Case of the Footloose Doll (22 page)

“An ice pick!” Judge Bolton exclaimed.

“An ice pick,” Mr. Mason repeated firmly. “If the Court will notice newspaper photographs of Mr. Baylor at the time he arrived in this city, the Court will notice he is coming down the stairs from an airplane carrying his brief case in his left hand, waving his right hand in a gesture of friendly salute, presumably at the cameraman who took the picture. At that time, according to the newspaper report, he claimed he had bursitis. If that was true, it must have been in his left shoulder. His right hand and his right arm were unaffected. 

“Now, I would like to know why it is that he has had this sudden indis-position, in his right arm. I would like to have a physician examine Mr. Baylor to see whether or not there is bursitis in the right shoulder, and I would like to know the names of the physicians he has consulted since he has been here in this city so that we can subpoena them and find out whether the trouble with his right arm is not due to a wound inflicted by an ice pick.”

Judge Bolton said, “Mr. Mason, that is a very serious charge, a very grave accusation. I trust that you have facts with which to back it up.”

“It is no more grave than the statement made by the district attorney that Mr. Baylor was unable to raise his right hand because of bursitis,” Mason said. “If you want to rebuke anybody, rebuke the district attorney.” Judge Bolton flushed. “Mr. Mason, that remark borders dangerously on contempt of Court.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Mason said. “I simply felt a natural resent-ment that any statement I made as to the cause of Mr. Baylor’s injury was accepted with the gravest doubts, whereas the district attorney was permitted to give the Court the benefit of his solemn assurance, an assurance which, as it turns out, was predicated entirely on hearsay testimony, and that he received no rebuke. I would suggest, with all due respect, that the Court examine Mr. Baylor and ask him for the names of the physicians who have treated him.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Baylor said in a low voice. “I regret that the matter has reached this stage. I have carried on the deception long enough. My conscience is bothering me and now I am faced with complete ruination. I wish to make a statement to the Court. Mr. Mason is entirely correct. The bursitis is in my left shoulder. The trouble with my right shoulder is due to a wound from an ice pick which was at first painful but which now has become badly infected.” 

Judge Bolton banged furiously with his gavel. “Order!” he shouted. “Order! There will be order in the court or I will clear the courtroom! The spectators will refrain from making any disturbance! This is a court of justice. Now be silent.” When Judge Bolton had restored order somewhat, he looked at Baylor with a puzzled frown. “This is something,” he said, “that I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“It is simple enough,” Baylor said. “I went to the apartment of Mildred Crest because I felt that I had to have certain letters my son had sent Fern Driscoll which could cause the greatest embarrassment to my family and to my social position. I felt that those letters were in danger of becoming public property through the activities of a scandal magazine. The defendant wasn’t there when I arrived. I entered her apartment by using a duplicate key which I obtained by bribing the janitor. I unscrewed the light bulbs so I could not be surprised and identified. I was searching for the letters with the aid of a flashlight when the defendant unexpectedly returned.

“I suddenly realized the position in which I had placed myself. I felt that the only thing for me to do was to turn out my flashlight and in the dark rush past the young woman who blocked the doorway.

“I didn’t want to hurt her, so I lowered my right shoulder and charged. What I didn’t realize was that she had an ice pick in her hand. The ice pick was, by the momentum of my own charge, impaled in my arm near the shoulder and torn from her grasp. I ran down the stairs, and it was just as I was at the foot of the stairs that I encountered Carl Harrod.

“Harrod apparently had been keeping an eye on the apartment house. He recognized me, turned and followed me. 

“By that time I realized I was out of the frying pan and into the fire. Harrod had a camera. He got a flashlight picture as I ran to my car.

“The magazine with which Harrod had been negotiating for the story of my son’s attachment would have paid many times as much for a story involving me as a housebreaker. I knew I was licked.

“Feeling that I might have a chance to buy my son’s letters, I had arranged for a large sum of ready cash which I had on my person.

“I had withdrawn the ice pick and thrown it into the gutter before I made my arrangements with Harrod. I paid him ten thousand dollars in cash to help me out of my predicament. It was my only way out.

