The Case of the Lucky Legs (22 page)

"Thelma Bell was in the bathroom having hysterics when you arrived at the apartment. The door was unlocked. You opened the door and went in. Patton was trying to get into the bathroom. He was attired in only his underwear. When he saw you, he started to put on his bathrobe. You walked to him without a word, shoved the knife into his heart. He fell to the floor. You turned and started for the door. Then you remembered your blackjack. You had no further need for it. You thought you might be searched, and you didn't want to have such a weapon in your possession. You pulled it out and flung it to the floor. You ran down the stairs of the apartment house and picked up a cab. You stopped within a block or two to telephone Della Street and tell her that you were telephoning from your room in the hotel, and asked if you should bring the brief case as well as the papers. Then you completed your journey by taxicab to the office building here, picked up the package from Mamie at the cigar stand, tore off the wrapper, took out the newspapers and the brief case, and came sauntering into the office just as I telephoned to find out if you were there, and to tell you about the murder.

"Thelma Bell heard the thud of Patton's body when it fell. She unlocked the bathroom door and went out. She bent over Patton. Some blood got on her skirt, stockings and shoes. She wasn't wearing white shoes. Therefore the stains didn't show particularly, and she was able to cover them with shoe polish. But her skirt and stockings were a mess. She cleaned herself up in the bathroom as best she could, and then went directly back to her apartment and took a bath. She went by taxicab. She had finished her bath when Marjorie Clune came in. Knowing that Marjorie had an appointment with Patton, she looked Marjorie over to see if there were any bloodstains on her clothes. She found the bloodstains on Marjorie's shoes, and made her take a bath. She didn't want Marjorie to become involved in the murder. On the other hand, she didn't want to get mixed in it herself. She had called Sanborne, her boy friend, as soon as she had reached her apartment, and had hastily fixed up an alibi with him. The reason that the alibi was so full of holes was that it had been fixed up over the telephone."

Perry Mason ceased speaking.

Bradbury sneered.

"Would it be asking too much," he said, "for you to produce some evidence other than your own maggoty conclusions?"

Perry Mason's smile was cold and frosty.

"I saw Mamie the next morning," he said; "she told me about you having left the package. She mentioned that you always wore a brown suit. I remembered then that you had been wearing a brown suit that evening at the office. Yet, when I saw you in the hotel, you wore a tweed suit. You had rushed from my office to the hotel and changed your clothes. I wonder why. I wonder if it wasn't because there was blood on your brown suit. Of course, the stains wouldn't have shown very plainly by artificial light. But they were there, and you wanted to get rid of the suit. I have an idea that you may have had some trouble disposing of this suit. I think we'll find it concealed somewhere in your room in the hotel.

"Moreover, in order to carry out your plan, you had to have Doray leave the country. You wanted to throw him in a panic. You therefore had Eva Lamont call Dr. Doray at his hotel. She told him that she was Della Street, my secretary, and that I wanted him to leave the country.

"Dr. Doray left the hotel, but kept calling back for messages. He got Marjorie's message, called her, and she agreed to meet him in Summerville."

"Who's Eva Lamont?" asked O'Malley.

"The woman," Mason said, "that occupied Bradbury's suite in the Mapleton Hotel until yesterday. Then, with Bradbury's money, and under his instructions, she went to the Monmarte Hotel, registered as Vera Cutter, and gave Paul Drake information that implicated Doray in the case earlier than would otherwise have happened.

"When I called Bradbury at my office and told him of Patton's death, he almost had a fit, registering surprise. That's the fault of an amateur. He overdoes it. Surprise becomes consternation, and consternation becomes terror.

"Returning, however, to this Eva Lamont angle. Bradbury used her to involve Doray. Naturally, the blacker the case against Doray, the more willing Marjorie Clune would be to do anything in order to bring about Doray's acquittal.

