The Case of the Curious Bride (8 page)

"Yes."

"All right," he told her, "I'm going to telephone the Chronicle. These birds have got me spotted now, but they don't know that I've seen them. I'm going to telephone the Chronicle, and then I'm going to let them know that I've seen them and turn my back, pretending to hide. That'll make them think I'm expecting you here, and waiting for them to leave before I go out of the booth. They'll get some place where they can watch me and stick around waiting for me to come out, or for you to join me."

He dropped a coin in the telephone, gave the number of the Chronicle and, after a moment, asked for Bostwick, the city editor. There was the sound of a man's voice on the wire, and Mason said, "How would you fellows like to have the exclusive story of Rhoda Montaine, the woman who had the two o'clock appointment with Gregory Moxley this morning?… You could also have the credit for taking her into custody… Yes she would surrender to Chronicle reporters. Sure, this is Perry Mason. Of course I'm going to represent her. All right, now get this straight. I'm here at the Municipal Airport. Naturally I don't want any one to know that I'm here or that Mrs. Montaine is here. I'm in a telephone booth. You have a couple of reporters come to the telephone booth and I'll see that Rhoda Montaine surrenders herself to them… I can't guarantee what's going to happen after that. That's up to you, but, at least, your paper can get on the street with the news that Rhoda Montaine surrendered to the Chronicle. But get this straight. You can't have it appear that the Chronicle ran her to earth as she was trying to get away. It's got to be a surrender… That's right, she's going to play it that way. She surrenders to the Chronicle. You can be the first on the street with it.

"No, I can't put her on the telephone and I can't give you her story. I can't even guarantee that you'll get a story. How much more do you want for nothing? You can get an extra ready and have it on the street as soon as your men telephone a release. Frankly, Bostwick, I'm afraid the detectives are going to grab her before your men get a chance to interview her, and she isn't going to say very much to detectives right now… Okay, get your extra ready. Start your boys out here and I'll give you some of the highlights on the situation. Now, mind you, I don't want to be quoted in this. I'll simply give you bits of information that you can get for yourself. Rhoda Montaine married a chap named Gregory Lorton some years ago. You'll find the marriage license in the Bureau of Vital Statistics. Gregory Lorton was none other than Gregory Moxley, otherwise known as Gregory Carey, the man who was murdered.

"A week or so ago, Rhoda Lorton married Carl W. Montaine. Montaine is the son of C. Phillip Montaine, a multimillionaire of Chicago. The family's not only respectable but high hat. In the application for a marriage license, Rhoda Lorton described herself as a widow. Gregory Moxley showed up and started to make trouble. Rhoda had been living with a Nell Brinley at one twenty-eight East Pelton Avenue. Moxley sent telegrams to Rhoda at that address, telling her certain things. If you can get those telegrams either from the police files or from the files of the telegraph company, you can use them. Otherwise you can't. Nell Brinley will admit that she received telegrams… That's all I can tell you, Bostwick. You'll have to make up a story from that. You can start running down those angles so that you can have something to put in the special edition you throw on the streets… Yes, she'll surrender herself at the airport. The reason she came to the airport is because I told her to meet me here… No, that's all I can tell you. I've given you all the dope I can. Good-by."

The receiver was still squawking protests as Perry Mason slammed it back on the hook. He turned around as though to leave the telephone booth, looked through the glass, caught sight of one of the detectives, paused, turned his shoulder so that it concealed as much of his face as possible, lowered his head, picked up the telephone receiver and pretended once more to be telephoning.

"They've spotted me, Rhoda," he said, "and know that I've spotted them. They're going to give me a chance to walk into the trap now. They'll get under cover somewhere."

"Aren't they likely to come in here?" she asked in a muffled voice.

"No," he said, "it's you they want. They've got nothing on me. They figure it's a cinch you're going to meet me here and that I'm waiting for you, that I'm trying to keep under cover until they leave. They'll stick around in plain sight for a while and then pretend to leave, figuring that will draw me out in the open."

"How did they know about me?" she asked.

"Your husband," he said.

She gave a quick gasp. "But my husband doesn't know anything!" she said. "He was asleep."

"No, he wasn't," Mason told her. "You slipped some Ipral tablets into his chocolate, but he was too foxy for you and didn't drink the chocolate. He pretended to be asleep and heard you go out and heard you come back. Now go ahead and tell me what happened."

Her voice sounded indistinct as it drifted up from the lower part of the telephone booth. Perry Mason, with the receiver pressed against his ear, cocked his head slightly so that he could hear her words.

"I had done something awful," she said. "Gregory knew about it. It was something that would put me in jail. Not that I was so frightened about going to jail, but it was on account of Carl. His parents thought Carl had married beneath him – a woman who was little better than a street walker. I didn't want to have anything happen that would give Carl's father a chance to say, 'I told you so,' and I didn't want to have my marriage to Carl annulled."

"You aren't telling me very much," Mason said, ostensibly into the telephone.

"I'm trying to tell you the best I can," she wailed, her voice sounding as though she were about ready to start sobbing.

"You haven't got any too much time," Mason warned her, "so don't waste any of it feeling sorry for yourself and crying."

"I'm not feeling sorry for myself and I'm not going to waste time crying," she snapped back at him.

"Your voice sounded like it."

"Well, you try sitting down here, with your head pushed up against a metal telephone box and your knees pushed up against your chin, with a man's feet tramping all over your dress, and you'd talk like that too."

Perry Mason indulged in a chuckle. "Go on," he told her.

