The Case of the Curious Bride (12 page)

"You haven't told me anything yet," Mason said.

"I am laying a foundation."

"Forget the foundation. You don't need it. Get to the point."

"Very well. My son retained you to represent his wife. I know that you expect pay for your services. I know that you know my son has virtually nothing in his own name. I realize, therefore, that in the back of your mind you have fixed upon me as the source of your fee. I am not a fool, and I assume that you are not.

"I am not questioning my son's judgment. I think he selected an excellent attorney for the purpose. However, I don't want you to underestimate me. Under certain circumstances I'm willing to pay for the defense of Rhoda Montaine and to pay handsomely. Unless these conditions are met, I shall refuse to pay a red cent."

"Go on," Mason said, "you're doing the talking."

"Unfortunately," Montaine remarked, after biting at the end of his stubby white mustache for a moment, "there are some things I cannot say. The district attorney's office have advised me of certain steps they contemplate taking. I can't reveal those steps to you without violating a confidence. On the other hand, I know that you are a very shrewd individual, Mr. Mason."

"So what?" Perry Mason asked.

"So," Montaine said, "while I can't tell you what those steps are, if you should tell me that you have anticipated those steps, we might then discuss the matter frankly."

Perry Mason made drumming gestures with his fingertips. "I presume," he said, "you're referring to the fact that as long as your son and Rhoda are husband and wife, the district attorney's office can't use Carl as a witness. They will, therefore, try to get an annulment of the marriage."

A smile lit Montaine's face. "Thank you, Counselor," he said. "Thank you very much, indeed. I had hoped you might make a statement of that nature. You will understand my position in relation to that annulment action."

"You," Mason said, "feel that your son married beneath him, is that right?"

"Certainly."

"Why?"

"He married a woman who was after him only for his money; a woman whose previous life had certainly not been above reproach; a woman who continued to make clandestine appointments with the man who had been her former husband, and also with a doctor who had been intimately associated with her."

"You think that association was improper?"

"I am not saying that."

"You are implying it."

"After all, Counselor, isn't this rather beside the point? You asked me a question and I answered it fairly and frankly. Perhaps you do not agree with my feelings. Nevertheless, your question concerned my feelings, rather than facts."

"The reason I asked the question," Mason said, "was because I want to get your attitude clarified in my own mind. I take it you're anxious to have the marriage declared null and void. What you want me to do is to promise you that while I'll put up the best defense I can for Rhoda Montaine, I'll not fight the annulment action. Moreover, when it comes to the cross-examining of your son, you'll expect me to lay off making him appear too ridiculous. If I'll promise to cooperate on these things you're willing to pay me a nice fee. If I don't cooperate, you're not going to give me a dime. Is that right?"

Montaine seemed uncomfortable. "You have expressed the idea," he said cautiously, "far more bluntly than I would have dared to."

"But accurately?" Mason asked.

Montaine met his eyes. "Yes," he said, "quite accurately. You do not, of course, know the amount of the fee I am prepared to pay. It is, I think, much larger than would be considered customary. Do you understand me?"

Perry Mason clenched his right fist, pounded it slowly upon the desk, giving emphasis to his words. "I get you now. I'm even way ahead of you. You want to get rid of Rhoda Montaine. If she'll let the district attorney annul the marriage to Carl you'll be willing to give her a break on the murder case. If she insists on the legality of the marriage, you'll try to get rid of her by having her convicted of murder. Carl's a weak sister. You know it, and I know it. If Rhoda is acquitted and still remains Carl's wife she might prove troublesome. If she's willing to give Carl up, you'll give her money to defend the charges against her. If she insists on sticking to Carl, you'll throw in with the district attorney and try to get her convicted of murder. You're so damned cold-blooded you don't care about anything except getting your way."

"Isn't that," Montaine asked coldly, "being rather unfair to me?"

"No," Mason said, "I think not."

"I think so."

"Perhaps," Mason said, "because you haven't been fair with yourself. Perhaps you haven't gone so far as to analyze your motives and to determine just how far you are ready to go."

"Is it necessary, Counselor, that we should discuss my motives in order to get your answer to my proposition?"

