The Case of the Caretaker's Cat (13 page)

"We were going to be married."

"You didn't call him Douglas."

"What do you mean?"

"You had some pet name for him."

She lowered her eyes, and flushed.

"And," Mason went on, "when you didn't call him by that pet name, you still didn't call him Douglas – you called him Doug."

"Does that make any difference?" she countered.

"Simply this!" Mason said. "If Douglas had written that note to you, he'd have signed it 'Doug' or some pet name, and it would have been a lot more tragic. There'd have been some affectionate stuff in it, and he'd have told you good-by, and that he loved you. That note wasn't written for you; it was written for the public. That was a note that was given you to show people."

She was watching him with wide eyes, her lips compressed tightly together, as though she were trying to keep from whimpering or letting some damaging statement escape her.

"That note's a blind. Douglas telephoned you, and told you he was in a jam. He wouldn't leave without seeing you. He came to say good-by. You talked him into staying. You told him you'd employed me, and I was going to clear things up. You asked him to stay; he refused. You asked him if he wouldn't at least stay where you could keep in touch with him until after I'd made a complete investigation."

Her face gave no faintest flicker of expression, but she clenched her right fist, slowly brought it up until the muscles were pressing tightly against her lips.

"And so," Mason went on inexorably, "Douglas Keene agreed to stay within reach until the police had uncovered all of the facts, and I had tried to explain those facts in such a way as to establish his innocence. But you wanted to throw the police off the trail; so Douglas Keene left this note that you were to give to me, and later on intended to give to the newspaper reporters."

Mason pointed a rigid forefinger at her. "Speak up," he said, "don't lie to your lawyer. How the hell can I help you if you start concealing facts?"

"No," she said, "that's not true. That's… Oh!"

She dropped on the edge of the bed and started to cry.

Mason strode to the closet door, jerked it open, went to the room which contained the shower, opened the door, and looked about in that room. He frowned thoughtfully, shook his head, and said, "She's too wise to have him where the officers would be apt to look. Paul, get busy and see if there isn't a storeroom around here where boxes and stuff are kept."

Mason strode to the bed, jerked back the covers, felt of them and nodded. "Just one blanket," he said. "She's taken off some of the blankets to give him."

Della Street crossed to Winifred's side, put her arm around the girl's shoulder and said soothingly, "Can't you understand, dear, he's trying to help you? He's only being gruff because time is precious, and he must know the facts before he can plan his campaign."

Winifred slid her head over on Della Street's shoulder and began to sob.

"Won't you tell us?" Della asked.

Winifred shook her head, rolling it from side to side on Della Street's shoulder.

Mason strode out of the door to the corridor which ran between booths and lunch counter, peered about him, then crossed behind the lunch counter and started looking into the corners and down under the counter.

Paul Drake had explored a side passageway. Suddenly he gave a shrill whistle. "Here it is, Perry."

Winifred screamed, jumped to her feet, and ran the length of the passageway, her robe billowing out behind her. Mason, walking rapidly, covered the space almost as quickly as the running girl. Della Street, moving at a more leisurely pace, brought up the rear.

A door was open. It showed a litter of broken boxes, old barrels, some cans of paint, a few surplus stores, broken chairs and various odds and ends which had accumulated from the operation of the waffle kitchen. A space near one corner had been cleaned out, and broken packing cases and chairs piled in such a manner as to conceal it. On the floor were spread two blankets and a pillow made by stuffing papers into a flour sack. A sheet was pinned to the blanket.

Paul Drake's flashlight threw brilliant light into the corner, and held the square of note paper in the center of its beam.

"A note," he said, "pinned on that blanket."

Winifred made a dive for the note. Perry Mason's rigid right arm thrust in front of her held her back.

"Just a minute, sister," he said. "You take too many liberties with the truth. I'll read this one first."

The note was a scrawl, as though it had been penciled in the dark. It read:

"I can't do it, Winnie, dear. Probably they'd never find me. But if they did it would make it tough on you. I'd feel that I was hiding behind you as a shield. Perhaps if things come out all right I'll get in touch with you. But I know they'll be watching you and watching your mail, so you won't hear anything from me for a while. Lots of love and kisses to you, sweetheart. Your own Doug."

Mason read the note out loud, folded it and said to Della Street, "Catch her, quick. She's going to faint."

Winifred sagged toward Della Street's protecting arm, then straightened. Her eyes were wan and pathetic. "I shouldn't have left him alone," she said. "I should have known he'd do that."

Perry Mason moved toward the door, kicked aside a broken packing case, walked down the passageway, entered Winifred's room, picked up a telephone and dialed a number. "I want to talk with District Attorney Burger," he said.