"When Bradbury, listening in over the telephone this afternoon, heard me instruct Della Street to trace any telephone call which had been received by Marjorie Clune prior to her departure from Thelma Bell's apartment, he knew that I was getting on a hot trail. So he changed his plans immediately and ordered me to have Doray plead guilty and accept a life sentence. He wanted to do that because he realized I was commencing to get a slant on what was actually happening. And he tried then to convict Doray and to get me mixed into it in order to save his own skin.

"That, gentlemen, is my confession," Perry Mason said.

He strode across the room and sat down.

Bradbury faced the accusing eyes of Detective Sergeant O'Malley.

"A pack of lies," he said, "a pack of damn lies. Let him produce one bit of proof."

"I think," said Perry Mason, "that if you will have his room in the Mapleton Hotel searched, O'Malley, you'll find that suit of clothes. I think that if you will check his fingerprints with the fingerprints on the bloody knife, you'll find that they check. And, furthermore, just to show you what a liar he is, I dropped by his hotel this afternoon and paid his hotel bill. In paying it, I secured an itemized account of the telephone numbers that he had called. I have the list here. You will see from this list that he called Harcourt 63891 on the night of the murder. That he also called Grove 36921, which was the number of Dr. Doray, in the Midwick Hotel. You will also see that he was paying the bill on a suite of rooms until this morning; that the woman who occupied the other room was Eva Lamont. If you will rush your men to the Monmarte Hotel, you will find Eva Lamont registered under the name of Vera Cutter, and Paul Drake will identify her as the woman who gave him all of the information which enabled him to tip off the police to the evidence against Dr. Doray."

Perry Mason pulled the receipted hotel bill from his pocket, and handed it to Detective Sergeant O'Malley.

Mason turned to face Bradbury.

"I warned you, Bradbury," he said, "not to lie about that telephone call to Marjorie Clune. I told you that it would be a confession of guilt."

Bradbury stared at Perry Mason. His face had gone white as a sheet.

"Damn you," he said, in a low tone vibrant with hatred.

O'Malley nodded to Riker and Johnson.

"We're going to headquarters."

He turned to Della Street.

"Would you mind getting headquarters on the telephone?" he said. "I'm going to send some men out to pick up Eva Lamont and search Bradbury's room at the Mapleton Hotel."

Perry Mason bowed to O'Malley.

"Thank you, Sergeant," he said.

He turned to Bradbury and made a sweeping gesture.

"As you have so aptly remarked, Bradbury," he said, "we understand each other perfectly. We're both fighters. We use different weapons, that's all."

Newspaper photographers held cameras and flashlights. Perry Mason sat behind his desk in the big swivel chair; standing back of him, with warm eyes and smiling lips, was Della Street. Dr. Doray sat in the big leather chair. Marjorie Clune was perched on the arm of the chair.

"Can you get your heads a little closer?" asked one of the newspaper reporters of Marjorie Clune and Dr. Doray. "Bend down a little bit, Miss Clune, and, Doray, if you'll look up at her and smile a little…"

"I'm smiling," said Dr. Doray.

"That's a grin," the newspaper reporter told him. "What we want is something a little more wistful; you're too happy."

Marjorie Clune tilted her head.

Perry Mason watched the pair with an indulgent smile.

Flashlights suddenly illuminated the pair.

One of the reporters turned to Perry Mason.

"Would you mind telling us, Mr. Mason," he said, "when you first knew that Bradbury was guilty?"

"I first realized it," Perry Mason said slowly, "when I became convinced that Bradbury had been in communication with Marjorie Clune, some time after the murder and before midnight. I knew that Marjorie Clune couldn't have called him, because she didn't know where he was. Therefore, he must have called her. He couldn't have called her after she went to the Bostwick Hotel. Therefore, it must have been while she was at Thelma Bell's apartment. I wondered how he could possibly have known that she was at Thelma Bell's apartment. He must have gained that information before I had reported to him. The only way I could account for it was that he had seen the number on the slip of paper."

"So then you laid a trap for him?" asked the reporter.

