The Case of the Curious Bride (10 page)

"That's just the point," Perry Mason said slowly. "I'm not certain but what she may be trying to shield somebody."

"What makes you think that?"

"The fact that there are no fingerprints on the doorknob," Mason said.

"Rhoda wore gloves," the detective reminded him.

"Well, what if she did? If she had worn gloves, she wouldn't have left fingerprints on anything, would she?"

"That's right. And the police didn't find any of her fingerprints."

"Then," Mason insisted, "if she hadn't left fingerprints because she wore gloves, she wouldn't need to worry about fingerprints."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that a woman wearing gloves wouldn't leave any of her fingerprints, but when there were no fingerprints on the knob of the door or on the murder weapon it means that some one took a rag and carefully obliterated all of the fingerprints. The only reason a person would do that would be to obliterate certain telltale fingerprints. A person who was wearing gloves wouldn't have left behind any fingerprints to worry about – nothing she would need to obliterate."

Drake's frown was thoughtful. "So that's what you were getting at when you phoned me," he said.

Perry Mason resumed his pacing of the office. Abruptly, he jerked open the door of a coat closet, pulled out a hat, clapped it firmly into position on his head, glanced meaningly at Della Street. "Take a look at that habeas corpus petition," he said. "It should be ready for my signature."

She nodded, moved with the swiftly silent efficiency of a nurse making things ready for a major operation. A few moments, and she returned, bearing a piece of paper in her hand. "This is the last page," she said, "ready for your signature."

Perry Mason scrawled his signature. "Send it up," he said. "Get a judge to issue the writ. See that it's served. I'm going out."

"Going to be long?" asked Paul Drake.

Perry Mason's smile was ominous. "Just long enough," he said, "to give Doctor Claude Millsap the works."

Perry Mason stared steadily at her. "I don't like to fight with women," he said. "I've told you that I was an attorney and that I was going to see Doctor Millsap on a matter of great importance to him. Now you get through that door and tell Doctor Millsap that Perry Mason wants to see him about a.32 caliber Colt automatic that was registered in his name. You tell him that I'm going to wait just exactly thirty seconds, then I'm coming in."

A hint of panic showed in the nurse's eyes. She hesitated, turned, opened the door of Doctor Millsap's private office and slammed it shut behind her with emphasis. Perry Mason consulted his wristwatch. Precisely at the end of thirty seconds he strode to the door, twisted the knob and pushed it open.

Doctor Millsap wore a white robe. A concave mirror was fastened about his forehead with a leather strap, giving him a decidedly professional appearance. The office smelled of antiseptics. Surgical instruments glittered in glass cases. A row of bookcases was visible through an open doorway. On the other side could be glimpsed a tiled operating room.

The nurse had one hand on Doctor Millsap's shoulder. Her eyes were wide. She had been leaning toward the physician. At the sound of the opening door she whirled, with panic in her eyes. Doctor Millsap's face was a sickly gray. Perry Mason shut the door behind him with silent finality. "It happens," he said slowly, "that time's valuable. I didn't have any to waste in preliminaries, and I didn't want you to take time to think up a bunch of lies and make me waste more time proving that they were lies."

Doctor Millsap squared his shoulders. "I don't know who you are," he said, "and I certainly don't understand the meaning of this unwarranted intrusion. You can either get out, or I'll call the police and have you put out."

Perry Mason's feet were planted wide apart, his chin belligerent, his eyes cold and steady. He was like a solid block of granite – four-square, cold, unyielding. "When you get the police on the telephone, Doctor," he said, "explain to them just how it happened that you made a false burial certificate for Gregory Lorton in February, 1929. You can also explain to them how it happened that you gave Rhoda Montaine a.32 caliber automatic, with instructions to shoot Gregory Moxley."

Doctor Millsap ran his tongue along the line of his dry lips, looked over to the nurse with desperate eyes. "Get out, Mabel," he said.

She hesitated a moment, stared venomously at Perry Mason, then walked past him through the door. "See that we're not disturbed," Mason told her. The slamming of the door of the outer office constituted his answer.

Mason held Doctor Millsap's eyes. "Who are you?" asked Doctor Millsap.

"I'm Rhoda Montaine's attorney."

Momentary relief became apparent in Doctor Millsap's expression. "She sent you here?"

"No."

"Where is she?"