After a moment he said, "It's Perry Mason talking. I've got to see him on a matter of importance. Where can I reach him?"

The receiver made squawking noises, and Perry Mason, with an exclamation of disgust, hung up the receiver. He dialed another number, and said, "Police Headquarters?… Is Sergeant Holcomb where you can put him on the phone?… Hello, Sergeant Holcomb? This is Perry Mason… Yes, I know it's late… No, it isn't past my bedtime. If you're trying to be funny, you can skip it, and if you're wisecracking you can go to hell. I rang up to tell you that I personally will guarantee Douglas Keene will surrender to the police at five o'clock tonight… No, not at Police Headquarters. That would give you a chance to pick him up en route, and claim he was a fugitive from justice. I'll telephone you from some place which I'll select. You can come there and pick him up. Don't try to keep the information from the newspapers, because I'm going to tell them… Yes, I'll surrender him at five o'clock…"

Winifred Laxter lunged toward the telephone. "No, no!" she screamed. "No! You can't…"

Perry Mason pushed her away. "Five o'clock," he said, and hung up.

Della Street held one of the girl's arms. Paul Drake held the other. She was wrestling with them, her eyes fastened on Perry Mason's face with an expression of stark fear.

"You can't do it!" she screamed. "You mustn't. You…"

"I said I'd do it," Perry Mason said slowly, "and, by God, I will."

"You're selling us out."

"I'm selling no one out. You wanted me to represent him. All right, I'm going to represent him. The boy's made a fool of himself. He's just a kid. He got stampeded into running away. Someone's double-crossed him. I'm going to put him back on the right track.

"He'll read the newspaper. He'll read that I'm representing him. He'll read that I've personally guaranteed to surrender him into custody at five o'clock tonight. He'll know I'm acting for you. He'll come in and give himself up."

"Chief," Della Street pleaded, "suppose he shouldn't get in touch with you, suppose he should read that in the paper and still keep in hiding?"

Perry Mason shrugged his shoulders. "Come on," he said to Paul Drake. "We'd better get up to the office. Newspaper reporters are going to ask us questions."

He turned to Della Street. "You stay here until that girl gets quieted down. Don't let her have hysterics, and don't let her make a fool of herself. As soon as you can leave her, come up to the office."

Della Street, clicking her heels together, made a mock military salute. "Okay, Chief," she said.

She turned to Winifred Laxter. "Come on, baby, snap out of it."

"I'm s-s-s-snapped out of it," Winifred said, fighting back tears. "Mind your own d-d-d-damned b-b-b-business, and g-g-go on up to his office."

Perry Mason stretched out in his swivel chair, placed his heels on the corner of the desk, lighted a cigarette. "When the newspaper reporters come in, Della, keep them in the outer office and bring them in all at once."

She nodded. Her eyes showed worry.

Paul Drake moved over and sat on the edge of Perry Mason's desk.

"You and I," he said, "had better pool a little information."

Mason's eyes were expressionless. "Such as what?" he asked.

"My men tell me Edith DeVoe was killed. She was beaten over the head with a club. The club was part of a crutch which had been sawed up."

Perry Mason smoked in silence.

"Of course, I knew that you had something in mind when you went up to Doug Keene's apartment. When I saw the blood-stained clothing, I knew it didn't come from the Ashton murder."

"But at that time," Mason asked, "you didn't know anything about the DeVoe murder?"

"Certainly not."

"That," Mason said, "might be a good thing to remember – in case you were questioned."

"Did you know about it?"

Mason stared steadily out of the window into the graying dawn.

After a few moments, when it became apparent he didn't intend to answer the question, Drake went on, "Do you know a man named Babson? He's an expert cabinetmaker. He does all sorts of woodwork, and, as a sideline, makes crutches."

Mason's face showed interest.

"A couple of weeks ago Ashton dropped into Babson's place. Ashton had his crutch made there. He wanted his crutch altered. He wanted a hole bored near the tip of the crutch, wanted it reinforced with metal tubing and lined with chamois skin. He wanted the metal threaded so that a cap could go on the end and the whole business be concealed under the rubber tip of the crutch."

Mason said slowly, "That's interesting."

"About three days ago," Drake went on, "Babson was questioned about that crutch business. A man who gave his name as Smith said he was representing an insurance company that was interested in Ashton's injuries. He wanted to know if Ashton had secured a new crutch or had any alterations made to the old one. Babson started to tell about the changes, then thought better of it and started questioning this man, Smith. Smith walked out."

"Got a description?" Mason asked tersely.