“Carl Harrod agreed to go to his apartment and call Perry Mason. He was to tell hint that the defendant had stabbed him with the ice pick.

“Since I felt certain the defendant hadn’t recognized me, and since we knew she’d call Mr. Mason and tell him she had stabbed someone, we felt Harrod’s call to Mason would completely confuse the issues and give me a chance to keep out of it.

“I was to go to my suite in the hotel, shut off the telephone and refuse to see anyone. Harrod, however, was to report to me, using the name of Howley when he had performed his part of the bargain. I made arrangements so that any call from Howley would be put through at once.

“If Carl Harrod was able to convince Mr. Mason he was the one who had been stabbed, I was to give him another ten thousand dollars. I also realized there would be further payments, but at the moment I couldn’t help myself.

“It was the only time in my life I had ever yielded to blackmail. This time I faced the pitiless publicity of a scandal magazine. I had no choice. Anything would have been better than that sort of publicity.

“We never expected Perry Mason would want to call a doctor to examine Harrod. We knew his client would have told him of the man who had rushed at her, of having stabbed him with the ice pick. It was my idea Harrod would claim the ice pick had penetrated his shoulder, but Harrod tried to put himself in a bargaining position by claiming he had been stabbed in the chest. That was so he could offer a settlement if Mr. Mason would turn over the letters we wanted. Harrod had my ten thousand dollars in cash, ten one-thousand-dollar bills. He knew that I would pay him another ten thousand dollars and that, if he could get those letters, I would pay him even more.

“Harrod knew that Mr. Mason would try at all costs to protect his client by keeping the matter from the police. Harrod, of course, was jubilant. He assured me he could handle Mr. Mason so Mason would, as he expressed it, be eating out of our hands. He said he had handled people of Mason’s type before, that Mason couldn’t be forced to do anything for himself, but that he could be made to do anything when it was a matter of protecting the interests of a client. Harrod assured me he was going to force Mr. Mason to turn over the letters we wanted. Harrod, of course, was expecting compensation for all of this, but he knew I would pay him more than the magazine would.

“I am sorry, Your Honor. I entered upon a scheme of deception and now I find myself trapped by my own chicanery.” Judge Bolton looked at the crestfallen, completely flabbergasted district attorney, then looked at Perry Mason.

“If this is the truth,” Judge Bolton said, “who inflicted the fatal wound on Carl Harrod?”

“There was only one person. Your Honor,” Mason said in a voice of quiet assurance, “who could possibly have done that. What Carl Harrod hadn’t anticipated was that I would insist on calling a physician to make an independent examination.

“Harrod had no ice-pick wound, no wound of any nature when I was talking with him, but he knew after my interview that I had gone to summon a doctor. Carl Harrod, therefore, did the only thing he could. He told the young woman with whom he was living to insert an ice pick in his chest, not to insert it deep but to make a sufficient wound so that he could show a puncture mark to the doctor I was bringing, who was to make the examination.

“Nellie Elliston saw an opportunity to get the large sum of cash Carl Harrod had just acquired from Mr. Baylor. That is the only explanation that accounts for the facts. Harrod bared his chest. He instructed her to insert the ice pick an inch or two. She went to the utility drawer in the kitchen, took out an ice pick, returned to bend over Harrod, smiled down at him, and plunged the ice pick into his heart.

“Then she took the cash Harrod had acquired and fabricated an entirely spurious death scene and dying declaration. Because the district attorney was so anxious to get me involved in the case, he didn’t have her submit to the rigorous tests which he would have imposed under other circumstances.”

Judge Bolton looked around the courtroom, then turned back to Perry Mason “How do you know all that, Mr. Mason?” he asked.

“Knowing that Irma Kames was identifying the defendant, not because of the transaction at the Arcade Novelty, but because of mental suggestion and because of an image so firmly implanted in her mind by improper police methods, I knew there was only one thing that could have happened.

“And when I suddenly remembered the picture of Mr. Baylor arriving at the airport with his right hand waving a greeting, yet remembered that later on that same evening he had been forced to shake hands with his left hand, claiming a bursitis in his right shoulder, I knew what must have happened.”