"Yes."

"I don't see why."

"Because," Mason said, "your motives, for reasons which I shall presently discuss, may be of controlling importance."

"You still haven't given me an answer to my proposition."

"My answer," Mason said, "is an emphatic negative. I am called upon to defend Rhoda Montaine. I think it will be very much to her advantage to seal the lips of your son by insisting upon the legality of the marriage. Therefore, I shall contest any annulment suit."

"Perhaps you can't contest it."

"Perhaps."

"The district attorney feels certain that you can't. He says the matter is legally dead open-and-shut. I only came to you because I have a great respect for your mental agility."

Mason permitted himself to grin. "Do you mean ability or agility?" he asked.

"I mean agility," Montaine said.

Mason nodded slowly. "Perhaps," he said, "I can convince you that there is some ability, as well as some agility. For instance, let us now return to an analysis of your motives. You are proud of your family name. If Rhoda Montaine was legally married to your son and was executed for murder, it would be a black spot upon that family name. Therefore, ordinarily, you would reserve the proposition. If Rhoda Montaine was not your daughter-in-law, you wouldn't care whether she was convicted of murder or not. If the marriage was legal, you'd move heaven and earth to get her acquitted.

"Your proposition shows you'd do anything to get Rhoda out of the family. Offhand, I'd say this was because you recognize Rhoda's influence over your son. You wouldn't know of this casually. You must have acquired the information at first hand. I should, therefore, surmise that you didn't leave Chicago last night as you say you did, but that you have been here in this city for several days, keeping your presence a secret from both your son and Rhoda Montaine. I might even go farther and surmise that you employed detectives to shadow Rhoda, in order to find out just what sort of a woman she was, just what she was doing, and just how much Carl was actually under her influence.

"I might surmise, further, that you have some other marriage in view for Carl, a marriage which is, perhaps, of the greatest importance to you financially; that you want to have Carl legally free to enter into such a marriage."

Montaine got to his feet. His face was entirely without expression. "You are deducing these matters," he said, "merely from an analysis of my motives, Counselor?"

"Perhaps," Mason said, "I am thinking out loud."

Montaine said softly, "Perhaps you are, and then, again, it may have been rather a peculiar coincidence that the detective who left your office as I was waiting in the outer room found it necessary to return for a final word with you. I'll admit he did it rather cleverly. He looked at me casually, walked past me to the door and then suddenly 'remembered' that it was necessary for him to return to your private office."

"Then," Mason said, "you were here, spying upon Rhoda Montaine."

"You might say," Montaine said, "that I was gathering certain data."

"Does your son know this?"

"No."

"And you employed detectives to shadow Rhoda Montaine?"

"I think," Montaine said, "I have answered enough of your questions, Counselor. I have only one more statement to make – that is that you may feel you can make a valid legal claim against Carl for your services in defending Rhoda. Therefore, you feel you have nothing to lose by refusing to accept my offer. I want to assure you, however, that Carl has nothing in his own name and unless you do accept my offer, the chances that you will receive any remuneration for your work in behalf of Rhoda are exceedingly slim."

"Aren't you," Mason asked, "rather hard?"

"I am inflexible, if that is what you mean."

"That isn't what I meant."

Montaine bowed. "Well, Counselor," he said, "I think we understand each other perfectly. Think it over. Don't give me a final answer now. Despite your mental ability I might prove a dangerous adversary."

Mason held open the door to the corridor. "You've got my final answer," he said. "If you want war you can have it."

Montaine paused in the hallway. "Sleep on it," he suggested.

Mason said nothing, banged the door shut. He stood for a moment in thoughtful contemplation, then strode to the telephone, picked up the receiver, and, when he heard Della Street's voice on the wire, said, "Get me Paul Drake, Della."

A moment later the telephone rang. Mason spoke swiftly. "Paul," he said, "we've got to work fast. Here's something I want you to get busy on right away: Moxley was a swindler. He specialized in swindling women. We know that some one telephoned Moxley a short time before he was murdered. We know that this some one was demanding money. That person is very likely to have been a woman. We know that on at least one occasion Moxley went through a marriage ceremony in order to get possession of some money he wanted. You're checking back on Moxley's life. As fast as you get an alias that he used, have your men cover the hotel registers and the public utility offices to see if a woman using one of those aliases as a married name has recently arrived in the city. We might locate the person who was putting the screws on Moxley before the police get the information."

