The Case of the Dangerous Dowager (16 page)

"Mason's a lawyer. He knows all about business and partnership insurance," Drake interrupted. "Go ahead and tell us the rest of it."

"Well, those policies had a provision that if a partner committed suicide within the first year, the insurance company only had to pay the amount of the premiums which had been paid in. On the other hand, if the death took place by violence or by accident, the surviving partner got double the face of the policy. Now then, you see where that leaves Charlie Duncan. If Sammy committed suicide, Duncan can't collect a cent under the policy except a few hundred dollars which were paid as premiums. He has to wind up the partnership business and he has to give one-half of all the assets to Sammy's heirs. But if he could prove Sammy was murdered, then he'd get forty thousand dollars instead of twenty. He could keep the whole partnership business, and he'd only have to pay over twenty thousand to the heirs.

"You see what I mean. When they took out the partnership insurance, the insurance had this clause about death by violence, but in the agreement they overlooked that and agreed on a payment of a flat amount of twenty thousand dollars, which one partner would pay to the other."

Perry Mason pursed his lips in thought, met Drake's significant glance and nodded his head.

"Go ahead, Arthur," Drake said.

"Well, Charlie's a quick thinker. Now, I'm just betting that as soon as he walked into that room and saw Grieb dead, he realized the position that he'd be in. I think he knew Sammy had been dipping into the till, and that was one of the reasons he was so anxious to have a receiver appointed.

"Now then. Charlie busted into that room and saw Sammy sitting at his desk, dead. He knew damn well it was a suicide, but Perry Mason, the lawyer, was right there in the office, and Charlie had a deputy United States marshal with him who had been called in to serve the papers on Sammy. Now, I think that Charlie knew there was evidence there which would prove Sammy had killed himself, and what he wanted was to ditch that evidence. In order to do it, he had to get rid of both this man Perkins and Perry Mason, and the best way he could think of was to pretend Perry Mason had bumped Sammy off, and, of course, to protect his own interests, he kept yelling murder right from the start. Charlie's an awfully smooth guy when he has to be. He's a fast worker and a quick thinker, and…"

"Yes, you've told us all that before," Drake interrupted.

"Well, the logical thing for Charlie to do was to make a build-up so he could accuse Perry Mason of murder and order Perkins to take Mason and lock him up somewhere. Now, Charlie knew just as well as I do – in fact a damned sight better – that it wasn't murder, that it was a case of suicide, but he wanted to get Mason and Perkins out of there, so he accused Mr. Mason of the murder and got Perkins and Mason to go out.

"Now, I was watching that runway which led to the offices, and I saw Perkins and Mason go out. I went in just a second after they went out. I told the officers that Charlie was looking around in the chair in the entrance room when I went in there, and that's the truth, but before I went in that room, Duncan had been in the room where Sammy's body was slumped over the desk. I know that because when I opened the door to the outer office I could hear the sound of someone moving fast on the other side of the door, just as though Charlie had come running out of that inside office.

"Now, I'd gone in there on an emergency signal. I didn't know what was up and when I heard all the noise of running feet I stopped long enough to get my gun out of my holster and into my fist. I wasn't going to walk in and have someone stick a gun in my ribs.

"My gun didn't come out easy, and maybe I was a little yellow. I hated like hell to push that door open the rest of the way, but I did it – and there was Charlie fumbling around in the chair, just like I told the officers.

"Now, I think that Sammy killed himself, that the gun had slipped down from his hand and was lying on the floor by the desk, that Charlie saw it there. He got rid of Mason and Perkins long enough to run in and pick up that gun. At first he intended to frame the killing on Mr. Mason. So he figured he'd slip the gun down in the cushions of the chair in which Mason had been sitting. But I came in there and found him fussing around that chair, and he didn't dare to do it then, because he was afraid I'd squeal. So he kept the gun in his pocket and ditched it later."

"How do you know what gun Grieb was killed with?" Mason asked.

Drake nodded and said, "That's the part that's important, Arthur. Just how do you know that?"

"Well," Manning said, "I know something about guns. I fooled around quite a bit with ballistics when I was in the army. The marks on a gun barrel fingerprint a bullet which goes through it just the same as a man's fingerprints on a piece of glass…"

"Yes, we know all about that," Drake said. "Go on."