Judge Bolton said, “The Court noticed that, when Mr. Mason made his statement about the real reason Mr. Baylor could not raise his right hand. Miss Elliston slipped out of the courtroom. In order to dispose of the case at bar, the Court suggests that the district attorney instruct the officers to pick up Nellie Elliston for questioning. The Court might also suggest that it views with the greatest disapproval attempts to bolster the recollection of a witness who is making an identification so that she will not be shaken on cross-examination.

“The Court takes judicial cognizance of the fact that many of our miscarriages of justice are the result of mistaken identification, and suggests that, when a witness is making an identification, the witness be permitted to pick a person from a line-up under test conditions which are conducted with scrupulous fairness.”

“And,” Perry Mason said, “in order to keep the record straight, and in view of Mr. Baylor’s statement I now wish to call my last witness, Fern Driscoll.”

“Who?” Judge Bolton snapped. And then added angrily, “Is this a trick, Mr. Mason?”

“This is not a trick,” Mason said. “I wish to call Fern Driscoll as my next witness. She is waiting in the witness room. If the bailiff will please summon her, I will—”

“Order!” Judge Bolton shouted. “Order in the courtroom! I will have no more demonstrations. The spectators will remain orderly or I will clear the courtroom!”

Judge Bolton turned to Mason. “I trust, Mr. Mason,” he said acidly, “that you are not attempting to impose upon the Court to obtain a dramatic effect. Having called Miss Driscoll as a witness, the Court is going to consider it as an abuse of the process of the Court unless you are able to produce that witness.”

“Here she is now,” Mason said.

Abruptly the courtroom became tensely quiet as a rather tall, dark-eyed, chestnut-haired, young woman walked slowly to the witness stand, held up her right hand, and was sworn.

“Your name?” Judge Bolton asked.

“Fern Driscoll,” she said.

Judge Bolton glowered at Perry Mason. “Proceed!” he said.

“Would you kindly tell us what happened after you left the employ of the Baylor Manufacturing and Development Company in Lansing, Michigan?” Mason asked.

“I left there under circumstances that made me very despondent,” she said. “I felt that I was no longer welcome in the organization. I started driving west with my car.”

“And you picked up a hitchhiker?” Mason asked.

She nodded.

“And what happened?”

“The hitchhiker was a young woman who told me a story about being down on her luck. I guess she was. She told me she had listened to the importunities of a married man who told her that he loved her, that he was going to get a divorce and marry her. She found out that he was completely insincere, utterly ruthless, and when she went to him and told him she was in trouble, he simply laughed at her. He threw her out. She had lost her friends. She had no money.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

“I think,” Fern Driscoll said, “the young woman was temporarily insane. She was desperate. I had a little money. She watched for an opportunity, clubbed me over the head, grabbed my purse, knocked me unconscious, and rolled me out on the road. When I regained consciousness, I found that she had taken my car, my suitcase, and all of my belongings. I reported the theft, but no one seemed particularly concerned.

“I felt certain my car would be recovered eventually. I even hoped nothing very serious would happen to the young woman who had stolen it. She was emotionally unstable and I believe temporarily insane. She had come to believe the world owed a living to both her and to her unborn child. It was quite in keeping with her emotional state for her to hold up a bank.

“No one paid any particular attention to me or made any effort to recover my property. It wasn’t until the press announced that the identity of the bank robber was known and that Fern Driscoll had done the job, that the F.B.I. went into action. That organization located me within an hour.

“Needless to say, I knew nothing about the fact that I was supposed to have been murdered, or that this young woman was on trial, or that she wound up with my purse and my identification.”

“Was the defendant who is here in court the young woman hitchhiker who stole your car?” Mason asked 

“Absolutely not!” 

Mason turned to the pop-eyed Hamilton Burger and smiled. “Your witness,” he said.

Burger said, “No . . . no questions.”

“That’s my case, Your Honor,” Mason said smiling.

“Do you have any further evidence?” Judge Bolton asked Hamilton Burger.

The district attorney merely shook his head.