"Good idea," Drake said. "How about Montaine? Do you think we should try to put a shadow on him?"

"No," Mason said. "It wouldn't do any good. He didn't come to my office until he was ready to. From now on, his life is going to be out in the open. We could shadow him until Doomsday, and wouldn't find anything. Whatever mischief he's been up to, he's been up to before he came here."

"I was right then," the detective inquired, "and he'd been here for several days?"

"Yes."

"Did he admit it?"

"Not until after I put the screws on him. He spotted you, and he knew you were a detective."

"What was he doing here?" Drake asked.

"That," Mason said, "is something we can only surmise. He wasn't talkative. There's more to this than we figure, Paul."

"He must have been following Rhoda," Drake said. "He must have shadowed her to your office."

"Yes, I think he did."

"Then, when Carl called on you," Drake said, "Carl must have known through his father that his wife had called on you."

"Yes, I think he did."

"Then the father and the son must be working together."

"That's an inference," the lawyer agreed, "but we've got to feel our way, Paul. We're going up against a tough combination."

Drake's voice betrayed a trace of excitement. "Look here, Perry," he said, "if Montaine was following Rhoda around, he must have known about Moxley."

"He did."

"Then he must have known about the appointment for two o'clock in the morning."

"He didn't admit that."

"Did you ask him about it?" Drake inquired.

Perry Mason laughed. "No," he said, "but I will."

"When?"

"At an opportune moment," the lawyer replied, "and I think you'd better forget about Montaine, Paul. He's an intelligent man and a ruthless man. For all of his vaunted family pride, he thought nothing whatever of sacrificing the life of Rhoda Montaine in order to further his own interests."

"Well, don't let him crawl out of the picture," Drake cautioned.

"Hell!" Mason exclaimed. "I'd no more let him crawl out of the picture than a kid would let Santa Claus crawl out of the picture around Christmas time."

Chuckling, he hung up the telephone. Della Street opened the door from the outer office. "A messenger," she said, "has just brought papers that were served on Rhoda in the case of Carl Montaine against Rhoda Montaine. It's an action for an annulment of the marriage.

"And Doctor Millsap rang up and told me to tell you they sweated him at headquarters all night, without getting anything out of him. He seemed real proud of himself."

Mason's tone was grim. "They're not done with him yet," he said, reaching for the papers Della Street held out to him.

The entrance to the Colemont Apartments was dark and silent. A short distance down the street, the Bellaire Apartments glowed with illumination from an indirect lighting fixture which shed a soft radiance over the foyer, the mail boxes, call bells and speaking tubes. Some of this brilliance radiated to the sidewalk, filtered into the entrance of the all but obsolete apartment house where Moxley had met his death. Perry Mason stood for some five minutes in the shadows, making certain that no patrolling steps were beating down the sidewalk, that no police radio car was cruising in the vicinity.

Earlier in the day Perry Mason, working through a real estate agent, had rented the entire building. Three of the apartments had been vacant for several months. The fourth had been rented by the week, furnished, by Gregory Moxley. The march of progress had doomed the old frame building to eventual destruction. Tenants demanded more modern apartments. The owners of the building had been only too glad to accept the rental offer made by the lawyer's representative, without inquiring too minutely as to the purpose for which the building was to be used, or the identity of the tenant.

Mason took from his pocket the four keys which had been delivered to him. Shielding the beam of a flashlight under his coat, he selected one of the keys, inserted it quietly in the lock and paused once more to listen. A car turned off the main boulevard and whined past the street intersection. Mason waited until it had reached the next corner before turning the key. The lock clicked, the door swung open and Perry Mason stepped into the darkness, pausing to close and lock the door behind him. He groped his way up the stairs upon cautious feet that kept crowding the side of the stair treads, lest they should make unnecessary noise.

The apartment that had been occupied by the murdered man covered the entire south side of the upper floor. Street lights, sending beams through the windows, furnished sufficient illumination to disclose the outlines of the furniture.