"Five foot eleven, age forty-five, weight a hundred and eighty pounds, light felt hat, blue suit, and a peculiar scar across the face. He was driving a green Pontiac."

"When did that report come in?" Mason asked.

"The night operator handed it to me when I went past the office. It had been on my desk for some little time. One of the boys turned it in in his report."

"Good work," Mason said. "How'd he happen to call on Babson?"

"You wanted a complete check-up on Ashton, so I told the boys to go the limit. Naturally, we were interested in the place where his crutch had been made."

"Well," Mason told him, "add one more name to your list – put a tail on Jim Brandon. Find out all you can about him. See if he's been flashing any ready money lately."

"Already done," Drake said laconically. "I put a couple of men on him as soon as I got the report. Now let me ask you a few questions."

"Such as what?" Mason inquired.

"Such as where you're going to stand in this thing. Did you have to telephone the police, promising to surrender that kid?"

"Sure I had to do it," Perry Mason said with a savage impatience. "Can't you get the sketch? He's either guilty as hell or else that was a plant. If it's a plant, he can't dodge it. He's got to face it. If he tries to run away, he's going to be picked up. If the police pick him up and he's running away, he's headed for the gallows. He'll stretch hemp in spite of anything I can do. If he's guilty and surrenders and stands up like a man, faces the music, pleads guilty and tells his story to the court, I can probably get him off with life imprisonment."

"But you're gambling that he isn't guilty?" Della Street asked.

"I'm gambling, with everything I've got, that he isn't guilty."

"That's just the point, Chief," Della Street protested in hot indignation. "You're gambling too much. You're staking your professional reputation backing the play of an emotional kid about whom you know nothing."

Perry Mason grinned at her, a grin which held no amusement, but was the savage grin of a fighter coming back into the ring to face a formidable adversary who has already inflicted terrific punishment. "Sure I am," he agreed. "I'm a gambler. I want to live life while I'm living it. We hear a lot about the people who are afraid to die, but we don't hear so much about the people who are afraid to live; yet it's a common failing. I have faith in Winifred, and I have faith in Douglas Keene. They're in a bad spot and they need someone to front for them, and I'm going to do it!"

Paul Drake's voice still held a note of pleading.

"Listen, Perry, it isn't too late to back out. You don't know anything about that kid. Look at the facts against him. He…"

"Shut up, Paul," Perry Mason said without rancor. "I know how the facts stack up just as well as you do."

"But why should you stake your reputation on the innocence of some kid when everything points to his guilt?"

"Because," Mason said, "I play a no-limit game. When I back my judgment, I back it with everything I have. I try not be wrong."

"A no-limit game makes for big winnings and big losings," Della Street pointed out.

Mason said impatiently, with a gesture which included both of them, "What the hell can a man lose? He can't lose his life because he doesn't own that, anyway. He only has a lease on life. He can lose money, and money doesn't mean one damn thing as compared with character. All that really counts is a man's ability to live, to get the most out of it as he goes through it, and he gets the most kick out of it by playing a no-limit game."

A buzzer sounded in the office as the door of the entrance office opened and closed. Drake nodded to Della Street. She rose and slid through the doorway into the outer office. Paul Drake lit a cigarette and said, "Perry, you're a cross between a boy and a philosopher, an impractical, hard-hitting visionary, a damned altruistic cynic, a credulous skeptic… and, dammit, how I envy you your outlook on life!"

Della Street opened the door and lowered her voice apprehensively. "Sergeant Holcomb is out there," she said, "with a whole flock of newspaper reporters."

"Did Holcomb bring the newspaper reporters?"

"No. I think he tried to beat them to it. They've been tagging along behind. He seems irritated."

Perry Mason grinned, blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. "Show the gentlemen in," he said.

Della Street ventured a grin. "Does that include Sergeant Holcomb?"

"Just this once, it does," Mason told her.

Della Street flung open the door. "Come in, gentlemen," she said.

Sergeant Holcomb pushed his way through the door. Back of him appeared several men who spread out fanwise as they entered the room, took up positions against the wall. Some of them took out notebooks. All of them had an attitude of listening intently, the attitudes of spectators at the opening round of a prize fight, who scrouge forward to the edge of their chairs lest they miss a single blow in what promises to be an encounter of whirlwind rapidity.

"Where's Douglas Keene?" Sergeant Holcomb demanded. Perry Mason inhaled a lungful of smoke, let it seep out through his nostrils in twin streams. "I'm sure I don't know, Sergeant," he said in the patient tone an elder uses in addressing an excited child.

"By God, you've got to know."