"Something else that isn't so generally known," Manning said, "is that the firing pin leaves a distinctive mark on the exploded shell. Firing pins aren't centered dead to rights. They're always a little bit to one side or the other.

"Well, one day Charlie Duncan and Sammy Grieb got in an argument about who was the best shot. They were both army men. Charlie bet Grieb fifty bucks he could come closer to a mark than Sammy could. Sammy got sore and put up the fifty. I was in the room at the time and they used me as stake holder. We went below the casino into a long storeroom where there were some heavy timbers and put up a target."

"Who won?" Mason asked.

"Grieb did. That was where he outsmarted Charlie. Charlie's a crack shot, but Grieb was familiar with the gun and Grieb stipulated that they were only to shoot one shot apiece.

"Now, after I got to thinking about what might have happened, I went down there below decks and started prowling around. Sure enough, I found one of the exploded shells that had been ejected by the gun and dug one of the bullets out of this heavy beam. Now I can swear those bullets came from Sam's gun and that's the same gun that Sam was killed with."

Mason raised his head and said to Paul Drake, "Have you checked up on this, Paul?"

Drake nodded. "I've got a photograph of the exploded shell which they found on the floor in the room where Grieb was killed and checked the mark made by the firing pin with that on the shell Manning found down there in the passageway beneath the casino. There's no question but that they were both fired from the same gun."

"And how about the bullet he dug out of the beam?" Mason asked.

Drake took a little glass tube from his pocket. The tube had been sealed up with a strip of gummed paper, on which appeared words written in pen and ink and a scrawled signature.

"I put the bullet Arthur gave me in this tube and sealed it up in his presence," Drake said. "That tube can't be opened without breaking the seal. You see, I've put the wax over the paper at the top."

"Good work," Mason said. "They'd probably accuse us of switching bullets if they could. Have you made a microscopic examination, Paul?"

"No, because I'll have to pull a few wires to get enlarged microscopic photographs of the fatal bullet, but it's a cinch the indentations made by the firing pin on both shells are the same."

Mason said slowly, "You know, Paul, this is important as hell."

"Of course it is," Drake said. "That's why I wanted you to hear Manning's story yourself."

"It's important to a lot of people," Mason went on slowly. "It means the insurance company can save forty thousand bucks in hard cash. It means Charlie Duncan will be out forty thousand bucks, hard cash. It means that, no matter what else happened aboard that ship, a murder charge can't be pinned on anyone for Grieb's death. Now that's going to make quite a commotion in a lot of places."

Drake nodded.

Manning said, "I hope it's going to help you, Mr. Mason. You and Mr. Drake have been on the square with me."

"It'll help us, all right," Mason said, "but I don't know yet just how I'm going to spring it, or when I'm going to spring it. I want you to forget all about this for the time being, Arthur, and don't tell anyone anything about it."

Manning said, "Whatever you two say."

"Well," Mason pointed out, "they may subpoena you before the grand jury that's making the investigation. If they do, you answer questions, don't tell any lies; but, answer the questions in such a way you don't volunteer any information – that is, unless Paul instructs you to play it differently."

"Yes, sir," Manning said, "I can play the game, all right."

"Who else knows about this shooting match?" Mason asked.

"No one except Charlie Duncan, and of course he isn't going to talk."

"Where did you say it took place?"

"Right under the casino; there's a long passageway running the length of the storeroom. They keep a lot of canned goods down there."

"Which way did they shoot, toward the bow or toward the stern?"

"Toward the bow."

"What was the distance?"

"Oh, I'd say about thirty or forty feet."

"And Grieb beat Duncan shooting?"

"Yes."

"But Duncan's a good shot?"

"Yes, but you see, it was Grieb's gun and Grieb knew just how to handle it."

"Is Duncan left-handed?"

"No, he's right-handed. Sam was left-handed. That's why he kept the gun in the upper left-hand drawer of his desk."

"They shot into a beam at the end of the passageway?"

"That's right."

"What was the target they were shooting at?"

"A round piece of tin they'd cut from a can with a can opener."

"How did they hold it in place?"

"Drove a nail through it and stuck it into the beam."

"That piece of tin would have been about two or three inches in diameter?" Mason asked.

"Yes, you know, just the top of a tin can, an average-sized tin can."

"But neither one of them hit it, did they?"