What had, at one period of the history of the house, been a front bedroom was now remodeled into a living room. Back of it, a room had been fitted as a dining room, and back of the dining room was a kitchen and a corridor. The corridor led to a bedroom in the back of the kitchen. A bathroom opened from the bedroom. Perry Mason moved quietly through the room, checking the articles of furniture against the copies of the police photographs which he carried in his hand and which he illuminated with his small flashlight. He moved to the window which looked out toward the Bellaire Apartments. That window was now closed and locked. Perry Mason made no effort to raise it. He stood by the window, staring at the dark apartment directly opposite, an apartment which was, he knew, occupied by Benjamin Crandall and wife.

Perry Mason moved back across the room, out into the corridor and entered the kitchen. Over a gas stove he found what he was looking for.

The lawyer tip-toed to the window, carefully pulled down the curtain, making certain that it was fixed in an even position at the bottom, so that no light would trickle through. He snapped on his flashlight, took from his pocket a screw-driver and a pair of pliers, a roll of adhesive tape and some wire. He picked up a chair, carried it across to a point of vantage, stood on the chair, and let the circle of illumination from his flashlight rest upon the electric bell which had been screwed into the wall. Working with painstaking caution, Perry Mason unfastened the screws, disconnected the wires, removed the bell from the wall. When he had it in his hand, he carefully studied it, then stepped down from the chair. Using the beam of the flashlight to guide him, he walked to the head of the stairs. Here he had placed a package which had been under his arm when he entered the apartment.

He untied a heavy cord, opened the package and disclosed four buzzers, similar in appearance in every way to the bell which he had taken from the wall above the gas stove. The only difference was that the one he had removed was a bell which rang by agitating a clapper between two hollow hemispheres of metal; while the others were buzzers which gave forth an explosive buzzing sound when the current went through the coils.

Mason carried one of the buzzers back to the kitchen, climbed on the chair, screwed the buzzer into position and saw that the wires were connected. Then he replaced the chair and raised the curtain. He paused to listen, picked up his package and tip-toed down the stairs. He waited for several seconds before he unlocked the door and slipped out into the cool night air.

Hearing no sound, he locked the door behind him, took another key from his pocket and opened the door of the lower apartment. This apartment exuded a smell of musty closeness – a smell that assailed the nostrils with a message of untenanted neglect. Perry Mason found the call bell in the kitchen, and replaced it with a buzzer. Then he raised the curtain and slipped silently out into the night.

He next opened the door which led to the upper apartment, opposite the one in which Moxley had been killed. Working swiftly and silently, he again disconnected the call bell and installed one of the buzzers. He was on the point of leaving the apartment when the beam of his flashlight picked up the stub of a burnt match in the corridor. The match was one of those waxed paper affairs which had been torn from a pocket package. Mason slid the beam of his flashlight along the boards of the corridor, soon picked up another match stub, and then another. He followed those stubs to the back porch, where the light fuse boxes for the apartment were kept. Here was also a place for the delivery of groceries and garbage.

Mason noticed that a similar porch-like platform projected from the apartment on the south which Moxley had occupied. An agile man could easily slip across the intervening space, climb a railing and find himself in the back of Moxley's apartment, with access through a corridor and kitchen to the bedroom where Moxley was murdered.

Mason stepped across to the adjoining porch. Here he found one more match, and then, over in the corner where it apparently had been discarded, the empty container from which the matches had been torn. It was of waxed pasteboard with a flap which folded over the matches. On the back of this folder was printed a cut of a five story building, below which appeared the printed words "Compliments of the Palace Hotel, the best in Centerville."

Perry Mason wrapped the bit of pasteboard in a handkerchief, slipped it in his pocket. He retraced his steps, left the upper apartment and made a brief visit to the remaining lower apartment. When he left the house, there was not a single electric doorbell in the building. Each one of the four apartments was equipped with buzzers.

Mason wrapped the bells carefully in the heavy, brown paper, tied up the package into a compact bundle, listened to make sure no one was about, and then stepped out from the shadows of the foyer to the sidewalk.