Mason made an unsuccessful attempt at a smoke ring. "The air's too churned up," he explained to Paul Drake in an audible aside. "It's hard to blow them when there are too many people in the room."

Sergeant Holcomb pounded his fist on Mason's desk. "By God," he said, "the day is past when you criminal attorneys can play tag with the law. You know what they're doing now to people who harbor public enemies."

"Is Douglas Keene a public enemy?" Mason asked innocently.

"He's a murderer."

"Indeed! Whom did he murder?"

"Two people. Charles Ashton and Edith DeVoe."

Perry Mason's tongue made clicking noises against the roof of his mouth. "He shouldn't have done that, Sergeant," he said.

One of the reporters snickered audibly. Holcomb's face darkened. "Go ahead and crack wise," he said, "all you want to, but I'm going to get you for aiding a fugitive from justice."

"Is he a fugitive from justice?"

"He most certainly is."

"He's going to surrender at five o'clock tonight," Mason said, taking another drag at his cigarette.

"We'll catch him before that."

"Where is he?" Mason asked, raising his eyebrows.

"I don't know," Sergeant Holcomb bellowed. "If I did I'd go pick him up."

Mason sighed, turned to Paul Drake and said, apologetically, "He's going to put his hands on Keene before five o'clock tonight, yet he insists he doesn't know where Keene is. I've offered to surrender him at five o'clock and yet he won't believe I don't know where he is. It isn't logical."

"You wouldn't promise to have that man in custody by five o'clock unless you knew where he was right now. And you're working out some scheme to beat the case while you've got him under cover," Holcomb accused.

Mason smoked in silence.

"You're a lawyer. You know what the penalty is for becoming an accessory after the fact. You know what happens to people who give aid to murderers."

"But," Mason pointed out patiently, "suppose it should turn out he wasn't a murderer, Holcomb?"

"Wasn't a murderer!" Holcomb almost screamed. "Wasn't a murderer? Why, do you know what the evidence is against that boy? He went out to see Charles Ashton. He was the last man to see Ashton alive. Now get this and get it straight. Ashton had a cat. The cat slept on Ashton's bed. Douglas Keene went out to get that cat; and he got the cat. Witnesses saw him when he entered the room, and saw him leaving the place with the cat in his arms.

"Now Ashton was murdered before the cat left the place. The cat had jumped in through the window. There were tracks on the bed where the cat had walked up and down. There was even a cat track squarely in the middle of Ashton's forehead, proving that the murder was committed before Keene left with the cat. Ashton was killed after ten o'clock and before eleven. Keene was there in Ashton's room shortly before ten and stayed there until he left with the cat after eleven."

Mason, pursing his lips, said, "That would make quite a case against Douglas Keene, if you were certain it was Ashton's cat he carried away."

"Of course it was Ashton's cat. Witnesses saw him, I tell you. The housekeeper saw him. She wasn't sleeping well. She was looking out her window when Keene left. She saw him with the cat in his arms. James Brandon, the chauffeur, was driving a car to the garage. He turned in the driveway, and the headlights hit Douglas Keene squarely. He'll swear Keene was carrying the cat."

"You mean Clinker?"

"I mean Clinker, if that's the cat's name."

"Under those circumstances," Mason said, "the weight a jury would give the testimony of these people would depend upon their ability to convince the jury of the identity of the cat. Where's the cat now, by the way, Sergeant?"

"I don't know," Sergeant Holcomb said, then added, significantly, "Do you?"

Perry Mason said slowly, "I don't think, Sergeant, there's any law in the Penal Code against giving shelter to a cat, is there? You're not by any chance accusing the cat of the murder, are you?"

"Go ahead and crack wise," Sergeant Holcomb said. "Do you know what I'm doing here? Do you know the real purpose of my coming here?"

Mason raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

Holcomb, pounding the desk with his fist, said, "I came here to tell you that Douglas Keene was wanted for murder. I came here to tell you that we're getting a warrant out for Douglas Keene's arrest. I came here to tell you the evidence against Douglas Keene so that if you continue to conceal Douglas Keene, we can have you convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude and have you disbarred. That's why I'm here. I'm going to tell you all of the evidence. When I leave here you're never going to be able to tell a jury or the Grievance Committee of the Bar Association you didn't know Douglas Keene was wanted for murder and that you didn't know the evidence that was against him."

"Rather shrewd, Sergeant," Perry Mason said. "In fact, it's very shrewd. You're closing the door to any possible defense that I might have, is that it?"

"That's exactly it. You're either going to turn up Douglas Keene, or you're going to be arrested, prosecuted, and eventually disbarred."