"Sure they did. Grieb hit it almost dead center. Duncan missed the center by about half an inch."

Mason regarded Paul Drake with speculative eyes and said, "How about Duncan, Paul? Is he telling the truth about having been ashore filing papers and all that stuff?"

Drake said, "Yes, Perkins was with him, and then you'll remember that I had men shadowing him. Why, Perry? You don't think…"

"How about those fingerprints on the glass top of the desk? Did you find out anything about them?" Mason interrupted.

"A leak from the D.A.'s office," Drake said, "is that the print of the hand and fingers on the desk was made by Sylvia Oxman. I don't know how they found out, perhaps by getting her fingerprints from the articles in her house. It's a cinch they haven't been able to take any fingerprints from her. She's crawled into a hole and pulled the hole in after her."

Mason said thoughtfully, "And you don't think the police know where she is?"

"No… What do you think about this Benson suicide, Perry?"

Mason said, "I don't think, Paul," and closed one eye in a warning wink. "You'd better go back to the office and tip Della off to play 'em close to her chest. And it'd be a good plan to put Manning some place where the dicks can't find him."

"You're not going to release this story now?" Drake asked.

"No. I want to wait until Duncan has sewed himself up good and tight on the incidental details. I want to let the police build up a swell case against Sylvia. Then I want to smash down the house of cards with one big grandstand. I want to do it in a way that'll stampede the witnesses and hit the grand jury with such a smash the whole case will blow up. There are some things about what Sylvia did that would be better hushed up. And I'm not in such a sweet spot myself if the going gets rough. To make Manning's story hold water it's got to be played up just right… You, Manning, keep absolutely quiet about this. Paul will hide you somewhere…"

"You won't need me out on the ship?" Manning asked. "Getting stuff on Duncan?"

"Hell, no," Mason said. "Not now. We've got enough on him now to raise merry hell with a murder case. That's all I want. I'm not representing the insurance company."

"How about you, Perry?" Drake asked. "Can I take you some place?"

Mason shook his head and opened the car door. "I'm on my way," he said, reaching through the open window on the driver's side to give the detective's shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "Damn good work, Paul," he said. "It's probably saved my bacon."

WITH GAMBLING SHIP MURDER

Mason abruptly whipped open the newspaper, held it up so it concealed his chest, shoulders, and the lower part of his face, only his eyes being visible over the upper edge.

Sylvia Oxman, her survey of the lobby completed, walked directly to the telephone booths. Mason followed. Still holding the newspaper in front of his face, he stood where he could observe her through the glass door of the telephone booth. She dropped a dime into the slot and dialed a number. Mason was at some pains to watch her gloved forefinger as it spun the dial. He mentally checked each number as she dialed it.

She was, he realized, calling his office.

He stepped into an adjoining booth, and pulled the door shut behind him. Through the partition he could hear Sylvia Oxman's voice. "I want to speak to Mr. Mason, please… This is a client… He'll want to speak with me, I'm sure… Well, when do you expect him?… Will you please tell him that he was called by Miss IOU. I'd better spell that for you. It's I, for Irma, O, for Olga, Y-e-w, but please see that he gets the name as just Miss I. O. Yew. Tell him that I'll call later."

She hung up the receiver. Mason cupped his hands about his mouth, leaned against the thin partition, and called, "Hello, Sylvia, this is Mr. Mason talking."

He could hear her grab at the receiver in the other booth, heard her frantic "Hello! Hello!" – then silence. He stood leaning against the partition, grinning and listening.

Abruptly the door behind him opened, and he turned to confront Sylvia Oxman's smile. "Do you know," she asked, "that you scared me to death for a minute? I recognized your voice and couldn't imagine where in the world it was coming from… Why don't you stay in your office during office hours?"

"Can't," Mason told her.

"Why not?"

By way of answer, he unfolded the newspaper and let her read the headlines.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, her eyes dark with consternation, "I didn't know it would be anything like that."

"It is," Mason told her. "Why did you run out on me?"

"I had to. Frank was aboard."

"How did you know?"

"A man told me."

"Who was the man?"

"I don't know."

Mason said, "Look here. We'd better get where we can talk. How about your room?"

"How did you know I was registered here?"

"A little bird told me."

"The maid's making the room up," she said. "That's why I came downstairs to use the telephone. Let's go over in a corner of the lobby."