"Under arrest," Perry Mason said slowly, "for murder."

"How did you happen to come here?"

"Because I wanted to find out about that death certificate and the gun."

"Sit down," said Doctor Millsap, and dropped into a chair as he spoke, as though his knees had lost their strength. "Let's see," he said, "a man by the name of Lorton… Of course, I have a great number of cases and I can't remember, offhand, the facts connected with each one. I could, perhaps, look it up in my records. You say it was in 1929?… If you could recall some of the particular circumstances…"

Mason's face flushed with anger. "To hell with that line of stuff!" he said. "You're friendly with Rhoda Montaine, I don't know how friendly. You knew she'd married Gregory Lorton and that Lorton had skipped out. For some reason she didn't want to get a divorce. On February twentieth, 1929, a patient was admitted to the Sunnyside Hospital with pneumonia. The name under which he was booked was that of Gregory Lorton. You were the attending physician. The patient died on February twenty-third. You signed the death certificate."

Doctor Millsap licked his lips once more. His eyes were sick with panic. Perry Mason shot out his left arm doubled it smartly at the elbow so he could consult the dial of his wristwatch. "You've got ten seconds," he said, "to start talking."

Doctor Millsap took a deep breath. Quick, panic-stricken words poured from his lips like water from a hose. "You don't understand. You wouldn't adopt that attitude if you did. You're Rhoda Montaine's lawyer. I'm her best friend. I'm in love with her. I care more for her than anything in the world. I've loved her ever since I've known her."

"Why did you sign the death certificate?"

"So she could collect the life insurance."

"What was wrong with the life insurance?"

"We couldn't prove that Gregory Lorton had died. There was a rumor that he had been in an airplane wreck. The records of the transportation company showed that he'd purchased a ticket to go on that plane, but we couldn't prove conclusively that he had been on that plane. No bodies were recovered, except the body of one man. The life insurance company wouldn't take that as proof. Some lawyers told Rhoda she would have to wait for seven years and then bring an action to have it established on the records that her husband was dead. She didn't want to remain married to him. If she had secured a divorce, that would have been an admission that he was alive. She didn't know what to do. She felt she was a widow. She felt, beyond any doubt, that he was dead.

"Then I got an idea. There were a lot of charity patients applying for hospitalization. Many of them couldn't be accommodated, many of them were suffering from fatal maladies. A man of about the size, build and age of Gregory Lorton was trying to get admission to the hospital. I saw that he was suffering from pneumonia and knew that the case would be almost certain to terminate fatally. I told him that if he would consent to use the name of Gregory Lorton, and answer questions as to his father's and his mother's name and address in a certain way, I could get him into the hospital, because Gregory Lorton had an unused credit on the books of the hospital.

"The man did it. He answered all the questions so that the records of the hospital showed just the same as they did on the application for a marriage license. We did everything we could for the man. I'll swear to that. I didn't try to hasten the end, in fact, I tried my best to save his life, because I thought that if he lived I could do the same thing over again with some other unfortunate, until one of them did die. But, despite everything I could do, this man died. I made a death certificate, and then Rhoda had her attorney stumble on the fact of death a few weeks later by writing to the Bureau of Vital Statistics. The attorney acted in good faith. He put the matter up to the insurance company and they paid the policies."

"How much were the policies?"

"Not very much, otherwise we couldn't have worked it as easily as we did. I think they were around fifteen hundred dollars in all."

"Were they policies that Lorton took out in favor of his wife?"

"Yes. He persuaded Rhoda that they should each take out some insurance in favor of the other. He told her that he was negotiating for a fifty thousand dollar insurance policy in her favor, but that there was some hitch in it and the company would only write fifteen hundred dollars temporarily, until an investigation had been completed. He got her to take out a policy in his favor for ten thousand dollars. Undoubtedly, he intended to kill her and collect the insurance if he hadn't been able to get what money she had and skip out with it."

"Of course, he quit paying the premiums on the policies just as soon as he left her?" Perry Mason said.

"Yes," Doctor Millsap said. "That fifteen hundred policy was just a blind. The probabilities are he's forgotten about it. He just paid one premium on it and then left. Rhoda went on paying for the fifteen hundred policy. The airplane accident took place within a few months of the time the first premium was paid. The death certificate was filed within a year. If Rhoda had gone about it right in the first place, I don't think she'd have had any trouble getting the payment made on the strength of the airplane disaster. As it was, she got up against some officious clerk in the insurance company who tried to make things difficult for her."

