoughtfully silent. At length he said, “That figures, Paul. Some men from Nevada were watching the sanitarium. They were anxious to talk with the doctor the Court appointed.

“That means the gamblers were getting tired of waiting, and it also means they were very much on the job.

“They could have discovered when Horace Shelby left the place and where he went. Then they told Exeter they weren’t going to wait for Shelby to die, that it was up to Exeter to get the money or else .

“Then a ‘collector’ would have tagged along to see what Exeter was doing — and if Exeter bungled the job, that collector might have lowered the boom on him.”

“It’s a possibility,” Drake agreed. “Those collectors are willing to write a debt off every once in a while in order to throw a scare into the pigeons. If word gets around a man who gets too delinquent in payments doesn’t stay healthy, it helps with collections everywhere.

“Usually, however, they get some muscle men to give a guy a beating first.”

Mason thought the situation over. “A jury might buy that theory, Paul. I might even buy it myself.”

Marvin Mosher, one of the leading trial deputies of the district attorney’s office, addressed Judge Linden Kyle, who had just taken the bench.

“May I make an opening statement, if the Court please?”

“It is not usual at a preliminary hearing,” Judge Kyle said.

“I understand, Your Honor, but the purpose of a preliminary opening statement is so that the Court may understand the purpose of the testimony which is being elicited and coordinate that testimony into the whole picture.”

“We have no objection,” Mason said.

“Go ahead,” Judge Kyle said, “but I suggest you be brief. A trial judge becomes rather adept at coordinating testimony.”

“Very well,” Mosher announced, “I will present the matter in a very brief summary.”

“The defendant, Daphne Shelby, thought until a few days ago that she was the niece of Horace Shelby, a man of some seventy-five years of age.

“She had acted as this man’s niece and, as the evidence will show, had ingratiated herself with him and was on the point of using that relationship to secure a very material financial advantage.

“It was at this point Shelby’s half brother, Borden Finchley, and his wife, Elinor, accompanied by a friend, came to call on Horace Shelby. They were shocked at what they found, the extent to which this young woman had ingratiated herself and the extent to which Horace Shelby had become dependent upon her.”

“Now, just a minute,” Judge Kyle interrupted, “you say that the defendant thought she was the niece of Horace Shelby?”

“That is correct, Your Honor. I am coming-to that, if the Court will bear with me.”

“Go right ahead. The Court is interested in this.”

“The Finchley’s suggested that the defendant take a three month vacation, that they would take care of Horace Shelby while she was gone and take charge of the household affairs. The defendant was quite rundown, and, in fairness to her, we should state that she had been very solicitous in her care of the man with whom she was living as a niece, a very devoted niece

“The defendant was given ample funds to take a trip to the Orient on shipboard. She was to be gone three months.

“While she was gone, the Finchley’s learned not only that Horace Shelby intended to make her tle sole beneficiary under his will, but that he had been giving the defendant large sums of money and was preparing to give her even larger sums of money.”

“What do you mean, large sums of money?” Judge Kyle asked.

“The last amount, the one which triggered the action on the part of the Finchleys, was a check for one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“For how much?” Judge Kyle asked.

“A hundred and twenty five thousand dollars.”

“Was this woman his niece?”

“She was not Your Honor. She was a complete stranger to the blood. She was the daughter of Horace Shelby’s former housekeeper, a daughter by an affair which had taken place at the other end of the continent.

“I will state in the defendant’s favor, however, that she in good faith, thought Horace Shelby was her uncle. He had led her so to believe.”

“And the mother?” Judge Kyle asked.

“Her mother had passed away a relatively short time ago. She had been Horace Shelby’s housekeeper for some twenty years.

“The Finchley’s found that Horace Shelby had deteriorated mentally, that he had exaggerated ideas as to what he considered his duty toward the defendant, that the defendant was carrying on a course which could well strip this rather elderly man of every cent he had in the world. And when the Finchley’s found that Horace Shelby was giving this young woman a check for a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars, they went to court and asked that a conservator be appointed.”

“That is quite understandable,” Judge Kyle said, looking curiously at Daphne.

“When Daphne returned from the Orient,” Mosher went on, “and found that the fortune that she expected to inherit within a short time was being placed beyond her grasp, she became furious. Horace Shelby, at the time, had been placed in a sanitarium for treatment.