"All right," Mason said, and followed her to a comfortable nook. He seated himself beside her, stretched out his long legs, and gravely offered her a cigarette. They lit from the same match, and Mason said, "All right. Let's talk."

She motioned toward the newspaper. "How much of this," she asked, "is because of what you did for me?"

"All of it."

"I'm frightfully sorry. Would it… Would it have helped any if I hadn't run out on you?"

"Not a bit," he told her. "The breaks went against me. But, first, suppose you tell me your story."

"I'm in a mess," she said.

"How much of a mess?"

"The worst possible."

"Go ahead and tell me."

"I lied to you last night," she said. "I haven't been able to sleep thinking about it. Tell me, how can I square myself?"

"By telling me the truth now," the lawyer told her.

"All right, I will. I gave Grieb and Duncan my IOU's for a gambling debt. Yesterday afternoon someone rang me up and told me that Sam Grieb was going to sell those IOU's to my husband. He said Frank was going to use them to keep me from getting my trust fund, and as evidence that I wasn't a proper person to have custody of our child, and couldn't be trusted to handle the monies she'd receive under her trust."

"What did you do?" Mason asked.

"I went right out to the ship, of course. I wanted to see if I couldn't do something about it."

"Did you have any money?"

"About two thousand dollars. That was all I'd been able to raise. I thought perhaps I could pay that as a cash bonus and get them to wait for the rest of it."

"Go ahead," Mason told her.

"I went aboard the ship," she said, "and went down to Grieb's office. There was no one in the reception room. The door to the private office wasn't closed. Before, whenever I called on Grieb, he'd hear the electric buzzer and push back the peephole in the door to see who it was."

"Had you ever found the door unlocked or open on any of your prior visits?" Mason asked.

"No. It was always locked and barred."

"What did you do this time?"

"I stood in front of the door for several seconds, waiting for Grieb to come. When he didn't come, I tapped on the door and called, 'Yoo-hoo. Anyone home?' or something like that. Then, after a moment, I said, 'This is Sylvia Oxman. May I come in?'"

"What happened?" Mason asked, studying her intently over the tip of his cigarette.

"Nothing. No one came to the door so I pushed it open and… There he was."

"You mean he was dead then?"

"Yes. Just like you found him."

"What did you do?"

"At first," she said, "I started to run. Then I realized that the papers on the desk might be my IOU's. I'd just caught a glimpse of them as I pushed the door open. But you know how something like that impresses itself on your mind. It was just as though the whole scene had been etched on my consciousness."

"Go ahead," Mason told her.

"I tiptoed over to the desk," she said. "I didn't want to touch the papers unless they were my IOU's, so I leaned across the desk to look down at them. I found they were my notes, and was just reaching for them when you came down the corridor. That rang the electric signal and threw me into a panic. At first I started to grab the IOU's, hide them and claim I'd paid cash for them before Grieb was murdered, but I realized there might not be seventy-five hundred dollars in the safe. So I decided to dash out in the other room, leave the door partially open, as I'd found it, and wait to see who was coming. Then, later on, I might be able to get rid of whoever it was and get the notes. So I ran back to the office, carefully pulled the door so it lacked about an inch of being closed, went over and sat down. I picked up a movie magazine and pretended to read."

"Then what?" Mason asked.

"Then after a while you came in," she said.

Mason scowled at her and said, "Are you telling me the truth, Sylvia?"

She nodded.

"Why didn't you want me to search your handbag?" he asked abruptly.

She met his eyes steadily and frankly, "Because I had a gun in that bag."

"What did you do with it?"

"I went up on deck and tossed it overboard. I didn't dare to let anyone know I had that gun."

"What sort of gun was it?" the lawyer asked.

"A.32 Smith and Wesson Special."

Mason studied her through half-closed eyes and said abruptly, "Sylvia, you're lying."

She straightened in her chair. Her face flushed under the make-up, then grew white. "Don't you dare accuse me of lying, Perry Mason," she said.

The lawyer made a casual gesture with the hand which held his cigarette, "All right, then," he said, "I'll point out to you the places where your story doesn't hang together."

"Go ahead," she challenged.

"In the first place, I was walking rather rapidly when I came down the corridor which leads to the office. That section of flooring which is wired to the office is within thirty feet of the door. I covered that thirty feet within six seconds. The things you've said that you did would have taken a lot more time than that."