"Then what happened?"

"Then, there was that period of waiting, and Rhoda collected the policy from my death certificate."

"You've known Rhoda some little time?"

"Yes."

"Tried to get her to marry you?"

Doctor Millsap's face flushed. "Is all this necessary?" he asked.

"Yes," said Mason.

"Yes," Doctor Millsap admitted with defiance in his voice, "I've asked her to marry me."

"Why didn't she?"

"She swore that she'd never marry again. She had lost her faith in men. She'd been a simple, unspoiled girl when Gregory Lorton tricked her into going through a marriage ceremony, and his perfidy had numbed her emotional nature. She dedicated her life to nursing the sick. She had no room for love."

"Then out of a clear sky she married this millionaire's son?" asked Perry Mason.

"I don't like the way you say that."

"What don't you like and why?"

"The way you describe him as a millionaire's son."

"He is, isn't he?"

"Yes, but that isn't the reason Rhoda married him."

"How do you know?"

"Because I know her and I know her motives."

"Why did she marry him?"

"It was a starved maternal complex. She wanted something to mother. She found just what she was looking for in this weak son of rich parents, a young man whose character was commencing to disintegrate. He looked up to Rhoda as a pupil looks up to his teacher, as a child to his mother. He thought it was love. She didn't know what it was. She only knew that all of a sudden she wanted something she could hold tightly to her and care for."

"Naturally you objected to the match?"

Doctor Millsap's face was white. "Naturally," he said in a voice that was edged with suffering.

"Why?"

"Because I love her."

"You don't think she's going to be happy?"

Doctor Millsap shook his head.

"She can't be happy," he said. "She isn't fair with herself. She isn't recognizing the psychological significance of her feelings. What she really wants is a man she can love and respect. Having a child would give her the natural outlet for her maternal affections. What she's done is to suppress her natural sex feelings over a period of years, until, finally, the starved mother complex has given her the irresistible desire to pick up some man who is weak and unfit, and try to protect that man from the world, gradually nursing him back to a normal place in life."

"Did you tell her that?"

"I tried to."

"Get any place with that line of argument?"

"No."

"What did she say?"

"That I could never be more than a friend to her, and that I was jealous."

"What did you do?"

Doctor Millsap took a deep breath. "I don't like to discuss these matters with a stranger," he said.

"Never mind what you like," Perry Mason told him, without taking his eyes from the man's face, "go ahead and spill it, and make it snappy."

"I care more for Rhoda than I do for life itself," Doctor Millsap said slowly, with obvious reluctance. "Anything that will make her happy is the thing I want. I love her so much that it's an unselfish love. I'm not going to confuse her happiness with mine. If she could be more happy with me than with any one else that would be the most wonderful thing that could happen to me. If, on the other hand, she could be more happy with some one else, than with me, I want her to have that some one else, because her happiness comes first."

"So you stepped out of the picture?" Mason inquired.

"So I stepped out of the picture."

"Then what?"

"Then she married Carl Montaine."

"Did it interfere with your friendship with Rhoda?"

"Not in the least."

"And then Lorton showed up."

"Yes, Lorton, or Moxley, whichever you want to call him."

"What did he want?"

"Money."

"Why?"

"Because some one was threatening to send him to jail for a swindle he'd worked."

"Do you know what the swindle was?"

"No."

"Do you know who the person was who threatened to send him to jail?"

"No."

"Do you know how much money he wanted?"

"Two thousand dollars at once and ten thousand dollars later."

"He demanded it of Rhoda?"

"Yes."

"What did she do?"

"Poor child, she didn't know what to do."

"Why not?"

"She was a bride. The suppressed emotional nature of years was commencing to re-assert itself. She thought that she was in love with her husband. She thought that her life was entirely wrapped up in his. Then, suddenly this detestable cad appeared on the scene. He demanded money. It was money that she didn't have to give him. He insisted that if she didn't get it for him he would have her arrested for working a fraud on the life insurance company; also for bigamy. She knew that before he did any of those things, he'd appeal directly to Carl Montaine and try and get money from him. Montaine had a horror of having his name dragged through the newspapers. Moxley was very clever. He knew something about Montaine's absurd complex about family and the snobbish attitude of Montaine's father."