"Gregory was in trouble. I don't know just what kind of trouble. He's always in a jam of some sort. I think he'd been in prison. That's why I hadn't heard anything from him. He'd disappeared. I'd tried to trace him. I couldn't find out anything about him, except that he'd been killed in an airplane wreck. I don't know yet why he wasn't. He had a ticket to go on the plane, but, for some reason, he didn't take the plane. I guess he was afraid officers were watching for him. The passenger list showed that he had been on the airship. I thought he was dead. I'd have wagered anything he was dead, but his body wasn't found. And then… well, then I just acted on the assumption that he was dead."

The lawyer started to say something, checked himself just as the words were on his lips.

"Were you going to say something!" she asked.

"No. Go on."

"Well, Gregory came back. He insisted that I could get money from Carl. He said that Carl would pay to keep from having his name dragged into a lawsuit. He was going to sue Carl for alienation of affection. He said that I was still his wife and that Carl had come between us."

Mason's laugh was sardonic. "Notwithstanding the fact that Gregory had taken your money, skipped out, and you hadn't heard from him for years," he said.

"You don't understand. It wasn't a question of whether he could win the lawsuit; it was a question of whether he had the legal right to bring it. Carl would have died before he would have let his name get dragged into the courts."

"But," Mason protested, "I thought you promised me you weren't going to do anything until you'd told me the whole story."

"I went back to see Nell Brinley," she said. "There was another telegram there. It was from Gregory. He was furious. He told me to telephone him. I telephoned him, and he told me I would have to give him a final answer that night. I told him I could give him my final answer right then. He said no, he wanted to talk with me. He said he'd give me a break if I'd come to talk to him. I knew that I couldn't get away while my husband was awake, so I made an appointment for two o'clock in the morning with Gregory and then slipped a double dose of Ipral into Carl's chocolate, so that he'd be asleep."

"Then what?" Mason asked, shifting his position slightly so that he could steal a hasty glance through the glass door of the telephone booth into the lobby of the airport building.

"Then," she said, "I got up shortly after one, dressed and sneaked out of the house. I unlocked the garage door, backed out my Chevrolet coupe, closed the garage door, and evidently forgot to lock it. I started to drive away from the house, and then realized I had a flat tire. There was a service station that was open a few blocks from the house. I drove on the flat to that service station. A man there changed the tire for me, and then we found that the spare tire had a nail in it. It was almost flat. There was enough air in it so the puncture didn't show until he'd changed the tires. So he had to take that tire off, pull out the nail and put in a new tube. I told him I couldn't wait for him to repair the other, so he gave me a claim check for it and I was to pick it up later on."

"You mean the tube that had the nail in it?"

"Yes. He was going to put that in the other tire and put it back on the spare. The tube that had been in there was ruined. I'd driven on it when it was flat."

"Then what?"

"Then I went to Gregory's apartment."

"Did you ring the bell?"

"Yes."

"What time was it?"

"I don't know. It was after two o'clock. I was late. It must have been ten or fifteen minutes after two."

"What happened?"

"Gregory was in an awful temper. He told me I had to get him some money, that I must deposit at least two thousand dollars to his credit in the bank by the time the bank opened in the morning, that I had to get another ten thousand dollars from my husband, that if I didn't get it, he was going to sue my husband and have me arrested."

"What did you do?"

"I told him I wasn't going to pay him a cent."

"Then what happened?"

"Then he got abusive, and I tried to telephone you."

"What happened next?"

"I ran to the telephone and reached for the receiver."

"Just a moment," Mason said. "Were you wearing gloves?"

"Yes."

"All right, go on."

"I tried to pick up the receiver. He grabbed me."

"What did you do?"

"I struggled with him and pushed him away."

"What happened after that?"

"I broke loose from him. He came toward me again. There was a stand by the fireplace, with a poker, a shovel and a brush on it. I dropped my hand and grabbed the first thing I came to. It was the poker. I swung it. It hit him somewhere on the head, I guess."

"Then did you run away?"

"No, I didn't. You see, the lights went out."

"The lights went out?" Mason exclaimed.

She squirmed about, vainly trying to find relief from her cramped position. "Yes, every light in the place went out all at once. The power must have been turned off."

"Was that before you hit him, or afterwards?" Perry Mason asked.

"It was just as I hit him. I remember swinging the poker and then everything got dark."

"Perhaps you didn't hit him, Rhoda."

"Yes, I did, Mr. Mason. I know I hit him, and he staggered back and I think he fell down. There was someone else in the apartment – a man who was striking matches."

"So then what happened?"

"Then I ran out of the room, into the bedroom and stumbled over a chair and fell flat."

"Go on," Mason said.

"I heard a match striking – you know, the sound made by a match scraping over sandpaper, and the sound of a man trying to follow me into the bedroom. It all happened in just a second or two. I ran through the bedroom, out into the corridor, and started to go downstairs, and some one was following me."

"Did you go down the stairs?" the lawyer asked.

"No, I was afraid to. You see, the bell had been ringing."

"What bell?"

"The doorbell."

"Some one was trying to get in?"

"Yes."

"When did it start ringing?"

"I don't know exactly. It was sometime during the time we were struggling."

"How long did it continue to ring?"

"Quite a while."

"How did it sound?"

"As though some one were trying to waken Gregory. I don't think the person at the door could have heard the sounds of the struggle, because he rang the bell in a funny way. He rang it for several seconds at a time, then stopped for several seconds, and then rang again. He did that several times."

"You don't know who it was?"

"No."

"But you didn't go down until the bell stopped ringing?"

"That's right."