"But it was a long time," she insisted. "You didn't open that office door for two or three minutes after the signal sounded. You must have been standing by the door or something."

Mason shook his head. "It wasn't more than six seconds at the most."

"I know better," she told him. "I heard the sound of the buzzer. That frightened me. At first I was so scared I couldn't do anything. I just stood there, leaning over the desk. Then I straightened, faced the door and waited. When nothing happened, I decided I might be able to sneak out into the other office. I didn't waste any time doing it, but I took pains to adjust the door rather carefully. Then I went over, sat down, picked up a magazine and pretended I was reading. It was quite a while after that when you opened the door. It might have been two or three minutes."

"You were excited," he told her, watching her closely. "Your judgment of time…"

"Forget my judgment of time," she interrupted. "The fact remains you didn't come right down that corridor as you claim. You paused for a minute or two outside the door."

Mason shook his head.

Her mouth was obstinate. "I heard the signal," she insisted.

"Wait a minute," Mason said, "is there any chance someone could have been hiding somewhere in that outer office? Then he could have slipped out when you went into the private office, and the signal you heard…"

"Not a chance," she interrupted.

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

"All right, we'll pass that up for the moment. You say you had a gun in your bag?"

"Yes, that's why I didn't dare to let you touch it."

"And you went on deck and threw the gun overboard?"

"Yes."

"But you didn't kill Grieb?"

"I kill Grieb? Of course not."

"Then why did you throw the gun overboard?"

"Because I'd been in that room, and Grieb had been shot. I didn't want to have people think I'd done it."

"Don't you know," he said, "that a gun leaves distinctive marks on every bullet which goes through the barrel? Don't you know that the experts can tell absolutely what gun fired a fatal bullet?"

"I've heard something like that," she admitted. "But I'd been in a room where a man had been murdered. I thought the safest thing to do was to get rid of my gun. So I got rid of it."

"And in doing that, put it forever out of my power to show that your gun did not kill Grieb," Mason said.

"No one needs to know I had a gun."

"How long had you been carrying it?"

"Some little time. I'd been doing quite a bit of gambling. Sometimes I won and sometimes I lost. I carried considerable cash with me on occasion and I didn't want to be held up."

Mason smoked for a few moments in thoughtful silence, then said, "That story doesn't hang together. It doesn't fit in with the other facts. No jury on earth would ever believe it. But years of practicing law have taught me to put more reliance in my judgment of character than in my ability to correlate events. Looking at you when you talk, I feel you're telling the truth. I'm going to stick with you, Sylvia; but God help you if you ever have to tell that story to a jury."

"But I won't have to," she said. "No one knows I was in there… except you."

He shook his head, watched the smoke eddy upward from the tip of his cigarette, and said, "In addition to Belgrade's sell-out, there's another hurdle. You left fingerprints, Sylvia."

"Where?"

"On the desk. When you put your left hand on the glass top and leaned over to look at the IOU's, you left a perfect print of your palm and fingers."

She frowned. "Couldn't you claim that had been done earlier in the day?"

"No. They know better, Sylvia. There were no other prints on top of that hand print. It wasn't even smudged."

"All right," she said, "I'll take my medicine if I have to. But don't think you'll ever get me to go on the witness stand and tell a story which isn't the truth. I'll tell the truth if it kills me."

"It probably will," Mason said grimly… "Why did you run out on me, Sylvia?"

"I told you why. Because I'd learned my husband was aboard."

"How did you learn it?"

"A man told me."

"Who was this man?"

"I don't know."

"Had you ever seen him before?"

"Not before that night, but I'd seen him two or three times during the evening. I…"

"Go on," he urged, as her voice trailed away into silence.

"I have an idea he may have been following me."

"What did he say to you?"

"He said, 'Beat it, Sylvia, your husband's aboard,' or something like that. I remember he used the words, 'Beat it.'"

"When did he tell you that?"

"Just as I stepped out on deck."

"Could you describe him?"

"Yes. He wore a blue serge suit, black shoes with thick soles, a blue-and-black striped tie with an opal tie pin. He was about fifty years old, with thick, black hair, and a stubby black mustache. He wasn't particularly tall, but he was quite heavy."