"Not exactly," Perry Mason said, "but I began to put two and two together. I remembered that he had entered my office reading the latest Liberty, that Liberty had just appeared on the stand. He had picked it up at the cigar counter that evening. Subsequently, when the young lady at the cigar counter told me he had left a package with her and had purchased a magazine, I knew that he must have left the package when he came to my office that evening, yet he said nothing of it. I then commenced to check on other details, and realized, not only that he could have been guilty, but that it was almost certain that he was guilty. I wanted to find out what numbers he had been calling on the telephone; I couldn't figure how I could do this, until I remembered that the hotel kept a record of them; then it was simple."

"And how did you know that Eva Lamont figured in the case?" the reporter asked.

"Because," Perry Mason said, "the first telegram that I received in connection with the case was signed by Eva Lamont. It appears that Bradbury intended to use her to work through. Then he became afraid that she couldn't carry out his plans, so he kept her with him to use as an assistant in getting Doray implicated. She didn't know the true facts, of course; he only confided in her such facts as he wanted her to know. She did the things that he told her, she was rather clever at it, she obeyed his instructions implicitly, and she fooled Paul Drake. By using her, Bradbury was able to get the officers on Dr. Doray's trail much sooner than would otherwise have been the case."

"When do you think Bradbury first conceived the idea of murdering Patton?" the reporter asked.

"Some time ago," Perry Mason said. "He didn't lay his plans in detail, of course, until facts had shaped themselves so that he could make intelligent plans. He is a clever man, Bradbury, don't make any mistake about that. And then, of course, he had some lucky breaks, but he almost managed to put Dr. Doray in the death chair.

"No jury on earth would ever have believed that Dr. Doray was telling the truth when he said that the knife had mysteriously disappeared from his automobile, when he had parked it near the apartment house where Patton lived. Moreover, at any time that Dr. Doray became convinced Marjorie Clune might have committed the crime, he would have confessed."

"And you reasoned all this out without the aid of Thelma Bell's complete statement?" asked the reporter.

"I realized what must have happened," said Perry Mason slowly. "Thelma Bell never did tell me the truth. The first time I knew her complete story was when I saw the signed interview she had given the press, in which she stated exactly what had happened. How Patton, under the influence of liquor, had tried to lock her in the bedroom. How she had taken refuge in the bathroom, where she had given way to hysterics. She felt that Patton had been dragging her steadily down-hill, through his exploitation of her physical beauty. She was tired and nervous and she gave way to hysterics.

"Bradbury, of course, heard her having hysterics as he came down the hall. He simply opened the door of the apartment and walked in. The time and the place were ideal for his purpose."

"But," one of the newspaper men said, "you confessed, did you not, Mr. Mason, to locking the door and then making false statements to the police?"

Perry Mason grinned, and there was a twinkle in his eyes.

"I did."

"Isn't that a crime?"

"It is not. A man can lie to the police or any one else just as much as he wants to. If his lies tend to shield a murderer, he may be guilty of compounding a felony. If he lies under oath, he is guilty of perjury. But, in this case, gentlemen, the lies tended to trap a murderer."

"But," the reporter pointed out, "weren't you taking risks?"

Perry Mason pushed back the chair from his desk, got to his feet and stood with shoulders squared, staring at the newspaper men with eyes that held a glint of amusement, and a glint of something that was not amusement. There was something almost of contempt in his tone when he spoke.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I always take risks. It's the way I play the game; I like it."

The telephone on Perry Mason's desk rang insistently. Della Street picked it up, listened for a few minutes and then left the room. Perry Mason turned to the reporters.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I think you have everything that you want now. I'm going to ask you to terminate this interview. I'm very tired."

"Okay, we understand," said one of the newspaper men. Perry Mason regarded Marjorie Clune and Bob Doray for a moment as if they were strangers. Then he jerked his head toward the door.

"What are you two children doing here?" he asked. "Your case is over. Get out. You've ceased to be a case, you're just a file. 'The Case of the Lucky Legs' – closed."

"Good-by, Mr. Mason," Marjorie said gently, "I never can thank you enough, you know that."